Has anyone else done this with a similar disability? If so, what was your experience, and what are your recommendations?

Also, I'm in my 20s, I'm not an older person doing a phd. I just got arthritis pretty young

Summary

The Second Amendment functions not as a check on state-corporate “tyranny” but as an ideological, electoral, and legal mechanism that reinforces state and elite power, diverting politics into culture-war conflict rather than economic representation.

Instead of a constitutional right, it’s better understood as a revocable privilege granted to gun owners who largely operate as loyal auxiliary supporters of the state’s monopoly on “legitimate” violence.

The legal profession’s role, in this account, is to furnish the epicycles (some more benign than others) through which doctrinal refinements and historical just‑so stories obscure this distribution of armed loyalty and culture‑war distraction.

When we discuss Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, we often focus on the mature statesman — the principal architect of India’s Constitution, the champion of social justice, and one of the twentieth century’s most influential democratic thinkers. Yet to understand Ambedkar’s greatness, one must look beyond his public achievements and examine the two cities that profoundly shaped his intellectual development: New York and London. He was forged in the crucible of global intellectual currents, shaped by the contrasting yet complementary landscapes of two great world capitals.

The transformation of Ambedkar from a victim of severe social ostracisation in colonial India into a towering global intellectual is one of the most remarkable chapters in modern intellectual history. His intellectual canvas was fundamentally global, shaped by cosmopolitan education, transnational legal frameworks, and comparative civil rights discourse.

The foundational bedrock of Ambedkar’s global intellect was laid during his extensive academic training abroad between 1913 and 1923. It was not merely an academic pursuit; it was a profound and remarkable transformation. A young man who arrived in the West carrying the scars of caste discrimination returned to India equipped with a global vision of democracy, economics, law, and human rights.

While New York gave him a new way of seeing society; London gave him the tools to change it. New York gave him a radical vision of social democracy, London provided him with the rigorous institutional and legal tools to construct it. Together, these global experiences synthesized an intellectual powerhouse who would dismantle centuries of entrenched social hierarchy and draft the constitutional framework of a new nation.

Ambedkar earned doctorates from two of the world’s most prestigious institutions: Columbia University in New York and the London School of Economics.

New York: The Discovery of Equality and the Vision of Social Democracy

Press enter or click to view image in full size

When Ambedkar arrived at Columbia University in 1913, he was only twenty-two years old. The city was buzzing with progressive politics and intellectual reinvention. For a young man who had spent much of his life confronting social exclusion in India, New York was a revelation. Here, away from the stifling confines of Indian caste discrimination, he experienced social freedom for the first time.

At Columbia, he experienced something that many people take for granted but which was revolutionary for him: social equality. In classrooms, libraries, and dining halls, he was treated not as an “untouchable” but as a student and scholar.

The simple act of sharing meals with classmates from different countries and backgrounds represented a form of human dignity that had often been denied to him in India. The intellectual environment of Columbia further expanded his horizons. He immersed himself in economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, and history.

The Influence of John Dewey

The most profound catalyst for Ambedkar’s intellectual awakening in New York was the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. From Dewey, Ambedkar absorbed a radical new definition of democracy.

Democracy as a Way of Life: Dewey taught that democracy was not just a form of government, democracy was more than voting or government institutions. It was a way of living together, a mode of associated living and conjoined communicated experience.

The Power of Education: He viewed education as the primary tool for social change and a means to break down artificial social barriers.

Ethical Pragmatism: Politics had to be grounded in social utility and human ethics, rather than rigid dogmas or religious scriptures.

Parallel Struggles: Race and Caste

In New York, Ambedkar did not just study textbooks; he studied American society. He observed the African American struggle for civil rights and the systemic oppression of race in the West, drawing sharp parallels to the untouchability practiced in the East. He closely followed the works of African American intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. In a historic letter to Du Bois in 1946, Ambedkar explicitly identified the shared structural realities of the Untouchables of India and the Black population of America, noting that the position of both communities was identical. By forging these conceptual links, Ambedkar elevated the fight against caste from a domestic administrative issue to a global human rights struggle, anticipating the modern intersectional approach to institutional discrimination. He realized that political liberty was a farce without social and economic equality.

