Sociologists From The United States

"Historical capitalism is not a system in which state power is abolished or in which states never interfere with market forces. Rather it is a system in which the most successful competitors use state power to facilitate capitalist accumulation. This does not mean that taxation and tribute are abolished, but rather that they are utilized to support the search for profit-making opportunities in the world market."

"National societies (both their states and their nations) have emerged over the last few centuries to become the strongest socially constructed identities and organizations in the modern world, but they have never been whole systems."

"...On the second day of graduate studies, Harrison walks into my windowless cubicle and asks if I want to be on his payroll. I say, ”Sure” and he walks out. A few weeks go by. I get my first paycheck, and start wondering what I am supposed to do. I get up the courage to go to his two room corner office suite a floor below and ask. He answers, “If you have to ask what to do, I don’t want you working for me.” I say, “OK” and walk out."

"...What I learned from him is that the thorniest problems are the most interesting ones, and also to avoid easy answers. Harrison was no fan of well-tried methods (including his own, once they became widespread) and stock explanations, sending us--meaning the students who worked with him most closely--on an unrelenting quest for something innovative."

"With one exception, all he cared about was the ideas: if Harrison thought you had a good idea, he would treat you like you had won the Nobel prize even if you were “just” a grad student; and if he thought your idea was rubbish he would tell you exactly that even if you *had* won the Nobel prize. The one exception was that he also, in spite of his gruff and sometimes rude demeanor, really cared for his people."

"Thirty years ago, Giovanni Arrighi, Terence Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein pointed out that revolutionaries rarely attain their demands immediately. Rather what happens is that ‘enlightened conservatives’ implement the demands of the most recent previous world revolution in order to cool out the challenges of a current world revolution. This is the way in which world revolutions produce the evolution of global governance"

"He was particularly critical of the violent protest tactics of the Weather Underground."

"He was fiercely independent in his thinking, and although he grew up among the New Left, and remained sympathetic to many of its critiques and aspirations..."

"Нe had made a transition that others had not, from revolutionary and radical politics to a more practical politics, a sort of left wing of the possible."

"Transformation in meaning perspective is precipitated by life’s dilemmas which cannot be resolved by simply acquiring more information, enhancing problem solving skills or adding to one’s competencies. Resolution of these dilemmas and transforming our meaning perspectives require that we become critically aware of the fact that we are caught in our own history and are re-living it and of the cultural and psychological assumptions which structure the way we see ourselves and others."

"Education cannot be defined by a simplistic preoccupation with fostering direct behavior change, which in many cases exemplifies the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The most significant behavior changes may be functions of perspective transformation, and such transformation is often an essential precondition for meaningful behavior changes."

"The egregious error of adult educators is to define our function solely as one of fostering behavior change and to act as though we believe our principal tasks are to do needs assessment surveys, to communicate ideas and to design exercises to develop specific knowledge, skills or attitudes for prescribed behavior change. Not only does this effort often become indoctrination to engineer consent, but it frequently addresses the wrong reality to begin with."

"We all require the meaning perspectives prescribed by our culture, but we have the potentiality of becoming critically aware of our perspectives and of changing them. By doing so, we move from an uncritical organic relationship to a self-consciously contractual relationship with individuals, institutions and ideologies. This is a crucial developmental task of maturity."

"Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America's vast poverty: political elites, who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over people; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable housing crisis."

"During slavery, "Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon," writes the historian Joshua Rothman...That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us the , the and the . It is the culture that has produced and undignified working conditions. If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a capitalism of poverty wages, and ; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is."

"Early Christianity was primarily an urban movement. The original meaning of the word pagan (paganus) was "rural person," or more colloquially "country hick." It came to have religious meaning because after Christianity had triumphed in the cities, most of the rural people remained unconverted."

"Contempt is not a scholarly virtue."

"In six decades (1881-1941)… at no census have the Muslims failed to improve their percentage and the Hindus failed to lose…” [It is due not only to the] “proportion of Muslim women married, but those who are married also have a higher fertility.”"

