Divergent Institutions: Kinship and Education

The overt trends towards liberalization in modern American democracy have drawn the ire of religious groups and conservative politicians in recent years as our post-industrial society drifts further and further away from its agrarian traditions and into a more secularized bureaucracy. These groups are often vocal advocates of specific religious or cultural norms, but quite often they are just individuals who mourn the relentless marginalization of roles and responsibilities which used to belong to the institution of kinship. Though sociologist Jonathan Turner (2008) has suggested that “...historically, the more fundamental relationships among [sociological] institutions has... remained the same,” the evolution of the relationship between education and kinship, as social institutions go, could not have been more divergent. The difference between the roles of kinship in education, then and now, is pronounced. Turner's own work reinforces this assertion.

Legitimacy and Polity: The Bilderberg Group

Welcome to the world's most high-profile low-profile global management social club! This prestigious and controversial conglomerate of investors and policy makers convenes in a different city every year. Attendance is invitation only, and the guest-list is a who's who of international (and multinational) executives from every sociological center. The annual guest list includes heads of state and/or their representatives, C.E.O.s, bankers and finance ministers, former generals and intelligence operatives, Ivy-League professors, top-tier media and news officials, economists...literally the global community's thin, golden, flaky upper-crust. As such, it is a Grand Council Assembly of polity, law, education, and economy (and one assumes at least a plurality of these attendants are in some way religious). But ironically, the single public face of this sprawling web of consolidated elitism is a minimalist website, www.bilderbergmeetings.org , which features no imagery or branding at all and very few words. Add to this absence of transparency the fact that the meetings and guest lists are announced only a few days in advance, journalists and reporters are not invited, and the governments of the host countries provide full security for this event, and the absurd claim that the organization itself and the meetings they conduct do not produce policies, and its easy to see how this has become one of the most controversial groups in human history.