New York also exposed Ambedkar to a cosmopolitan world. He encountered diverse cultures, international students, labour movements, debates on women’s rights, and modern social science. He learned to analyze social problems not through tradition or religious authority but through reason, evidence, and critical inquiry.

This exposure allowed him to view the Indian caste system through a comparative lens. He did not treat caste as a peculiar local anomaly, but rather as a specific manifestation of a universal human malady: institutionalized inequality.

His early academic paper, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development (1916), presented at an anthropology seminar in New York, demonstrated his ability to apply rigorous, global scientific methodologies to decode local social structures.

In many respects, Columbia transformed Ambedkar from a talented student into a global thinker.

London: The Tools of Constitutionalism

Press enter or click to view image in full size

If New York broadened Ambedkar’s vision, London sharpened his expertise. If New York was the laboratory of Ambedkar’s democratic theories, London was the workshop where he acquired the technical craftsmanship to implement them.

After leaving Columbia, Ambedkar pursued studies at the London School of Economics while simultaneously training as a barrister at Gray’s Inn. Unlike his relatively liberating years in New York, his London experience was marked by financial hardship and relentless discipline.

London was not a period of discovery; it was a period of mastery. London taught Ambedkar how institutions function, how economies operate, and how law can be used as an instrument of social transformation.

Ambedkar spent countless hours in libraries, particularly the British Museum Reading Room. There he immersed himself in economics, public finance, constitutional law, political theory, and monetary systems. The libraries of London became his workshop.

Much like Karl Marx before him, Ambedkar treated libraries not as repositories of information but as laboratories of ideas. Day after day, he filled notebooks with observations, statistics, and analyses. He read government reports, economic studies, legal texts, and historical works with extraordinary intensity.

His dedication was driven by a larger purpose. He was not merely collecting degrees. He was preparing himself intellectually for the struggle that awaited him in India. At the same time, his legal education equipped him with the constitutional understanding that would eventually prove invaluable during the drafting of the Indian Constitution.

Institutional Rigor and Legal Precision

London provided Ambedkar with the structural machinery of governance. His deep immersion in British constitutional history, parliamentary procedures, and jurisprudence gave him a granular understanding of how power could be institutionalized and checked.

He wrote the book — The Problem of the Rupee at London School of Economics, analyzing colonial economic exploitation, a study whose insights would later influence India’s financial institution — Reserve Bank of India. During these years, Ambedkar developed expertise that would later make him one of the most highly trained economists of his generation.

Weaponizing the Law

In London, Ambedkar learned that moral arguments against oppression were insufficient; they needed to be backed by codified rights and constitutional guarantees. He saw the law not as a static tradition, but as a dynamic instrument for social engineering. The British parliamentary model showed him how minority safeguards, separate electorates (which he later pivoted from in the Poona Pact), and institutional checks and balances could protect the vulnerable from the tyranny of the majority.

The Convergence of Two Worlds

The making of B.R. Ambedkar was not the story of a student who travelled abroad and returned home with academic qualifications. It was the story of an intellectual transformation.

New York liberated his imagination. London disciplined his intellect. New York provided the ideals. London provided the instruments.

One city showed him what a just society could look like; the other taught him how such a society might be built.

At Columbia, Ambedkar encountered liberty, equality, fraternity, and democratic pluralism. At the London School of Economics and Gray’s Inn, he acquired the economic, legal, and institutional knowledge necessary to translate those ideals into practical reality.

From New York came a belief in social democracy and human dignity. From London came an understanding of economics, law, and governance.

Outcome

The synthesis was extraordinary. Together, these experiences enabled him to challenge caste oppression, advocate for constitutional rights, design public institutions, and articulate a vision of democracy that remains relevant across the world today.

He became a thinker capable of connecting moral principles with institutional design. Few leaders of his generation possessed such a combination of philosophical depth and practical expertise.

Ambedkar’s global intellect is permanently etched into the constitutional philosophy he gave to India. As the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, he synthesized global constitutional best practices to suit a deeply fractured society. He drew the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the concept of fundamental rights, and parliamentary democracy.

