What are we referring to when we use the word “culture” ?
What does it mean to call a society “modern” ?
What is the difference between a brain and a mind?
What effect does modern culture have on the formation of identity?
What are the potential cultural causes for mental illness?
In this blog, I hope to explore these and other related questions, taking sociologist Liah Greenfeld’s work as a starting point for our investigation. In a day when science has been given precedence over other disciplines, we hope to establish the empirical reality of culture and affirm its status as a valid subject of study.
At the University of California, San Diego, Neuroscientists begin work on the brain of HenryMolaison, world’s most famous amnesic. The Brain Observatory’s website has streaming video of the project’s first phase- a 30 hour procedure of sectioning the brain into thousands of hair-thin slices.
In this essay published in Southern Rural Sociology, Phyllis Puffer argues that most introductory sociology textbooks incorrectly define Durkheim’s concept of anomie and anomic suicide.
The latest episode of ‘Office Hours,’ a social-science podcast produced by several grad students at the University of Minnesota, features my recent interview with Francesco Duina, chair of the sociology department at Bates College, and author of ‘Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession.’
Since reading Duina’s book, I’ve noticed the language and mindset of competition popping [...]
Of the various writings, videos, and recollections of teachers, classmates, and former friends with which we are left to piece together a picture of Jared Loughner’s mind before the shooting, the most intelligible is a poem titled ‘Meat Head’ that he wrote for one of his classes at Pima Community College last fall.
Meat Head
Awaking [...]
By now, the search for political or ideological motivations in the January 8th shooting in Tuscon has given way almost entirely to a search for signs of mental illness in Jared Loughner’s past, and while debates over gun control, inflammatory political rhetoric, and the responsibility of colleges when it comes to dealing with troubled students [...]
Exploring modern culture and its effects on the mind