April 12, 2003: Schedule Change! Arnold's trial commitment was changed, and everyone's schedule but mine coordinated. We're going to leave for Mammoth on Thursday, April 17, so I'll come in on Wednesday, April 16 to meet with you. I'll make up the Thursday time the following week. jeanne

April 8, 2003: OK, I lied about catching up with everything. I slept and read newspapers all day. But I was trying to figure out how to pull it all together. And this is retirement! Hah! Betty got us a room - the Dean's conference room on the SBS floor of offices. It's right behind the restrooms. I don't want to think about what that means sociologically.

• Class page for Sociology of Reality.

  • April 12, 2003: Cats: Love 'Em or Leave 'Em? by Ariana Rivera. Excellent submission for explaining how and why our measures of learning are different on Dear Habermas. Please read as a sample. jeanne

  • April 10, 2003: New project suggested this week on photo essays: don't miss it: Photo Essays.

  • April 14, 2003: Sample Request for Letter of Recommendtion Sample prepared by Jennifer Glass. Please read before you ask for a letter! jeanne

• Theses:

  • April 10, 2003: Carolyn Ibekwe has submitted her thesis on the health care system. Because I have that only in hardcopy it's impossible for me to work with it extensively. Primarily it gives no source identification for data which seems to rely on secondary analysis. Also it approaches the problem so globally that it has little potential for significant recommendations. Carolyn, you need to start sending this to me one e-mail so that I can transfer it over to my computer and we can work on it together. jeanne

  • April 10, 2003: Julie Gibbs. Have youir work on disk and will have it up tomorrow or the next day. Sorry that I seem to have gotten bogged down in an onslaught of theses. jeanne

  • April 9, 2003: Millie Coulter's thesis on the damage of labelling obesity as the fault of the obese person and seeing obesity as a social problem that can be resolved by changing the individual behavior of the obese person.

    • April 9, 2003:An American Skeptic in Paris Backup of a NY Times review of a William Klein exhibition in New York. William Klein is an important 20th Century American Photographer. One of the pieces that attracted me in the reviews for this exhibition was a painted contact sheet that features obese women. Klein was known for his social sarcastic commentary. Backup.

      Millie, I think this would be a great piece for your thesis. Critique the painting, with all its social criticism. You can still have my painting. jeanne

    • April 9, 2003: fatbk10.htm
      Despair Acute for Obese Children, Study Finds. "Many believe their quality of life ranks as low as that of young cancer patients."
      Millie, I think this would be a great citation for your thesis. Seems to me it says exactly what you're trying to say. jeanne

  • April 10, 2003: Berthena Kemp's thesis on wending her way through the barriers that keep us from managing to reach out and help one another.

    "Meanwhile I am involved in the Renascent Woman Project in Ghana. I was introduced to the director, Joycelyn Johnson during our Global Conference here in Los Angeles. These are women in Africa have chosen not to paricipate in some of the tribal traditions, such as women who because they are widowed are expected to submit to a Brother-In-Law as a wife, and even bear his children. She must live by his dictates. Particularly in the time of the great AIDS epidemic this offers a sure death. These women face emotional bondage and dead-end choices. Being misused, forgotten and hurt leaves an imprint upon one's being.

    The goal of the Renascent Woman Project is to help women rid themselves of things which have held them in bondage and kept them from discovering and fulfilling their potential.

    Hopefully I will be able to participate in some of their learning centers for women to rediscover the joy of being."
    Berthena Kemp, on her thesis topic, April 8, 2003.

