Rumor and Experience
Monday, November 24th, 2008 Posted in Concrete incident or process | No Comments »Each life is unique. What is sensed and done by each of us can not be replicated in time or space. The individual makes and lives in his own universe. We can think of this as another pattern against which ...
Varieties of Absence
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 Posted in Concrete incident or process | No Comments »Separation anxiety is a stark experience that the infant can not avoid. His nursing mother away at work is no longer present for him. His language undeveloped and with no sense of the future, he exists only in the immediate ...
The Concrete and Particular Group
Thursday, October 30th, 2008 Posted in Group, Concrete incident or process | No Comments »We start with the situation of people whose lives have been intertwined who separate. Man Ray leaves France and his domestic companion Adrienne Fidelin remains. Che leaves Cuba and Fidel stays behind. Florence graduates high school and leaves her au ...
Gone But Not Forgotten. The Vulnerable Concrete Social Group.
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 Posted in Sociology of Group, Concrete incident or process | No Comments »"...the time has come for us to part," wrote Che Guevara in his farewell letter of April 1, 1965 to Fidel Castro. This marked the formal end of their relationship. A separation, the parting of the ways, is a moment ...
Whatever Happened to Adrienne Fidelin?
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 Posted in Mystery, Concrete incident or process, Biography | No Comments »Adrienne Fidelin, nick-name Ady, was the love companion of Man Ray, American artist and photographer, in the latter half of the 1930s (circa 1936-1940) in Paris. Their relationship is celebrated in Ray's autobiographical memoir "Self-Portrait" (1963) ...
Some of the Concrete is Under Deep Water. Notes on the Iraq War.
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 Posted in Concrete incident or process, Conflict | No Comments »War, and specifically the ongoing war in Iraq, is an interaction sequence whose parties attempt to impose contradictory social orders on each other using forceful and fraudulent means. The key for the sociologist is in the interaction. The ...
A Sociological Chat about the Sub-Prim Crisis
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 Posted in Concrete incident or process, Sub-Prime Crisis | No Comments »Notice the imperfection of the economic system in the USA. Crises are not infrequent. Every time we experience one we hold our collective breath, fearing that this will be the big one, the meltdown, when the finely tuned ...
Orange Juice. A Sociologist Approaches a Concrete Case of Murder
Friday, March 28th, 2008 Posted in Concrete incident or process, Anti-Experiment, Family Forms, Murder | No Comments »Like most cases of crime and deviance the OJ murder case appears on its face to be irrational. The shocking element: what seems to be a sane and ordinary person is acting against common sense. Why would a mature, ...
On the Edge of a High Place.
Thursday, March 27th, 2008 Posted in Cadre, Alternate Worlds, Prostitution, Concrete incident or process, Anti-Experiment | No Comments »In the movie "A Man for All Seasons" an historical event is transformed into a dramatic narrative. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) engages in a political disagreement with King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) over divorce and ...
The Governor and the Whore. An Observation
Thursday, March 20th, 2008 Posted in Prostitution, Politics, Concrete incident or process | No Comments »This story, so riveting in the moment, flashed through the public consciousness like a transient case of dysentery. Correct medical treatment and it goes away. The governor resigned. Stop press. Story over. His attacks on Wall Street firms and ...