"As far back as the 3rd or 4th millennium B.C. and probably much earlier still, India was in possession of a highly developed civilization with large and populous cities."

"However, the seed of the debate on the differential population growth rates of the Hindus and Muslims was planted in the undivided India itself. Kingsley Davis, an eminent demographer, was one of the first to raise a debate on the Hindu-Muslim population growth rates in the sub- continent. In his famous book “The Population of India and Pakistan” (1951), he presented before the world the fact that Muslim fertility was higher than the Hindu fertility. For instance, the decline in the proportion of the Hindus from 75.1 per cent to 72.9 per cent in between the censuses of 1881 and 1901 (Davis, 1951) created strong reaction and fear among the Hindus that the Muslims would become the majority population in India in the future. Numerous research and review studies have been done on this area since then. But there seems to be no end to this highly debated topic and it still remains a very popular area for research studies among the research scholars and population scientists."

"So putting the evidence from archaeology, literature, and history together, we reach the conclusion that before the Christian era India had a substantial population, first because of its advanced technology and second because of the fertile environment of the application of this technology."

"So in India some three to seven thousand years ago there were peoples possessing a technology sufficiently advanced to support a dense population."

"Although there were mass conversions, the country was too vast, the invaders too few, and the volume of immigration too small to change the social complex… India, therefore, never became a Muslim nation, but remained simply a Hindu country in which Muslims were numerous."

"…American sociologist George Yancey in his 2015 book “Hostile Environment” focused on American media bias against Christianity and conservative religion in general and found its roots in the fact that mainline U.S. journalism is a self-perpetuating caste. If you are an Evangelical Christian or do not agree with the prevailing liberal and secular ideology, particularly on moral matters, you will be thrown out of the first interview when you will try to be hired by one of the mainline media."

"The last three decades have vindicated 20 centuries of Catholic teaching about marriage and the family like never before. It's great to belong to a Church that’s right when the world is wrong!"

"Paradoxical as it may seem, collective bargaining is not losing ground in the United States because unions are less attractive, but unions are less attractive because collective bargaining is losing ground."

"Legitimacy involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate or proper ones for the society."

"…there is evidence, particularly in the works of the late sociologist Anson D. Shupe, that sexual abuse is more common in [the] “old” religions than in [the] new religious movements, not only in absolute numbers but also in percentage. Yet, the media sometimes pay more attention to abuse in “cults” and create the false impression that sexual abuse is more prevalent in the “new” than in the “old” religions."

"Among the academicians manipulatively shaping Dalit Studies, Gail Omvedt occupies a very important place. She is a sociologist from the University of California at Berkeley, and became an Indian citizen in 1983. She combines nineteenth-century colonial categories with Marxist subaltern constructions, seeing Indian culture as a creation by the upper castes to subjugate the lower castes for thousands of years. Anything that united Indians in their fight against colonialism is merely ‘high-caste symbols’. She attributes the attitudes of Aryan supremacy to even Mahatma Gandhi, saying that he ‘saw Aryans as his ancestors. As against what he saw as the evils of industrialism, he wanted to go back to an idealised, harmonious village society in which tradition ruled. This he called Ram Rajya’... While she argues against the Indian state and criticizes Indian industrialists, she favors globalization of the Indian economy in ways that would make India subservient to the West. Her former leftist colleagues analyzing her stand on globalization, find a striking continuity in her writings. They point out how she puts into the mouths of Dalits words of appreciation for British rule."

"Such a position authorizes Omvedt’s recent pro-liberalization stance: neo-colonialism and economic dependency are abstract, academic concepts irrelevant to the lives of the peasant masses. 140"

"no community is a monolith. Whether we’re talking about white communities or Black communities or the Asian diaspora or Native communities, there is disagreement around a lot of things – gender, age, class. Going back to Ericka Huggins, that conversation was very formative for me, because I asked her, “How do I interact with elders I disagree with?” And she said, “You know, I had elders I disagreed with. This is a tale as old as time and is not a new thing. But are you moving in a principled way? Are you moving transparently? Are you being accountable? Is it really coming from a place that is grounded in a bigger vision of community care and wellbeing? Then keep moving in that way. If you’re not causing harm and what is being built is actually transformative, that will come out in the long run.”"

