Monthly Archives: July 2011

A unique way to acquire a McMansion: “adverse posession”

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Amidst many foreclosures across the country, one Texas man believes he has found a way to acquire a suburban McMansion for $16. The move involves invoking “adverse possession” to take possession of the $300,000 home:

“This is not a normal process, but it is not a process that is not known,” he said. “It’s just not known to everybody.”

He says an online form he printed out and filed at the Denton County courthouse for $16 gave him rights to the house. The paper says the house was abandoned and he’s claiming ownership…

But, Robinson said just by setting up camp in the living room, Texas law gives him exclusive negotiating rights with the original owner. If the owner wants him out, he would have to pay off his massive mortgage debt and the bank would have to file a complicated lawsuit.

Robinson believes because of the cost, neither is likely. The law says if he stays in the house, after three years he can ask the court for the title.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out as it would require someone, the true owner, the bank holding the mortgage, or the government, to move this guy out. It is funny that the neighbors seem to be the ones leading the charge against this guy: are they simply jealous that he was able to acquire a home for this little money?

But perhaps this story hints at a positive side effect of the foreclosure crisis: states and other governmental bodies get a chance to review all sorts of laws regarding mortgages, foreclosures, and housing possession.

A new kind of capital: “erotic capital”

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Sociologists have written a lot about “economic, social, and cultural capital.” One sociologist suggests adding a new category: “erotic capital“:

Even some academics are waxing poetic about the hidden value of sexual prowess. Sociologist and London School of Economics professor Catherine Hakim, author of Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom, believes that “erotic capital” is the fourth human asset, in addition to economic, social and cultural capital.

She defines it broadly as physical and social attractiveness, and says that flirting is one manifestation. “Charisma often includes flirting, when appropriate,” Hakim says, “and these days even CEOs are expected to display charisma.”

While the rest of this post is about “flirting gone wrong,” I wonder how other sociologists would view the idea of “erotic capital.” People have some control over their looks, particularly if they have money (which often enables better health care), but it is also predetermined. Additionally, there is pressure to conform to culturally-specific standards of beauty. All of us are socialized into particular patterns of attractiveness which could range from being well-mannered to flirtatious and dressy to roguish.

There are quite a few studies that discuss the effects of being attractive. I don’t recall Goffman’s dramaturgical work mentioning much about “physical or social attractiveness.” While such studies did account for power dynamics, certainly attractiveness plays some role in interaction. Can attractiveness be enough to overcome deficits in other areas of capital or would it be in fourth place in terms of importance about the types of capital?

The unpredictable nature of Twitter cascades and social marketing

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Tim Harford in the Financial Times discusses mathematical sociologist Duncan Watt’s research on why certain information in social media catches fire among a large group of people (like in a “Twitter cascade”) and other information does not. Watts suggests several factors are important: we tend to see what becomes successful and what is not, popular posts are small and uncommon, and “it’s impossible to predict which tweets will start cascades.”

There are lot of people who would like to take advantage of social media to share information and sell products. This sort of research suggests it is more difficult to do this than some might think. On one hand, having a lot of friends or followers means that more people could see your information. But on the other hand, this does not necessarily mean that people will pass along your information to their own set of friends. If Watts is right, does this mean that companies or organizations should change their strategies or even limit social media marketing?

This is not just a problem in studying social media. It is also difficult within other fields, such as film, music, and books, to predict what will become a success and what will not. A common solution there is to simply produce a lot of material and then wait for a small percentage of products to generate a lot of money and help subsidize the rest of the material. This also seems to be the case with social media: there are a lot of people sharing a lot of information but only a small part of spreads through a larger population. This might also mean that gatekeepers, people who have the ability to sift through and analyze/criticize content, will continue to be important as the average user won’t be able to see the broader view of the social media world.

Could some of this problem be the result of the actual design and user experience of Twitter? If so, might companies and others work toward creating different forms of social media that would increase or enhance the sharing of information across a broader set of users?

