The challenge of modernity/post modernity in the sociology of religion
Essay - 9 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The rapid changes that took place in the last decades of the 20th century had a deep impact on the religious landscape as well. The new phenomena present a double challenge to the sociology of religion: on the one hand, it has to review, refine and reinterpret the classical statements in order to...
Rational choice theory in sociology: A survey
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Rational Choice (RC) is a proliferating research program in the social sciences. It is the dominant theoretical perspective in economics and an influential approach in political theory. In sociology, there are an increasing number of people working in this tradition, in particular among American...
Dust-wiping and non-duality: The Buddhist teachings of Hui-Neng
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Buddhism, for all its accolades and requirements, its notions of the sutras and of karma, for all the equanimity it offers to people of any social caste, is a relentlessly frustrating philosophy. For those who adhere to its principles as writ by human hand (versus the ‘divine hands' that...
Legal issues in child health
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Lawyers are uniquely suited to help improve the health of today's children. Many would argue that health insurance and ethics are the dominant concern in the health of America's youth. The best legal support for children is to help allow the child to participate in their own health care....
The structure of society: from opposite ends of the spectrum
Essay - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
While looking at the structure of a society, one can determine whether or not a civilization is being run in a sensible fashion. By observing the class structure, roles of the different sexes, the manner in which the younger generation is being brought up, and the freedoms or restrictions being...
Spanish assumptions of Native Americans in the new world
Essay - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Early assumptions about Native American cultures and religions played a large role in justifying the reformation of Indians' ways of life. Assumptions made by the Spaniards included that Indians lacked morality, ethics, reason, and political institutions, and were therefore ripe for colonization...
In-depth Country-by-Country analysis of distance learning in the Middle East
Essay - 17 pages - Sociology & social sciences
In this context, underdeveloped countries such as those in the Middle East (i.e. The Arab States, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Turkey, Sudan and Egypt) must increasingly turn to distance learning as a means of broadening access to education for their populations. In 1981, fourteen of UNESCO member...
Unholy Acts: The exile of Pope Shenouda in the context of Egyptian Religious Politics
Essay - 13 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Soon after the end of Ramadan in August 1981, more than one hundred thousand Egyptian Muslims gathered in front of Abdin Palace in Cairo, ostensibly to celebrate the end of the fast. Western newspapers, however, reported that what appeared to be a prayer gathering had a political, as well as...
Debunking video game myths: The controversies vs.The reality
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Welcome to Liberty City, a rendition of New York City in the popular series of Grand Theft Auto. Released by Rockstar Games in April 2008, the forth installment continues the tradition of being as controversial as the three GTA's before it. With hyper realistic graphics, real world physics, and...
Truth in dualisms
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Social theory continuously finds itself facing predicaments surrounding the notion of dualisms. Many of the dualisms prompting debate among theorists include: micro/macro, voluntarism/determinism, subjective/objective, and agency/structure. These main dualisms present a recurring issue: that of...
National identity
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
What separates human being from other animals within our world is our innate ability to recognize and define our own existences. This ability in which we posses can not only create cohesion amongst groups and societies but it can also lead to dissonance and division. Our identities, whether...
Do we live in a post-industrial society?
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Contemporary society has increased in its complexity over the past three and a half decades. The labour market as we know it differs rather immensely from what was experienced at the turn of the century. Labour has evolved so dramatically that some prefer to say that we have entered a new age,...
The alternate approaches of the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King Jr.: From within or without
Essay - 8 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Citizens of the United States will always be able to take pride in their country for its place as first true democracy in world history. Every citizen (a term which has carried with it countless shifting definitions) has always had the right to vote and determine his or her own course in the...
Utopian communist society
Essay - 8 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Classic studies have always been the basis for many scholars in the analyses of modernization and current environment speculation. Classic studies pose challenges to the inquiries that surface in sociology; overturn the formalism of public administration studies and at several times reject the...
Comprehensive protection plan
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Threats against personal security take many forms: civil unrest, environmental threats, targeted attacks by stalkers or individuals with personal grudges, or terrorism. Though security threats are essentially chaotic, security plans must be comprehensive and based in a thorough understanding of...
