sociology 101 – on the semi-periphery

Why Christian Right failed, but succeeded

Posted on 2015/08/26 by jd

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Apparently, the US Christian Right did not study Gramsci.

Daniel Schlozman writes ‘…Americans have become less Christian and more secular. Around 1990, following a spate of scandals that engulfed leading evangelical pastors, the share of Americans identifying with evangelical denominations began to decline, from its peak at 34 percent to 27 percent. At the same time, public opinion on gay rights started its inexorable shift. New laws and norms around gay rights represent a huge setback for religious conservatives.

The Christian Right has also failed to build permanent institutions. So while it made white evangelicals into Republicans, the preachers and brokers who led the movement now have no role. Direct mail, not billionaires’ checks, sustained the movement, and when the checks stopped, each of the Christian Right’s marquee groups folded.

Without group intermediaries, white evangelicals have failed to build coalitions with other power centers inside the Republican Party and lost influence. Instead, conservative politicians appealed directly to white evangelical voters….’

Source: How The Christian Right Ended Up Transforming American Politics

forget politics, this is the proper perspective on things….

Posted on 2015/08/06 - 2015/08/06 by jd

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Young children carry out Restorative Justice

Posted on 2015/06/24 - 2015/06/24 by jd

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‘…"What surprised us is that children responded equally to the theft, unfairness, and loss conditions," Jensen says. "They treated all of them equivalent, whether they were affected or whether the puppet was affected." The children viewed a third-party violation with as much disdain as they did a personal one, and where adults might discriminate between outright theft, loss, or an unfair situation, the children punished them all equally. The children preferred restoration to punishment, and when they were able to restore stolen or lost items, they usually returned the hot items to the original owner, "even if the original owner was another puppet," Jensen says.

Taken together, the findings indicate that children’s reactions to third-party violations were more about responding to the needs of the "victim" than they were about punishing perpetrators.

"Young children seem to be very responsive to the distress that another individual might be feeling. This is called effective perspective taking," Jensen says. "This ability to show concern for others seems to be a very strong motivational force."

As adults, our sense of justice is based on learned rules and norms; we wield punishment as a deterrent and a form of revenge. But "in young children, it seems that we start with the pro-social aspect of [justice]," Jensen says, starting "with the concern we have for the individual who’s harmed. Those other aspects of justice then become layered on top of that."…’

via Toddlers Carrying Out Restorative Justice – Pacific Standard.

Jeb Bush likes ‘scientific’ racist Charles Murray

Posted on 2015/05/26 - 2015/05/26 by jd

Jeb Bush says
‘I like the Charles Murray books, to be honest with you, which makes me a total nerd.’

scroll video to 53min40sec…
http://www.c-span.org/video/?325690-1/national-review-institute-2015-ideas-summit

jeb

A Majority of US Public School Students Live in Poverty

Posted on 2015/05/25 - 2015/05/25 by jd

I have no doubt that this is true, but how can this be true? WTF happened, America??!

‘Released by the Southern Education Foundation, the new analysis (pdf) used the most recent national census figures available to confirm that 51 percent of the students across the nation’s public schools were low income in 2013. According to the report’:

‘In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren. In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013.

Most of the states with a majority of low income students are found in the South and the West. Thirteen of the 21 states with a majority of low income students in 2013 were located in the South, and six of the other 21 states were in the West.

Mississippi led the nation with the highest rate: 71 percent, almost three out of every four public school children in Mississippi, were low-income. The nation’s second highest rate was found in New Mexico, where 68 percent of all public school students were low income in 2013.’

via ‘A Nation in Decline’: Majority of US Public School Students Live in Poverty | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community.

Representative Parliamentary ‘Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor’

Posted on 2015/05/09 by jd

Giles Fraser writes about this week’s UK election:

‘…What difference did my vote make? Why indeed do people vote, and care so passionately about voting, particularly in constituencies in which voting one way or the other won’t make a blind bit of difference? And why do the poor vote when, by voting, they merely give legitimacy to a system that connives with their oppression and alienation? The anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee suggests a fascinating answer: elections are like religious rituals, often devoid of rational purpose or efficacy for the individual participant, but full of symbolic meaning. They are the nearest thing the secular has to the sacred, presenting a moment of empowerment.
But is this empowerment illusory? Is, as Banerjee asks, “the ability to vote … a necessary safety valve which allows for the airing of popular disaffection, but which nevertheless ultimately restores the status quo. In such a reading, elections require the complicity of all participants in a deliberate mis-recognition of the emptiness of its procedures and the lack of any significant changes which this ritual brings about, but are a necessary charade to mollify a restless electorate.”…’

via Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Noam Chomsky speaking to Chris Hedges about America today…

Posted on 2015/04/28 by jd

Noam Chomsky speaking to Chris Hedges about America today…

“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”

“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”

via Chris Hedges: Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’ – Chris Hedges – Truthdig.

