(no subject)

So far today: Watched 'Sharpe's Eagle'.
I do like the way he gets the crap kicked out of him so often.
Its not 'oh look, war, whee!', that is the attitude the bad guys have.
Good guys get splatted but keep going.
That scene in the hospital, I think there were more one leg people than I've seen in a year of anything else. Jobs for disabled actors!

Homework eats my brain...


Today my plan is to read more textbook (still on the chapters that don't contribute to essays directly) and maybe write an outline for essay that is mine. Essay that is for class I need data from class for, though actually teach might be printing out the data I found from the web, so, that I have already.

Can write about representations of age or disability. Age looks simpler, but disability is more interesting. Is only 1000 words either way. I keep getting thoughts like 'I could write both'. And then remembering that is the insane plan.

I'm finding this year my brain is working much better. I've probably done 1.5 times the work of last year - two days a week, but less hours on one day. It was hard and made me whiny, but I went in for two days this week and am not whiny. Er, tired and grouchy and headachey, yes, but not whiny... Okay, so perhaps my theory needs work...

I'm left rather hopeful about next year, when two days a week should easily be half the course, which is how much I need to do to get funding.

I like this end of the year. There's a point past which knowledge reaches critical mass, and new knowledge leads to more new knowledge, rather than confusion. Everything hangs together and clicks into place. Or at least enough of everything to leave a happy learning glow instead of massive wah.

I read textbook for fun! Yaays!

(no subject)

Have finished the chapter on culture and identity.
Well, mostly. I skipped some of the culture stuff because I don't need to do the high vs mass vs popular arguments again, that was covered in cultural studies. The identity stuff was more where the new stuff was.

It concluded with saying you need modern and postmodern theories to really get a handle on identity formation.

I think I'm seeing why the book has so many theories it then rips to shreds. Part historical, of course. Partly to teach us tools - how to theory rip. But partly because high contrast is easier to see. Take the theories that push things as far as they logically go, and they have only the one point they try and push. So once that point is understood, can see if you figure they push it too far. Which, often, yes. Or, sometimes, they push it quite far enough, but leave out all the other necessary points. Like Marxism and how it ignores gender and ethnicity and all the rest as sources of inequality. All about class for old school marxists. Quite limited. But, very clear.

Still quite annoying to read for pages and pages and then have the book get snarky about it. Feel like there should be some conclusions and teaching should start there. But no, is all a big argument, and the necessary thing to bring away from class is how to join in, not what the result is. On account of there isn't one. Or, there are very many, that all think each other are dumb.

Is kind of fun.

And things are changing. Like, education results, conclusion is inequalities remain, so bad, but everyone is doing better, so that part is good. And a lot less people seem to starve to death than did a couple hundred years ago. Yaays.


One fairly random thing that irritates me about this textbook - I don't think it uses the word 'bisexual' even once. In most chapters it mentions gay&lesbian, which is yaay. But I can't find bisexuals anywhere. Textbooks should not unexist a group. I realise already there are 2 words needed, and bisexuals are actually a bit different for some of the points made, but somewhere in the 2 inches thick book should be mentioning that some exist.
I've taken to penciling in 'and bisexuals' after every 'gay and lesbian' it mentions.
I are being slightly silly, but, it bugs me, and it is my book to pencil in.


The identity chapter didn't have much more than 'and sexuality is also a source of identity' anyway. The families chapter had more. But I guess from a statistical point of view a person can either be living in a same sex household or an opposite sex household, they aren't exactly measuring orientation so much as living arrangements, yesno? Would need details on individual studies I guess. But that would dissappear bisexuals as a category. Except for poly relationships, which hide in the '3 or more adults' category, which is very small indeed.


See which issues I zoom in on. Disability and sexuality. Not revealing about me *at all*.
:eyeroll:

Yeah, this would be why at the end of each chapter there's a section on 'values' as points out that sociologists are people with their own filters and opinions.
I quite like that section. Useful. The science textbooks I remember went for more of an omniscient/objective approach, which would hide a lot of important in social sciences. Or sometimes in science as well, I guess.



Next I could either write homework stuff
or go look at the Crime & Deviance chapter, which has been lurking looking interesting for ages.


I don't think I'm in a "write" kind of mood.

(no subject)

The 'crime and deviance' chapter starts out interesting.
definitions: deviance is any departure from norms / expectations / values of a particular society.
So, Jesus was a deviant.
Functionalist theory, Durkheim, reckons a certain amount of deviance is useful/essential. Because socities need to change, and if everyone is doing the same (no deviance) then there is no change.
Also says punishment can't squish crime totally for deviance that is criminal and deviance that is, say, abolishing slavery, all the same thing is to the mechanism and too much punishment makes for dysfunctional no change no growing society.

It seems to me there has to be holes to poke in that.
But it is past 9 at night and I'm not feeling very poke-y.

I guess it goes back to values ie value of human life. Trying to make it so people don't kill people seems like a pretty good start. But it means squishing free will in particular ways. And squishing the idea that some people need killing. Which... is a very big argument. You get everything from Jains that try not to step on bugs right up to people who think killing criminals is helpful.
I don't think my brain can keep up with that argument tonight.

Though with vampires the argue comes back to resources. If you can put them all in nice safe padded rooms, you don't have to kill them.

Methods of squishing deviance but still allowing change... tricksy.
Leaving people alive to have thoughts seems like a good start.



I think I'll go to bed now. Read more big thinking tomorrow.