The virtual world is not the enemy. The pioneers invented a world they believed in, but the followers must follow that world whether they believe in it or not.

The growing influence of focus groups means we are all in danger of being excessively cowed by their feedback.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

Every time the DSM prepares for a new edition, there are countless groups lobbying to get their particular mental illness recognized by the diagnostic manual. Surely, this is a social and cultural...

I did a psychotherapy day once, about class, and the first thing they did was get us to talk about our names. Of course, me, being called Grayson, everybody thinks its somehow unusual and classy. No,...

Why is it kind of acceptable to say that the Germans are better at penalties, but not that blacks are better at boxing? Is it simply that you're allowed to stereotype a group perceived as oppressive,...

Canada is the only country in the West that hasn't given in to the rhetoric of fear. The dominant rhetoric is a line of inclusion.

We all know and we all perceive Christian Dior in a very specific way.

Eighteenth-century matrons would have never have dreamed of appointing a redhaired wet nurse for their precious offspring - redheads passed on their horrible characters through their milk.

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

The collapse of the Tower of Babel is perhaps the central urban myth. It is certainly the most disquieting. In Babylon, the great city that fascinated and horrified the Biblical writers, people of...

Aging nations have arteries clogged with obsolete laws, slowing blood flow and preventing oxygen from reaching all parts of the body politic. Physicians call this arteriosclerosis; historians see...

Fascism is a religious concept.

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.

A 'good' family, it seems, is one that used to be better.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

When you strip hope from people, it leaves a void, and that void needs to be filled. And very likely, that void is going to be filled by an ideology... Hope and faith are so connected. Now, when...

Upper classes are a nation's past the middle - class is its future.

Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.

Today while the titular head of the family may still be the father everyone knows that he is little more than chairman at most of the entertainment committee.

Good sociologists have always had an insatiable curiosity about even the trivialities of human behaviour, and if this curiosity leads a sociologist to devote many years to the painstaking exploration...

Operating in the interstices of communist China society was at once exhilarating and uncertain. There were no rules. Or rather, there was only one rule: that nothing is allowed. But the corollary,...

How old did someone have to be before they could be put to use to make tea?

Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more...

Murder was apparently too common - place in the big city to attract much notice. Poor Luther, thought Lucy, as she headed back to the hotel. Even in death he was only a big fish in a small pond.

Women are almost two thirds more likely than men to believe in God, a major study of attitudes among middle aged Britons has found, says The Telegraph. Well, men are twice more likely than God to...

Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.

At its most basic, the allure of fundamentalism, whether religious or ideological, liberal or conservative, is that it provides an appealing order to things that are actually disorderly.

The point of an organic family is to release the children from the disadvantages of being extensions of their parents so that they can belong primarily to themselves. They may accept the services that...