Category: Globalization

Global Culture, Immigration, and the World Cup

On By Karen SternheimerIn Behind the Headlines, Globalization, Immigration, Population, Aging, and Demography, Popular Culture and Consumption, Stacy TorresLeave a comment
author Stacy Torres

By Stacy Torres

My father was from Chile. Five years after his death, I’ve adapted to the past tense when referring to him, but it’s still not automatic. Was. Every time that three-letter verb of no longer being catches in my throat, I notice the slight delay even if my conversation partners don’t.

I remember nothing about World Cup 2022, the year after he died, which remains a blur of loss. One year is nothing when it comes to grief, as Saul Bellow so eloquently puts it: “Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces—down to the last glassy splinter.”

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How Pizza Became International Cuisine

On By econnellIn Globalization, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption1 Comment

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you remember your first taste of pizza? I don’t because I’ve been eating it all my life, as you probably have been too. Pizza is practically universal food; it’s one of those words that remains the same in multiple languages, although pronunciations might vary a bit.

Why is pizza something you can find nearly anywhere in the (industrialized) world? Yes, it tastes good, it can be portable, and sold by the slice. It’s a food with just a few ingredients that is relatively cheap and easy to produce. But it also teaches us about globalization and the way in which commerce and culture cross borders.

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Public Transportation and Global Citizenship

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Globalization, Karen Sternheimer, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change5 Comments

Karen sternheimer 72523By Karen Sternheimer

In addition to travel itself, I enjoy travel planning. One of the first things that I usually do is figure out when to go, how to get there, and how to get around once I am there.

When planning my most recent trip to Germany and Austria, I was excited to get what I thought was a great deal on a rental car, which would amount to about $20 a day. After reading so much about rental car shortages while making plans, I was particularly excited about this, and moved on to figure out lodging for the trip, about 9 months in the future.

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Restrooms in Cultural Context

On By econnellIn Globalization, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption7 Comments

Author photoBy Karen Sternheimer

Several years ago, I visited the Mauna Kea Observatory on the Big Island of Hawai’i. I was surprised and amused by a sign I saw in the visitor’s bathroom, instructing users how to, um, use the facilities. I had previously taken this action as self-evident once one was old enough to regulate one’s bathroom activities. But this turned into one of many important lessons that travel can offer:  It helps us learn about cultural practices that we might take for granted.

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Class and Geographic Mobility in Academia: Global Perspectives on Class Cultural Mismatch and Linguistic Imperialism in Higher Education

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Colby King, Globalization, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine2 Comments

Colby King author photo Kamil Luczaj photo (1)Calvin-odhiambo

By Colby King, Kamil Luczaj, Assistant Professor of Sociology,  University of Information Technology and Management (Rzeszow, Poland), and Calvin Odhiambo, Associate Professor of Sociology, USC Upstate

In January 2022, we held a panel discussion about our research as well as our individual experiences, describing what we know about how social class inequality and geography play a role in social mobility. We discussed how social class mobility intersects with race, language and dialect, geographic background, and gender in career opportunities, particularly how these issues heighten class cultural mismatch, creating challenging circumstances even for successful academics experiencing upward class mobility.  

Dr. Luczaj is a sociologist from Poland. He is interested in international academic careers and working-class cultures. His research addresses the complex relationship between class position and migration experience. For example, he has published a study on foreign-born scholars in Central Europe, and a meta-analysis on foreign-born scholars “on the peripheries.”

Originally from Kenya, Dr. Odhiambo’s experiences as an international academic illustrate many of Dr. Luczaj’s research findings. Dr. King is not an international academic, but has experienced social class mobility through his academic career, and has also written about efforts to support students, faculty, and staff in higher education from first-generation and working-class backgrounds.

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Road Trip: Culture Shock and Renting a Car in Italy

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Globalization, Karen Sternheimer6 Comments

Author photoBy Karen Sternheimer

Culture shock is one of the most basic concepts in sociology, involving a feeling of confusion in a new environment that those accustomed to the location likely take for granted. Taking a road trip in a foreign country is a great way to experience culture shock: something at once familiar becomes strange in a place where the language and customs are different from what we are used to. Culture shock one of the most interesting things about travel.

Renting a car in most other countries often means that the instrument panels will look different, especially if the speedometer is based on kilometers per hour rather than miles per hour. While most rental cars in the U.S. have automatic transmission, nearly all European rentals are manual transmission, commonly known as a stick shift. And the one that we rented on our most recent trip didn’t even take gasoline, but instead ran on metano.

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Applying the Sociological Imagination to COVID-19

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, COVID-19, Globalization, Karen Sternheimer, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine7 Comments

author photoBy Karen Sternheimer

By now you have likely heard of the Novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19. Maybe your school or workplace has shifted online for the time being, or you have noticed a shortage of cold and flu related items at your local store.

While this is a rapidly changing situation, we can use this example to help us understand several sociological concepts:

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Language and Culture

On By econnellIn Globalization, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change3 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

Have you studied a foreign language? If you have and are in the U.S., you may be in the minority, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. According to the report, about 20 percent of K-12 students in the U.S. were enrolled in a foreign language course in 2017. By contrast, 92 percent of European students were learning a foreign language during this time frame.

Wide disparities exist regarding foreign language study within the U.S. according the report, ranging from 51 percent of New Jersey students to just 9 percent in Arizona, Arkansas, and New Mexico. These disparities largely stem from differing state requirements; just ten states and the District of Columbia have a foreign language requirement for high school graduation.

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Being a Temporary Foreigner

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Globalization, Immigration, Population, Aging, and Demography, Karen Sternheimer25 Comments

Headshot 3.13 cropcompressBy Karen Sternheimer

As C. Wright Mills noted in The Sociological Imagination, one of our tasks as sociologists is to “make the familiar strange.” Traveling to a foreign country—especially one where you barely speak the language—is a great way to undertake Mills’s advice.

Travel highlights how many little things we take for granted while interacting with others. The most obvious barrier is speaking the same language. While we English speakers of the world are uniquely privileged because so many people speak our language, or at least some of our language, not everyone does.

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Race and Studying Abroad

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Globalization, Jonathan Wynn, Race and Ethnicity1 Comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

Have you been traveling this summer? If you have, I’m sure that you packed your sociological imagination with you. Last month I participated in a Study Abroad trip with a group of first year students who were all either first-to-college or global majority students. We traveled to the Dominican Republic so the students could do an intensive cultural exchange and service learning course.

These students are part of a program to improve racial and ethnic diversity in our Honors College here at UMass Amherst, and I taught Intro to Sociology with them last fall. Similar to honors programs (as well as high school college prep courses) study abroad programs are, generally, a primarily white experience. Only about 5% of students who study abroad are black. Our International Programs Office recognizes this disparity, and assists and supports the program my students participated in because of this inequity.

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