Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

Video Links

• Jessica Simpson—The Price of Beauty, Excerpt from Paris (Episode 102)
  Jessica Simpson interviews former model Isabelle Caro (now deceased) about her anorexia, the reactions to her thinness in the fashion industry, and her controversial anti-anorexia campaign. ​

 

• Manorexia
  A look at the phenomenon of “manorexia”—male self-starvation. A young athlete discusses the struggles he has faced with this eating disorder.

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• The Bystander Effect
  This video, narrated by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, examines the bystander effect—when people don’t get involved in certain situations because they may not feel responsible or they hope that someone else will get involved to help.

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• The Storm
  This report examines the chain of decisions that slowed federal response to the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, government's failure to protect thousands of Americans from a natural disaster that long had been predicted, and the state of America's disaster-response system 4 years after 9/11.

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• Rules of Engagement
  In 2006, the U.S. Marine Corps brought criminal charges against eight Marines. The charges stemmed from actions they had taken during combat and ranged from murder to dereliction of duty. The Marines maintained that they were simply following the standard rules of engagement. 

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Audio Links

• Radiolab: Season 4 Episode 1: Laughter
  This program explores laughter as a biological and sociological phenomenon. Scientists discuss laughter as a means of communicating important social information and observe that we are unlikely to laugh when alone. Also examined is laughter as something that is “contagious.”

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• This American Life 318: With Great Power
  This episode is focused on stories of power and responsibility. The first act is a story of a woman who possessed information that could free an innocent man from prison. The second act is the story of a mother and daughter in a family who wished for years they could do something to stop their neighbor from all kinds of shocking behavior. Suddenly, they get the power to decisively change things forever and then they have to decide whether they will.

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• This American Life 378: This I Used to Believe
  This program is a compilation of stories about people forced to let go of their firmly held beliefs. For example, when the daughter of a pro-choice activist concludes that abortion is murder, her mother goes to extraordinary lengths to persuade her daughter to switch sides. An additional example shows us that after a woman loses her faith, a football coach—who she's never met—tries to restore it.

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Web Resources

Professional Resources

The American Sociological Association has a number of sections organized that bring together sociologists who have interests in theoretical issues, including:

• Theory Section
   
• Section on Marxist Sociology
   
• Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI)
  Sociologists who work from the symbolic interactionist perspective have long had their own professional association, the SSSI.
   
• American Anthropology Association (AAA)
  Anthropology is a social science related to sociology and is defined as the study of humankind, from its beginnings millions of years ago to the present day. The AAA has two purposes, including to advance anthropology as a science that studies humankind in all its aspects, through archeological, biological, ethnological, and linguistic research, and to further the professional interests of American anthropologists, including the dissemination of anthropological knowledge and its use to solve human problems. 

​Other Resources

• The Power of the Situation
  This video examines how behavior is impacted by groups and their leaders and highlights the Solomon Asch Experiment, the Stanley Milgram Experiment, and the Stanford Prison Experiment as examples of how individuals’ behavior is impacted by the situation.
   
• The Stanford Prison Experiment
  The Stanford Prison Experiment website features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions the researchers posed in a dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University (self-characterization).
   
• Shallow, self-absorbed, and aggressively competitive “primates”
  This is a synopsis of a book titled Primates of Park Avenue. This book examines the pressures and competition that make the status of mothers and the roles of mothering in Manhattan, NY, unique.
   
• Stanley Milgram
  Dr. Thomas Blass, professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, maintains a website dedicated to providing accurate information about the life and work of one of the most outstanding social scientists of our time, Stanley Milgram (self-characterization).

​There is no shortage of sites on the World Wide Web that provide more general information about the sociological enterprise. The following are meta-sites that attempt to organize sociology on the web:

• Animals Have Culture Too
  This article from Pacific Standard magazine examines the culture that exists among primates and how it is similiar and different when compared to humans. The main point of Frans De Waal’s book titled Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? is that animals are as intelligent as they need to be in order to adapt to to their environment. How is this similar to humans?