Everyday Sociology Talk: Ethography of the Fashion Industry
Ashley Mears talks about studying the fashion industry--as a model--during her dissertation research.
For more video, see www.youtube.com/nortonsoc
Ashley Mears talks about studying the fashion industry--as a model--during her dissertation research.
For more video, see www.youtube.com/nortonsoc
The story of how I, a self-respecting sociologist, came to be in receipt of four Nike shoes in the last two days is a long one. It started with a trip that my husband and I took to the track and field Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon.
Eugene is TrackTown, USA but also NikeTown! The relationship goes back to the history-making collaboration between legendary track and field coach Bill Bowerman and Nike chief executive officer (CEO) Phil Knight, as I described here in a previous post. The apparent impact of this auspicious coupling is that everyone in Eugene wears Nike sneakers. This is not literally true, but I have never seen as many people in Nikes as I did there!
Karen Sternheimer talks to new Everyday Sociology blogger Jonathan Wynn about his research on tour guides.
For more video, see www.youtube.com/nortonsoc
Each semester on my syllabus I let students know that some questions or concerns can’t be resolved via email. For example, someone stumped on a paper topic might benefit from a five minute brain storming session with me far more than exchanging five emails (which would actually take longer to type and read). And yet I have noticed that my office hours, and those of my colleagues, go mostly unused except for times right before or after a major assignment.
I understand this: it takes time to go to another building, find an office and talk to someone during the limited time when they are available. We save so much time doing lots of things electronically, like communicating with friends and family, banking, shopping, and even meeting new people, that physically going someplace seems like a real hassle, if it even occurs to us at all.
When I was growing up my life revolved around sports. After school, on the weekends, and all during the summer my friends and I would play sports. We would hop on our bikes, ride around the neighborhood, and search out the nearest game: Street football in the fall, roller hockey in the spring, and basketball in the summer. While attending summer camp I played softball, soccer, and basketball all day long. All of this was in addition to the youth leagues, school teams, and intramural sports that I participated in.
In all of the hours that I spent playing sports as a kid I would say that 98% of the time it was an all-male affair. Whether it was informal neighborhood pick-up games or formal organized leagues, I was almost always playing with and against other boys. In fact, it was so unusual for me to see girls playing sports that I still remember the first co-ed sports camp I attended when I was thirteen-years-old. I didn’t know what to make of it.
Continue reading "Gender and Sports: Forty Years of Title IX" »
Sociologist Debby Carr discusses the difference between research and opinion in social science.
For more videos, see www.youtube.com/nortonsoc
As sociologists, I—and many of my colleagues—tend to focus on the impact of social location, studying the role of education, race, class, and gender and other such variables; I've written about many of these in this space. My recent trip to the west coast, however, has got me thinking about the centrality of location – literally, meaning place. I’ve been thinking about how where we live shapes many aspects of life—far more so than I usually acknowledge. Let me share some of observations from the trip to illustrate what I mean.
While channel surfing recently, I stumbled upon Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, a hidden-camera show featuring elderly cast members who approach younger people in public places and catch them off guard by breaching norms.
Many of the brief segments include elderly women sexually propositioning much younger men, while other pranks include eating off a stranger’s plate at an outdoor café, making out with a blow-up doll in public, and a gray-haired lady standing outside a liquor store who asks a young man to buy her beer because she forgot her ID.
What have you heard about preventing rape and sexual assault?
Most of the time, we learn those rules of self-defense that are mostly taught to women, such as not walking alone or at night or not accepting an open beverage. These rules are often “nots” and are framed as behaviors that people (women) should do to avoid being raped or assaulted.
I’m borrowing the title of this blog from a former student of mine, Hayley, who always used to say this to people on July 4th. As an insightful sociologist, Hayley realized none of us, as individuals or as a nation, can exist without the support and help of others. Therefore, we should really be celebrating and promoting our interdependence instead of our independence.
Interdependence is the notion that we all rely on each other. To say that we are interdependent is to recognize that we are all connected and dependent on one another. But interdependence does not just mean that all people are connected; it also suggests an understanding of how all life on earth is linked together. Sometimes we refer to this as the interconnected web of life.
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