Category: Social Science Quotes

Social Science Quotes

Discourses of Disability

Social Science Insights

Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary – like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball – carrying a caption like “your excuse is invalid” or “before you quit, try”…  Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn; it’s there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. So they can go, “Oh well if that kid who doesn’t have any legs can smile while he’s having an awesome time, I should never, EVER feel bad about … Continue reading Discourses of Disability

Social Science Quotes

Holistic Understanding of Mental Health in Indigenous Culture

Social Science Insights

Prof Pat Dudgeon, National Mental Health Commissioner, says that: ‘Indigenous culture has for a long time had a holistic understanding of mental health’:

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Social Science Quotes

Bob Brown on Australian democracy

Social Science Insights

In the Howard years Australia became a much meaner and more self-interested country … We are the richest people per capita in the world, if you just look in material terms, and we are the richest people ever to live on the Earth… Yet there’s this air of dissatisfaction and a feeling that we are being cheated, and that is a cultural shift that came out of the Howard years and has been promoted mightily by the Murdoch media — and that flows on through the ABC and all the other radio shock jocks and so on….

People voted for that with their eyes wide open [on the removal of environmental policies]. And I might add to that, that they voted for $4 billion dollars in foreign aid to be not spent.

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Social Science Quotes
People eat food and chat on Johnston Street during the Hispanic Latin American Festival, Melbourne

The Excitement of Sociology

Social Science Insights

“However, much of the time the sociologist moves in sectors of experience that are familiar to him [sic] and to most people in his society… It is not the excitement of coming upon the totally unfamiliar, but rather the excitement of finding the familiar becoming transformed in its meaning. The fascination of sociology lies on the fact that its perspective makes us see in a new light the very world in which we have lived all our lives.” 

– Peter Berger, (1963: 21) “Invitation to Sociology” [my emphasis]
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