Understanding The Sociological Imagination
In 1959, one of sociology’s iconic figures, Charles Wright Mills, published perhaps his most famous work, The Sociological Imagination. Passing away a mere three years later in 1962, Mills left with us a sociological framework that continues to influence our discipline, and that is frequently taught in introductory sociology courses. In this post, with help from a group of sociology students, David Mayeda explains the sociological imagination, and stress its ongoing importance in contemporary society.
“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” (Mills, 2007, p. 1).
If you’ve ever thought you lived a completely independent life, fully in control of your own destiny, C. Wright Mills would likely ask you to think again. Considered one of sociology’s preeminent thinkers, Mills taught at Columbia University in the mid-twentieth century. The above quote by Mills offers a snippet of insight into what he terms the sociological imagination.
As students from The University of Auckland describe in the above video, the sociological imagination is an important instrument that provides us with a particular “quality of mind,” an approach to viewing our individual lives as part of a larger story, one that is driven by history and a constellation of interconnected social structures that afford us varied life chances….
Coercive Control and Intimate Partner Violence
Just before ringing in 2016, the United Kingdom announced that new legislation would make coercive, or controlling, abuse in domestic relationships a criminal act, carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison. The legislation reflects what feminist advocates have been claiming for decades – that intimate partner violence (IPV) is not limited to physical or sexual abuse. Additionally, IPV includes a wide range of non-physical but highly influential behaviors that enable one intimate partner to control the other, and keep the victimized partner ensnared in an abusive relationship. Here, David Mayeda discusses Evan Stark’s concept of coercive control to illustrate how widespread gender norms in society contribute to men’s control over women in intimate relationships.
When people hear the words “domestic violence” or “intimate partner violence” (IPV), the first images that come to mind are typically those involving physical violence between intimate partners. However in 2007, Evan Stark published Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, a book which illuminates how violence in intimate relationships is sustained largely by acts of control, which do not always carry physical violence. Stark’s work has also been influential in showcasing how coercive control is shaped by society’s gendered expectations of men and women….
Rousey & UFC 193: Women’s Revolution or Limited Liberal Feminism?
This weekend in Melbourne, Australia, Ronda Rousey will defend her mixed martial arts (MMA) bantamweight championship against Holly Holm in the main event of UFC 193. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is marketing UFC 193 as a women’s revolution in sports. Not only are Rousey and Holm – two women – squaring off in the main event, but in the co-main event, Joanna Jędrzejcyk defends her UFC straweight title against Valerie Letourneau. UFC 193 will stand as the first major event in combat sport history where the main event and co-main event are both headlined by female fights. Still, one must ask, even with Rousey’s rise to stardom, how far has the UFC has come with respect to gender equity? In this post, David Mayeda examines the UFC’s inclusion of female fighters and argues UFC 193 symbolizes the limitations of liberal feminism.
Roughly four years ago, UFC President, Dana White, stated soundly women would never fight in the UFC. Less than two years later, he signed Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche to compete in the UFC’s first women’s fight for the newly established bantamweight championship. Prior to Rousey’s entrée into the organization, women, including Rousey, had been competing in MMA. Still, the UFC was and remains the most prominent MMA ogranization, and since her victory over Carmouche, Rousey has shifted the way society views MMA.
At present, the UFC includes two women’s divisions. Rousey is champion at the bantamweight level (upper limit of 135 lbs), while Joanna Jędrzejcyk – a 6-time world champion in Muay Thai – stands as the strawweight champ (upper limit of 115 lbs). Although male fighters still outnumber female fighters at UFC events, the inclusion of female competitions in the UFC is now very normalized. However, at this weekend’s event in Melbourne, Australia, female fighters are truly taking the spotlight, as Rousey, Jędrzejcyk and their respective opponents will close out the card in the two main event matches.
Unsurprisingly, the UFC is marketing the event around these shifting gender norms and capitalizing off Rousey’s ascent to mainstream celebrity status. As seen in the promotional video, above, representations of Rousey, a two-time Olympic judoka and bronze medalist in 2008, and Holm, a 19-time world boxing champion, revolve around girls’ contested climb into combat sport greatness, as they disrupt notions of socially acceptable femininity through their childhood and adolescence….
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moreCultural Appropriation and Indigenous Peoples
In multicultural societies, different cultural groups are bound to share their respective norms, exchange traditional values and learn from one another. Present-day technology has helped make our global society smaller. Not only do people migrate at faster rates, in larger numbers and with varying levels of privilege. Additionally, information technology expedites cultural interchange and movement of financial capital across global platforms, often times in a matter of seconds. If cultural interchange is an inevitable by-product of globalization, how should we interpret use of culture for capital gain? In this post, David Mayeda offers analysis of a recent commercial, which presents rugby icon Richie McCaw and Māori culture as symbols to sell products for Beats by Dre, and asks if this representation of Māori culture is cultural appropriation.
