Sociology lens

Abolition, from police abolition to prison abolition, is largely thought about as being a pretty radical theory. Even amongst critical criminologists who argue against mass incarceration, the torture of solitary confinement, or the racist nature of the over surveillance, policing, and sentencing of Black and Latinx folks, abolition is often seen as an extremist or unrealistic response to a broken system. Identifying concrete ways of fixing problematic aspects of the system is for many preferable than wanting to tear the... Sociology Compass is delighted to welcome Sayaka Osanami Törngren as our new Associate Editor for the Race & Ethnicity section. Dr Osanami Törngren is Associate Professor in International Migration and Ethnic Relations, and Senior Researcher at Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare. The Associate Editor role at Sociology Compass is to lead on the commissioning of state-of-the-art review articles under dedicated subject areas. We took the opportunity to talk to Sayaka about her research background and aims for the race &... For many people in the United States and the world over, 2020 was a pivotal year for learning about and engaging in radical protests against extrajudicial killings of Black and Latinx people by police officers. It was a year that brought a lot of attention to the now common slogan “defund the police,” especially after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. As the world had also come to a...

Source: healthamericans.org It is not surprising that caloric intake continues to be a problem for many Californians and others throughout the United States. Healthy eating habits are mostly treated as individual issues. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides guidelines for food consumption with initiatives like the Yet, we have seen a few movements in the last couple of years that recognize food consumption as a social and cultural issue. In 2010, ABC aired a series focusing on chef Jamie Oliver’s attempts to change eating habits in one of the unhealthiest towns in the United States. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution tackled major obstacles to healthy eating in a West Virginia town, starting primarily with the food served in schools. Oliver found that the publically-funded school lunch program served children milk with too much sugar, food with too much fat, and meals with few redemptive qualities. Oliver met resistance from the community and the school system, but ultimately the small town in West Virginia started to change. Even after he left, Another movement that comes to mind is These are the types of initiatives that are needed in order to reduce obesity rates. If we continue to think about weight issues as individual battles, we will fall short. We need larger social and cultural changes in order to ensure that individuals have access to the food and information necessary to maintain a healthy weight. Suggested Reading: Burdette, Hillary L. and Ro...

Launching in 2023! Diversity & Inclusion Research is an important new Open Access, multidisciplinary journal publishing high-quality research focussed on improving diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility at the individual, organizational, and societal level. Published by Wiley, the journal aims to contribute towards the deepening of local and international, theoretical and practical understandings of DE&I.​ There is an increasing urgency driving a need for rigorous inequality research. More than two-thirds of countries are experiencing increased income disparity, exacerbating the risks of economic and... When we began to research children’s consent to non-urgent heart surgery in 2019, we were surprised by the healthcare professionals’ enthusiasm for consent with the right to refuse. In the first of our 45 interviews with practitioners and related experts, an anaesthetist said: “As a group, we would like to be the best in the world at doing some kind of evidence-based consent that is great for patients and legally robust. We’re aiming to be amazing at it…Definitely some four-year-olds... “Medicalization“ as a theoretical concept has received much attention in sociology throughout decades and people’s drug use is a social phenomenon investigated from different perspectives in the social and life sciences. Research on “study drugs” is an area where many of these perspectives converge – not only because it prompts us to reconsider the treatment/enhancement distinction....

Learning Objectives 1.1. What Is Sociology? • Explain the concepts central to sociology. • Describe the different levels of analysis in sociology: micro-level sociology, macro-level sociology, and global-level sociology. • Define the sociological imagination. 1.2. The History of Sociology • Explain why sociology emerged when it did. • Describe the central ideas of the founders of sociology. 1.3. Theoretical Perspectives • Explain what sociological theories and paradigms are and how they are used. • Describe sociology as a multi-perspectival social science divided into positivist, interpretive and critical paradigms. • Define the similarities and differences between quantitative sociology, structural functionalism, historical materialism, feminism, and symbolic interactionism. 1.4. Why Study Sociology? • Explain why it is worthwhile to study sociology. • Identify ways sociology is applied in the real world. Introduction to Sociology Concerts, sporting matches and games, and political rallies can have very large crowds. When you attend one of these events you may know only the people you came with, yet you may experience a feeling of connection to the group. You are one of the crowd. You cheer and applaud when everyone else does. You boo and yell alongside them. You move out of the way when someone needs to get by, and you say “excuse me” when you need to leave. You know how to behave in this kind of crowd. It can be a very different experience if you are travelling in a for...