However, his genius lay in his critical adaptation. He introduced unique constitutional mechanisms for affirmative action and social justice, transforming the state into an instrument for radical social engineering. He warned the world that political democracy is hollow without social and economic democracy — a prophetic global insight that remains highly relevant today as societies worldwide grapple with rising economic disparities.

In his later years, Ambedkar’s intellectual evolution culminated in a global spiritual quest. Recognizing that political and legal frameworks are insufficient without a moral foundation, he turned to Buddhism. His final magnum opus, The Buddha and His Gospel, was not a traditional religious text but a rational, socially conscious reinterpretation of Buddhism aimed at a global audience. By reviving Buddhism, Ambedkar offered a universal message of ethics, compassion, and human dignity as an antidote to the spiritual and structural violence found in stratified societies globally.

Conclusion: A Global Legacy

The making of Ambedkar as a global intellectual and a modern thinker was a product of his unique ability to transcend his immediate suffering and analyze it using the highest tools of global scholarship. He bridged the East and the West, the legal and the social, the political and the spiritual. Ambedkar belongs to the select pantheon of global thinkers who fought not just for the liberation of a specific nation or community, but for the universal reclamation of human dignity. His life and ideas stand as an enduring global blueprint for breaking systemic shackles and building a just world.

By taking the democratic ideals of the New World and tempering them with the legal, institutional frameworks of the Old World, he created an entirely unique vocabulary of emancipation for the Global South. New York gave him the dream of a casteless, egalitarian society; London gave him the gavel and the pen to write that dream into law. In doing so, Ambedkar did not just build Indian democracy — he redefined what democracy could mean for the oppressed across the entire world. Ambedkar’s intellectual trajectory shatters the parochial view that his fight was merely regional or caste-specific. He was a global intellectual of the highest order.

Hi everyone! I’m a Junior & a big fan of theory, class, economics and how it affects consumers behavior and societal norms.

I’m pretty scrambled at the moment in regards to research topic ideas/possibilities and would like some book recommendations or guidance.

Thank you!

I am interested in reading about AI mediated communication though a critical theory lens, specifically about how people communicate with chat bots for therapeutic and personal relationship purposes. Does anyone have any articles they’d reccomend? Thanks!!

I'm serious. You look at doctor's offices, cop phootage, how people act on the internet, how your coworkers act at every job you've been to, how every roomate you've had acts, how your family acts, how people act in school classrooms, how every customer acts at work, people putting graffiti, people on the street late at night, every story throughout history, duels to the death over nothing.... is humanity largely comprised of like batshit insane people? is it like 30%~?

Edit:
Last night I was listening to a story about losing your mind. It was so symetrical. So fulfilling. So perfect. Every setup had a payoff, and everything, every beat, every detail of the story, was integral to the web. It was my favorite story, because the writing itself, the structure of it, was so beautiful. So I started telling my partner who was listening to the story with me. It reminded me, and i said as much, of principles of design. The colors, contrasting, fighting, clashing, flowing, going together, smooth, sharp. The groups of small things with a gap, and groups of big things. Bubbles in cartoons, ceramic animal figures being laid out to an invisible specification in my dad's back yard. Patterns on a fursona. There is a form. An underlying principle. Something all of this points to. a perfection, a beauty, a payoff to every question. I saw this when i was on mushrooms. I saw the payoff. It was god. And she loves us.

My partner said "you're crazy." i said "what?" and she said "you are completely insane. You never make any sense." I think she's right.

Insanity is so prolific because its so tempting. Insanity is packing everything up and tying the loose ends together with an erroneous narrative you make up yourself, or endlessly pursuing something to tie to the ends when your way of putting together the puzzle pieces doesn't complete the puzzle, or just being content leaving one side unfinished in favor of having as many pieces put together as possible. That's why genius is so close to madness. Or maybe i'm just making things up to satisfy my need for the world to be simple. again right now.

I've decided to stop using screens, and doing other things that make me feel less grounded. Focus on reading, playing music, and interacting with other people. It helps me.

