Tagged: goffman

Speech, Identity, and Losing the Accent

The voice isn’t often taken as a subject for Sociological analysis, despite affecting and representing a great range of highly sociological topics such as social stratification and identity, amongst many others. Taking the voice as an object of study can be incredibly illuminative, as trends in the way we speak are a clear indicator of wider social changes, as well as being highly applicable to social theory. I started thinking about this after hearing a radio programme on the BBC, that...

Authors in FOCUS: An Interview with Wayne Brekhus On Cognitve Sociology and the Study of Race

Wayne Brekhus discusses his co-authored article, On the Contributions of Cognitive Sociology to the Sociological Study of Race In the interview, Dr. Brekhus answers questions such as: What is cognitive sociology? How did he become interested in the cognitive perspective? Why is it so critical that we study race using the cognitive model? To listen to the interview, CLICK HERE !! AND… After you watch the interview, read the article by clicking here!!

The DeMcDonaldization of the Internet

On this blog, I typically discuss the intersection of social theory and the changing nature of the Internet (e.g., using Marx, Bourdieu, Goffman, Bauman, DeBord and so on). In a chapter of the new third edition of the McDonaldization Reader edited by George Ritzer, I argue that what we are seeing is a general trend towards the deMcDonaldization of the Internet. The shift from a top-down centrally conceived and controlled “Web 1.0” to a more user-generated and social “Web 2.0”...

our digital culture of narcissism

by nathan jurgenson For many (especially youths and young adults), attempting to quit or never start Facebook is a difficult challenge. We are compelled to document ourselves and our lives online partly because services like Facebook have many benefits, such as keeping up with friends, scheduling gatherings (e.g., protests) and so on. Additionally, and to the point of this post, the digital documentation of ourselves also means that we exist. There is a common adage that if something is not...