Choice and identity
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
In the United States, the ideology of individualism predominates. The individual, as opposed to the family, community, tribe, or hierarchy, is seen as the central social agent. This individualism allows for greater individual freedom — people have the ability to create and then to recreate...
Are psychopaths untreatable?
Essay - 13 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Psychopathy equals violence. Whatever rubric is used identifies a person with a greater likelihood of violence, often motivated by opportunism, sadism or material gain. Treatment responsivity and harm reduction as treatment success in high-risk or repetitive offenders seems overreaching. It...
Two theories of my life
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
: Using the developmental theories of Erikson and Piaget (primarily Erikson), and critiques of the same, the life of Valencia Richards, a non-traditional adult student will be critically examined. Richards experienced malnutrition and abuse as a child, and then the heavily structured life of a...
Healthcare for the uninsured
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
It can be said, with some truth, that the American healthcare system is the best in the world. Technology levels are high, specialists abound, innovations in treatment, care, and prevention are matters of course, and physicians and other medical professionals are well-paid, high status, and thus...
How drama and theater affect sociology: Case studies on Bertholt Brechts' "The Good woman of Setzuan" and Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warrens Profession"
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
It has been said that Shakespeare was a master at using the dramatics of theater to not only deconstruct society, taking it apart to show it again to the viewer, but also that through his works, society in turn was forced to take a critical look at traditional societal roles. In this sense, one...
Hip-Hop's influence on culture
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Hip-Hop, over the course of the past thirty years had grown from an improvisational street art in the South Bronx section of New York City to a multi-billion dollar business and cultural phenomenon. Hip-hop is thus also a major cultural influence. In the same way jazz gave us words like "cool"...
Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2008
Essay - 9 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The Broadcasting Board of Governors has been in operation for just under a decade. Formerly a Cold War-era media arm of the US government tasked with spreading American media, news, and propaganda messages behind the Iron Curtain, the BBG was repurposed to deal with the new international...
More's Humanist Utopia
Essay - 9 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Within the narrative, the Utopians undergo a shock of recognition when the little expedition of Europeans lead to the introduction of Christianity and then modern technology. A utopia is by definition an ideal society and therefore does not need to change. In fact, by the strictest standards of...
Tarahumara: persistence at the margins
Essay - 7 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The Tarahumara are a simple, content, people who live in one of the most rugged places on Earth. They live in Sierra Madre Occidental of Southwestern Chihuahua. The area is often referred to as the Sierra Tarahumara. It contains the tallest waterfall in the hemisphere and canyons deeper than the...
Class and ethnicity in Costa Rica: The Afro-Antillean case
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Latin America has a unique heritage of race mixture and class struggle, within which is located the domination and repression of countless people of African and Amerindian blood. While Costa Rica is no real exception to this historical trend, many of national proponents claim that their country...
Ghosts of Marx's camera obscura
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Karl Marx began his work as a social theorist contemplating the various riddles of modernity. He was able to unveil and bring light to ideas, as well as concepts that allowed and encouraged the citizens of the late nineteenth century to ration the contradictions hidden in the social worlds....
Literature, society and culture
Essay - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Literature has body as well as soul. It possesses qualities of sound and color, fancy and imagination. However, literature is much more than sound and color; it is a living thing of blood and fire, capable of infinite power and beauty. It is not an inanimate thing of dead words, sentences,...
An investigation of Edgard Varèse's Poème Électronique
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
To those who are familiar with the unique historical context in which he was growing up, it comes as little surprise that Edgard Varèse was a composer at the forefront of the twentieth-century electronic music movement. As Malcolm MacDonald claims in his treatise on the artist, Varèse grew up...
Point of Purchase: Bookshops and Stationers as Agents of Change
Essay - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
It was not so much the press itself, but the uses to which the press was put that revolutionized the exchange of ideas in early modern Europe and on into the present. In order to change an entire cultural consciousness, it took not only the invention of a useful tool, but also the motivation and...
Is social mobility on the increase? If yes, why? If not, why not?
Essay - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Social mobility is the degree to which, in a given society, an individual's social status can change throughout the course of his or her life, or the degree to which that individual's offspring and subsequent generations move up and down the class system. The former can be understood as...