    Berthena, this sounds like an extraordinary project. All I counsel is that you remember how many roadblocks we have encountered with such projects over the last year. I hope that you will be able to follow this one to Africa, but with the Thesis Project done first, please. Just remember that if that does not come to pass, your thesis is still within your grasp, as the project on clearing roadblocks on which you have already put in long months of work. jeanne

  • April 10, 2003: Stealing Innocence: A Parole Agent's Perspective: On working with Sexual Predators Chapter 1. Charles Barlow. Charles, as soon as I have our rvision of Chapter 1, I'll try to get up further revisions. But that's very hard to do when I don't have your response to my initial revisions. A word to all the M.A. Thesis students: Don't take time off. Keep going. We gotta finish. jeanne
  TOPIC OF THE WEEK:
  Understanding Illocutionary Discussion in
  Post-War Setting

  As we approach an end to the Saddam regime, it becomes ever more important that we all learn to listen and talk to one another. For this and next week, please read dialogue and conversation From infed.org UK. Good review of theorists we'll want to include in our discussions on how we manage the world now that we have the aftermath of this war to deal with.

  Attiutudes change slowly, no matter how hard we work at attempts to change them. Nota bene the global effects of the US attempt to convince the world that the war with Iraq was a just war. In order to understand an illocutionary approach to post-war events, you'll need to look at what's being said around the world. Bear in mind that each of these news sources, and any others you may wish to use, represent political perspectives. If you are to listen in good faith, remember that your goal is to try to understand how those who are voicing these views feel, and why they might feel this way. We need to go through that step before we can approach real governance issues.

  Meanwhile, start with Already, Postwar Iraq Is a Divisive Subject and War in Iraq Provides Model of New Way of Doing Battle to see how the discussions are going to look. jeanne

  See also A Picture Story of the Fall of Baghdad.

  In order to develop some sort of comparative sense for issues in the Middle East presently, I am beginning to put up some summaries fro Power and Responsibility in Chinese Foreign Policy. Although you might think of foreign policy as belonging to the realm of political science, this is an important illustration of why we in sociology cannot afford to ignore other disciplines. Human rights, the oppression wrought by fear of loss of control, the normative expectations through which we carry on our daily lived experiences are shaped our sense of power and responsibility. And our foreign policy reflects the way we shape and maintain our interpersonal relationships.

  * * * * *

  Theoretical Musings for Us by Us

  • Modern Social Theory: General

    • April 8, 2003: dialogue and conversation From infed.org UK.

      " 'Dialogue', Freire says, 'is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world'. Here we explore this idea - and its roots.

      "contents: introduction | gadamer - horizons of understanding | emotions and virtues | habermas: dialogue, power and distortion | bohm on dialogue | dialogue and conversation | conclusion | further reading"

  • Classical Social Theory: General

    • April 15, 2003: Backup of A Challenge to White Supremacy, 100 Years Later W.E.B. DuBois centennial of Souls of Black Folks. New York Times article by Felicia R. Lee.

    • April 10, 2003: Kant and Sociology" File just started.

    • April 4, 2003: Charles Horton Cooley: Primary Groups On Larry Ridener's Dead Sociologists Site.

    • April 4, 2003: George Herbert Mead Note the "importance of play."

  • Classical Theory: Attitude Change and Persuasion

    • April 10, 2003: Gottfried Keller and German Romanticism Lessons we need to learn about attitude theory from romanticism.

    • April 10, 2003: Victor Hugo and French 'Romanticism This piece brings in Edgar Allen Poe, so it will maybe help you relate this movement to American literature.

  • Classical Theory: Psychoanalysis

  • Education

    • April 16, 2003: Backup of LA Times article: Anaheim Schools reach out to community for reading readiness. Don't miss the illocutionary discourse elements where school officials come to speak of reading readiness in ways that parents can understand. Children welcome.

    • April 8, 2003: dialogue and conversation From infed.org UK. Good review of theorists we'll want to include in our discussions on how we manage the world now that we have the aftermath of this war to deal with.

    • April 8, 2003: Beginning Women Teachers Using Action Research towards Inclusive Mathematics Bill Atweh and Ann Heirdsfield, Queensland University of Technology. Good paper. Might give you some ideas on how to lay out a participatory observation paper, a type that many of us forget about when we think of traditional theses.

