Category Archives: sociology

On Rock or Sand.

Posted on May 20, 2015 by readingmater

Do we have “firm foundations for Britain’s future” ? Old people notoriously think the world is going to hell in a hand basket (is that an American idiom?) so I am, typically, wondering whether the golden days were the days … Continue reading →

Posted in social justice, sociology, theology | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Breadline Britain

Posted on March 6, 2015 by readingmater

Our house was the first in our street to have TV (probably 1947.) I remember all the neighbors grouped on the settee and chairs and kids peeking round- and, as I remember, what was on the screen was the old … Continue reading →

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Building Paradise in Hell

Posted on February 18, 2015 by readingmater

Is the world we live in more like Lord of the Flies or the village of Eyam stricken by the plague and self-quarantined? Do we believe in the dramatic heroes (masc.), and special effects of disaster movies, or do we … Continue reading →

Posted in history, non-fiction, sociology | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Am I a racist?

Posted on January 6, 2015 by readingmater

Yes. There have been so many conversations in the wake of news coverage of police shootings of black people, followed today by an arrest without injury of a white woman who had been shooting into cars and pointed her gun … Continue reading →

Posted in non-fiction, social justice, sociology | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Voices

Posted on December 29, 2014 by readingmater

I love the way Science Fiction can make us imagine different ways of being, in different worlds, for example, Ursula Le Guin’s world where people are either male or female at different times, and sexually undifferentiated and uninterested in between. … Continue reading →

Posted in non-fiction, science, sociology | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Beyond the Beautiful Forevers.

Posted on July 25, 2014 by readingmater

I just rated this a five on Goodreads, but I almost couldn’t read it. Katherine Boo is an investigative reporter, and spent three years immersed in the life of a Mumbai slum. If it were not a choice of my … Continue reading →

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The Earth is the Lord’s, not the Corporations’

Posted on February 2, 2014 by readingmater

God ‘s world is not to be trashed. While we lived in Eureka, the locally owned Pacific Lumber company, which held much well managed and selectively logged valuable redwood forest was bought out with junk bonds, by an out of state company … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, non-fiction, social justice, sociology, theology | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“The Sun hasn’t fallen from the Sky”

Posted on September 22, 2013 by readingmater

I grew up poor, but in a loving family that coped with what life threw at them. By the 60s I was working in children’s homes in Yorkshire, with children whose parents had not been able to cope. In the … Continue reading →

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Victorian women, and later. And now?

Posted on May 9, 2013 by readingmater

Still reading around the Dickens and (Pratchett’s) Dodger theme, I found a biography of Ellen (Nelly) Ternan, who was Dickens’ unknown mistress for many years: then I happened on a book about an east end girl who was in service in … Continue reading →

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Religion in Human Evolution: Robert Bellah

Posted on February 4, 2013 by readingmater

When we were teaching World Religions, Bud and I used, in an early class, the four skull replicas belonging to our youngest daughter. The most recent was Homo Neanderthalensis, then Homo Erectus or Beijing Woman, as she called it, then … Continue reading →

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