Sociological Images

I’ve recently been reading the Sociological Images blog [1]. That site has lots of pictures and videos that are relevant to the study of Sociology (most of which have a major WTF factor) and it’s run by people who have Ph.Ds in Sociology so the commentary is insightful. Since reading that I’ve started photographing relevant things.

I can’t work out the logic behind the above advert for Energy Watch which was on a billboard near Ringwood Station in Melbourne, Australia. The only thing that it clear is that it spreads bad ideas about mental illness and psychiatric treatment. It doesn’t make me want to do business with them.

The above picture is a shop-front for the Antons clothing store (I’m not sure if they are a tailor or if they sell ready to wear). It was taken on Lonsdale St, Melbourne where the store apparently used to be, now they are in Melbourne Central.

The above pictures show more detail. Unfortunately the combination of lighting and my camera (Xperia X10 phone camera) wasn’t adequate to show the apparent ethnic differences between the two men. It seems that the most likely Australian interpretation of the ethnic groups that are represented are African (maybe Afro-American), Southern-European or maybe American Hispanic, North-Western European, and Japanese. It’s good to have mannequins representing the fact that not everyone in Australia is white, but different facial expressions for different races seems a strange choice (admittedly it might be a choice made by mannequin manufacturers). Also the Japanese woman with fan idea is rather outdated.

I’ve just started reading You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist (Second Edition) by Dalton Conley. I’ve only read the first chapter, but that was good enough that the entire book has to be good enough to recommend.

• [1] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages