The new edition of this accessible and wide-ranging book demonstrates the distinctive insights that sociology has to bring to the study of globalization. Taking in the cultural, political and economic dimensions of globalization, the book provides a thorough introduction to key debates and critically evaluates the causes and consequences of a globalizing world.
"Why is the US far right finding its savior in Spanish dictator Francisco Franco?" by Jason Wilson (#TheGuardian)
"Some US far-right figures have made renewed attempts to rehabilitate the 20th century Spanish dictator Gen Francisco Franco in recent months, praising him as an avatar of religious authoritarianism, and praising his actions during and after the Spanish civil war as a model for confronting the left in the US."
"The critics of this flurry of neo-Francoism say that the real target of this revisionism is domestic attitudes to US democracy."
"For Faber, parts of the the American right are captured by “the dream of order, where social order is more important than democracy, and democracy is a threat to social order”."
A very interesting article on the "re-emergence" of Franco in Spain: "Francisco Franco Is Back: The Contested Reemergence of a Fascist Moral Exemplar" by Francisco Ferrándiz (#OpenAccess, 2021).
💥 Christmas is coming and my book is coming too! This monthly post about The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia discusses my approach of building a discursive strategy. It explains how I was choosing epigraphs and what books and authors influenced my writing style.
#Sociology has a pain "problem." We use concepts like (collective or cultural)#trauma draw allusions to pain, but do not ground them in the fundamental experience of rejection, exclusion, isolation, etc. This paper does this while theorizing SOCIAL trauma. When we understand the science behind social pain, or the neg. affectual response to rejection and exclusion, we can collapse the distinctions btw cultural and collective trauma.
Dear #sociology community: I was foolhardy enough to announce an MA seminar on "Social #transformation" for the summer semester. We start with the idea that every change has to go through a complex society, so there are no automatisms. I'm not without any plan, but I would be interested to know what reading you would recommend - thanks!
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
"The unit is engaged in the same kind of AI work that the world’s biggest tech companies, like Google, Facebook and China’s Baidu are doing in a race to apply machine learning to such functions as self-driving cars, analysis of salespeople’s telephone pitches and cybersecurity — or to fight Israel’s next war more intelligently."
“I’ve always loved algorithms. I was already involved with them in high school and worked in the field. When I [was] drafted I wanted to combine the technology with a combat,” Maj. Sefi Cohen, 34, recalls.
The unit’s only female member left recently. so for the moment it’s an all-male team. Cohen says: “Everyone who’s here is the tops.”
Reconsidering foundational relationships between #ethnography and #ethnomethodology and #conversation analysis – an introduction (by Eisenmann, Meier zu Verl, Kreplak & Dennis)
If you search for this phrase or "how to start a religion" in Google, 670 million results are shown in the first case and more than 3 billion in the second case. On Amazon there are several books with these or similar titles such as (surprisingly) "How to Build a God in Your Garage". Some websites (with more or less seriousness) try to explain step by step how to create your sect or community of beliefs.
I once read somewhere that 'it is not the person that consumes the product, it is the product that consumes the person' or something along those lines. Does anybody know where it came from?
From Hobbes to Bauman, a dive into the liquefied society and the 'interregnum' of anomie. Could a fluid state be a solution? Further insights will follow in another article.
Ingemar Johansson Sevä and Ida Öun: "Partisanship and perceptions of the consequences of welfare service privatization from left to right (-wing populism)".
Society can be understood as something that only exists as long as actions are performed, as long as processes take place, as long as we all contribute in some way to its ephemeral construction.
"Social organization is messy and refractory, a shambles rather than a crystal […]. There is no tidy atom and no clear-cut world, only complex striations and long strings that reptate as in a polymer goo" (White, H.C. (2008), Identity and control, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 18).
A sombre documentary on #hikikomori. Perhaps manifesting in an unusual place, one individual states that in the 21st century we need to be content with being poor. A true testament to the neoliberal order.
@sociology#sociology How would one go about compiling a list of sociologists worldwideacross the planet who have died in the last two years? Thinking about memorials to our fallen comrades.
We recently published the article "Political icon and role model: Dimensions of the perceived ‘Greta effect’ among climate activists as aspects of contemporary social movement leadership" by Mattias Wahlström and Katrin Uba.