Thank you for your comments.

it’s a complex topic and most people only want simple answers and will knee jerk against they very notion of the term. is there a softer name for it? has anyone had success at communicating it to someone who hasn’t taken college classes?

I had the chance this year to take a few sociology classes in college and to be part of a small discussion group focused on philosophy and social theory. That experience really changed the way I think about how these subjects are treated online.

It made me reflect on how, ever since “activism” became more visible on social media, sociology has often been reduced to something like a side quest, an accessory to arguments rather than a discipline in its own right. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good thing that sociological ideas are reaching a wider audience. But at the same time, it feels like a lot of the core concepts (frameworks, terminology, and even entire theories) lose their depth and precision when they’re compressed into easily digestible formats like short posts or video essays.

What stands out to me is the confidence with which people speak on these topics online. There’s this tendency to present opinions as if they were grounded in a solid understanding of the field, "universal truth about society" when in reality sociology is incredibly complex, layered, and often internally contested. Even among trained sociologists, there isn’t always consensus, so seeing people flatten these debates into definitive takes can feel frustrating.

I’m not even a sociology major, but I still find myself wondering: do people actually understand the concepts they’re using? Or are these ideas just being repurposed as rhetorical tools?

Of course, everyone is entitled to have opinions and critiques, especially when it comes to media and culture. That’s part of being human. But there’s a difference between engaging critically and positioning oneself as an authority on cultural or sociological analysis without acknowledging the depth of those fields.

I guess what bothers me most is not that people are interested in sociology, but that the way it’s often discussed online strips it of its nuance, its rigor, and ultimately, its meaning.

I’m researching it as a possible career path and want to get an idea of the areas I may be working in

I honestly don't know much about the course. I didn't study Sociology in Class 12 either, so I'm a confused a lot !!

I wanted to ask a few things like -

• What do you actually study in each year? Is it mostly theory or are there practicals/research too?

• Is it difficult for someone who has never studied Sociology before?

• What kind of student usually enjoys this course?

• What are the career options after graduation? (Private jobs, government exams, higher studies, NGOs, research, etc.)

• If you could go back, would you still choose Sociology Honours? Why or why not?

• What are the biggest pros and cons of this course that no one tells freshers?

This is our local recurring future-planning thread. Got questions about jobs or careers, want to know what programs or schools you should apply to, or unsure what you'll be able to use your degree for? This is the place.

This thread gets replaced every Friday, each week. You can click this link to pull up old threads in search.

In this piece from Works in Progress, it traces how marriage customs across 186 culturally independent societies track almost perfectly with resource structures: who inherits, how wealth is stored, and whether you're a pastoralist or farmer.

Some specific stats worth noting:

Among 186 culturally independent societies, 31 were monogamous, 153 polygynous, and 2 polyandrous

When France imposed equal inheritance partition after the Revolution, it became the first European country to exhibit declining fertility — because families had to limit children to avoid over-dividing estates

The Himba of Namibia are pastoralists, where 49% of children are not biologically the husband's — yet husbands accept this because inheritance runs matrilineally (through sisters' sons), so their investment in non-biological children is low

Does the "marriage = resource management" frame fully explain the variation? Or does it underweight coercion, culture, and religion?

Hi y'all! Sociology PhD student here with an embarrassingly dumb question. I often see both "demographics" and "sociodemographics" used to describe basic characteristics of a study sample or population, but I've struggled to find a clear explanation of the distinction. If you use both terms, what do you mean by each? What do you include in each?

It's hard for me to think of demographics that aren't also inherently "social" in some way, maybe with the exception of chronological age and sex assigned at birth (but even sex is complicated and partly socially constructed, so.).

Hello all!

I'm a sociology PhD student teaching as instructor of record for the first time (woohoo!) and my students are learning introductory statistical analysis for the social sciences. At my university, the summer session course covers up through t tests and confidence intervals before students take the second part of the sequence with faculty in the fall and learn regressions and the like.

