Sunday Sociological Song

Music has always been a big influence on my political and sociological thinking. In light of this, I’d like to introduce a new series on this blog entitled Sunday Sociological Song. Each week, I’ll post a song with some serious sociological content which has influenced my thinking in some way. The inaugural song is People of the Sun by Rage Against the Machine:

RATM was probably the earliest musical influence for me. They were staunchly Marxist, anti-corporate, and anti-war. In this song, Professor de la Rocha is singing about what he sees as the exploitation of Mexico by first Spain and subsequently by the United States. In today’s terminology, Professor de la Rocha might be considered a World Systems theorist or maybe a student of Dependency Theory. Ironically, when I do a JSTOR search for “rage against the machine” Albany’s own Richard Lachmann show up at the top of the list with an article on the political sociology of Nader and Chomsky and its implications for teaching students. I bet Richard never thought that one of these future Chomsky/Nader/RATM-influenced students in his classroom would be a free market libertarian!

• Josh McCabe