Ron Price

INTRODUCTION TO MY SOCIOLOGY THEORY NOTES

Forty-nine years ago just after the autumnal equinox of 21 September 1963, I entered my first sociology lecture theatre at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario.  I was 19. After taking what was an introductory course in sociology, 1963/4, and teaching sociology off-and-on until I retired from FT teaching in 1999 and PT and casual/volunteer teaching during the years 2001 to 2005, I decided to keep that portion of my sociology notes connected with sociological theory.  It was this subject, this sub-discipline within sociology, that interested me the most. This field of sociology had more relevance to an understanding of many of the social questions bedevilling our society—or so it seemed to me--than other facets of sociology.  It was also a subject that was useful in my exploration of the Baha'i Faith and its place in society. The Baha'i Faith has been, since my mid-to-late teens a core around which my values, beliefs and attitudes were and are based.

For the set of sociology theory notes which I now possess I have drawn on the structure of the last major sociology theory syllabus I taught. I taught that syllabus in the 1990s in the Human Services section of Thornlie College of Technical and Furthe Education(Tafe), now a part of the Swan College of Tafe in Perth Western Australia.  I have altered and extened that syllabus in these years of my retirement, 1999 to 2012. I have extended my base of resources to include some 8 arch-lever and 4 two-ring binder files in that interesting field of study. What is found in these files represents my interests in sociology after nearly half a century of contact with that illuminating sub-discipline within sociology. Some other aspects of sociology, aspects with a religious, historical and psychological orientation, can be found in other files in my study here in the north of Tasmania in those discipline files, disciplines in what have become, inevitably, an interdisciplinary world.

Ron Price
25 March 2009 to 11 May 2012

THANKING DR MARK FOSTER

My own view is that, in order to understand the individual, one must begin with the synergetic concept of social structure (on both the macro and micro levels). In a psychologistic society, such as exists in the United States, Canada and Australia, conceptualizing social structure as a force which dominates, and acts over and above, any individual influences, is virtually alien. All societies and groups consist of both structure and people. Except in fictitious or propositional works, one without the other is inconceivable. A car, for instance, is built with both a blueprint and auto parts. Lacking the blueprint (the structure), the parts have no meaning.

Social structures, or frameworks, include the various social institutions (religion, the economy, education, the arts, etc.), in addition to gender, race, social class, sporting arenas, particular classrooms, and so on. Manichean-like dualist conceptions of good and evil or of right and wrong - moralizing, in other words - have dominanted much of modern Western thinking. I propose a more structurally relativist model. Viewing social action in relation to frameworks of values and norms will allow degrees of approximation to a given structure and avoid the fallacy of bifurcation.

Furthermore, situations which might otherwise be perceived as mentally or emotionally problematic might instead be viewed as instructive. Indeed, our collective angst is, I believe, a product of excessive psychologism. As social beings, learning takes place as we come into dialectical tension with our structural surroundings. But to become engaged in this type of trans-individual perception, one needs to develop a sociological imagination and avoid conceptualizing one's experiences in purely personal categories.

Knowledge, and what a culture defines as truth, are grounded in the contingencies of dynamic structures. And truth itself, or at least what may be referred to as such, emerges out of the particularities of social interaction. The Platonic worlds of forms and of outward appearances are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable. To return to our main subject, there are both micro- and macro-structures. Each acts as a social force to delimit the range of socially acceptable statuses and behaviors (i.e., averages). Individual exceptions, such as those which may be attributable to neurological pathology, are not significant for sociological purposes.

These structures are both enabling and constraining. Society and the people who, along with social structures, constitute it, adapt, over long periods of time or during periods of significant large-scale crisis, through creative, dialectical interaction with these structures. For more on this theme go to this link:http://cms.definestudiocms.com/en/sites/84267/editables/445453/edit

CRITICAL REALISM: Part I

My approach to sociology, as I pointed out in the introduction to this part of my website, is eclectic.  Critical Realism(CR) is one of the strands of theory that I draw upon.  It is a complex theory to explain and I hope to come back to this topic and try to simplify the langage.  The language possesses an intellectual, a conceptual, density which loses most students in my experience as a teacher of sociological thoery.

