#sociology

That subject has lost its one time appeal to economists as our science has become more abstract, but my interest has even grown more intense as the questions raised by the sociology of science became more prominent. ↗

— George Stigler

#appeal #became #become #economists #even

It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed." "That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#ethics #evil #good #philosophy-of-science #sociology

One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in. ↗

— Georg Simmel

#sociology #life

[Prison] relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. ↗

— Angela Y. Davis

#prisons #racism #society #sociology #racism

My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#sociology #sociology

I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining one’s crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter in which he deplored that 'the criminal never has a chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the blame is put on the victim. ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#guilt #sociology

And it may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering, as it did at the first Human Be-In and Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Or it may be that two generations of war and surveillance had left people craving the embodiment of their own unease in the form of a lone, unsteady man on a slide guitar. ↗

— Jennifer Egan

#history #music #sociology #music

To begin an ethnographic project with a goal, with an object of research and a set of presumptions, is already to stymie the process of discovery; it blocks one's ability to learn something new that exceed the frameworks with which one enters. ↗

— J. Jack Halberstam

#social-psychology #sociology #sociology

Objectivity, in this sense, means that a person's statements about the world can be trusted if they are submitted to established rules deemed legitimate by a professional community. Facts here are not aspects of the world, but consensually validated statements about it. ↗

— Michael Schudson

#media #objectivity #sociology #sociology

إن تطور المجتمع البشري ناجم عن المنافسة الحادة التي تدفع كل فرد لأن يبرع ويتفوق على غيره ، فالتطور قائم على أكوام أبدان الضحايا ، أبدان أولئك الذين فشلوا في الحياة ، فصعد على أكتافهم الناجحون ↗

— علي الوردي

#sociology