Everyday Sociology Blog

Ideologies in the News: How Powerful Ideas Become Common Sense

By Wayne Mellinger

Instructor, Antioch University

A “dominant ideology”  is a way of looking at and understanding the social world that reflects the perspectives of the rich and powerful.  British sociologist John B. Thompson  aptly describes ideology as “meaning in the service of power.”

Because dominant ideologies are meaning-laden events, social scientists have developed approaches to studying them that are highly attuned to the details of discourse and the interpretation of texts—that is, how ordinary people make sense of these symbolic events in everyday life.

The Myth of the Self-Made Person

By Peter Kaufman

What do the alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have in common with Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, Jimi Hendrix, and Ben Franklin?

The answer: All of these individuals are said to have become who they are by their own individual means.

To ”Commit Sociology”

By Jonathan Wynn

Recently, when the Canadian Government arrested men suspected of planning a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned the media not to “commit sociology” by asking for their motives. (It’s a reference to a W.H. Auden poem.) Best not to think too much, apparently, about the world around you.

In my Foundations of Social Theory class, we began the semester with the broad, big worldviews that many people often use unreflexively and to their own detriment: horoscopes, homeopathy, numerology, dousing, conspiracy theories, and the like. I hope you are equipped for the task of making sense of the world you’ll find around you: to “commit sociology.” 

Maybe you ascribe to one of those all-encompassing meta-theories: the astral alignments determining behaviors and the gods working in mysterious ways. What have you learned about sociology that will explain your everyday challenges? An engineering class may help your colleagues get jobs but it won’t help them understand the dynamics of the world they live in. The same could be said about journalism, food studies, and management classes. How could I not try to convince you that sociology, and theory, will?

Thinking Sociologically about the Boston Tragedy

By Karen Sternheimer

Since the bombing at the Boston Marathon on April 15, the nation has been trying to figure out how and why someone would do something so horrific. The bombers’ methods and motives are the domain of law enforcement, trying to figure out first who did it, how, and why.

Sociology can be useful to help us to develop hypotheses about why events take place, particularly those events involving large group. Explaining why any particular individual behaves the way they do is harder to understand, and as I write investigators are working diligently to learn more about the suspects to figure out why they would build bombs and hurt innocent people. So it is too soon to specifically use sociological concepts to understand the suspects.

But we can think sociologically about the public’s reaction to the violence.

Violence and the Need to Be Imaginatively Aware

By Peter Kaufman

“It’s always one damn thing after another.” This was a favorite phrase of my advisor in graduate school. He was referring both to the relatively minor irritations of grad school—getting papers rejected, having data troubles, worrying about qualifying exams—as well as the daily annoyances of life—finding a parking ticket on your car, getting into an argument with a friend, having a long wait at the doctor’s office. 

I’ve thought of this phrase quite a bit lately as I followed the tragic events in Boston. It wasn’t so much the bombing at the Boston Marathon that brought these words back to me as much as it was the cumulative effect of recent events: Boston, Sandy Hook, Hurricane Sandy, Aurora, Penn State, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and the list could go on.

On the Social Construction of Privacy

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?  

The Sociology of Pranks

By Jonathan Wynn

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.

The Sociological Imagination and Personal Crises

By Karen Sternheimer

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.”

Bananas, Nessy, The Secret, and Social Theory

By Jonathan Wynn

My usual first day of class gambit is a framing story or activity that lightens the mood, avoids jumping right into the material and yet still provides a window into the key ideas for the class.

 I’ve started my Sociological Theory courses with all sorts of odd topics: “overdosing” on homeopathic medicine (which you cannot actually overdose on, since it is little more than sugar tablets in fancy packaging), the numerology of September 11^th, horoscopes, and the Lincoln/Kennedy conspiracy. I also bought some dowsing rods (two metal bars that supposedly locate water or whatever they are “attuned” to) for students to test their ability at finding water.

The Social Construction of Stuff

By Karen Sternheimer

I am in the process of moving to a new home. The move has been planned for over a year, so I have been preparing to pack and get rid of things for a while. Coincidentally, our department recently moved to a new building and a family member is in the process of moving too, so I have had many chances to pack, unpack, and reflect.

Moving reminds me of the meanings we assign to our stuff. According to sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, we socially construct meaning of reality. We don’t just construct these meanings individually, but socially as well. These meanings become habitual and part of our social institutions, reinforcing the meanings that we collectively create about our social world and ultimately our realities.