CR is a philosophical and theoretical movement on the intellectual left, but "left" does not refer in this context to a political orientation. Critical Realism takes no particular position on partisan issues. It is for this reason, among others, that I have been attracted to and utilize this theory in my approach to politics and social issues. Critical realists have a variety of political and economic views. Intellectual left, as I use the term refers to: (i) social emancipation and spiritual self-realization, and (ii) consciousness-raising or the critical consciousness of oppressed peoples. By providing theories which are, in some ways, explanatory accounts of behavior, sociology and other human sciences can help point the way toward emancipation, self-realization, and consciousness raising. Such is a key goal for CR.

The terms intellectual left and liberalism need to be distinguised. Social and economic justice as well as human rights and emancipation are concerns which often characterize the intellectual left. On the other hand, individual freedom or liberty is, by definition, a liberal issue. Strictly speaking, both pro-choice and pro-life views on abortion are liberal positions. Those on the pro-choice side focus upon the reproductive freedom of the mother. Pro-lifers, however, are primarily interested in the freedom or liberty of the fetus to come to term. The capitalist free market is based on classic economic liberalism.  For more on these terms Google: (i) Mark A. Foster, Ph.D., sociology of religion and theory, (ii) clinical sociology at: Portal: www.markfoster.net, or (iii) Critical realism: www.structurization.com

CRITICAL REALISM: Part II

For a basic biography of Roy Bhaskar and his sociology go to: http://criticalrealism.wikispaces.com/Roy++Bhaskar.  His consideration of the philosophies of science and social science resulted in the development of Critical Realism(CR), an ontological(meaning) and emancipatory body of thought that aspires to: (a) move beyond The Enlightenment to a new Eudaimonian Enlightenment(go to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia, (b) avoid irrationalism and reductionist rationalism through historical self-awareness and dialectic. To achieve this, it draws on pre-modern dialectical and spiritual traditions as well as on positive aspects of The Enlightenment like its commitment to scientific inquiry and to freedom.

CR is also

My experience these days of sociology, as a formal discipline, is just about entirely on the Internet. Occasionally I dabble, for I am retired now and I have made of dabbling an art-form; I dabble in this rich and variegated academic field which nearly fifty years ago I had just entered in the last year of my teenage life. I remember well that first year of the formal study of sociology; it was a year, an academic year, which ended in early May of 1964, just before I got a job checking telephone poles for internal decay with the Bell Telephone Company of Canada.  In about February or, perhaps, March, a new tutor joined the sociology staff. He was able to explain the mysteries of the sociological theorist Talcott Parsons better than anyone. And at the time, Parsons occupied a position in the empyrean of sociological theory godheads. It was an empyrean at the very centre of that introductory course in sociology. If one wanted to pass that course in sociology one had to have a basic understanding of Parsons' sociological theory.  And that was no easy task for the several hundred sociology students hoping to get at least a BA by 1966.

Everyone admired this tutor as if he was some brilliant theologian who had just arrived from the Vatican with authoritative pronouncements for us all to write down on our A-4 note paper to be regurgitated on the inevitable April examination. He was an Englishman, if I remember, rather slim and a good talker. And Parsons, for all of us, was about as intricate and complex, as elusive and variable, as you could get and still stay in the same language and on the same earthly plane. I was able to pass sociology that year by the skin of my teeth. I still deal with the intricacies of this field of study, some by the skin of my teeth and others with a good bite of the cherry as it is often said colloquially.

For the rest of this story go to the following link:http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/archive/index

Definitions of Clinical Sociology and Related Subjects

Sociological practice is intervention using sociological knowledge whether it is in a clinical or applied setting. It is different from pure academic sociology in which sociologists work in an academic setting such as a university.  Many universities are starting to make their undergraduate and graduate degrees more practical. Since many people with a BA, MA, or MS in sociology are working in jobs that are applying sociological knowledge and the sociological perspective, more and more universities are trying to make the curriculum more geared towards sociological practice. There are even accreditation bodies such as the Commission on Applied and Clinical Sociology. Accreditation is important because it lets potential employers know that the university has met national standards on applied or clinical sociology.

