Sociology – Altered States of Academia

14th Jul 2026

Stand by Goffman: Masculinity, Stigma and a Boyhood Treehouse

Claire Birkenshaw “Chopper was my first lesson in the vast difference between myth and reality” (Gordie Lachance, Stand by Me) In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Erving Goffman (1963/1990) argues that stigma is not an inherent attribute of individuals but a social relationship through which particular characteristics become discrediting. As such, virtually anyone is susceptible to…

Constructing the Great and Terrible Wizard: Four Sociological Perspectives on Power in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Claire Birkenshaw “I have fooled everyone for so long that I thought I should never be found out.” (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) One of the most memorable plot twists in children’s literature occurs in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900) when the collapse of a carefully constructed façade reveals that the seemingly omnipotent Wizard of…

Discipline, Incorporated

Claire Birkenshaw “By means of strange incantations, they conjured up a new incarnation of evil, another grinning mask of fear, home to the constantly renewed magic of purification and exclusion” (Foucault, [1972] 2009, p.3). Film, as Sian Barber (2015, p.4) reminds us, is a “crafted artefact”, which is “never produced in a cultural and social…