Peter Berger on his career as an “accidental sociologist”

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Sociologists don’t often produce memoirs. But Peter Berger has a new book that has some insights into his career:

Since the 1970s, Berger admits to having felt increasingly removed from — or marginalized by — contemporary sociology, having no flair for quantitative analysis and little sympathy with leftist political agendas. As a social scientist, he stresses that his research is as “value-free” as he can make it, but that as a man, he is a moderate Christian, and as a citizen, he is what we might call a cultural conservative. He doesn’t disguise the fact that wealthy Texas businessmen and right-leaning think tanks have often sponsored his work…

During the mid-1950s, Berger served in the Army, and in the late 1950s, he taught at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina. These experiences shocked him into an awareness of American prejudice. He gradually came to believe that sociology’s “humanistic” purpose lay in debunking “the fictions that serve as alibis for oppression and cruelty” and, in particular, “unmasking the murderous ideologies underlying the death penalty, racism, and the persecution of homosexuals.” From these convictions, Berger has never wavered.

So why don’t more sociologists write about and think through their own careers in print? Perhaps there are a few reasons:

1. One would have to be a big name, someone like Berger, that many sociologists and other outside the field would easily recognize.

2. This sort of work goes against the data-driven expectations of the field. I suppose someone could argue they are using themself as the data in the work.

3. One wouldn’t get much academic credit for such a work since it is unlikely to advance the field.

At the same time, I think such books could be very useful, particularly to undergraduates who have a hazier view of what being a “professional sociologist” looks like. I would guess that many sociologists could offer compelling stories about how sociology changed their view of the world and how their research and teaching impacted others.

On another note, I remember reading another work by Berger that had some personal insights: Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity. I wasn’t particularly impressed.

Social inequalities in accessing open government data

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Some governments are providing more open data. But, this may not be enough as citizens don’t necessarily have equal access to the data or abilities to interpret the information:

At least 16 nations have major open data initiatives; in many more, pressure is building for them to follow suit. The US has posted nearly 400,000 data sets at Data.gov, and organizations like the Sunlight Foundation and MAPlight.org are finding compelling ways to use public data—like linking political contributions to political actions. It’s the kind of thing that seems to prove Louis Brandeis’ famous comment: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” But transparency alone is not a panacea, and it may even have a few nasty side effects. Take the case of the Bhoomi Project, an ambitious effort by the southern Indian state of Karnataka to digitize some 20 million land titles, making them more accessible. It was supposed to be a shining example of e-governance: open data that would benefit everyone and bring new efficiencies to the world’s largest democracy. Instead, the portal proved a boon to corporations and the wealthy, who hired lawyers and predatory land agents to challenge titles, hunt for errors in documentation, exploit gaps in records, identify targets for bribery, and snap up property. An initiative that was intended to level the playing field for small landholders ended up penalizing them; bribery costs and processing time actually increased.

A level playing field doesn’t mean much if you don’t know the rules or have the right sporting equipment. Uploading a million documents to the Internet doesn’t help people who don’t know how to sift through them. Michael Gurstein, a community informatics expert in Vancouver, British Columbia, has dubbed this problem the data divide. Indeed, a recent study on the use of open government data in Great Britain points out that most of the people using the information are already data sophisticates. The less sophisticated often don’t even know it’s there.

This touches on two issues of social inequality that are not discussed as much as they might be. First, not everyone has consistent access to the internet. It may be a necessity for the younger generations but for example, there are still problems in doing web surveys because internet users are not a representative cross-sample of the US population. Making the data available on the internet would make it available to more users but not necessarily all users. This ties in with some earlier thoughts I’ve had about whether internet access will become a de facto or defined human right in the future.

Second, not everyone knows where the open data is or how to go through it. Government information dumps require sorting through and some time to figure out what is going on. There may or may not be a guide through the information. As someone who has worked with some large sociological datasets, it always takes some time to become acclimated with the files and data before one can begin an analysis. This should legitimately become part of a college education: some training in how to sort through information and common databases. If we get to a point where the average informed citizen needs to be able to sort through government information online, wouldn’t this be a basic skill that all need to be taught? As the commentator suggests, the trained and sophisticated can take advantage of this data while the average citizen may be left behind.

The idea of having more open government information should cause us to think about how the internet might help close the gap between people (though I don’t hold any utopian expectations about this) rather than sustain or exacerbate social inequalities.

The weekend of “Carmageddon” in Los Angeles

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Local highway construction doesn’t typically garner national attention. But there has been plenty of news for weeks about a key highway closing in Los Angeles:

Interstate 405, a freeway normally so clogged that locals like to joke that its name is shorthand for “traffic that moves no faster than 4 or 5 miles an hour,” is closing for 53 hours for a major construction project.