While such programs are increasing emphasis on practical skills, they still incorporate pure knowledge. Pure academic researchers are also useful to applied sociologists in that their theories and research may be used by an applied sociologist or clinical sociologist in research or in sociological practice. Some degrees may only be focused on applied or clinical sociology. Applied sociology is generally meso-level or macro-level intervention. It would include grant writing, program evaluation, human resources, work in public policy, community development, and many other jobs within social service agencies, non-profits, and businesses. There are many other opportunities for someone with applied sociological training.

Clinical sociology courses give students the skills to be able to work effectively with clients, teach basic counseling skills, give knowledge that is useful for careers such as victims assisting and drug rehabilitation, and teach the student how to integrate sociological knowledge with other fields they may go into such as marriage and family therapy, and clinical social work. For more on this subject go to Wikipedia and these two links: http://clinicalsociology.com/  
http://directory.clinicalsociology.com/

SOCIOBIOLOGY, E.O. WILSON and THE UNITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE

One theory of sociology I have come to regard with some favour is sociobiology. Sociobiology is defined as the scientific or systematic study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior, in all kinds or organisms including man, and incorporating knowledge from ethology, ecology, and genetics, in order to derive general principles concerning the biological properties of entire societies. "If humankind evolved by Darwinian natural selection, genetic chance and environmental necessity, not God, made the species." "The brain and the mind exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication of the genes that direct its assembly." The two apparent dilemmas we face therefore are: (1) We lack any goal external to our biological nature--for even religions evolve to enhance the persistence and influence of their practitioners. Will the transcendental goals of societies dissolve, and will our post-ideological societies regress steadily toward self-indulgence? (2) Morality evolved as instinct. "Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be curtailed or sublimated?"

Although much human diversity in behavior is culturally influenced, some has been shown to be genetic - rapid acquisition of language, human unpredictability, hypertrophy (extreme growth of pre-existing social structures), altruism and religions. "Religious practices that consistently enhance survival and procreation of the practitioners will propagate the physiological controls that favor the acquisition of the practices during single lifetimes." Unthinking submission to the communal will promotes the fitness of the members of the tribe. Even submission to secular religions and cults involve willing subordination of the individual to the group. Religious practices confer biological advantages.

Wilson used sociobiology and evolutionary principles to explain the behavior of the social insects and then to understand the social behavior of other animals, including humans, thus established sociobiology as a new scientific field. He argued that all animal behavior, including that of humans, is the product of heredity, environmental stimuli, and past experiences, and that free will is an illusion. He has referred to the biological basis of behaviour as the "genetic leash." The sociobiological view is that all animal social behavior is governed by epigenetic rules worked out by the laws of evolution. This theory and research proved to be seminal, controversial, and influential.

In his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Wilson discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences, and might be able to unite the sciences with the humanities. Wilson prefers and uses the term "consilience" to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor.  For more on this subject go to the following two links:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson   and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology

SOME INTERNET POSTS OF OTHERS WHICH I FIND HELP MY UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIETY
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/arts/26bell.html?ref=sociology

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review/Tanenhaus-t.html?ref=sociology

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/science/08fukuyama.html?ref=sociology

http://www.markfoster.net/jccc/soclinks.html

http://www.sociology.org/announcements/rip-daniel-bell
SCATTERED LIKE STAR-DUST

As Sir Ernest Barker has so illuminatingly emphasized, the whole secular theory of natural law from 1500 to 1800 was engaged in working out little else but a theory of society.  Man was primary and relationships secondary. In this new Order, rising out of the ashes of shattered loyalties and the multiplicity of saviours-in-a-hurry, with their inorganic and fixed frameworks, an organically conceived Administration would serve as the nucleus and pattern for a future World Order. Relationships, groups, institutions, were primary and individuals secondary.-Ron Price with thanks to Robert Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition, Heinemann, London, 1970(1966), p. 48.

The old order had ended long before
this new one was born, back then.(1)
Brilliant sprays of diamonds and gold
‘rose out of the depths of His mysterious
purpose with enough wealth to save the
world, at least by the skin of its teeth, &
other sprays of ideas so fine, scattered
like star-dust from those magnetic poles
to tropic lands, that would save the world:
more than enough divine Tablets, & Kitabi
this’s and that’s and the zeal of the Lord,
now fully institutionalized in a new Order
spraying us with Its breath-taking emerald
energy and its very brilliant inventiveness.

