"The military, prison, and financial policies of the U.S. government are interrelated, creating a social system that is repressive and offensive to human dignity for people who experience it, especially the marginalized, the poor, the 'Third World'. The poor in America are filling the prisons and the 'Third World' are the fodder on the other end of the bombs in America's wars. In categorizing the abuse of power that is undertaken by institutions operating 'above the law' or through State privilege, the deprival of life by government policies through war and the deprival of liberty to individuals through imprisonment are particularly fundamental problems that relate to the basic human rights every person should enjoy equally. Capitalism is being used as a justification for these actions historically by American policies, leadership, and their rhetoric... When you discuss what the alternatives to the 'corruption' that favors the 1% or represents only a fraction of the 1% who are permitted an active or consequential role in politics, it seems that #ows is suggesting an alternative of direct, active, particpative democracy that is also interested in a reform of policy according to moral standards." + Understanding #ows - Noam Chomsky Interview

Sociology News:

Anselm Kiefer: Aschenblume, 2004 - http://goo.gl/Ow1ht
Sociology after Auschwitz
Adorno, Fascism, & Historical Internalization - Submitted by: Miguel Hernandez

Looking critically at the statement, “After Auschwitz (and in this respect Auschwitz is a prototype of something which has been repeated incessantly in the world since then) our interest is in ensuring that this should never happen again,” Adorno uses this phrase at the end of ‘Lecture II’ (1968) in “Introduction to Sociology,” right after he praises Freud for his "theory of society" which has been "enormously fruitful for the subjective-empirical side of sociology, for defining the motivations of persons and groups." (Adorno, 1970, p.17)  Adorno further compliments Freud on the grand themes his theory of psychology generated when applied to historical interpretat...

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Sociology News:

the altruistic is the highest value of humanity
Famine, Affluence, & Morality
An individual should sacrifice every aspect of selfishness - Submitted by: Sara Riverston

Peter Singer begins his seminal essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” in 1971 writing about East Bengal, now Bangladesh, whose people had just suffered a terrible natural disaster. The situation he describes is one that could be told forty years later in the same words and same context, which is to state that little has changed in bridging the gap between the world’s poorest people and the richest societies economically, or even with regard to the most basic aspects of standard of living such as adequate food, shelter, and health care. In building his argument that people who are with the means to assist are morally obligated to help the suffering, Singer builds his rhetoric on the equivalency of proximity when it references human emerge...

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Police Violence: Milgram & Stanford Prison Experiments
Milgram + Stanford Prison
Social Psychology and Obedience in Groups - Submitted by: Stephanie Grant

In his landmark study on human behavior in relation to authority, Stanley Milgram wrote of the importance of obedience in human society. “Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority,” he wrote. “Facts of recent history and observation in daily life suggest that for many persons obedience may be a deeply ingrained behavior tendency, indeed a prepotent impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct.” (Milgram, 1961) The Milgram experiment involved individuals who meet and are asked to participate in an experiment on the use of punishment in learning.

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'Adorno's diagnosis of the exchange society has three levels: politico-economic, social-psychological, and cultural. Politically and economically he responds to a theory of state capitalism proposed by Friedrich Pollock during the war years... Pollock argued that the state had acquired dominant economic power in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and New Deal America. He called this new constellation of politics and economics “state capitalism.”'
+ Adorno - State Capitalism & War

‎'A typical example of this is his distinction between technology and technics, where technology is a “social process,” or a “mode of organizing and perpetuating (or changing) social relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and behaviour patterns, an instrument of control and domination.” Technics refers to the techniques of production which can “promote authoritarianism as well as liberty, scarcity as well as abundance, the extension as well as the abolition of toil... According to Marcuse, the “machine process” generates a “mechanics of conformity,” whereby “[i]ndividuals are stripped of their individuality, not by external compulsion, but by the very rationality under which they live.” The “mechanics of conformity” governs “performance not only in the factories and shops, but also in the offices, schools, assemblies and, finally, in the realm of relaxation and entertainment.” These insights are relevant to postwar democracies as well where human well-being is increasingly subordinate to the demands of efficiency, profit and the maintenance of the state political apparatus.'
+ Marcuse - Sociology & Technocracy