As crews worked feverishly to get the freeway open in time for Monday morning’s rush-hour, residents have been making plans for weeks to stay off local roads, lest they trigger what officials dubbed “Carmageddon.”

Such an event could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of the city.

With warnings having been broadcast through television, radio, social media and flashing freeway signs as far away as San Francisco, much of the city’s nearly 4 million residents appear ready to stay off the roads.

As I have seen multiple stories about this, several thoughts came to mind:

1. It is a 53 hour closure, not the end of the world. This has been overhyped. People will survive.

2. Shouldn’t planners be lauded more for doing the work over a summer weekend? The preparation for the whole project actually sounds pretty good.

3. People don’t often think about roads until they are a problem. This is a good example of that.

4. Even though it may have been overhyped, this is still a legitimate social problem, particularly for emergency vehicles and other important highway users. This seems to be more common with highway construction: a long, well-publicized campaign to make sure that residents are made aware of what is to come. If people know what is coming, they are usually pretty good at making other plans. Like with many other social issues, public officials need to walk a fine line between overhyping this, like using the term “Carmageddon,” while also making sure that people are aware of the severity of the problem.

5. This would be a good opportunity to think about new transportation options in the Los Angeles region. As the map accompany the AP story shows, there are only a few routes across the Santa Monica mountains. The answer is simply not to construct additional highway lanes and more drivers will then use the highway.

6. This reminds me of some examples of cities that have eliminated highways, like the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, and traffic has adapted. Closing the highway for a short time is a nuisance but if the highway was closed longer, I bet people would adapt.

Redistricting with “sociological integrity”

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Redistricting can often a contentious activity. But what if it is done with “sociological integrity”?

“Districts are ordered generally to maintain sociological integrity. Seward was happy paired with Homer and Seldovia as having the only outside deep water ports for the Kenai Peninsula,” Seaton said. “Now Seward is with Nikiski and Sterling – Homer with no other ports; Seldovia with Kodiak.”

A well-ordered voting district is one that generally has an amiable sociological mix that share economic and cultural ties to work toward common legislative goals. Nonetheless, Homer fares well with other Lower Kenai Peninsula communities like Ninilchik and Kasilof, and now the Russian village of Nikolaevsk, which formerly was represented in an entirely different district. The residents of Funny River Road may lack common issues and it “could take a while to develop that cohesiveness,” Seaton said. “It’s just different issues because they are looking at a main economic structure that is inland and revolves around the river. Not that there’s anything wrong with their new alignment, it’s just people will need to feel their way through and acclimate to working with different areas and different interests.”…

Since Alaska is one of the few states once found guilty of gerrymandering districts to favor issues or candidates, Alaska elections are overseen by the Federal Election Commission to ensure a strong voice for electing a minority candidate.

I like this term, “sociological integrity,” and think it has potential if it generally referred to positive social outcomes and plans drawn up from sociological principles.

Perhaps this is unique to Alaska, but this sounds like a different way of drawing up legislative districts: they should have a “amiable sociological mix that share economic and cultural ties to work toward common legislative goals.” What sounds different about this is that districts in other states are often drawn to collect a certain number of votes for a particular party. Those in charge of redistricting want to solidfy their own positions and reduce the ability of their competition to compete in districts. The definition from this article refers not to votes but rather a shared cultural and economic history as uniting voters. Perhaps party affiliations are tied to this (an example from the article above: perhaps deep water port communities are all on one side) but cultural and economic ties are also important as this is how residents and community leaders connect with each other more frequently.

Does any other state consider cultural ties when drawing up legislative boundaries or is it all just a naked grab for votes?

Using mapping to help students understand the racial dimension of their world

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A sociologist describes a mapping project that helps students connect their everyday experiences to larger racial patterns:

Theresa Suarez, an associate professor of sociology at San Marcos, has taught partially online courses on racial and ethnic identity for years. But Suarez found it was difficult to enable her students, many of whom are people of color, to connect the theoretical material she taught in class and their own narratives, she explained during a session here on Tuesday at the Emerging Technologies in Online Learning conference, hosted by MERLOT and the Sloan Consortium…

Suarez, who describes herself as late-adopter (her presentation here was a rare foray for her into teaching with PowerPoint) and an occasional techno-skeptic, resolved to find a technological solution that would not require a lot of complexity or jargon. So she turned to online software that uses geographic information systems to let students superimpose demographic data about race and ethnicity onto maps of their local communities.

