Sociological Perspectives on Food, Culture, and Work
Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism focuses so strongly on the commodity itself that other aspects of the social context are ignored. Commodity fetishism obscures the true social relationships involved in making a product. Example: Chocolate. Many workers in the Western African cocoa industry are children, and a significant percentage of them are enslaved.
The Durkheimian tradition tends to focus on understanding how society comes together to function as a cohesive whole. Durkheim emphasized how
Read MoreMulticulturalism and the Spanish Constitution: An Analysis
Multiculturalism and the Spanish Constitution
The Constitutional Recognition of Multiculturalism.
Many parts of the constitution allude to the existence in Spain of a plural reality of languages and cultures through the use of the word “culture”:
- Preamble, fourth paragraph: “The Spanish nation … to protect all the peoples of Spain and Spanish …, their cultures and traditions, languages and institutions.”
- Section 143.1 “… bordering provinces with common historic, cultural, and economic characteristics
Second International: History, Objectives, and Impact
The Second International (1889-1916)
The Second International was founded in 1889, with its headquarters in Brussels. While the First International initially encompassed a wide range of trends, the Second International, after expelling the anarchists in 1893, adopted a clear Marxist socialist direction. It comprised a federation of socialist parties from different nations.
Key Objectives
The association emphasized the pursuit of legislation to improve workers’ living conditions, including unemployment
Read MoreMigration, Labor Markets, and Global Economic Shifts
Economic Theories of Migration and Labor
- Neoclassical Economics: Macro focuses on the demand and supply of labor, influencing wages. Micro focuses on individual migration to areas with opportunities, leading to higher income through human capital in the long run.
- New Household Economics: Migration decisions are made within the family context. Households collectively aim to maximize expected gains.
- World Systems Theory: Migration flows are non-random. Migrants move from the periphery to the core, driven
Minority Languages and Linguistic Normalization in Galicia
Minority Languages and the Case of Galician
Minority languages are those that have a small number of speakers in a given territory. A minority language refers to linguistic varieties of small extent, but very much present in their own territory.
The Normalization of Galician
As we know, the social confrontation between a hegemonic language and one or more minority languages has two possible outcomes: either the dominant language eliminates the minority language, or legal, political, social, and linguistic
Read MoreDavid Hume and the Rise of Empiricism
Hume: Edinburgh, 1711
Empiricism, the philosophical movement that dominated British philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries, shared a common goal with rationalism: to provide philosophy with a method that would allow it to achieve the same success as the science of the time, spurred by Newton’s recent discoveries.
The England in which empiricism developed was marked by disputes between supporters of Parliament and defenders of absolute monarchy. The bourgeoisie favored a Parliament that would diminish