'It is man himself who is responsible and not "historical developments..." If we take "freedom" to mean first and foremost the responsibility of each individual. to shape personal, occupational, and social existence in a rational way, then it can be said that there is no greater fear than the fear of the creation of general freedom.'
+ The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Sociology News:

Applying act utilitarianism in decision-making
Saving Private Ryan
Mill reformulated Bentham’s theory of Utilitarianism - Submitted by: Nicole Briggs

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) are the two historical figures most closely associated with the philosophy of utilitarianism, which seeks to ground moral reasoning in a calculus of utility in judging actions on the basis of the degree of ‘goodness’ that they produce socially, personally, or through situational results. Utilitarianism addresses the philosophical problem that occurs in the definition of ‘the good’ in society. In religious traditions, the ‘good’ is established by divine decree or prophetic interpretation.

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Sociology News:

Territorial Masquerades: http://goo.gl/SMf8N
Weber & Machine Learning
Sociology, Capitalism, Religion, and Bureaucracies - Submitted by: Raymond Schach

Max Weber (1864 – 1920) is one of the leading German intellectuals of the 20th century, having written influential treatises on Sociology, Capitalism and Religion, and Bureaucracies as they represented the rational rule of society. When looking for the philosophical influences that influenced Weber’s theories, it is difficult to find as Weber critiqued in many ways Socialism in his writings but maintained an academic distance from other schools of thought. While Weber may be most influenced by the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche as they dominated German philosophy in his day, he is not writing to them directly or with frequent reference in his work, and his teachings stand independent.

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Sociology News:

everyday life as a complete homogenization
Taylorism and Fordism
Engaging with the deskilling and upskilling theses - Submitted by: David Marshall

Globalization represents an expansion of free-market capitalism along with the values of liberalism and democracy as they inform modernism and scientific progress, and this may be viewed as a bias against local, indigenous cultures, their traditional values, and knowledge systems. International marketing operates through channels and budgets primarily, carrying also an agenda or ideology. The channels relate to the technology of communication or “the medium” and the advertising or content, of whatever value or moral tone, is “the message”.

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Robbery & Social Causes - Tracing the Roots of Robbery from Childhood up to Adulthood - Submitted by: David Marshall

Criminologists remain divided and in debate over the root causes in human psychology and social development that cause crime, violence, and adjustment issues in human individuals. Some suggest that childhood characteristics are formed through biological, anatomical, or genetic factors and that these may predispose a person to become a robber later on in life, while others posit that social programming, cultural education, and personal relationships may be the cause of creating violence in individual behavior.
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David Marshall
Prison Gangs & Mafias - Security Threat Groups & Gangs in Prison - Submitted by: Tech Streets

Prison gangs represent a security threat to correctional facility workers potentially due to the possibility of motivation for attack on other prisoners, the increased level of violence seen in their behavior, and their motivation by gang ideologies. The psychology of gang membership should be understood in order to be aware of potential violent conflicts that can erupt in the prison environment due to gang warfare. In prisons, the gang members organize primarily around racial and ethnic identities, while others argue that the violence inherent in prison institutions...
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Tech Streets
Vanguard Political Culture - E. Franklin Fraizier's analysis of the "Black Bourgeoisie" - Submitted by: Nicole Briggs

E.F. Frazier was a pioneering African-American sociologist who was active in the NAACP and other civil rights organizations in the pre-Vietnam era. Frazier pursued a sociological interpretation of the African-American experience that was related to Marxism, the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and other black empowerment advocates of the time. Frazier uses the Marxist dialectic, criticism, and class interpretation in building his analysis, which is known as the “Black Bourgeoisie” where it focuses on the minority culture of the most affluent...
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Nicole Briggs

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