“He’s trying to figure out if he’s high or just psychotic,” I explain. I’m listening as a doctor a few feet down the hallway tells a middle aged man, “We’re worried that you’re hearing and seeing things that aren’t there, so you’re going to need to stay for a little bit.” I’m with a friend… Continue reading Auto-Ethnography
I haven’t blogged in a long time, thanks to a procrastination that my research in the mental health care system now allows me to label “apragmatism” (about which I am no longer “anosogosique”). Nonetheless, as twelve (12!) months of fieldwork in France comes to a close, I’ve been feeling an itch to write down some… Continue reading Souffrance Psychique
Although I haven’t quite crested the New York Times bestseller’s list, I’ve been quite pleased to have been contacted by a few outlets to talk about my new book: What’s in the Dumpster (Tiny Spark) How to Fix All That Food Waste (Good Magazine) Freeganism: Food Waste’s First Wave (The New Food Economy) Freegans… Continue reading Fame
(Cross posted – and better formated! – at the Berkeley Journal of Sociology) If BlackLivesMatter matters, it will be thanks partly its disruptive tactics The #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) movement has been making headlines, but not necessarily friends. When BLM protesters stormed the stage at rallies for Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in August 2015, commenters lamented… Continue reading Keep It Contentious
I think that—somewhere nestled between “paying for another year of graduate school” and “distracting me from my dissertation”—most TAs optimistically see their function as, on some level, “helping” their students. If you asked me what that meant nine months ago, when I started teaching, I probably would have answered that my “help” would come in… Continue reading Reflections on Teaching, III: Untitled
This is a post about race. In general, I would encourage you to read someone else on this topic—consider, for example, these blogs. Candidly, I’m not sure if the problem is that white males don’t talk enough about race, or if they talk too much and don’t listen enough. Either way, I’m thinking out loud… Continue reading Reflections on Teaching II: (White) Elephant in the Room
Teaching Bourdieu is unpleasant. The phrase “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” is one of the worst articulations of a great idea ever. His discussion of “symbolic violence” is equally (which is to say, not very) straightforward. Symbolic violence is: Violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity…through… Continue reading Reflections on Teaching I: Grading is Symbolic Violence
Perspective for those who observe mental illness, but for me, as a subject, this tree bore only dry and tasteless fruit. . . I have a chemical imbalance; I really didn’t feel those things. I have a chemical imbalance; I didn’t really experience those things. I have a chemical imbalance; I didn’t really think those… Continue reading Planes, Brains, and the Unexplained
The months tick upwards. I tried to write this as four months, rewrite it at five, post it at six. I wish I could say it was because I wanted to say everything perfectly, but it’s not. Life overtakes us, and promises we make glibly to ourselves—“I’ll think of her everyday”—are forgotten fast. She always… Continue reading You Are Here
It’s a bit belated to write something about #BlackLivesMatter. Although the timing isn’t exactly intentional, I would half-justify my non-blogging by arguing that “now”—as in, “late”—is the perfect time to say something, precisely to make a small contribution to this issue not simply fading away (again) or to continue my own attempts to be something… Continue reading Black & White & Shades of Grey
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 