Steubenville: Social Media & The Bystander Effect
Kathleen Parker in today’s WaPo Nails It: The bystander effect is the psychological term coined after Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her New York apartment building in 1964. As the story...
View ArticleWinning The War on Drugs by Not Fighting It
By SocProf. I know this is Todd’s territory here but I found this article on the Portuguese approach to drug policy quite interesting: “One gram of heroin, two grams of cocaine, 25 grams of marijuana...
View ArticleBig Pharma and Social Control
I wish this post were an April Fools joke. I have been writing extensively, from a Labeling theory standpoint, about the arbitrary and haphazard spread of psychiatric diagnoses over the past several...
View ArticleThe Successful War on Drugs
By SocProf. This seems to be the message of The House I Live In, Eugene Jarecki’s latest film. I think this is a very important film to understand fully the War on Drugs. For many years, I used the PBS...
View ArticleAcademic Steroids: Part Whatever
Attention Deficit Drugs Face New Campus Rules: Fresno State is one of dozens of colleges tightening the rules on the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. and the subsequent prescription of amphetamine-based...
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“The Wire” and Labeling Theory
By David Mayeda In the 1960s and ’70s, labeling theory (a.k.a., social reaction theory) gained criminological prominence. Demonstrating a shift towards the critical criminology school of thought,...
View ArticleHeadline of the Duh
Psychiatry’s New Guide Is Out Of Touch With Science: Just weeks before the long-awaited publication of a new edition of the so-called bible of mental disorders, the federal government’s most prominent...
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The Sociology of “In The Flesh”
[Spoilers!] In the Flesh is the most intelligent zombie show I have ever seen. It totally destroys The Walking Dead (about which I posted a lot over at the Global Sociology Blog). The first season is...
View ArticleThe Left Coast
California Is Facing Prison Catastrophe: Just six months after declaring “the prison crisis is over in California,” Gov. Jerry Brown is facing dire predictions about the future of the state’s prison...
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Book Review – The Gang & Beyond
[Disclaimer: the publisher sent me a copy of this book for review.] Simon Hallsworth’s The Gang and Beyond: Interpreting Violent Street Worlds is as much a study on gangs in the context of street...
View ArticleThe Wire – The Blog Series
A while back, Dave Mayeda posted a great series of posts applying sociological theories of deviance to the TV show The Wire. So, I just thought I’d list them all here so you can all go read them as...
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The Visual Du Jour – Death Penalty 2012
Via The Guardian: Click on the image for a larger view. There are no big surprises there (although, frankly, I thought the US had more executions). However, it seems rather clear that most Western...
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In The Flesh, Season 2 – Backlash
Last year, I posted about the first season of In The Flesh, a BBC zombie show that I liked quite a bit. Season 2 finished airing on BBC America last week and it is still very good. Season 1 was only...
View ArticleYour Militarized Campus
Grenade Launchers, Armored Personnel Carriers, M-16′s, All Standard Fare on Campus: At least 117 colleges have acquired equipment from the department through a federal program, known as the 1033...
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