The measure of America: how a rebel anthropologist waged war on racism, Claudia Roth Pierpont
Book review - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Based on Boas's life and achievements, Claudia Roth Pierpont's article ?How a rebel anthropologist waged war on racism' deals with the origins of anthropology in the United States, laying emphasis on the importance of Boas, the "rebel anthropologist?, in the transformation of the...
The use and abuse of biology, an anthropological critique of sociobiology
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
According to M. Sahlins, vulgar sociobiology is "the explication of human social behavior as the expression of the needs and drives of the human organism". This thesis implies that social organization is exclusively determined by biology. However, among other arguments, the author argues that one...
Anthropological debates on definition and origin
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
This article is based on Tylor's work on animism and Durkheim's work The Elementary Forms of the religious Life. One of the main problems of an anthropological study of religions is to find the objectivity that every science requires. For example do we need to be believers or atheists to...
America's middle-class
Essay - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
We have examined throughout the length of this course the fact that America's lower class does not have the ability to voice their political concerns that the wealthier classes have and thus, when focusing on the issue of welfare it is important to realize that most of the policies enacted...
One is not born, but rather becomes a woman' (de Beauvoir). Discuss with references to determinist, constructionist and deconstructionist theories of gender.
Essay - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.' This famous assertion, excerpted from Simone de Beauvoir's Deuxième Sexe, concentrates the idea that sexual identity is an identity that one acquires, and whose acquiring is influenced by socialization, education, ideology and cultural...
The Amish
Essay - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
We discuss about the characteristic features of the Amish community in this document. The Amish are a religious and close-knit community which lives in the USA, a country that is riding high in terms of technology. The most astonishing aspect about them is that they choose to live on the fringes...
The intrusion of church behind bars. Case Study: faith-based prison programs in the U.S.
Essay - 10 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The Evangelical leader Charles W. Olson had promoted his dream of a 'Christian prison' for years. After he was convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal, this former aid of President Nixon was released from jail in 1975. He founded then, the Prison Fellowship Program in 1976. This...
Islam and Modernity : Towards a modern comprehension of Islam
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The events of the 20th century have totally disturbed the geography of Islam. Decolonization and globalization have been raising new issues in Muslim societies throughout the world. In this essay, we will see how the tension between the search for a Muslim identity on the one side, and the push...
Marabouts in Morocco : how to explain the vigour of maraboutic practices today in the Cherifian Kingdom?
Essay - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The term "marabout" comes from the deformation of the Arabic term murabit. The murabit is a disciple who receives the religious teachings of a master of in a ribat. Their necropolises are often located on what used to be the old major caravan routes, where they represented spaces of neutrality,...
Are conservative values back among young people?
Essay - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
An article that was published in ?The Economist' on the 26th of July 2003, deals with an ?upturn in conservatism' among young American people. Indeed, according to this article, more and more students support the republican ideology, and are in favor of US military interventions. However,...
Wake traditions in Ireland and Church opposition to wake and associated practices - published: 29/09/2010
Essay - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Foreigners often see Ireland as a deeply Catholic country. Yet when dealing with their traditional customs, the Irish can prove to be very disobedient to the orders of the Church. One of the best examples is probably that of the 'merry wake': the Church tried for hundreds of years to...
Abortion in the United States
Essay - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
In the modern world, one can observe the growing success of anti-abortion actions in the United States whereas the law is supposed to ensure safe and medical abortion. Besides, abortion has become a part of everyday politics (like the death penalty). For instance, in the presidential campaign...
The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr
Worksheets - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The Jama'at-i Islami was founded by Mawlana Sayyid Abu'l-A'la Mawdudi (1903-1979), whose deep Sufism-education rapidly led to Islamic movements, as for instance the Khilafat movement that failed to unite the Muslims of India. The context in which Mawdudi rose and later created the...
Sociology - published: 19/08/2010
Thesis - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Sociology is the study of society which comprises of humans. When further classified, it is the study of human social relationships and institutions such as groups and associations. A science on one hand relates to discovery, innovation and knowledge. Art is created by human beings. A combination...
Objectivity and subjectivity in sociology
Thesis - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
A sociologist is a man who examines the society by being as objective as possible. We may therefore define objectivity as the quality which provides a distorted picture of people and things, or anything that describes them and judge them without a bias. This paper analyzes the methods employed by...
