In his examination of governing under capitalism, Goran Therborn (2008) remarks that evidence of a society, in which the forces of social control manage through the general population’s acceptance of the legitimacy of that rule, is the absence of a police presence to enforce ideological domination. The less often one experiences the police on a daily basis, the […]
It is fair to say that the history of Europe, and by extension the United States, in relation to Islamic regions has been one characterized by violence and misunderstanding. By the end of the 8th century a vast empire from India to the east, spreading across the Middle East, North Africa and into Spain, consolidated Islamic rule. By […]
Well into the middle of the second decade of the 21st Century, I wonder if we are living in a time warp. As I write, Israel is once again involved in a ground war in Gaza resulting in the death of thousands on the ground, though increasingly the Israelis are using a page out of the US […]
Readers of this journal are familiar with the nature of consumer debt, and the role it played in destroying much of the equity of middle class families after the housing crisis caused by the financial meltdown of 2008 and the collapse of real estate prices. Starting in the late 1970s, to make up for stagnant real wages while […]
It is perhaps fitting, at this time of year, to reflect both on how capitalism shapes society, and on the state of society (and here I mean the US as the heartland of neoliberal capitalism) under capitalism. We are inundated with offers of merchandise as we are asked to celebrate a holiday that commemorates charity […]
At the turn of the century, writers like Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker created monsters that reflected the times in which they lived, monsters that were either constructs of the new scientific age, or the undead sucking the very life-blood of people to survive and create the new race of non-humans. These reflected the anxieties […]
Over the past decade, as a result of the economic crash in 2008 and the greater awareness of inequality through the efforts of the Occupy Movement, there is an increasing interest in critical sociological analysis. At the same time, Critical Sociology introduced a Latin American and Caribbean initiative, then an Africa initiative, and most recently a Middle East […]
We are constantly reminded that we live in a world that is now connected by a global economy, one that transcends the earlier understanding of an international economy. In the latter case, major corporations situated in a core country—either the US, Japan, or those that comprise Western Europe—and projected their economic power as the post-colonial […]
Modern scholarship is in deep crisis. The extent of intellection prostitution to those who oppress and manipulate others may have already reached the point of no return. (Western Union of Radical Sociologists, 1969b) With these opening sentences, the founders of The Insurgent Sociologist, which later became Critical Sociology,1 gave notice to the academy writ large, […]
For at least half a century, social constructionism strongly marked the course of sociological studies of social problems. Its presence was felt in social problems textbooks, various dedicated book series, and within the discipline’s major professional associations, particularly the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) where many seminal constructionists served as presiding officers […]