Archive for January, 2008

Alternate Worlds–Dumbo

Thursday, January 24th, 2008 Posted in Alternate Worlds, Dumbo | No Comments »

Notion of alternate worlds. Not time travel just similar worlds existing at the same time but not easily accessible, one to another. The ways across are at borders. There is a moving over a line to another place--through ...

Analyzing the Heroic

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 Posted in Heroic | No Comments »

For me the hero is the utmost exemplar. Whatever is to be done is accomplished with dash, dispatch, excellent style and results well beyond expectation. In each sector, whether sports, factory production, family life, police work, sailing, horseback riding, ...

A Question for Culture

Saturday, January 19th, 2008 Posted in Culture | No Comments »

Back to the mysterious heart of the group: I am guessing that it is very rare for any human grouping when confronted by a demanding event to be without a hint of a governing concept in its responses. Call it ...

A Sociology of Sociology

Thursday, January 17th, 2008 Posted in Analysis, Sociology of Sociology | No Comments »

Sociology is a social enterprise attached for rations and support to the modern university system. It is part of a long-time absorption of studies of the real world into this formal order. The new specialties have been breaking off ...

Wild Versus Tame

Sunday, January 13th, 2008 Posted in Violence | No Comments »

Our rules contradict our animal energetic. To be cultivated and cultured is to be under control. Before we could domesticate animals and plants we had to tame ourselves. The attempted dominance of a moral self over animal ...

The Violent Encounter

Thursday, January 10th, 2008 Posted in Asymmetrical Relationship, Violence | No Comments »

A transitive action: One person or side acts violently against another. Then what does alter do? This is the initial phase of Parson's unit act--the beginning of interaction. So violence is a particular kind of verb, a doing of ...

Locating Violence within the Social Order

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 Posted in Violence | No Comments »

I do not have a general theory of violence. I do not have a model of the social dynamic of violent action in its several settings. The unity is in the definition only--all actions with a probability of ...

Sociology of Violence: Definition

Saturday, January 5th, 2008 Posted in | No Comments »

INTRODUCTION As a teacher violence was my most successful course. A lot of students. A low absentee rate. My approach: to remain objective under all circumstances and to emphasize context. My presentation was not as convincing or as elegant ...

Recollection of Notes Past

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 Posted in Review | No Comments »

We are into a quick and informal review of the kind of sociology we have been advocating here. A clearing of the throat and singing Auld Lang Syne before continuing. The recognition that a hard science sociology is gone is ...

So Far, So Good.

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 Posted in Review | No Comments »

I've been chipping away here for several months now, time to peek at the image I've engraved in the rock so far. Remember that my premise is that each of us in social life acts within his own understanding of ...