Sociology Students for a Change

Sociology is the study of humans in groups--not individual characteristics of these humans, but the aggregate, collective aspects of groups. Sociology studies populations in situated behavior patterns, clusters of behaviors, correlations, and meaning. Human beings are complicated, so we have to be careful about our language.

Situated behavior patterns means cross-sections of ranks and content. A single parent woman of color is situate d differently from a single-parent white priviledged woman. An African American man of priviledge at work is situated differently from a poor African American man at work. A poor single parent woman of color shares "interests" with a poor white American woman, but prejudices can still keep them apart. Differences in intersectionalities keep people -- even when most of whose sectionalities are similar in either belief or opportunity -- divided.

One is one's intersectionalty. Ego is one's intersections. Social potential is seeing our shared intersections.

Gender rank is fundamental to all social organization. All social situations are, at base, situations of male-male, male-female, or female-female (or man-woman, woman-woman, and mano-a-mano, in perpetual struggle). Women are always situated differently from all men in similar situations: it is the human condition that gender is always a root part of intersectionality.

Gender power and gender stereotypes are breaking since the women got the vote 50 years after (in theory) African Americans acquired it, but gender equality remains just beginning. The suppression of women has been the cornerstone of man's civilization. This season we have a woman running against a man for the most powerful position in the world, and opposed to her or united with her is a man of half-color.

Social organization is complicated, and the academic tradition of writing for Sociology carries many turgid models. Only two Sociologists since the 1950s have been best selling writers. How can we learn from the strong aspects of Sociological writing and also write with effectiveness?

4 Students for a Change blogs:
I (Political - Power blog)
II (Gender blog)
III (Who Am I - Religion - Fundamentalism - blog)
IV (Solutions blog)