The United States SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) will have a profoundly negative effect on online social networks if they go through. As Wikipedia describes it, the proposed legislation will not achieve the goal of stopping online piracy and copyright infringement. Instead:

They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn't being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines. And, SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

If you're in the USA, please consider signing the SOPA petition on Google or writing to your local representative. The Wikipedia homepage can currently direct you who to write to by simply typing in your zip code. What happens in America with SOPA will affect us all - Sociology at Work is a not for profit that relies upon information and resource sharing, as does the research and activism of all sociologists.

Read more on SOPA and PIPA here from Wiki.

Pic via Peter G McDermott  who also produced this video to highlight how SOPA would affect internet censorship.

I’ve been working on a post encouraging the growth of visual sociology. I will share that with you soon. Visual sociology refers to representing sociological knowledge through photographs, charts, videos and other visual media. In that spirit, I thought I would reblog this US AID infographic. It demonstrates the importance of improving women’s education, economic contribution, political power and health in developing countries through international assistance programs. [Text below for our vision impaired members.]

The infographic reads:

A woman multiplies the impact of an investment made in her future by extending benefits to the world around her, creating a better life for her family and building a strong community.

• 99% of maternal deaths each year occur in the developing world.
• Adequate health care, a skilled birth attendant and emergency care help prevent maternal deaths. 
• 1 in 5 girls in developing countries who enrol in primary school never finish.   
• Girls who stay in school for seven or more years, marry four years later and have two fewer children.
• Women make up nearly % 52% of the global total of people living with HIV...
• Current approaches to preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission are 98% effective.
• 43% of the agriculture labour force. However, women are less likely to own land, and own fewer amounts of land when they do.
• When women have the same amount of land as men, there is over a 10% increase in crop yields.
• Women comprise only 18.9% of the world’s legislators.
• Countries where women’s share of seats in political bodies is greater than 30% are more inclusive, egalitarian, and democratic.

Via: US Aid.

Many refugees are displaced from their homes for years. They might live in refugee camps for decades. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partners support microfinancing efforts. Through small loans, refugees are empowered to maintain businesses and trading efforts, thus building up their long-term security.

Right: Microcredit: Bhutanese refugee women participate in a microcredit scheme, which offers loans to start small businesses. / Timai camp, eastern Nepal / UNHCR / J. Pagonis / July 2005. (UNHCR, Flickr)

Above: Refugees from Burma (Myanmar) at Nu Po Refugee Camp in Thailand. (UNHCR, Flickr)

The UNHCR writes:

The difficulty of finding access to legitimate, non-exploitative sources of income is one of the most serious obstacles faced by refugees and displaced people. However, refugees and displaced people should not to be treated as passive recipients of humanitarian assistance. With the right tools and opportunities, they have the skills and resources to contribute to their own development. People with an entrepreneurial spirit can create employment for themselves and for others...

Microfinance is another way in which humanitarian agencies can provide direct assistance for income generating activities in the short–term. Since microfinance aims at both a short–term and a long–term impact, it offers a suitable field for the cooperation between humanitarian and development organizations.

Sources: UNHCR Life in a Refugee Camp on Flickr.

Here are some resources that may be useful to our S@W members. Whether you are looking for work; a student seeking writing support; keen to take advantage of a free online course; or you are interested in new sociology blogs and publications, these resources should hopefully inspire your sociological imagination!

• PhDs.org is a useful job site tailored for specialists. Search the filtered social science positions at various levels: graduates, early career researchers and more senior executives. You can look for scholarships, internships, postdoctoral offers, project officer roles with not-for-profit groups, research gigs with think tanks, civil service jobs and other positions at the Director level. Most jobs are based in America, but they regularly feature jobs in other parts of the world.
  
• Sociology Major.com helps students learn more about sociological concepts and it encourages submissions to support peer learning. There are resources to help with writing papers and sections for sociology texts and sociology authors.
  
• Stanford University is offering free courses to the public online, including seven computer science courses and two entrepreneurship courses. There are no tuition fees, no textbooks and no set class times. The courses that may interest sociologists range from Computer Science 101, Human-Computer Interaction and Natural Language Processing. Read more on the UnCollege website.
• Sociolab is curator of a useful live list of sociology blogs on Tumblr (including mine).  If you have a Tumblr blog dedicated to sociology issues, please get in touch with Sociolab and join the community.
  
• Religion and Gender is a free online journal focusing on a range of religious experiences. The first edition features papers on queer theories on religion; 'macho Buddhism'; African Pentecostal masculinities; and feminist scholarship on pro-choice and anti-abortion lobby groups.
• Finally, some cross-promotion - I've been blogging about otherness, public sociology, media, and political issues on The Other Sociologist. Latest posts cover LGBT marriage; how sociology can address Japan's environmental efforts to clean up this year's nuclear disaster; Facebook's analysis of friendship networks; and 'unintentional racism' in Florence + The Machine's latest video.
  

Do you have other resources you think would benefit our colleagues? Please email me!

^{Image via: Ancient Mesopotamia.}

The United Nations has launched its latest campaign, 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. This year also marks the 15 year anniversary of the United Nations Trust Fund to End violence. The United Nations reports that:

• Up to 70% of women and girls will be beaten, coerced into sex or abused in their lifetime.

Read more...

Andrew Gottlieb of The Psychology Lounge recently posted a useful article about the way the media misrepresents social science research. Although Gottlieb is a clinical psychologist, his analysis has relevance for applied sociology. I include his tips on how to identify the typical ways journalists misuse scientific data. I then discuss some of my own tips for how to manage media interviews in order to avoid these common media traps.

Gottlieb has analysed Gary Schwitzer's post on How Reporters Screw up Health and Medical Reporting. He identifies three journalist practices that misrepresent social science:

Read more...

The World Bank has released a new report - Skills Not Just Diplomas, which presents a critical evaluation on the state of education in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the former Soviet Union. The report lends support for some of the goals of our applied social research network here at Sociology at Work - specifically its focus on increasing practical training in schools and universities. This includes addressing the skills that employers expect of workers which go beyond academic knowledge.

Read more...

Hope you had/have a Happy UN Day, wherever you are in the world!

This year, the UN commemorates the fact that the global population will reach 7 billion people by the 31st of October. Earlier in the day, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released this message:

"Let us unite, seven billion strong, in the name of the global common good."

Check out the UN population blog, 7 Billion Actions.

Read more...