Ron Price
8 January 1997 to 12 September 2011

(1) Many theorists, including the sociologist Robert Nisbet, refer to the old order as the one which fell with the French revolution in 1789.

THE TREMBLING OF THE VEIL

What was happening between 1908 and 1914 was nothing less than that a great new historic school was in the process of transformation, more significant than the romantic revolution, transforming the philosophical rudiments of life, and heralding great social changes. -Malcohm Bradbury, “Ford Maddox Ford’s Opening World”, Tensions and Transitions: 1869-1990: The Mediating Imagination, editor Michael Irwin, et al, Faber and Faber, 1990, p.8.

It is reasonable to think that the cycle of the Modern Movement runs roughly for fifty years, from the trembling of the veil and the sense of the New that came at the end of the 1880s, through to the late 1930s. This could be seen as the great hiatus during which the Baha’i World acquired the sinews of its Administration, especially after 1912, and thus became able to launch its first systematic international teaching plan in 1937.-Ron Price with thanks to Malcohm Bradbury, ibid., p.4.

Your release from prison by the Young Turks(1)
was no simple matter, no chance part of history,
but a signal for the birth of the modern age, one
could say, of new movements, groupings, & little
magazines, manifestoes, art exhibitions, & those
declarations of artistic rebellion, upturning all the
conventions with people like: Pound, Eliot, Lewis,
D.H. Lawrence, T.E. Hulme—that seedbed of our
Modernism—with the true Seed being planted so
unobtrusively, unbeknownst, mixing insidiously &
imperceptively, insinuating itself into the heart of
this new age, born of visions from seeds-to-seeds,
born of a mystic intercourse, that had come West,
as if on the wind, by 1892 in the first trembling of
the veil, the first radiance unclouded by flesh, and
energizing the world to a degree unapproached in
the life of that most precious Being ever to walk on
the surface of this speck of radiance in the universe.

Ron Price
3 March 1997 to 12 September 2011

(1) In 1908 ‘Abdu’l-Baha was released from prison. The intensification of the Modern Movement began in that year says Bradbury.

A NEW PHASE IN CIVILIZATION

There were many who blew the horn that I blew, albeit differently shaped, different sizes and styles, but many ordinary people and many thinkers and intellectuals, writers and social scientists blew many of the tunes I was trying to blow both in my autobiography and in other works. Fernand Braudel, for example, of the French annales school of history, recognised the justice of the sociologist Raymond Aron's observation that 'the phase of civilisation we have had is coming to an end and, for good or ill, humanity is embarking on a new phase.' That phase is one of a single civilisation which could become universal.  I don’t want to list and comment, quote and analyse, all those who share this global, one world perspective. Suffice it to say, it was a horn, a musical instrument, which as the epochs advanced in my lifetime was blown by more and more serious students of history’s longue duree. Some of these students of society and culture, history and civilization, had a grand interpretation of history, a meganarrative, a metanarrative, along the lines pursued by Oswald Spengler, H. G. Wells or Arnold Toynbee. And some did not. Much of the discussion remains nebulous and unsatisfactory. The story, the blowing, is far from over.

SOME SITES-LINKS THAT INTIMATE THAT COMING CIVILIZATION
http://humanrightseurope.blogspot.com/2011/09/jagland-urges-europe-to-practice-what.html

NOT EDITED IN CELLULOID SAFETY

A poetic point of view is caught from the poets one lives with and the literary influences which have a poetic manner, a style and voice that resonates in one’s life. Through perpetually studying and enjoying certain writers one acquires a sense of their application of ideas to life in verse. While I have caught a poetic point of view from Roger White and Emily Dickinson, Wordsworth and Dawe; while historians like Toynbee and Gibbon and sociologists like Nisbet and Mills have played their part in some individual flower that has sprung up from within me; while philosophers like Russell and Nietzsche, among others; and psychologists like Rollo May and Erik Erikson have all helped me find and articulate a voice, I would also have to acknowledge a range of other influences that make me want to sing, to talk, from my very inmost soul in the highest seriousness, free from simple verbiage and utterance of the ordinary kind. -Ron Price with thanks to Matthew Arnold, “The Study of Poetry,” Gateway to the Great Books, William Benton, 1963, pp. 38-9.

