The Global Sociology Blog

‘Global institutions need a drastic overhaul’ – World Politics, World – The Independent via kwout

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It is a nice coincidence that I showed Jane Elliott’s famous experiment to my class… for those of you who need a refresher…

Then, I saw this article in the Guardian:

‘Blue-eyed bankers’ to blame for crash, Brazil’s Lula tells Gordon Brown | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

Actually, more than race / ethnicity, the important question [...]

In the comments  of my latest post on the patriarchy continuum, the Grumpy Sociologist mentioned this post of his on patriarchy and domestic violence in the US and Gaza. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of this in the news lately. For instance, the media has been all over the shooting in the nursing home [...]

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film composer Maurice Jarre dies via kwout

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Of course, when I saw that hotel had Gomorrah available for pay-per-view, I HAD to watch it, so, I ponied up the money and watched… and it is a gripping film. Gomorrah is, of course, based on Roberto Saviano’s book of the same title and for which Saviano is now living in hiding. It [...]

This should be interesting:

Spanish judge accuses six top Bush officials of torture | World news | The Observer via kwout

Universal jurisdiction is a beautiful thing.

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So first, there was the real Fritzl case out of Austria. Then, as I mentioned yesterday, there was a horrifyingly similar case in Italy, with an update today:

‘Italian Fritzl’ was known to police and social workers – Europe, World – The Independent via kwout

And now, there is another case out of Colombia:

BBC NEWS | [...]

For Branko Milanovic, the root cause of the economic crisis is not just greedy bankers and deregulation but the enormous increase in inequalities over the past 25 years, worldwide:

‘Just World News’ with Helena Cobban: Milanovic: ‘The crisis of maldistribution’ via kwout

This results in enormous capital that is not consumed (there is only so much [...]

Patriarchal violence may take different forms but it all boils down to controlling women’s bodies and sexuality:

Un Italien arrêté pour le viol de sa fille pendant 25 ans, Europe – NouvelObs.com via kwout

It is a case terrifyingly reminiscent of the Fritzl case: a 63-year old man has been continuously raping his 34-year old daughter [...]

“It’s raining again”

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What Jay said:

"The American tendency to define problems in moral terms leads us to come up not with solutions but with punishments."

I am going to make my students learn this by heart. As importantly, this is part of this post:

Montclair SocioBlog: If I Had a Hammer via kwout

Although I would nitpick that "zero tolerance" [...]

The current issue of Contexts has an interesting article on global cities and the opportunities and challenges they present to urban planners, developing countries and multilateral institutions written by Michael Goldman and Wesley Longhofer. They write

"In the Global South, select cities promise to be catalysts for their national economies, too. Indeed, many scholars and analysts [...]

I am a big proponent of conceptual rigor and clarity as having the correct conceptual framework to understand social situations and phenomena is crucial to either provide the correct solutions to problems or at least to not make mistakes. Anyway, John Robb clarifies:

Global Guerrillas: HOLLOW STATES vs. FAILED STATES via kwout

It seems to me that [...]

Dalton Conley’s Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety was clearly written to be a bestseller and takes its place among the "trends" books that get published on a regular basis and claim to be capturing the [...]

How did I ever live before discovering In Contempt:

Is It Toxic? | In Contempt via kwout

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