The theories of the state in classical sociology: Karl Marx and Max Weber
Thesis - 7 pages - Sociology & social sciences
European sociology for long has been influenced by the works of Marx and Durkheim. However, there has been little importance given to the work of Max Weber. Whenever his works were taken into account, they have been focused mainly on their methodological dimension. It is only recently that...
The role and position of North and South Indian women: The problem of female infanticide, dowry burning and Sati
Thesis - 9 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The North and the South of India is different in terms of language, custom and religion. In fact, language, custom and religion itself is prone to regional differences even down to the village level. However, despite these differences even in the village level, a homogenous explanation can be...
Native American identities and adaptations
Thesis - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Jamake Highwater was an impostor. According to an anonymous essay in Dancing Bear, a blog and online collection of essays having to do with Native American issues, Highwater fabricated his Native American heritage, his family history, his credentials, and even his age. Highwater clearly...
Social work
Thesis - 7 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Though social work is a wide and pervasive field which encompasses many different careers and experiences, there is a common theoretical understanding of the needs of people and their communities which seems to speak to all of them. In this paper I will be concentrating on the theoretical...
The Jews
Thesis - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Jewish people are some of most influential people in the world today. Jews have helped societies all around the world develop into advanced societies. This research explores several aspects of the Jewish plight. The first phase of the research discusses the diverse wars waged against the Jews, in...
Truth and the views surrounding it
Thesis - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Michel Foucault's Fearless Speech deals with the idea of parrhesia and its role in ancient Greek philosophy and daily life. This lecture deals with two harmonious but separate definitions of parrhesia. One deals with parrhesia in a political sense, the act of speaking truth in a public arena with...
Bishop Hill: Success and failure through adaptability
Thesis - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Scholars assess several criteria in evaluating the relative success of intentional communities. One of the most firmly established and frequently cited is whether or not the community achieves its own goals [You 1983, p.4]. Holding a community's ability to stick to its original plan in such high...
The corporation and society: A sociological perspective
Thesis - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Corporate power is a phrase which has at least two faces: one is the intellectual aspect, which we use to conceptualize the processes and functions of corporations and the corporate elite. The second is the various set of actions and events that corporations produce which allow us to reach the...
The other in Israeli culture: Yearning for a home and a homeland
Thesis - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Do our similarities bring us together, or do our differences tear us apart? This question can be answered varyingly and astutely, across (and within) cultures and societies. Eshkol Nevo's rich novel Arba'a Batim ve Gagu'a can be construed as the author's response to this question in contemporary...
One brain two languages: The advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism
Thesis - 6 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Language is such a vital part of our existence. We are confronted daily with language through interaction with others and within ourselves through our own inner dialogue. On the whole scientific inquiry and analysis utilizes language in communicating ideas and conducting experimentation....
Environmental racism
Thesis - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
According to Fredrickson, America was able to largely ignore the race question until the American Revolution. Before the war for independence, Jews were mostly sequestered in ghettos and black people on plantations, so the need for a dominating racial ideology had not yet arisen....
Terror in the Mind of God: A book review
Book review - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The world has become a more dangerous place to live in the past fifteen years or so. According to Mark Juergensmeyer's book, Terror in the Mind of God; the Global Rise of Religious Violence, this can be attributed to religious terrorists, or activists depending on one's perspective, reacting...
Lady Xun: The selfless spouse
Thesis - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
As the daughter of an affluent father, Lady Xun was destined for a life of prosperity. However, her life was marked by benevolence, not political or economical achievements. After marrying Yuanye Zhang, her life went from extreme luxury into a married life of severe poverty. While marrying...
Lenin's Bolshevik faction and the Jews in Russia
Case study - 8 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were assimilating into the broader Gentile culture of Europe, thanks to the immense pressures of modernization and, to a lesser extent, democratization. The Jews of Russia faced much of the same choice as the rest of the Russian population in the...
Honor killing in the United Kingdom
Case study - 31 pages - Sociology & social sciences
In recent years there have been a spate of killings in the UK characterized by the family members killing their own daughters or one of the female family members. These killings have one theme in common: a female member is generally killed by her family brutally for transgressing family code....