Reflections On Facebook Observations While I made my observations of musical artists’ publicity-propaganda on my Facebook page feed over a week ago, I observe this activity daily in my personal life so these observations are ongoing and continuous. Facebook is just the latest, but not necessarily the greatest addition to self-promotional-propaganda. There are thousands of platforms on the Internet… Read More
Facebook Promotional-Propaganda Observations While I completed this observation on 18 and 19 February, I observe this phenomenon daily on the Internet and in the external world. I have observed all varieties of propaganda in the everyday for far longer than Facebook has been around, Facebook exemplifies what is most fascinating about this phenomenon: the example of unintentional propaganda… Read More
Reflections on Subjectivity, Role, Access, Ethics (This is something that I have considered since working for local network television news. The readings lately and the other students viewpoint on this have just codified what I have known all along. Now I just have to find a way to research with this in mind. Stay tuned.) Everyone has a bias, and objectivity… Read More
Reflections on My Driving Research Interests My driving research interests are more like lifelong passions, as any glance into one of several bookshelves of my library will reveal. However, those interests are usually distilled into a few topics that contain a myriad of additional subjects. I am fascinated by sociology in general, but I am especially fascinated by how people react… Read More
Reflections on Who I am as a Sociologist Who I am as a sociologist is, by turns, a complex question, as well as one that will never be fully defined as I continue to evolve year by year, learning and researching people and their environments from the simple to the complex. How and why I arrived at this present destination is also complex,… Read More
Reflections on Transgender Inequality in Schilt’s Just One of the Guys? Part 2 In the remaining chapters of Just One Of The Guys?, Kristen Schilt offers her conclusions as she discusses the effects and reception of open transgendered men in the workplace in addition to her concluding chapter. I will stop here, for a moment, and relate an incomplete anecdote when I was living in Austin, TX working… Read More
Reflections on Transgender Inequality in Schilt’s Just One of the Guys? Part 1 While Kristen Schilt offers a broad overview of the experiences of transgenders, and it is impossible to represent all experiences of equality or inequality, this is a fascinating work. I do agree that in some rare instances that she cites there is an increase in equality in certain professions (Schilt 2010: 2), but we are… Read More
Reflections on Declining Homophobia in Mayeda’s Declining Homophobia Among Male Athletes and McCormack’s The Declining Significance of Homophobia While McCormack’s main premise is that there is a decline in homophobia, I would clarify that it has only declined in specific areas due to their nature, be they be large cities with a strong progressive element such as San Francisco or New York or specific schools that he analysed first hand. However, and unfortunately,… Read More
Reflections on Readings In Inequality from Manza and Sauder’s Inequality and Society and McCormack’s The Declining Significance of Homophobia While segregation has been mostly and forcibly eradicated in education, categories of segregation (or queues) have not been eliminated in the work place (Manza, et al: 415). Primarily in the control of the employers’ and their representatives, they stereotypically categorize women and minorities in various rankings of lesser importance, visualizing the segregation and prejudice as… Read More
Reflections on Inequality in Racism And Poverty in Omi’s The Changing Meaning Of Race and Wilson’s More Than Just Race Poverty can be explained with cold hard statistics. Racism, on the other hand, cannot be explained scientifically, but it is explained as an individual social construct. (Omi 2001: 243). Racism is derived from generalities that individuals use to separate the different from him/herself. (Hume 2007: 99-102). Unfortunately, little has changed in centuries. We are all… Read More