I don’t want to be an actor
who finds himself, extends
his sense of who he is on
some stages or in movies.

Some seem to find their soul,
their language, their voice,
on screen in its technicolour
manipulation & perfect sound.

I don’t want to put myself
imaginatively into Bonanzaland
or play the role of a perennial
outsider with a predictable victory
in choiceless invulnerability.

The final torrid clinch with
several along the way with
a compliant, mysterious blonde
sounds superficially attractive.

The predictable wonder of my
ordinary life: unscripted and
flawed and so very plausible,
my undeclared guilts and my
poetry, which like the Greeks,
is one with my religion, will not
emerge edited in celluloid safety.

Ron Price
16 November 2000 to 12 September 2011

HOMO LUDENS* *Man the player.

Jack Kerouac had an evolving set of etymologies for the term "beat." In The Origins of the Beat Generation originally published in Playboy in 1959, Kerouac wrote: "The word "beat" originally meant poor, down and out, deadbeat, on the bum, sad, sleeping in subways." But he added that in the 1950s the word gained an extended meaning to denote people who had “a certain new gesture or attitude which I can only describe as new mores." Kerouac suffused the “beat” label with positive connotations; he later extended the word "beat,” giving it a religious significance.

For Kerouac the importance of the "beat" label lay in its openness of signification among other purposes. He returned to it in the 1960s several times to pour into its useage new meanings.  In several letters he claimed to have shown that "beat" was the Second Religiousness of Western Civilization as prophesied by Oswald Spengler. This second phase always takes place in the late stage of a civilisation. This second phase, he stated, possesses something of the beatific, the sublime, but it coexists with coldhearted times of urban skepticism and cynicism. This religiousness is the reappearance of an earlier spiritual springtime in history. It also becomes well-rooted and grounded in the culture. To Kerouac, the Beats were also saints in the making, walking the Earth doing good deeds in the name of sanctitude and holiness.

These beats only lasted until 1949 Kerouac said in another context, in one of his many interpretations of the term, an interpretation he gave toward the end of his life in 1969. Kerouac also said that “the beats” was just a phrase he had used in his 1951 written manuscript of On the Road to describe young men who run around the country in cars looking for odd jobs, girlfriends and kicks--to get their rocks-off as it is often said now colloquially.

In 1958 a San Francisco columnist Herb Caen coined the phrase "beatnik" to denote members of the growing Californian bohemian youth culture which Caen associated with new barbarian tendencies in America. The appellation “beatnik” came to enrage Kerouac in the last decade of his life: 1959- 1969. By the late 1960s Kerouac was denouncing the youth culture which had followed his example. To Kerouac they had gone off the road, so to speak.  Kerouac continued to flirt with numerous religious systems, but he became in that last decade of his life someone who preferred to stay at home, no longer King of any Road or King of any Beats. –Ron Price with thanks to Bent Sørensen, “An On & Off Beat: Kerouac's Beat Etymologies,” philament: An Online Journal of the Arts and Culture, April 2004.

You were never impressed(1)
with the hippies who had
evolved during those Plans
of the 1940s and 1950s(2)
from the beatniks-hipstirs.

I was 21, 22 and 23 when
hippie was catching on(3)
in its two strands: art/
bohemian and peace/
civil rights. And it was
reaching its height when
I was among the Eskimos,
experiencing a mild schizo-
affective disorder and trying
to teach primary school kids.

These hippies had dropped out
of a world they found meaningless,
played with sex, drugs, rock-‘n’-roll
while I played with a new religion---
but for some of us the play was as
serious as it could be: homo ludens.(4)

1 Jack Kerouac(1922-1969).
2 Plans: 1946-1953 & 1953-1963.
3 The term hippie was first used in a newspaper on September 6th 1965. Six weeks before I had just turned 21. The term began to be used extensively by mid-1967.
4 The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga discusses the seriousness of play, the role of play, in culture in his book Homo Ludens(1938).

Ron Price
June 14th 2005 to 8 July 2011

FOUR BOOKS IN FOUR EPOCHS: ALL IN 1962.