Video » ‪‎Noam Chomsky‬ explains why America is always on top

Posted on 2015/04/16 - 2015/04/16 by jd

‪‎Noam Chomsky‬ discusses American White Supremacy, US imperialism and why North America and Europe are always on the top of a map, and not at the bottom…. [2 mins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGHpWST7l9I

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American exceptionalism means not having to remember

Posted on 2015/04/03 - 2015/04/03 by jd

Tanya H. Lee writes:

This unquestioned belief that "America" – that is, white settlers – "had a mission" from God to spread democracy and new technologies sits at the heart of the problem. The issue before us is whether we want an educated populace that has a nuanced understanding of our history during the colonial period or a citizenry that is not equipped to think about history, because one very narrow interpretation of it is accepted without thought or criticism.

Michael Yellow Bird of the Arikara and Hidatsa Nation, a professor of sociology and director of indigenous tribal studies at North Dakota State University, said, "In my estimation, most American students receive what has been called an authoritarian education that celebrates a master narrative of this nation and really focuses on what appears to be its greatest accomplishment, the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that America has done all these great things and sort of occupies a special place on the planet among all countries."…’

via The Native American Genocide and the Teaching of US History.

Johann Hari writes about addiction

Posted on 2015/03/24 by jd

‘…In Rat Park, all the rats obviously tried both water bottles, because they didn’t know what was in them. But what happened next was startling.

The rats with good lives didn’t like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did.

At first, I thought this was merely a quirk of rats, until I discovered that there was — at the same time as the Rat Park experiment — a helpful human equivalent taking place. It was called the Vietnam War. Time magazine reported using heroin was “as common as chewing gum” among U.S. soldiers, and there is solid evidence to back this up: some 20 percent of U.S. soldiers had become addicted to heroin there, according to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Many people were understandably terrified; they believed a huge number of addicts were about to head home when the war ended.

But in fact some 95 percent of the addicted soldiers — according to the same study — simply stopped. Very few had rehab. They shifted from a terrifying cage back to a pleasant one, so didn’t want the drug any more…’

via The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think | Johann Hari.

in the direction of exclusion

Posted on 2015/03/20 - 2015/03/20 by jd

An interview with Nadav Eya

‘You know, I have a friend in India who’s a journalist. A Hindi nationalist party is now in power in India. Like us, they have a neighboring country, Pakistan, with whom they are locked in a territorial dispute, except that they have nuclear weapons. I asked my friend about the nationality clause in the Indian constitution, and it turns out that there isn’t one. India was founded on the ancient Indian idea of unity in diversity. My friend was very surprised that we are allowing the nation-state legislation to go forward. I asked him what would happen in similar circumstances in India, and he didn’t even want to think about it. Laws like that only weaken us.

The societies that are moving in the direction of exclusion are shrinking into religiosity, into ethnicity. They are closed to external influence, rigid and inflexible in their thought, and the end result of that inflexibility is extremism or implosion. We know the examples.

via The lesson SodaStream taught Israel – Features – Israel News | Haaretz. [archived text]

Podemos’ Pablo Iglesias likes ‘The Wire’

Posted on 2015/02/19 - 2015/02/23 by jd

AMY GOODMAN: And do you have any words of advice for President Obama, now in his second term? He can’t run again. Whether he will be a lame-duck president or a legacy president remains to be seen.

PABLO IGLESIAS: I don’t know. I don’t know what could I say to President Obama. There is something that I like. We both love The Wire, the HBO series. And I like Omar, too. And I read that Obama like this character, this character Omar. And I don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you like The Wire?

PABLO IGLESIAS: I think it’s probably the best TV series in order to explain how the power works, how the power works in politics, in media, in the organization of the work. I think it’s a masterpiece. I used to teach political geography in my faculty, and all the time I was saying to my students, “You have to see this TV series, because it’s great in order to understand how the power works.”

AMY GOODMAN: Do you have anything like that in Spain?

PABLO IGLESIAS: Not in that level. I think that The Wire is the best series.

via The Next Syriza? As Greece Rejects Austerity, Meet the Activist Who Could Become Spain’s New PM | Democracy Now!.

An unnoticed slaughter in Crimea

Posted on 2015/02/19 - 2015/02/19 by jd

‘…So when Russia annexed Crimea, 800 people were suddenly cut off from their [methadone and buprenorphine] treatment [….] In January, UN Special Envoy Michel Kazatchkine announced that approximately 80 to 100 people had died in Crimea since the drug treatment programs closed. That’s nearly one out of every ten patients…’
via Mass Deaths in Crimea as Russia Bans Methadone | Open Society Foundations (OSF).