Monthly Archives: October 2011

More on increasing poor population in the suburbs: 53% increase between 2000 and 2010

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The New York Times reports on the growing population of the poor in the American suburbs:

The increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities. The recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010…

“The whole political class is just getting the memo that Ozzie and Harriet don’t live here anymore,” said Edward Hill, dean of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.

This shift has helped redefine the image of the suburbs. “The suburbs were always a place of opportunity — a better school, a bigger house, a better job,” said Scott Allard, an associate professor at the University of Chicago who focuses on social welfare policy and poverty. “Today, that’s not as true as the popular mythology would have us believe.”

Since 2000, the poverty roll has increased by five million in the suburbs, with large rises in metropolitan areas as different as Colorado Springs and Greensboro, N.C.

While these are interesting figures (and I’ve noted them before here and here – the original report from September is a month ahead of this Times piece), arguably the suburbs have never completely fit the Ozzie and Harriet image. While many suburban places were retreats for wealthy and middle-class whites, there have also been working-class suburbs and some non-white suburbs. There is indeed a “popular mythology” – but I wonder if suburban critics have also been interested in pushing this image.

A few other thoughts:

1. Do most Americans today even know the show Ozzie and Harriet? In its time, the show had a long run: 402 radio episodes (1944-1954), 435 television episodes (1952-1966). Even with a lot of episodes, this show seems to have been syndicated less than some other shows.

2. If a greater percentage of the poor in metropolitan areas are now in suburbs, is this considered a positive thing for big cities?

3. Do we have any data on what happens to the poor in suburbs – do they have higher levels of social mobility than the poor in the city or rural areas? Additionally, the article suggests jobs and housing have helped increase the suburban poor population but what is the exact data on this?

Tying purchases of larger fast food items to McMansions and status seeking

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A forthcoming study from researchers from Paris and Northwestern University shows that powerless people make larger fast food purchases in order to show their status:

Consumers who feel powerless reach for extra-large portions of food in an effort to increase their social standing in the eyes of others, a new study suggests.

“An ongoing trend in food consumption is consumers’ tendency to eat more and more,” the researchers wrote in the study to be published in the April 2012 print edition of the Journal of Consumer Research. “The increase in food consumption is particularly prevalent among vulnerable populations, such as lower socioeconomic status consumers.”…

The study authors noted that cultural norms associate some larger items, such as houses, vehicles or flatscreen TVs, with wealth, success and high social status. If consumers feel unhappy with their status, they may take this belief and apply it to food, the researchers suggested.

These consumers may attempt to compensate for their perceived lower status by showing others that they can afford to buy the larger sizes, but instead of a Mcmansion they buy larger portion sizes, according to the researchers. In one of the experiments, the participants perceived that consumers who bought a large coffee at a cafe had a higher status than those who chose medium or small — even when the price of all sizes was the same.

It seems that the key here is that these are the decisions made by powerless people, people who have limited, more legitimate ways to show off their status. So do the authors suggest that people with more power don’t buy items to simply show status? This is an argument typically made about McMansions and SUVs: certain people with money feel the need to show off their wealth with these more ostentatious, larger purchases. On the other hand, the implication is that people with more education or taste would consume other sorts of items, not seeking status. Really? A designer larger, green home isn’t also somewhat about status? Going smaller is necessarily less about status?

I would love to see results of similar experiments done with different groups regarding some of the other consumer items mentioned in this report. I suspect we might find that status seeking purchases look different across different socioeconomic statuses, echoing Bourdieu’s distinctions between those who little capital (in this fast food study) versus more capital and also between those with more education and more money.

Twentysomething: “What people in the past might have gotten from church, I get from the Internet and Facebook”

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In a small segment of a larger interesting article about “twentysomethings” (known in some academic circles as “emerging adults”), one twentysomething blogger talks about the role the Internet plays in her generation’s lives:

Thorman suffered the post-college blues. She worked in an entry-level job, was in a so-so relationship, and wondered if this was all there was to life. Her existence, she says, felt inconsequential: “You graduate from college and you want to matter and be a part of something bigger.”

Then she launched her blog, and all of a sudden she was engaging hundreds of people from around the world in a discussion. The Internet gave her a place for connection and community much like neighborhood bars and churches did for previous generations.

