FIFA World Cup and Social Stratification

John Oliver, from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, perfectly analyses the FIFA World Cup and how it affects the poor.

On his show a few weeks back, Oliver illustrated how the greedy FIFA capitalists use their power and influence to use the poor while stealing from them.

This 13 minute clip is great for explaining theories of social stratification, especially those from Karl Marx.

Must Know Crime and Society Concept: Differential Association

(Edwin Sutherland)

Social learning theories use the cognitive processes of learning through observation or a direct instruction to explain social occurrences. One example of what learning theories seek to explain is how people adopt criminal behavior.

Edwin Sutherland, who is considered to be one of the most influential criminologists of the twentieth century, explains with his popular theory (Differential Association or Learning Theory) that there are nine principles to how someone learns the attitudes, values, motives, and techniques of criminal behavior:

Feminist Perspective of Crime and Deviance

Feminists, similar to Marxists, view crime and deviance as a structure of power, where, how people are treated is based on what their economic background is or what resources they have. Or, to be more specific to this case, what gender they are.

When analyzing this topic, feminists primarily focus on how female perpetrators are viewed. They'll compare female and male convicts to see if society reacted with a double-standard, or if morality was used to blame a specific gender. They'll also look to see if the motive of a crime was to show power or dominance over another person.

Turns out schools are still segregated in America

It's been 60 years since the Brown v. Board of Education case which led to a unanimous Supreme Court decision that stated “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” However, believe it or not, schools are still segregated in America, as the quality of education varies by socioeconomic status and 'race'.

Conflict Perspective of Crime and Deviance

(Karl Marx)

When it comes to crime, conflict theorists don't examine how and why crimes happen. Rather, they look at how society creates and defines deviants.

Karl Marx, the first conflict theorist, believed that capitalistic societies are split into two classes: the bourgeoisie (rich) and the proletariats (poor). The bourgeoisie are the ones who own the means of production, while the proletariat (the working class) are the ones who manufacture all of the goods. The rich extract capital from the goods that are built and then pay the workers a wage.

Stereotypes and career expectations in minority cultures

So I was cruising around YouTube yesterday and came across this awesome skit from Wong Fu Productions that illustrates racial stereotypes in society. The skit, "Do you love your job? - Job Expectations," follows two high school teens -- one Asian and the other African-American -- as they battle their true selves in an attempt to squeeze into their racial typecast. Obviously, -- SPOILER ALERT -- it didn't work.

Sociology of Crime: Functionalist Perspective

Within the functionalist school of thought, crime is viewed as an activity that serves a positive purpose for society. Emile Durkheim, a functionalist, stated in "On the Normality of Crime" that crime can help to reassess and change laws, increase group solidarity, and set boundaries for what is an acceptable behavior and what is not.

Sociology of Crime: What is crime and deviance?

What is a crime? To many, a crime is a behavior that violates the law. Laws are created to protect people from social harm, but how do we really know what constitutes a social harm?

Take for example same-sex marriage. It is unanimous among many scholars that homosexuality is natural (people are born LGBT). But yet it is considered to be an illegal "behavior" in many countries, and not too long ago it was illegal for same-sex couples to marry in all of North America because many people believed (and some still do) that homosexuality was a mental disorder.

Why do people still think homosexuality is learned?

I was skimming through The Economist the other day and came across this article about gay individuals in China and the day to day obstacles that they have to go through. The article shared the story of one man who struggled to come out to his parents and instead of being true to himself and being him, he underwent gay conversion therapy to try to fix himself for the sake of his relationship with his mom and dad.

And guess what? As a result, he got anxiety issues, insomnia, weight and hair loss, and minus $1,700 from his savings account. But the thing that he went in to "fix" still remains. He is still a gay individual. So this brings me to my question: if homosexuality is a learned behavior, then why doesn't gay conversion therapy work, like ever?

Socialized Self: Merton's self-fulfilling prophecy and Cooley's looking-glass self

(Robert Merton)

Robert Merton was an American sociologist who won the 1994 National Medal of Science for his founding of the sociology of science. He spent most of his career as a professor at Columbia University, where he developed the concepts of the "reference group," and "self-fulfilling prophecy." For the purposes of this post, I will only discuss the latter.