« September 2011 | Main | November 2011 »
Kim McGann
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Nazareth College
I was sitting in a sociology of law class at SUNY Buffalo talking about rape cases. The professor asked whether we thought women were treated fairly in the legal system. My classmate Sarah raised her hand and when she was invited to share her comment she began quite adamantly “I’m not a feminist or anything but I definitely think that it is unfair to allow a woman’s sexual history to be used against her in a trial.”
By Sally Raskoff
I tried to go to our local mall the other day but couldn’t get into the parking lot. All the nearby streets and the mall access had been closed on the corner of the mall where I was headed. I finally found a parking space overlooking that corner. I saw police barriers, road closures, and some officers waving people away while others held clipboards and stood in small groups talking to other officers.
By Janis Prince Inniss
No matter the size of your college or university, you are likely to be taught by adjunct professors at some point.
What is an adjunct? You might think of an adjunct as the equivalent of a ”temp” or a part-time worker; an adjunct is the university version of such a position. Usually, this means that adjuncts receive no health, retirement, or other benefits, are poorly paid and do not have the holy grail of academic positions: tenure. In fact, adjuncts are a job classification that does not allow them to ever become tenured.
I recently had the privilege of undergoing a root canal.
I mean that only semi-sarcastically; the procedure was not exactly fun, nor how I would have hoped to spend the morning, and it wasn’t cheap. That’s where privilege comes into play.
Having a good paying job and dental insurance meant that I could undergo the procedure, sparing me the possibility of chronic pain and infection. The reason I went to the dentist in the first place was to get my routine six-month cleaning, which thanks to my insurance and socio-economic status is something I can afford to do regularly.
By Sally Raskoff
A recent study using data from Twitter reports on human mood swings throughout the day. The sociologists gathered and analyzed English language tweets from 2.4 million people in 84 countries for over a year. They used software that analyzed the meaning of words in the tweets and assessed their connections to moods and emotions among other things.
By Jonathan Wynn
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
I recently went down to see Occupy Wall Street, in New York’s Zuccotti Park. I was interested in what an occupation looked like. The images I saw on the news were of angry mobs and police pepper-spraying demonstrators, but I saw something different.
Continue reading "A Sociologist Visits Occupy Wall Street" »
By Janis Prince Inniss
What is your master status?
For many readers of this blog, it is probably student—whether college, high school or of some other level. Your master status is your most important status and people tend to interact with you on its basis.
By Peter Kaufman
For the past 12 years I’ve been including this quote at the top of my syllabus for my Introduction to Sociology class. I put this quote at the top of my syllabus because it serves as the motto of the whole class. In fact, this quote really serves as the motto for all of my classes and I would say for the whole process of teaching and learning—maybe even for the whole journey of life. It comes from a classic book of Zen Buddhism called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
If you're a sociology instructor or student and would like us to consider your guest post for everydaysociologyblog.com please .