      Seems a little weird to speak of "Inclusive Mathematics." Most of our social science majors are so sure they can't "DO MATH," they'd rather face a crocodile than a math test. But math is really a language. A very precise language, and one that some math teachers succeed in speaking far too eloquently for a beginner to understand. I uploaded this piece as a prelude to my teaching of Introduction to Statistics next Fall. Guess how I'd like to teach it. As "Inclusive Mathematics." jeanne

  • Health

    • April 14, 2003: Comfort food and Nightmares: War Stress Comment by Jennifer Glass.

    • April 14, 2003: Chicken Soup forwarded by Marsha Walker.

    • April 8, 2003: Anxious Nation May Turn to Unhealthy Eating Habits, Experts Warn Release Date: March 21, 2003. Free Brochure Shows How to Make America's Favorite "Comfort Foods" Healthier. URL for article came from an article in the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 8, 2003: "As the Nation Hunkers Down, Calorie Intakes Surge," at p. D 2 in the Personal Journal.

      • Brochure on Comfort Foods Available free online at American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR). A single copy can be ordered by phoning or writing:

        "These strategies, along with several other recipes, are featured in AICR's "Comfort Foods" brochure. A single copy can be ordered free of charge by calling 1-800-843-8114 ext. 65, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, or by writing to the AICR Publications Department, 1759 R Street, NW, Washington DC, 20009."

    • April 6, 2003: Pulmonary embolus So this is why Pat always tells us we have to get up and walk around on long plane flights. Sorry you weren't there to nag David Bloom, Pat.

  • Listing the Dear Habermas Site:

    • April 8, 2003:In response to a request from the TheUK.com. "The UK.com is a searchable directory of topics focused on the United Kingdom." They requested that I update our Dear Habermas site information. This is what I sent in. If any of you would like to make changes, let me know. jeanne

      Teaching site: focus on peace and social justice, with heavy emphasis on social and psychological theory explicating and encouraging critical analysis of current issues. Interactive, in that student writings are included in the development of the site's bi-weekly journal issues. Theories range over philosophy, sociology, psychology, art, and literature. Site owners are Professors of Sociology and Criminal Justice, with specialties in law and pedagogy; one is a member of the Bar.

      Mirror sites: http://www.habermas.org
      http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas
      http://www.uwp.edu/academic/criminal.justice/dearhabermas

      Keywords: Theory, Literature, Criticism, Humanities, Sociology, Praxis, Criminology, Philosophy, Psychology, Law. Given opposition and support of War with Iraq, site discusses means to illocutionary discourse (or discourse for the sole purpose of coming to understand one another in the hope of future governance discourse). We invite reader participation in the discourse and seek ways to include broader communities that may or may not include our students.

      jeanne sent this in on April 8, 2003.

  • Lived Experience

    • April 16, 2003: Backup of LA Times article: Anaheim Schools reach out to community for reading readiness. Note the story of young Ulisses Azevedo whose experience at this community gathering led to his voice being heard not just by his mother, but by officials of the school district.

    • April 12, 2003: Backup of A Bold New View of Turkish-German Youth Backup

    • April 12, 2003: Backup of G.I. Who Pulled the Trigger Shares Anguish of 2 Deaths Backup.

    • April 10, 2003: Jeanne's husband Arnold climbs Yosemite with his deer friends Discussion questions and project included.

  • Religion

    • April 14, 2003: Salman Rushdie and Islam

    • April 14, 2003: Backup of Salman Rushdie and Religious Dissent

  • Urban Sociology

    • April 13, 2003: Backup of NY Times article on comparison of New York and Los Angeles Essay up soon. jeanne

  • Visual Sociology or Photo Essays

    • April 12, 2003: Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism: It's (Almost) All a Matter of Context By Howard S. Becker. Originally published in Visual Sociology 10 (1-2), 5-14".

