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Sociologists contributions on a society
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In Avery Gordon’s Ghostly Matters, haunting is a method of sociological research. She argues, “To study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it” (7). Ghostly Matters is her attempt to understand the puzzling facts of social life through an analysis of the hauntings surrounding Sabina Spielrein, the desaparecido of Argentina and the lingering impact of racial slavery during the Reconstruction period in the United States. Gordon begins her search by outlining the limitations of sociological studies. She questions current methods of examining the relationships between knowledge, experience and power. Another definition of haunting can be used to describe the screaming presence which appears but, really isn’t present at all,
‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.
The back panel of 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories by columnist Chris Rose does not summarize his self-publication. Rather, it dedicates the book to a man named Thomas Coleman who met his demise in his attic with a can of juice and the comforts of a bedspread at his side. This dedication closes with “There were more than a thousand like him.” That is the life force of Rose’s book. It is not a narrative, it does not feature a clear conclusion, and there is not a distinct beginning, middle, or end. Rather, it exists as a chronology of Rose’s struggle to reestablish normalcy following a time of turmoil. Rose himself states in his introduction “After the storm, I just started writing, not attempting to carve out any niche but just to tell
Four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. The murders attracted national attention, but the community was not willing to get involved. The community was not fazed by these brutal murders but, by the fact that this incident got national attention. They were even more astounded that the rest of the nation even cared. In this book Laura Wexler shows just how deep racism goes. After reading the book I discovered that Fire in a Canebrake has three major themes involving racism. The first is that racism obstructs progression. The second is history repeats itself. The last theme is that racism can obscure the truth. This lynching, in particular, marks a turning point in the history of race relations and the governments’ involvement in civil rights. In the end this case still remains unsolved. No concept of the
In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to cede to a desire for closure by drawing easy but inherently flawed conclusions regarding the individuals directly responsible for the 1946 lynching, Wexler demonstrates that she is more interested in a larger historical picture than the single event to which she dedicates her text. And, in so doing, she rebukes the doubts of those who question the importance of “bringing up” the lynching, lending powerful motivation and purpose to her writing that sustains her narrative, and the audience’s attention to it.
Hunter begins her analysis by integrating the experiences of African-American women workers into the broader examination of political and economic conditions in the New South. According to Hunter, the period between 1877 and 1915 is critical to understanding the social transformations in most southern cities and complicating this transformation are the issues of race, class, and gender. The examination of the lives of black domestic workers reveals the complexity of their struggles to keep their autonomy with white employers and city officials. For example, African-American women built institutions and frequently quit their jobs in response to the attempts by southern whites to control their labor and mobility. Hunter carefully situates these individual tactics of resistance in the New South capitalist development and attempts by whites to curtail the political and social freedoms of emancipated slaves.
I was a science journalist who referred to all things supernatural as “woo-woo stuff”; Deborah believed Henrietta’s spirit lived on in her cells” (p. 7). Here, Skloot tells about where herself and Deborah Lacks were from and their feelings about “supernatural” occurrences. Skloot draws a contrast between the backgrounds and sentiments of herself and Deborah to demonstrate the differences that upbringing and environmental influences can arouse in two people; Skloot introduces the dynamic of race to demonstrate that race and economic status were, and still are,
In Southern Horrors and Other Writings three pamphlets written by Ida B. Wells are highlighted. These pamphlets showed that Wells used muckraking/ investigative reporting to describe what was going on in the south. Wells saw the corruption that was occurring in the South, and wanted to make it known to the public. Wells also uses persuasive writing to get the support of the African American community and she had hoped to create change. Wells’ writings are finally a historically effective text, not just because they are primary source documents, but because she served as a voice to the African American people.
Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs through the lens of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du bois provides an insight into two periods of 19th century American history--the peak of slavery in the South and Reconstruction--and how the former influenced the attitudes present in the latter. The Reconstruction period features Negro men and women desperately trying to distance themselves from a past of brutal hardships that tainted their souls and livelihoods. W.E.B. Du bois addresses the black man 's hesitating, powerless, and self-deprecating nature and the narrative of Harriet Jacobs demonstrates that the institution of slavery was instrumental in fostering this attitude.
A 19-year old female from Harford County, Maryland, narrated the story of Black Aggie, the urban legend of an overnight stay in a cemetery. She grew up Christian, and still lives in one of the more rural areas of Maryland with her younger sister and parents, who own and work at an electrical contracting business. Accustomed to hearing many ghost stories and urban legends, she first heard the story of Black Aggie during a middle school slumber party. Late one Saturday night over pizza in our Hagerstown dorm, she was more than willing to share her favorite urban legend with me.
Cheung, Theresa. The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings. Element Encyclopedia Series. Unknown: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2008.
Not many people in those days of slavery knew the truth of what was really going on. And if they did, just pretended like they didn’t, spreading the false ideas that slaves were happy and well treated. The “peephole” or “loophole”, through which the women of Stowe and Jacobs’ narratives are able to look out onto the town or the plantation, becomes their links to the outside world. Although they have been completely cut off and isolated from society and almost everyone they love, they still find a way to stay connected. Stowe imagines this link as a haunting, where they literally are able to control and manipulate the situation. Jacobs on the other hand uses the peephole as a means of exposing the truth. She “haunts” the town of Edenton, North Carolina in a very different way. Linda Brent is able to look down upon the town and reveal all its secrets. Jacobs and Stowe use their stories of the oppressed women, and their haunting link between confinement and truth, as another link to the public. Using it as means of getting their messages out there for the public to...
Morrison strengthened Beloved by including a supernatural dimension. While it is possible to interpret the book’s paranormal phenomena within a realist framework, many events in the novel most notably, the presence of a ghost push the limits of ordinary understanding and make us readers aware of the supernatural content. Moreover, the characters in Beloved also do not hesitate to believe in the supernatural status of these events. For them, poltergeists, premonitions, and hallucinations are ways of understanding the significance of the world around them. Such incidents stand in marked contrast to schoolteacher’s abnormal “scientific” and experimental studies.
During the Nineteenth Century slavery was widely used in the United States, differences between the North and the South were at a time of mass distinction. In Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she gives a detailed account of her trials and tribulations growing up in the South as a slave. Though Jacobs sometimes spared her readers of the gruesome, harsh, and despicable acts she witnessed and experienced through her life, this does not in the slightest soften the image of slavery given in the book. Throughout the text, Jacobs employs “the cult of true womanhood” in her many descriptions of the expectations of women during that time. She wrote of her experiences with the demon of slavery from the time she was a young child until she was in her thirties. The notion that
In their article, “Hannah Arendt’s Ghost: Reflections on the Disputable Path from Windhoek to Auschwitz,” Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski examine the relatively recent historical arguments concerning inherent German racism and potential direct continuity between Windhoek and Auschwitz. Similar to historians Pascal Grosse and Birthe Kundrus, Gerwarth and Malinowski reevaluate these new claims, first put forth by Jürgen Zimmerer, and discuss their legitimacy. The authors first argue that the colonial violence committed by the Germans, especially in 1904, was in fact in line with European colonial practices of the time, rather than unique to German colonizers. Second, Gerwarth and Malinowski argue that the race violence of the Third Reich
...f boundaries between characterizations, identities, the psychological, and the supernatural, is not only ambiguous and incongruous, but unstable, contingent, baseless, mysterious, and haunting.