The Internet had radically changed the way social customs as dating are conducted. Innumerable innovative ideas for dating have sprung up in the cyberspace. But the important question is whether such developments have beneficial or detrimental effects on the society in general and the youth in particular. In this essay I have tried to answer…
Category: Society
Comparative Perspective on Organized Crime Groups
Abstract: The Sicilian Mafia and the Medellin Cartel are both born out of political unrest. They both operate internationally and their actions can have significant impact on the related countries. Though usually illegitimate, the groups have had popular support and some of their leaders were revered and looked up to. The groups have intricate links…
How are the terms ‘margin’ and ‘centre’ used to define cultural groups in the Postmodern age?
There is a widely held consensus that postmodernism is a reaction to modernism and hence concerns itself only with “otherness”, “difference” and “identity”. High modernism is rarely occupied with the experiences of the cultural minorities and nor does it involve critical analyses of their experiences. People in the margin regard the links between their sense…
A Socio-Political Critique of Barn Burning by William Faulkner
The main focus of the story is on the moral dilemmas confronting the young boy Sarty, who is torn apart between his loyalty to his violent and anti-social father and the tendency to abide by the norms of the society at large. But, around that scaffold, Faulkner builds his statements depicting serious discords within the…
The applicability of the term ‘mass media’ in light of John Thompson’s views on the subject.
John Thompson had stated that “messages transmitted by the mass media are received by specific individuals situated in definite social-historical contexts”. He was quite right in asserting that though the media messages are broadcast to a large audience, the messages are ultimately consumed at the level of the individual. The way the message would be…
Marshall McLuhan And His Ideas
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was a Canadian philosopher, linguist, literary critic, communications theorist and a professor of English literature. He is the founding father of the field of study now termed “media ecology”. In Marshall McLuhan’s pioneering work on print culture, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, he presents the view that communication technology…
North Country (Movie): Summary and Analysis
The movie North Country was based on the book ”Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law” which tells the story of Lois Jenson, who filed the first class action lawsuit for sexual harassment in American history. In the film, Theron plays the daughter of an iron miner (Richard Jenkins) working in a…
East European Jews in America
The 350 years of association with the United States have provided Jews with certain unique freedoms and advantages compared to minorities in other parts of the world. However, the challenges they had to surmount had been quite considerable. Not least of which is the Catholic and Protestant theologies, which label Jews as the “Children of…
Is contemporary industrial society a ‘secular’ society?
Introduction “Secularism implies plurality of cultural choices. Secularism is not about the absence of faith: indeed it is about assertion of faith – faith in freedom and people, not dogmas. A space where one can pause and acknowledge the other, the one who is different, the alien, the non-believer; where one can negotiate the public…