      "The genres we're considering--documentary, photojournalism, and visual sociology--routinely provide at least a minimally sufficient background to make the images intelligible. A classic example from visual anthropology is Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead's Balinese Character (1942). Each photograph is part of a two page layout, one page devoted to photographs, the other to two kinds of text: a one or two paragraph interpretive essay, describing a topic like "The Dragon and the Fear of Space" or "Boys' Tantrums" or "The Surface of the Body," these essays having a further context in a long introductory theoretical essay on culture and personality, and a full paragraph of annotation for each photograph, telling when it was made, who is in it, and what they are doing. (See the discussion in Hagaman, 1995.)"

      . . .

      "If the analysis were made explicit, its complexity might well qualify it as a work of visual sociology. We would probably, in that case, want to know more about what we were seeing. Who are these people? What are they actually doing? But, more importantly, we would want to know more clearly what Frank was telling us about the nature of American politics. We would want to replace the nuance of the photographic treatment of American society, as many commentators have in fact done (cf. Brumfeld 1980; Cook 1982, 1986), with an explicit statement about the nature of that society, its class and political structure, its age grading, its sexual stratification, and its use of such major symbols as the flag, the cross, and the automobile. Such an explicit statement of cultural patterns and social structure would make the image speak to the kind of abstract questions about the organization of society that interest professional sociologists."

      Becker.

      April 14, 2003: Virtuality in Africa: Photo Essay

      April 10, 2003: Jeanne's husband Arnold climbs Yosemite with his deer friends Discussion questions and project included.

      • April 14, 2003: Marlene Whittaker's response to Arnold's rock climbing and deer friends.

      • April 14, 2003: Carla Calderon's response to Arnold's rock climbing and deer friends, including jeanne's response on how to fit in conceptual linking.

      • April 15, 2003: Sabrina Johnson's response to Arnold's rock climbing and deer friends, including jeanne's response on how to fit in conceptual linking.

      • April 15, 2003:Marsha Walker's response to Arnold's rock climbing and jeanne's summary of what we're learning from all these comments.

  * * * * *

  KIDS' Stuff

  Helping Your Student Get the Most Out of Homework National PTA. National Education Association. Link added April 13, 2003.

  New for Kids
  

  • How I Feel
    

    • Being Painted Black Poem by Laura Phillips, 16, of Port St. Lucie, Fla. The poem was published in Parade Magazine on Sunday, April 13, 2003, as the winner of a poetry contest judged by Billy Collins, Americas' Poet Laureate.

    • April 14, 2003: Comment by Tatiana Melendez on Laura Phillips' Being Painted Black

      Health:

      • April 9, 2003: Despair Acute for Obese Children, Study Finds. "Many believe their quality of life ranks as low as that of young cancer patients." Appropriate for older children and their parents. Good piece for sharing with family.

    Art Shenanigans

    • April 15, 2003: Tatiana Melendez' resonse to Laura Phillips' Being Painted Black

      Paul Klee: Untitled.

    • April 11, 2003: From the Djerassi Collection of work by Swiss Modernist Paul Klee, assembled by Dr. Carl Djerassi and placed in SFMOMA’s care . . . The exhibit will continue through June 8, 2003, in San Francisco, of course. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Klee's work has always enchanted me. He has a delightful sense of play. jeanne

    • Painted contact sheet by William Klein.

      See An American Skeptic Consider how work captured by painters such as William Klein here reminds us of the socially constructed nature of fat and thin and the sardonic attitude of the corporate world that continually tempts us with quick unhealthy food.

      Do you know what sardonic means?

      Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

    * * * * *

    

    Painting by Michelle Coffey at Lankershim Art Gallery, L.A.
    Was e-mailed an invitation for Lankershim Gallery's April 10th Reception.
    Don't know the painter. But the feeling of this piece says for me what I felt
    upon hearing that David Bloom had died in Iraq. jeanne

    * * * * *

    

    Art Critique Group - jeanne's right next to Picasso

    * * * * *

    

    Bird at Play in a picturesque world where the state has the right to come into your house and kill your pet bird to protect the chicken industry. An article in I think the LA Times today. Will put it up tomorrow, when it doesn't hurt so much. To protect the chicken industry! jeanne

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