The work of creating the book became an exercise in turning the emotional labour of racism into tangible physical labour. I was able to turn all that pain into an object, which is incredibly strange, but also incredibly freeing. – Naima Lowe, queer black artist on her new book “39 Questions for White People.” Source: Via Colorlines. Continue reading 39 Questions for White People
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interest do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you? Only democracy gives us that right. That is why no one with power likes democracy and that is why every generation must struggle to win it and keep it; including you and me, here and now. Tony Benn, 2005 Via: Phil BC. Continue reading Ask the Powerful Five Questions
What can you do with a social science degree? Carrie Brownstein has been a rockstar with Sleater Kinney and has found further success as a comedy writer and star on Portlandia. Here’s how she sees the link between her degree in sociolinguistics and her comedy TV show.
Noga Arikha, historian, on the importance of learning history:
Continue reading “The Importance of Learning History”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
“We live today in an era of stunning social change, marked by transformations radically discrepant from those of previous periods… the formation of intensified global communication systems, the apparent world-wide triumph of capitalism at a time at which global divisions … Continue reading Living Through Stunning Social Change
Prof Pat Dudgeon, National Mental Health Commissioner, says that: ‘Indigenous culture has for a long time had a holistic understanding of mental health’:
Continue reading “Holistic Understanding of Mental Health in Indigenous Culture”Continue reading “Bob Brown on Australian democracy”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.
“Race” is called an ideological construction, and not just a social construction, because the idea of “race” has never existed outside of a framework of group interest. As a nineteenth-century pseudoscientific theory, as well as in ceontemporary “popular” thinking, the … Continue reading Race as an Ideological Construction
Continue reading “The Excitement of Sociology”“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]
Social Science Insights 