By Wayne Mellinger
Instructor, Antioch University
Casual connections might be some of the most consequential relations in our lives, helping us to land jobs, deal with our personal issues, and providing us with a sense of identity and belonging. And in our world of social media, such as Facebook, modern humans probably have more casual acquaintances than most humans ever have had before.
By Todd Schoepflin
There I was, sitting on a bar stool, having a beer and shooting the breeze with my brother-in-law Jim, and watching people bowl together. I don’t get out much, so it was eventful just to hang out at a bowling alley for a few hours. But a surprising interaction occurred that night. A woman, who appeared to be drunk, touched my face as she walked by me and said something about my eyes that I think was intended as a compliment.
Ask just about anyone about how to improve public education and they’ll likely give you an answer: Hire better teachers. Fire bad teachers. Instill more discipline. Include more art and music in the curriculum. Go back to the basics. Involve multicultural lesson plans. Allow students to use vouchers to attend private schools. Create more public charter schools.
All of these ideas have been implemented somewhere, each with fans and critics. None has been proven to be a cure-all, but for supporters, they seem like simple solutions that should be put in place as soon as possible.
Education is a great example of the multifaceted nature of social issues. And while single solutions are easy for us to understand and form an opinion about, they are not necessarily helpful in the long run. Applying core concepts can help us understand why and move us towards a more complete understanding of education as a social institution.
Continue reading "Thinking Sociologically About Education" »
By Tristan Bridges, The College at Brockport, State
University of New York
and Tara Tober, University of Virgina
Drug-sniffing dogs are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Dogs are often one line of defense against possessing drugs in public. They help law enforcement identify people with drugs in airports, schools, and other public spaces. The use of dogs relies on a collective understanding that carrying drugs in public, even if you are discrete about it, should not be allowed. Various drugs are illegal to use, distribute, and even possess. Yet, we also know that many people do use, distribute, and carry drugs. So, the question becomes, when can people reasonably expect privacy from law enforcement? Or perhaps more appropriately, where?
From day one in my statistics course, I tell my students that data are everywhere. Even though the word makes it sound like data is everywhere, the word data is plural thus they are everywhere.
Facebook helped me make the point recently when they posted a note and shared information gleaned from posting patterns (empirical data!) during the week that the Supreme Court heard arguments on marriage equality.
Recently, gay marriage and gay rights have been at the forefront of the nation’s attention. As the Supreme Court heard two historic arguments on same-sex marriage, the top story in print, on the airwaves, and over the Internet has revolved around these issues.
My interest in such matters started much earlier, specifically in January 1991. At the time, my brother and I were driving back to New York from Washington, D.C. after attending a rally protesting the Gulf War. We spent the whole weekend together talking about things both serious and frivolous. It wasn’t until we were about two exits away from our hometown when my brother woke me up from a nap saying that he had something to tell me. I thought he was going to say that he got pulled over for a speeding ticket. Instead, he told me he was gay.
For the last five years I’ve received many calls about pranks. I’m not a prank expert, but I did write an article about tricks tour guides use to tell historical stories. That perked up the ears of a New York Times journalist who quoted me in an article, “April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks.” Since then, I’ve been on the radio and in print every year saying something about the sociology of pranks.
This year, instead of just giving little quotes here and there to the media, I wanted to explain my thoughts about April Fool’s pranks more fully. Fellow Everyday Sociology blogger Sally Raskoff wrote about them last year, too. Yesterday, in a faculty meeting, one of my colleagues said that "sociologists don’t have much of a sense of humor," but Raskoff’s blog is indeed a funny April Fool’s themed post. I won’t spoil it too much, but she points to pranks as being about breaking norms and showing the importance of humor. I agree, and want to expand this idea a bit further.
C. Wright Mills famously described how “personal troubles” and “public issues” are related; understanding this relationship is essential for developing a sociological imagination.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for a handful of students to encounter serious “personal troubles” during the course of a semester. These are not simply excuses to try and get an extension on an assignment, but serious crises that may prevent them from continuing in my class—or with their education entirely. Let’s consider how these “personal troubles” might be linked with “public issues.”
Continue reading "The Sociological Imagination and Personal Crises" »
You are likely familiar with the Steubenville, Ohio case where two teenaged boys were recently convicted of raping a young woman.
There have been some great sociological analyses about it. Sarah Sobieraj wrote an OpEd on the ”digital residue” of the case highlighting how social media drew the story out into the light of day, Evan Stewart wrote at The Society Pages on our male-dominated society, the UK’s Guardian discusses the town’s economic woes, and Lisa Wade wrote about the media’s response to the verdict.
Continue reading "Steubenville Meets the 24-hour News Cycle" »
Did you know that turning in a class assignment copied directly from your textbook without quotes is a form of plagiarism? A student who did this in one of my classes claimed not to.
Each year I encounter some form of academic dishonesty, the most common being copying from another source, directly or paraphrased, without quotes or attribution. The most egregious example: a student copied directly from a book I wrote. (In this case, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery).
Why do people cheat? And how can sociology illuminate—and potentially reduce—this behavior, particularly in academia?
If you're a sociology instructor or student and would like us to consider your guest post for everydaysociologyblog.com please .