Instead of a sit down exam with calculations, I would like to assess my students' learning using a sociological article that can actually help them engage with real world research. However, I'm having a hard time finding articles that use t tests as the primary form of analysis. I have found a few RCTs that seem appropriate, but they are not really sociological and/or they are boring and/or they use far too much jargon for college underclassmen.

I would really love any recommendations if you have them! Any subfield would be welcome (and I would even take social psych), but I did poll my students and some of the popular areas of interest are incarceration/criminal legal system, higher education/SES/wellbeing, and homelessness. Thanks all!

What's on your plate this week, what are you working on, what cool things have you encountered? Open discussion thread for casual chatter about Sociology & your school, academic, or professional work within it; share your project's progress, talk about a book you read, muse on a topic. If you have something to share or some cool fact to talk about, this is the place.

This thread is replaced every Monday. It is not intended as a "homework help" thread, please; save your homework help questions (ie: seeking sources, topic suggestions, or needing clarifications) for our homework help thread, also posted each Monday.

This is our local recurring homework thread. Simple questions, assignment help, suggestions, and topic-specific source seeking all go here. Our regular rules about effort and substance for questions are suspended here - but please keep in mind that you'll get better and more useful answers the more information you provide.

This thread gets replaced every Monday, each week. You can click this link to pull up old threads in search.

Have others noticed a pattern with these "manosphere" debate podcasts? It seems less like genuine conversations and more like a deliberate setup. They consistently feature women aged 18–23—often influencers or content creators—to debate controversial topics, which I believe is a strategic choice rooted in selection bias. This isn't accidental. It’s about creating an environment where these women are less likely to stand their ground, especially if they are college-educated or more experienced, which might undermine the hosts' facade. These podcasts are designed for virality, not truth, using tactics like confusing questions and interruptions to make guests appear irrational. Essentially, they monetize the spectacle of young women being "trampled on' in debates, turning these interactions into rage-bait rather than genuine discussion. From a sociological perspective, I wonder whether this reflects the evolution of the attention economy into a more hostile, performative media landscape, or if it’s mainly about manipulating participant selection to produce a predetermined outcome. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Could it be a reflection of how women’s sports are supported worldwide vs. in the US? In the US, most kids play sports—girls and boys. And the US is an athletic powerhouse in general, judging by the Olympics.

Perhaps women’s sports are simply supported far more in the U.S. than the rest of the world. I think that’s probably true, in some sense. For example, I wonder how many world class female athletes come out of countries like Iran, where women have “different” opportunities and civil rights.

Additionally interesting is how some countries can be consistent soccer powerhouses. Look at the smaller European countries that sometimes consistently field incredible teams. Consider Belgium, which has a similar population to the LA metro area. I’m guessing their success is somehow a product of culture and generational knowledge.

So if the US men’s team is so weak, and the women’s team is so dominant, what’s the cause? I’m guessing it’s more to do with how women’s sports are supported in other countries—less a product of some discrepancy between men’s and women’s soccer programs in the U.S.

Another factor may be that in the U.S., a smaller proportion of young male athletes choose soccer, while a higher proportion of women choose it. Maybe the U.S. men’s soccer pool of players is comparable to a place like Belgium, since soccer is such a minority sport compared to football, baseball, etc.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

This is our local recurring future-planning thread. Got questions about jobs or careers, want to know what programs or schools you should apply to, or unsure what you'll be able to use your degree for? This is the place.

This thread gets replaced every Friday, each week. You can click this link to pull up old threads in search.

I’m really curious to learn about how different cultures approach making conversation, whether it’s with a stranger or someone close. What topics do they talk about, how deep they like to go, how vulnerable they feel comfortable getting, how they approach controversies and debates… Would love to listen to a podcast or read a book on the matter! Something accessible to a non specialist.

What's on your plate this week, what are you working on, what cool things have you encountered? Open discussion thread for casual chatter about Sociology & your school, academic, or professional work within it; share your project's progress, talk about a book you read, muse on a topic. If you have something to share or some cool fact to talk about, this is the place.

This thread is replaced every Monday. It is not intended as a "homework help" thread, please; save your homework help questions (ie: seeking sources, topic suggestions, or needing clarifications) for our homework help thread, also posted each Monday.