Tagged: habitus

Social Media: Documentation as Stratification

The new norms of exhibitionism and copious self-documentation have been regular talking points on Sociology Lens over the past year.  Consider Nathan Jurgenson’s posts, our digital culture of narcissism and facebook, youtube, twitter: mass exhibitionism online, as well as my own recent post, The Queer Politics of Chatroulette. It now seems truer than ever for many social media users (particularly, teenagers and young adults) that “If you’re not on MySpace [and/or other social media sites], you don’t exist.” Moreover, the...

The Ghost of Mussolini

by kiddingthecity The ex-fascist mayor of Rome Mr. Alemanno made the headlines lately, when while visiting Israel refused to call on Fascism ‘as absolute evil’ and labeled it as ‘a complex phenomenon’. The outcry of condemnation  from the Italian Center-Left and the Jewish community at this latest ‘slippage’ is highly justified, but in my view missed the point: they are in fact rehearsing a view of Fascism (with capital letter) as ‘historical norm’ (Walter Benjamin’s Thesis VIII). Mr. Alemanno, on...