The year I began my pioneering life and the year before I took my first course in sociology and its theories, sociologist and culture theorist, Jürgen Habermas published his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere(1962). Habermas was, then, a student of the Frankfurt School of Social Research-which since the 1930s had been advancing a Marxist critique of western capitalism and its discontents. Habermas wrote The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) to explore the status of public opinion in the practice of representative government in Western Europe. Habermas defined the public sphere as a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space. In its ideal form, the public sphere is "made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state.” -Ron Price with appreciation to Jurgen Habermas, op.cit., p.176.

Through acts of assembly and dialogue, the public sphere generates opinions and attitudes which serve to affirm or challenge and, therefore to guide, the affairs of state. In ideal terms, the public sphere is the source of public opinion needed to "legitimate authority in any functioning democracy" -Ron Price with thanks to Paul Rutherford, Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Good, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2000, p.18.

In that same year, 1962, I was 18 and my family moved to a nearby town. I did my matriculation studies and Jacques Ellul echoed Habermas' concern in his Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes(1962). Ellul's term "the propaganda of integration" included biased newscasts, misinformation and political education which worked over time to shape the individual to suit the needs of social mechanisms. Ellul argued that propaganda is necessary in a democracy, even though it can create zombies of its citizens. "Propaganda is needed in the exercise of power for the simple reason that the masses have come to participate in political affairs."

In 1962 Herbert Marcuse was finishing his One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. This book analyzed the new "voice of command" used by managers, educators, experts, and politicians. This style of address, appropriated from advertising, had a hypnotic effect, argued Marcuse. The syntax of this speech and writing is abridged and condensed, giving the language more directness and assertiveness; it uses an emphatic concreteness, constant use of "you" and "your," and endlessly repeats images to fix them in people's minds. This style of rhetoric in Marcuse's terms creates the "one-dimensional" citizen, incapable of protest or refusal. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, April 7th 2006.
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WITHOUT MR VANCE PACKARD

By far the most significant writer who has written popular books about American society and found a niche outside the academy in the print media from the late 1950's to the late '80's was Vance Packard. He was famous for The Hidden Persuaders (1957), Status Seekers (1959), Pyramid Climbers (1962) and a succession of books until his last in 1989. Through the publication of these books, Packard probably had more influence on the lay public regarding the social dimensions of American society than any other writer or sociologist. Packard's books frequently appeared on best seller lists and young scholars were routinely shocked to find that Packard's works were considered beneath respectable discussion in many classrooms and tended to be disparaged by professional sociologists and public intellectuals, perhaps because they displayed none of the more abstract theorizing that social scientists look for in sociological writings.

Packard was not fully trained in sociology but majored in English and then earned a Master's degree in journalism at Columbia, and from there embarked upon a career in journalism at the start of the Baha’i teaching Plan in 1937. Through the resourceful use of his talents as a writer and his unique insights into American society, he contributed significantly to public understanding of a whole range of topics typically studied by academic sociologists: family and childrearing, sexual patterns, the media, consumerism and wastefulness, isolation and loneliness, and the super rich. In the years immediately before and after I became a Baha’i in Canada, Packard was a very popular writer. My contact with his writings was limited because in the late fifties I was more interested in sport and in graduating from high school. In the early to mid sixties, in my four years at university, I had a massive reading list in the humanities and social sciences; my concentration was on just getting though and out into the marketplace, into the world of jobs and earning a living. By the end of those four years I was also interested in marriage. -Ron Price with thanks to “Internet Sites on Vance Packard,” Poetry Booklet Number 58, Ron Price, July 10th 2006.

I remember seeing your books
back in those years when I’d
first started hearing about birds
flying over Akka and martyrs
by the score in lounge rooms
on cold Canadian evenings
when I waited for the talks
to be over and the hot coffee
and cakes to arrive—they seem
like distant cousins, those years.

Those years were as distant as
Packard himself as I plowed my
way through more books than
my little brain could stomach,
motivated as I was to make it in
the marketplace, get a job, marry
and raise a family ‘cause that was
what everyone did, eveyone whom
I knew and Packard was never on
reading lists &, my-god, I had more
to read than I ever thought I could
get through, but get through I did
even without the insights of that
famous Mr Vance Packard......!!!

Ron Price
July 10th 2006 to 11 May 2012.


Some of sociology professor Mark Foster's sociology and related links sites are found at:

http://www.markfoster.net/jccc/soclinks.html