The Global Sociology Blog

Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage: A History is still the best book around on marriage and families. And it’s like Kate Beaton read it and let her cartoonist imagination run wild…

Hark, a vagrant: 255 via kwout

This one is my favorite but the whole series is well worth it.

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They’re back! It’s been so long:

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Via Chris Uggen, every dot is a new prison. Pay also attention to the music and the visual, they are beautifully woven together:

One can nitpick, of course. It’s a bit longish and a timeline would have been nice but it makes a strong point.

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In Econned: How Unenlightened Self-Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, Yves Smith, of Naked Capitalism, issues bills of indictment against the economic profession, the financial class and their  accomplices in government and regulatory agencies. It is them who caused the financial crisis of 2008 and the book goes into much detail as to how it [...]

As part of my review of Loïc Wacquant’s Prisons of Poverty, I mentioned that Wacquant devoted some space to debunking what he considers to be a myth: the theory of the prison-industrial complex. I thought I’d mention a bit more about it.
For Wacquant, there are four main reasons the expression “prison-industrial complex” does not provide [...]

If you enjoyed The Story of Stuff, you’ll enjoy The Story of Bottled Water:

The Story of Bottled Water via kwout

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Loïc Wacquant’s Prisons of Poverty is the shorter, more reader-friendly and activist-oriented version of Punishing The Poor. It touches upon the same topics: the double-pronged way in which the neo-liberal state disciplines the poor: workfare and prisonfare. One cannot be understood without the other.
Contrary to Punishing The Poor, clearly directed at an academic audience, the [...]

Via Mashable (zoomable version here),

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The evil that reality television contestants do – TV & Radio, Media – The Independent via kwout

However, after years of Bush / Obama administration systematic torture and rendition, torture porn from the 24 TV show, in other words, after the banalization and acceptance of torture in the name of fighting terrorism, I fail to see [...]

Via Ian Wardle:

More money makes society miserable, warns report | Business | The Observer via kwout

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The great Yves Smith (have you gotten a copy of her book yet?) over at Naked Capitalism (which should be in everyone’s newsreader) has posted a great demonstration of the ways in which financial class behaves in a fashion very similar to cults and very class conscious. The post is a bit longish but worth [...]

Singer Jean Ferrat dead at 79: News24: Entertainment: International via kwout

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That’s the US’s world ranking on maternal mortality:

Amnesty report condemns US death rates of women in childbirth | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

“Mothers die not because the United States can’t provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good care is available to all women…
Whatever form they [...]

The transnational capitalist class, immune to economic shocks:

The World’s Billionaires – Forbes.com via kwout
Awww…

The Forbes 400 – Forbes.com via kwout

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