With expected victories and massive upsets, the 2015 Rugby World Cup (RWC) is now in full swing. Back in 2011, New Zealand’s All Blacks were winners of the RWC, led by team captain and rugby legend, Richie McCaw. Though aging, McCaw is still an impact player and continues his role as captain. An icon in the sport, it’s probably no coincidence that Dr. Dre’s “Beats by Dre” company released the following YouTube video featuring McCaw at the start of this year’s RWC. While watching, note inclusion of New Zealand’s indigenous Māori practicing haka that adds to the commercial’s ambiance.
Haka is a Māori war dance, used historically in times of conflict and coming together. In contemporary New Zealand, haka are still used to signify an occurrence’s importance, and in popular culture it is not uncommon to see haka performed at sporting events by Māori and non-Māori alike (to learn more on the connection between the haka and NZ rugby, watch the video, below; to see the All Blacks perform at this year’s RWC, click here). According to the New Zealand Herald, the haka in the above commercial was written specifically for the Beats by Dre ad….
Explaining White Privilege
Nobody likes being told they have it easy, especially if they’ve overcome obstacles to get where they are. This is one of the reasons white people sometimes find the term white privilege bothersome, perhaps even offensive. The fact is, people from all ethnic backgrounds typically need to work hard in order to get through life, including those of European descent. Consequently, understanding and accepting white privilege can be a difficult task. In this post, David Mayeda takes an example of a recent New Zealander who moved to London to inspect the concept of white privilege.
The New Zealand Herald recently published a letter written by a young, ambitious New Zealander named Alex Hazlehurst who moved to London aiming to expand her professional work experience in broadcast journalism. Titled, “I’m talented. I’m hard-working. I’m blonde. So why can’t I find a job in London?”, Hazlehurst explains, she arrived in London with a university degree, solid work experience and a positive attitude. In turn, she expected to find meaningful work relatively quickly.
Unfortunately upon arrival, Hazlehurst encountered a London employment market that was cut-throat and highly competitive: “It doesn’t matter if you are Kiwi, Aussie, Canadian or British; London has become the Hunger Games of employment. So much so, a job will go up online and within 48 hours it has 786 applicants.” Indeed, tough odds for any applicant.
Hazlehurst explains further, the inability to find gainful employment had rippling effects on her morale: “It was starting to feel like this city hated me. I was angry, broke, drinking a lot, and lacking any of the confidence I arrived with four months ago.” Fortunately, Hazlehurst persevered, landing “a permanent job, at a great company, in the heart of Leicester Square.”
Undoubtedly, it takes courage for a 25-year-old to move half way across the world to a city twice as big in population as her home country. Likewise, it takes talent and determination to grind through the process she did to find meaningful work. So if this individual struggled to succeed, how could she be privileged? How might she have white privilege?…
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In December 2012, a young woman from New Delhi, India was sexually assaulted and murdered by six male perpetrators in such brutal fashion that the tragedy provoked nation-wide protests and drew extensive international media attention. The incident also inspired British filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, to produce a documentary titled India’s Daughter (see trailer here). As part of the documentary, Udwin interviewed one of the convicted perpetrators, who declared the victim should not have resisted and was responsible for her own victimization because she violated feminine norms by dressing inappropriately and staying out late at night. In this post, David Mayeda uses Edward Said’s system of Orientalism to analyze a discussion on India’s Daughter that took place earlier this year.
TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault.
Edward Said is one of the most influential academicians in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His system of Orientalism has been fundamental in assisting scholars to rethink how we understand discourse directed towards people of color and conversely, those of European descent. As described in Said’s seminal 1978 text, Orientalism entails constructing representations of non-European, colonized groups in negative ways across a range of mediums (military documents, popular media, academic study). Throughout this broad discourse, non-European cultures are framed as dangerous, backwards, inferior, simple, mystical and/or uncivilized, and lacking cultural diversity.
Coupled with this definition of “the other,” comes the implicit understanding that those who are not Orientalized must be by comparison, uniformly safe, forward thinking, superior, advanced, scientific and/or civilized. To this end, Said argues that when western European powers define “others” in disparaging ways, they are simultaneously coming to understand themselves in opposing, positive terms.
Said contends further that an Orientalist system served as the foundation for British and French colonialism from late 17th century until World War II, and American neo-colonialism in the post-World War II period, though Said acknowledges Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia and Germany relied on Orientalist practices as well.
It is in this regard that Orientalism is so important as a conceptual framework, because without first Orientalizing non-European cultures, colonizing powers could not justify taking possession of other countries and imposing economic and educational systems that benefitted colonizers at the expense of the colonized. Understanding themselves as higher cultures, western Europeans assumed the right to bring said lower cultures along, no matter how grizzly the means….