"Ericka and the other sisters and brothers were released late that night. When she walked through the gates of Sybil Brand Institute for Women into the hard rain cutting through the night outside, she seemed as strong as ever. Seeing our sadness, our empathy with the pain she was surely suffering, she said, "What's wrong with you all? We can't stop now. We've got to keep on struggling." That was a moment I shall never forget. The sisters who had been with her inside the jail said that she was the one who had kept everyone's spirits high. She was the one who had most resolutely continued to carry the banner of struggle."

"It is important for us to know the history of Puerto Rican and Black women who fought for freedom of our peoples. We are not taught about them because even today people believe that women had no role in history. People still believe that women are only supposed to stay at home, cooking and sewing and raising children. These are the same things that were said to Sojourner Truth over a hundred years ago and they are still being said now. Women who speak out against injustice and fight for revolution are accused of acting like men, and we must understand that revolution is the job of men and women, brothers and sisters. We must learn from great women like Lolita Lebron, Carmen Perez, Antonia Martinez, Kathleen Cleaver and Ericka Huggins. This is what Point 10 of the YOUNG LORDS PARTY 13-Point Program and Platform means when it says "We want equality for women; machismo must be revolutionary and not oppressive.""

"I was raised in DC and my mother was raised in the South. People protecting themselves against police violence—against Klan violence—against white council violence, was very common. Even clergy went to church with guns. Everyone has a right to defend themselves. What I hope this country will eventually do is not allow guns to be in the hands of persons who should not have them. But I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with a person defending themselves against an attack. How do I feel about police violence? My heart is broken by it. I don’t have a political stance, because the word “politics”—when you look it up—means something that is debatable. And there’s nothing to debate. I met Tamir Rice’s mother and about 20 mothers who gathered in Oakland to share their stories. They cited being inspired by others who’ve come before them about how to reduce the unbearable pain of losing their sons or daughters. It never goes away. I think that police re-training and education is paramount. We want to abolish punitive law enforcement just like we want to abolish prisons. But there are people in prisons that we need to think about. And there are police officers on the street that we need to think about."

"Everything draws on the things that came before. The Black Panther Party drew on the civil rights movement. All of the organizations in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s—the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, the Black Berets, the American Indian Movement, the Gay Liberation Front, the anti-war movement—drew on movements before them. In particular, the courage of the women in these movements is a legacy that the Movement for Black Lives draws on. I stand on their shoulders, and Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi [the founders of the Black Lives Matter national network and creators of the hashtag], stand on theirs as well. The term Black Lives Matter is new. But there isn’t anything new about what is being requested of black people, of people of color, of white people. There is work that all of us must do, and because of social media we are more aware of it. That is the impact of Black Lives Matter. I’m particularly inspired that the people leading the movement are women—LGBT women."

"That’s a loaded question. I don’t know that I could say the Black Panther Party is more progressive, for instance, than Fredrick Douglass. Or that Martin Luther King was more progressive than Malcolm X. Or that Malcolm X is more progressive than Marcus Garvey. A movement brings together all kinds of peoples with differing perspectives, but the same goal. If you compare the Ten Point Program of the Black Panther Party to the platform of the Movement for Black Lives, you’ll see similar language. It isn’t that anybody copied the language. Anyone who has an open heart can see the violence of, for instance, the police today, the so-called correctional system today. Anyone with compassion will come to the same conclusion—that it has to stop. And the it that has to stop is racialized thinking, racist behavior, violent means to control people. Our response to that violence is sourced in love. So I don’t know about more progressive—everything has its purpose in its time."

