#sociology

...today, the only class which, in its 'subjective' self perception, explicitly conceives of an presents itself as a class is the notorious 'middle class' which is precisely the 'non-class': the allegedly hard-working middle strata of society which define themselves not only by their allegiance to firm moral and religious standards, but by a double opposition to both 'extremes' of the social space - non-patriotic 'deracinated' rich corporations on the one side; poor excluded immigrants and ghetto-members on the other. The 'middle class' grounds its identity in the exclusion of both extremes which, when they are directly counterpoised, give us 'class antagonism' at its purest. The constitutive lie of the very notion of the 'middle class' is thus the same as that of the true Party line between the two extremes of 'right-wing deviation' and left-wing deviation' in Stalinism: the 'middle class' is, in its very 'real' existence, the embodied lie, the denial of antagonism - in psychoanalytic terms, the 'middle class' is a fetish, the impossible intersection of left and right which, by expelling both poles of the antagonism into the position of antisocial 'extremes' which corrode the healthy social body (multinational corporations and intruding immigrants), presents itself as the neutral common ground of Society. In other words, the 'middle class' is the very form of the disavowal of the fact that 'Society doesn't exist' (Laclau) - in it, Society does exist. ↗

— Slavoj Žižek

#psychoanalysis #sociology #sociology

I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student, and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre, art, music, politics and philosophy. ↗

— Paul Nurse

#amongst #anne #art #associated #her

That subject has lost its one time appeal to economists as our science has become more abstract, but my interest has even grown more intense as the questions raised by the sociology of science became more prominent. ↗

— George Stigler

#appeal #became #become #economists #even

I wasn't a great student; I was lazy. But when I was in sociology class, I listened. ↗

— Eric Stonestreet

#great #i #lazy #listened #sociology

The family is the basis of society. As the family is, so is the society, and it is human beings who make a family-not the quantity of them, but the quality of them. ↗

— Ashley Montagu

#family-relationships #society #sociology #family

It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed." "That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#ethics #evil #good #philosophy-of-science #sociology

One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in. ↗

— Georg Simmel

#sociology #life

The old man in the beard he felt convinced was wrong. He was too busy saving his own soul. Wasn't it better to take part even in the crimes of people you loved, if it was necessary hate as they did, and if that were the end of everything suffer damnation with them rather than be saved alone? ↗

— Graham Greene

#business

At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them. ↗

— Gavin de Becker

#men

Anyway, that was the germ of the idea and of course... you know this was early days of sociology and whatever, especially on television. ↗

— Michael Apted

#course #days #early #especially #germ