Suarez instructed her students to place digital pushpins on places that shape their own experiences of where they live. “Where do you shop?” she said, by way of example. “Where do you surf? Where does your girlfriend or boyfriend live? What schools did you attend? Where do you work? Where don’t you go?”

The students then had to reflect, in essay form, on the points of reference marked by the pushpins, describing how each of those places plays a role in their identities — particularly in light of what they learned by seeing demographic data mapped on to their communities.

Perhaps this project is not all that innovative but I like it for several reasons:

1. This seems to be a microcosm of a sociological perspective: providing a structural context for our individual actions. This project would help students see how their daily activities and identities are shaped by demographic patterns, even if they hadn’t noticed them before. Instead of seeing these activities as individual choices, students can see how racial patterns influence their behavior.

2. Students can use their personal experiences as “data” and then work to provide sociological explanations.

3. These mapping abilities and software are fairly easy to obtain and they would be useful for future work.

4. I’ve always liked maps as they provide an overhead view of the world (just like sociology).

I’ve thought about doing some sort of mapping project in my Introduction to Sociology class and this may just be a good springboard.

Gangs in the suburbs

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Suburbanites often dream that they have escaped or avoided the problems of the big city. But some of these issues are no longer just big city problems: gangs have been in the suburbs for some time now.

Gangs, once a threat confined to city streets, began expanding outward two decades ago. Now, suburban and rural communities are the center of a significant and growing gang problem, according to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment report.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation found that nearly all communities surrounding Nashville have gang activity, including the traditional suburbs of Nashville, such as those around Hickory Hollow Mall, and small towns in Williamson, Rutherford, Sumner and Wilson counties.

These smaller, residential communities offer fresh territory for selling drugs and that increases the gang’s revenue.

“There’s money out in the suburbs,” said Mike Carlie, criminology and sociology professor at Missouri State University. “There are people in the suburbs that want drugs.”

Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, I can recall when local law enforcement and other officials started talking about gangs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was something that people in the community weren’t completely prepared for and that threatened the idyllic suburban lifestyle.

I haven’t read much research about suburban gang activity, particularly beyond inner-ring suburbs and in more affluent communities. I would be interested to know how it affects average suburban residents and civic organizations: are they willing to combat the problem and deal with some larger social issues or would they prefer to throw the book at gang members or would they move to further out or more affluent suburbs that don’t have a perceived gang problem?

One of my favorite scenes from Gang Leader for a Day involved the gang leaders meeting at a large suburban house to talk business. While the gang business, mainly involving poor neighborhoods in Chicago, was taking place, their kids were swimming in the pool and acting out the suburban lifestyle. What did the neighbors think? Even a more realistic show like The Wire is set in a place where the public would expect gang activity: run-down areas of Baltimore. Why not put together another show that takes gangs to the suburbs?This would perhaps be too scary for many Americans to consider.

How neighborhood affluence affects heat wave deaths

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In describing which residents are more affected by heat waves, a newspaper piece cities a sociological study and misses the bigger picture by emphasizing whether there is a shopping district nearby:

People who live in areas without “inviting” businesses are more at risk of dying. A 2006 study published in the American Sociological Review looked at the 1995 heat wave in Chicago and found that mortality rates were higher in areas where businesses were not well tended and leaned toward the bar-and-liquor-store variety.

With fewer businesses that could coax the elderly and other at-risk residents out of their homes and into the safety of air-conditioning, death rates rise, the study authors found.

What is the lesson here: move to a neighborhood with well-kept stores in order to reduce one’s risk of dying in a heat wave? On the whole, it isn’t really the stores that matter: it is about the overall affluence of the neighborhood which then affects the stores. People living in neighborhood with fewer stores are also more likely to be in places with less resources and perhaps less social services. The newspaper is presenting some data without providing a deeper look at the underlying relationship between these two factors.

Then, perhaps fighting the effects of heat waves goes far beyond opening swimming pools and “cooling centers.” Even as many cities have developed plans to deal with heat waves, including Chicago which was hit hard by a 1995 heat wave, it is part of larger structural issues that dictate which neighborhoods have resources and which do not.