Comments for Citings and Sightings

Comment on Touché, Facebook Team by Steve

Steve — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:53:37 +0000

This doesn’t make any sense, as it imports categories from studies of networks in “real life” straight into virtual life. My facebook friends fall into a number of categories–(1) close friends who are currently part of my everyday life; (2) people I was once close friends with; (3) acquaintances from the past and present; (4) “famous people”, at least in my world, i.e. people I’ve heard of even though I’ve never met them; (5) people I’ve never met who I’m friends with on fb because I liked their comments somewhere, or they liked mine. The core of my facebook friends includes mostly people in categories 2, 3, 4 and 5, although I rarely interact face to face with most of them, and some I have never met in person. We form something of an echo chamber, in that we share news of the world and debate politics over what would seem like a very narrow patch to outsiders. At the same time, I get a great deal of information I would not otherwise get. This form of communication is very important to me, but it isn’t inherently more diverse than the views I hear in category 1, usually in “real life.”

Comment on Lady Justice: Random, But Not Blind by Sarah Shannon

Sarah Shannon — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:47:27 +0000

Hi Kate. Thanks for your comment. The US really does stand out like a sore thumb on the international stage when it comes to criminal punishment. I’ll bet it was eye-opening to see how people in another country react to our practices. You might be interested in a forthcoming book chapter that I’ve written with Chris Uggen for the New Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology: http://www.socsci.umn.edu/~uggen/Shannon_Uggen_BW_10.pdf. We do some work here to put US punishment in international perspective.

Comment on Touché, Facebook Team by Touché, Facebook Team » Citings and Sightings | Infos Press

Touché, Facebook Team » Citings and Sightings | Infos Press — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:50:52 +0000

[...] Lier ? la source: Touché, Facebook Team » Citings and Sightings [...]

Comment on Lady Justice: Random, But Not Blind by The Death Penalty: Arbitrary and Discriminatory « Business Government & Society III

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:43:59 +0000

[...] You can now say 1,303 people: 43 prisoners died from lethal injections this past year. In the blog, Contexts, author Sarah Shannon argues how “Lady Justice” within the United States is ‘random.’ [...]

Comment on Lady Justice: Random, But Not Blind by Kate

Kate — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:28:57 +0000

After studying abroad this past year, I find the United States’ judicial system (especially the death penalty) to be more controversial. When I was in Spain, Troy Davis’s execution was shown on the local news. As we watched the footage from the courthouse, my host family sat in shock and could not comprehend how prisoners could receive the death penalty and/or be executed. My host sister, who studied law at the University of Granada, informed me of two things: the death penalty is not used within the European Union and Spain does not have life imprisonment sentences. The maximum amount of time that Spanish prisoners can spend in jail (for murder) is 30 years. The goal of their justice system is to rehabilitate all prisoners and help them re-enter society. The process seems idealistic and I am not sure whether it could ever be incorporated into our judicial system; however, it would eliminate the “random justice” associated with the death penalty.

Comment on The Left-Leaning Ivory Tower by Alex Casey

Alex Casey — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:25:38 +0000

That’s a great point Jeff, definitely an angle left untouched by the newspaper’s treatment of the issue. I would love to hear more about conservatives’ take on empirical evidence (or empirical evidence’s take on conservatism). Maybe that’s why we need more sociologists writing Op-Eds instead of letting journalists have all the fun.

Comment on Resisting Race Labels by Glenn Robinson

Glenn Robinson — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:45:39 +0000

“Census data are used to distribute federal aid…”
Who is receiving this federal aid that is distributed by ‘race’? And then why are there still large economic disparities between ‘races’?

Comment on The Left-Leaning Ivory Tower by jeffdowd

jeffdowd — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:53:22 +0000

I guess I have to be the uncouth one to point out that empirical reality tends to debunk conservatives worldviews. Perhaps that’s an explanation as well. Or are we going to pretend that Charles Murray and Dinesh D’Souza are performing scholarship? As it is, I’m waiting for McGraw-Hill to add Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin to their Taking Sides series (if that hasn’t happened already).

I mean are we so afraid of the accusations coming from the right that we cannot admit that conservatives and liberals assert not just different values but different empirically testable realities.

Comment on Teaching Privilege to the Privileged by Teaching Privilege to the Privileged » Citings and Sightings | Whiteness & White Privilege | Scoop.it

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:06:07 +0000

[...] background-position: 50% 0px; background-color:#222222; background-repeat : no-repeat; } thesocietypages.org (via @SH_lelabo) – Today, 11:05 [...]

Comment on The Left-Leaning Ivory Tower by Alex Casey

Alex Casey — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:17:53 +0000

Thanks Chris,

Writing this piece reminded me a lot of a Contexts discovery I read written a little while back about religion in academia.

http://contexts.org/discoveries/a-higher-power-and-the-ivory-tower/