Tag: Sociology

Christopher Ketcham – Above the Law: On the Prospects of Prosecutorial Reform

Link to an article by Christopher Ketcham:

“Above the Law: On the Prospects of Prosecutorial Reform”

Bonus link: “Corrupted Evidence: How the Department of Justice is Blocking Forensic Evidence Reform” (it should be noted that this bonus link article largely gives judges a free pass, for reasons not explained)

Robert Kuttner – Hidden Injuries of Class, Race, and Culture

Link to an omnibus book review by Robert Kuttner:

“Hidden Injuries of Class, Race, and Culture”

Bonus links: “What Drives Trump Supporters?: Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild on Anger & Mourning of the Right” and “I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans. Here’s What They Won’t Tell You.” and “Rural Voting from Group Identity Resentment of Other Groups Not Ideology” and “Janesville: Microcosm of the Heartland Rustbelt” (but see “On the Differences of Comedy in the Time of Alt Right Transgression” — essentially rejecting the core premise of Hochschild’s affective sociology as an infantalization)

Loïc Wacquant – On Urban Relegation

Quote from Loïc Wacquant:

“To speak of urban relegation – rather than ‘territories of poverty’ or ‘low-income community,’ for instance – is to insist that the proper object of inquiry is not the place itself and its residents but the multilevel structural processes whereby persons are selected, thrust and maintained in marginal locations, as well as the social webs and cultural forms they subsequently develop therein.  Relegation is a collective activity, not an individual state; a relation (of economic, social and symbolic power) between collectives, not a gradational attribute of persons. It reminds us that, to avoid falling into the false realism of the ordinary and scholarly common sense of the moment, the sociology of marginality must fasten not on vulnerable ‘groups’ (which often exist merely on paper, if that) but on the institutional mechanisms that produce, reproduce and transform the network of positions to which its supposed members are dispatched and attached. And it urges us to remain agnostic as to the particular social and spatial configuration assumed by the resulting district of dispossession.”

“Revisiting Territories of Relegation: Class, Ethnicity and the State in the Making of Advanced Marginality.” Urban Studies Journal, 53, no. 6, December 2015, Symposium (with responses by Janos Ladanyí, Troels Schultz Larsen, Orlando Patterson, and Emma Shaw Crane): 1077-1088.

Paul Kesler – Bourdieu vs. Delong

Link to a review of James Delong’s review of Pierre Bourdieu‘s Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (1998) by Paul Kesler:

“Bourdieu vs. Delong”

A useful case study description of how neoliberals tends to de-politicize (normalize) their political position.

Bonus link: “Kesler vs. Delong vs. Bourdieu”