Skip to content

Category Archives: Sociology

Final Comment on the Diab Affair

Sunday, August 2, 2009

There has been much confusion surrounding the hiring and subsequent firing of Hassan Diab, a contract instructor (a “sessional” in the language of the university) in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, who was hired as an emergency replacement to teach half of SOCI 1002 Introduction to Sociology II.
No one seems to [...]

Also filed in | | Comments (1)

Faculty Response to Diab Firing

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The following is a letter from the faculty members of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University regarding the firing of Hassan Diab, a contract instructor teaching introduction to sociology, by senior administration due to what appears to be pressure from B’nai Brith.
***
The firing of Dr. Hassan Diab from his teaching post at [...]

Also filed in | | Comments (0)

“Boutique”

Friday, July 31, 2009

I’ve been going through, issue-by-issue, the major sociology journals since 1975 looking at the treatment of animal related themes. Needless to say, there isn’t much. I’ll post about this research later. Here’s a great passage I came across today:
I don’t normally insert graphics of quotations, but I didn’t think anyone would believe me! And, if [...]

Also filed in Animals | | Comments (5)

Claude Levi-Strauss

Friday, November 28, 2008

November 28, 1908 -
It would have been better had Foucault said, “Perhaps one day this century will be known as Levi-Straussian.”

Claude dit

Also filed in | | Comments (0)

Regarding the financial crisis

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

In 1968, Alexandre Kojeve, then one of the chief planners for the European Common Market working the French Ministry of Economic Affairs, was asked what the students in the streets of Paris should do. Kojeve’s answer was “learn Greek.” It is only in recent years through Giorgio Agamben’s work that we’ve come to understand what [...]

Also filed in | | Comments (4)

Another Recommendation

Sunday, August 3, 2008

My friend and mentor, Lorna Weir, has been quite busy as of late. Another one of her papers, “The Concept of Truth Regime” [pdf], appears in the current Canadian Journal of Sociology 33(2).
“Truth regime” is a much used but little theorized concept, with the Foucauldian literature presupposing that truth in modernity is uniformly scientific/quasi-scientific and [...]

Also filed in Foucault | | Comments (3)

Worth Reading

Friday, July 25, 2008

I’d like to draw the readership’s attention to two recent and excellent articles (note: all three authors are on my supervisory committee):
Brian Singer and Lorna Weir “Sovereignty, Governance and the Political: The Problematic of Foucault” Thesis Eleven 94: 49-71. This is a companion article to their “Politics and Sovereign Power: Considerations on Foucault” European Journal [...]

Also filed in Research Notes, State, Sovereignty & Violence | | Comments (3)

Why sociology?

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Recently I asked the contributors to An und für sich to recommend some theology books to non-theologians that would give us an idea of what is going on in contemporary theology, why theology should matter to non-theologians, and how to make sense of the “theological turn” in contemporary social and political theory. (It seems to [...]

Also filed in | | Comments (27)

Rich Get Richer (2)

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Further confirmation of the general observation: the rich get richer and everyone else better be happy with what they had in 1970. From today’s “The Daily” report at STATSCAN on their analysis of earnings, income and shelter costs of the 2006 Canadian census (see also the longitudinal study here using data back to 1981):

Median earnings [...]

Also filed in | | Comments (0)

Randall Collins – Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Because it came up in a previous discussion this week and because the work looks genuinely interesting, the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with Randall Collins on his recent book Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton UP, 2008). The first chapter to the book is available from Princeton UP. (If anyone from Princeton UP [...]

Also filed in State, Sovereignty & Violence | | Comments (0)