"Celebrities are human beings. His eyes are open. He can hear. He’s paying attention to what he’s listening to. His heart is open. He’s tired of it—why wouldn’t he be? So he spoke. He’s not so worried about his paycheck or what people think. There’s something larger at stake. He’s a part of a multibillion-dollar industry and he’s breaking with the promise not to talk. That is what’s so beneficial about him. I cheer him on. When I was in DC at the new African American History and Culture Museum, the most celebrated statute in the museum on one floor was a statue of John Carlos and Tommie Smith who put their fists up at the Olympics in the ’60s. People were taking pictures with it. Kaepernick’s stance is empowering young black people today and it begs a look at history. He’s not the first, and he knows he’s not the first."

"A few years ago, I had the opportunity to hear Ericka Huggins-our friendship has now surpassed the half-century mark-speak at a conference on restorative justice in Toledo, Ohio, organized in part by my sister, Fania, who has worked as a practitioner of restorative justice for many years. When Ericka spoke of her own incarceration as a gift rather than an injury or deprivation, I thought to myself, "Yes, precisely. This is what I have been trying to say all along.""

"I didn’t stop living when the Black Panther Party ended in 1982."

"As we know only too well, the League of Nations, lacking Russia and the United States, was not sufficiently inclusive. Also when the pinch came, different governments proved unready to make the sacrifices or face the risks involved in effective opposition to imperialism in Japan, reaction in Spain, fascism in Italy or nazism in Germany."

"The form of work for peace which has most obviously made history is the long continued effort to create some form of world organization which should both prevent wars and foster international cooperation."

"In such a world all war would be civil war and we must hope that it will grow increasingly inconceivable. It has already become capable of such unlimited destruction and such fearful possibilities of uncontrollable and little understood "chain reactions" of all sorts that it would seem that no one not literally insane could decide to start an atomic war."

"It is to me surprising that the repudiation of the entire theory and practice of conscription has not found expression in a wider and more powerful movement drawing strength from the widespread concern for individual liberty. We are horrified at many slighter infringements of individual freedom, far less terrible than this. But we are so accustomed to conscription that we take it for granted."

"There has been personal refusal of war service on grounds of conscience on a large scale and at great personal cost by thousands of young men called up for military service. While many people fail to understand and certainly do not approve their position, I believe that it has been an invaluable witness to the supremacy of conscience over all other considerations and a very great service to a public too much affected by the conception that might makes right."

"I feel it rather surprising that refusal of war has never taken the form, on any large scale, of refusal to pay taxes for military use, a refusal which would have involved not only young men but (and mainly) older men and women holders, of property."

"I have spoken against fear as a basis for peace. What we ought to fear, especially we Americans, is not that someone may drop atomic bombs on us but that we may allow a world situation to develop in which ordinarily reasonable and humane men, acting as our representatives, may use such weapons in our name. We ought to be resolved beforehand that no provocation, no temptation shall induce us to resort to the last dreadful alternative of war."

"Another thing-men are everywhere becoming less "private-minded." There is a growing community sense. It is as though the urge which found expression in monasteries and nunneries in the middle ages were finding new expression. In the political field this consciousness of the common interest and of the rich possibilities of common action has embodied itself in part in the great movements toward economic democracy, cooperation, democratic socialism and communism. I am sure we make a great mistake if we underrate the element of unselfish idealism in these historic movements which are today writing history at such a rate."

"A dark and terrible side of this sense of community of interests is the fear of a horrible common destiny which in these days of atomic weapons darkens men's minds all around the globe. Men have a sense of being subject to the same fate, of being all in the same boat. But fear is a poor motive to which to appeal and I am sure that "peace people" are on a wrong path when they expatiate on the horrors of a new world war."

"Fear weakens the nerves and distorts the judgment. It is not by fear that mankind must exorcise the demon of destruction and cruelty, but by motives more reasonable, more humane and more heroic."

"May no young man ever again be faced with the choice between violating his conscience by co-operating in competitive mass-slaughter or separating himself from those who, endeavouring to serve liberty, democracy, humanity can find no better way than to conscript young men to kill."