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Most fight fans say it should have happened five years ago, when boxing’s two greatest contemporary icons stood at the height of their athleticism. But nobody is complaining that Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao and Floyd “Money” Mayweather have slipped past punches over contract disputes and will finally trade blows in the ring on 2 May 2015. This latest rendition of boxing’s history making prize-fight indeed breaks precedence, if for no other reason, for its financial provisions. The two pugilists will share an estimated $200 million in prize money, with Mayweather banking $120 million and Pacquiao $80 million, a 60%-40% split, as ticket sales for the contest skyrocket in value. In this post, David Mayeda, explains how the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight is far more than a major boxing competition, also representing a colossal clash in cultural values.
As much as any other sport, boxing has shared a dynamic relationship with American cultural politics. Throughout the twentieth century, African American heavyweight champions, such as Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Joe Frasier, Muhammad Ali, and George Foreman, symbolized diverging viewpoints tied to civil rights, patriotism, and imperialism.
At present time, however, boxing’s landscape has become highly depoliticized, stuck in a period of commercialized globalization where today’s boxing superstars are constrained by business interests that limit political expression. Despite these corporate restraints, the impending Mayweather-Pacquiao competition represents a clash in cultural values, as notions of intense American individualism square off against collectivism and humility.
“Money” Mayweather and American Individualism
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For the last seven months, six University of Auckland students and I worked diligently on a projected titled, “I, Too, Am Auckland.” Building off the widely successful “I, Too, Am Harvard” project and the university campaigns that followed at Oxford, Cambridge, and Sydney, our project speaks to the seemingly subtle, covert but still very damaging racism directed towards Māori and Pacific university students in Aotearoa New Zealand.
To provide some context, in New Zealand, Māori are the indigenous population who have undergone waves of colonialism and face marginalization in society that is similar to indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada and Australia. Pacific peoples have ancestries tied to Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Tokelau, Vanuatu, Hawai’i, French Polynesia/Tahiti, and many other Pacific islands/nations. Most Pacific nations also underwent European colonization, and notably in New Zealand, Pacific people were recruited to work in factories during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, valued predominantly for their unskilled labor….
Those Holiday Decorations and Alienation
In much of the western world, December and January mark months during the year we dub, the holiday season. For many of us, this entails purchasing gifts for loved ones, receiving gifts in return, celebrating time with loved ones, and making New Years resolutions. People who celebrate Christmas – whether that be for religious or non-religious purposes – frequently do so by ornamenting their homes with festive decorations. But where do all those decorations come from? In this post, David Mayeda uses Karl Marx’s concept of alienation to analyze the production of Christmas ornaments, most of which are made in the Chinese city of Yiwu.
As most of our readers should know, Karl Marx is one of sociology’s founding members. Marx viewed society through a lens of contentious production relations, in which the proletariat class (those who could only use their bodies as currency within the system) was exploited by the bourgeoisie (those who owned the means of production).
According to Marx, in their exploitation, the proletariat would become alienated from society in four different, but related and simultaneous ways: alienated from (1) the objects s/he produces, (2) the processes of production; (3) him/herself; and (4) the broader community of humankind. Now let’s return to this post’s example.
As The Guardian explains, over 60% of the world’s Christmas decorations are made in roughly 600 factories, located in the Chinese city of Yiwu:
- Christened “China’s Christmas village”, Yiwu is home to 600 factories that collectively churn out over 60% of all the world’s Christmas decorations and accessories, from glowing fibre-optic trees to felt Santa hats. The “elves” that staff these factories are mainly migrant labourers, working 12 hours a day for a maximum of £200 to £300 [USD $312 to $468] a month – and it turns out they’re not entirely sure what Christmas is.
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Thinking of Volunteering Abroad? Read this first.
Unless you have paid work lined up, soon-to-be graduates frequently ponder what they will do with all the newfound spare time on their hands, while simultaneously questioning how their university degree can be put into practice in the “real world.” Lacking that tangible, reliable post-graduation roadmap, many recent university graduates (at least those who can afford it) are choosing to volunteer internationally, as a way to build their resumes, help others in need and add meaning to their lives. In this post, David Mayeda draws on the concept of neocolonialsim to critique this growing practice of international volunteerism.
In just over two weeks, 11 current and former University of Auckland students and I will embark on a two-week trip to Cambodia and Thailand to learn about the horrific practices of human trafficking and modern day slavery. Our guides on this trip will be personnel from an organization called, Destiny Rescue, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that specializes in stopping the trafficking of women and children who are coerced into sex work. During the past year, the students and I have been preparing for this trip, which has included all kinds of fundraising, as well as having honest conversations about our short trip’s objectives.
For the most part, our trip will entail learning how broad structural factors (e.g., poverty, discriminatory citizenship laws, corruption in law enforcement and politics, gender and age discrimination, demand from high income countries) contribute to modern day slavery, guided through this learning process with people who deal with these factors “on the ground” as part of their daily work. However, there will be a few occasions where our tour group volunteers with young people who have escaped trafficking rings….