The advertisement campaign for creating AIDS awareness featuring Adolf Hitler has drawn much controversy upon its release. The ad shows a couple having steaming sex in a dimly lit room with music playing in the background. Towards the end of the ad, the face of the man is revealed to be Adolf Hitler, with the…
Category: Society
Neil Postman’s Defending the Indefensible
Neil Postman’s essay titled ‘Defending the Indefensible’ appears in his seminal book ‘Conscientious Objections’, in which he critiques aspects of our culture that we’ve taken for granted. The essays in the book address quality of life issues related to advancing technology, new media and declining education standards. Defending the Indefensible pertains itself to one facet…
How true is the claim by some Western scholars that Islam is on a collision course with the West and is inherently inimical to the modern age we live in?
Samuel Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations has evoked a broad range of responses from political commentators both in the United States as well as abroad. Huntington asserts that the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 had marked a new beginning in the history of international politics. While prior to the collapse of the Soviet…
The Hite Report (1976): A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality
Shere Hite is one of the most influential and controversial figures in sociology scholarship of the last half century. It won’t be an exaggeration to suggest that she is one of the most quoted authors in feminist scholarship; and her most famous work The Hite Report is even popular among lay readers. The Hite Report:…
Should businesses like McDonald’s be blamed for overweight Americans?
The United States of America is notorious for the high percentage of overweight and obese people in its populace. The fad of fast-food chains is identified as a chief culprit behind this worrying trend, which other lifestyle factors are also attributed a share of the blame. For example, “Americans forked over $110 billion to fast-food…
Challenge to the American social fabric: Racial Discrimination
Racial Discrimination has been a persistent problem plaguing American society through all its history. In the United States, for much of the country’s history, the important institutions were dominated by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) community. As a result, all other immigrant groups were disadvantaged from the outset. (Takaki, 1993, p.406) Even among whites, Eastern…
Biological and Anthropological Theories of War vis-a-vis the War on Terror
There were numerous stated motivations for the ongoing War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. But ever since intentions of war were mooted in the wake of September 11, 2001, many official statements of motivation have been discredited and disproved. The inefficient manner in which search operations for Osama-bin-laden was carried out showed that the…
Similarities between Monopoly Board and Atlantic City
The Monopoly Board game is one of the most popular board games in twentieth century history. First designed in 1935, the game has sold more than 200 million sets in its 76-year existence. The game is loosely based on Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips’ The Landlord’s Game that she published in 1924. Although intended to bring…
Hispanics in the United States today
Hispanic Americans are the largest ethnic minority in the United States. Of the total American population, nearly 17 percent are Hispanics. The terms Hispanic or Latino refer to Spanish speaking immigrants to the United States, who came from South and Central American countries. These countries include El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Columbia, Brazil,…
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire, Greene and Kliewer
Paulo Friere’s article titled ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ is provocative yet truthful in its observations. Contrary to comforting conventional views on mainstream education systems, Friere presents a new perspective on the subject. He views the teacher-pupil equations in these systems as rather oppressive, as it reinforces misconceptions about knowledge and expertise. More controversially, Friere demystifies…