Thorman is part of the 25 percent of twentysomethings today who say they have no religious affiliation. “What people in the past might have gotten from church, I get from the Internet and Facebook,” she says. “That is our religion.”

I have read a number of articles about SNS and Facebook use among emerging adults but I’ve never quite seen this idea before: religion has been replaced by Internet communities.

Additionally, the motivation for being part of these communities is different:

But blogging isn’t just about community and connectivity. It’s fundamentally about the individual. “I like blogging because I feel like a mini-celebrity,” Thorman says.

She’s not the only one to express that sentiment. “Attention is my drug,” Julia Allison told a New York Times writer. Allison is a Georgetown grad who became an Internet celebrity in her twenties and whose photo landed on the cover of Wired magazine with the headline GET INTERNET FAMOUS! EVEN IF YOU’RE NOBODY—JULIA ALLISON AND THE SECRETS OF SELF-PROMOTION. A Pew Research poll asked 18-to-25-year-olds about their generation’s top goals, and 51 percent responded with “to be famous.”

But Thorman doesn’t want fame in the Paris Hilton way—famous for being famous. She wants to be recognized, on the Internet, for her insights and ideas.

These online communities are different than traditional religion then in that the focus is on the individual users and their accomplishments rather than a transcendent power or a totem (in Durkheimian terms).

Where will this all end up? Some options you will hear in the popular discourse:

1. Disillusionment. This article talks a lot about twentysomethings looking for fulfillment and the Internet helps provide this. But is this ultimately satisfying? What if one can’t find a fulfilling long-term career? What if the other choices that were not taken always look more attractive? This argument tends to come from older generations – is there a way that twentysomethings can avoid this?

2. This is just another sign of secularization as organized religion drops in influence among younger generations.

3. The America celebrity culture, literally at everyone’s fingertips both as consumers and producers, will continue to grow. This celebrity culture will make it difficult to have intellectual discussion and debates in an online realm where even the most traditional news organizations have to cater to celebrity-hungry web surfers.

4. If these are the goals of this generation, who will tackle the big issues like dealing with poverty in the world, paying for Social Security and Medicare, etc?

It will be fascinating to watch how this all shakes out.

It is the best of times for teaching sociology and the worst of times for America

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A minister and adjunct instructor of sociology raises an intriguing question: when times are good for teaching sociology, it may be bad times for society.

This is a great time for teaching sociology, which means it is a bad time.

The study of sociology was born of the Industrial Revolution when the gap between the rich and the poor became the greatest ever known. The two groups which I straddle; the religious community and the academic community, became interested and attempted to study social phenomenon with a scientific approach, replacing social myths with evidence and facts.

Somehow we have managed to return statistically to that time. In our country, the wealthiest one percent of the population own 33 percent of the wealth and the wealthiest 10 percent own 70 percent of “our” wealth. It seems we have returned to the ruling class mode of the 19th century in Russia and France—a time when America was awash with “robber barons.”

No wonder folks are taking to the streets.

I wonder if anyone has researched the relationship between the popularity and of sociology compared to the historical milieu. Sociology did emerge out of turbulent times in the mid 1800s but it also seemed to reach peaks in the United States in the prosperous 1920s (the Chicago School) and the 1960s and 1970s while there was both unrest and prosperity. Might this suggest that when academia thrives, i.e. student populations are increasing as well as budgets, sociology (and perhaps other disciplines) thrive? At the very least, we could look at how figures of undergraduate  majors and student enrolled in sociology graduate programs over the years. Perhaps there simply wouldn’t be many dips in the data as sociology programs expand over time and spread into more schools.

Probably the better argument to make here is that sociology appears more relevant in unsettled times. As society dips toward troubles and chaos, people want answers and explanations. Additionally, perceptions of social problems might be more important here than the scale of actual problems. However, I wonder if this tends to give sociology a bad name as people then equate it only with social problems rather than solutions and thriving societies.

“Occupying Naperville 24/7 on Facebook” and “Saturday[s] at 10 AM”

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The Chicago Sun-Times has another report on the Occupy Naperville efforts of this past Saturday. While there are more quotes from the participants than the Chicago Tribune report, the last quote in particular intrigues me:

“We’re going to be occupying Naperville 24/7 on Facebook,” Alesch said. “And we’ll be here Saturday at 10 a.m.”

Several thoughts:

1. Is Occupy Naperville on Facebook really the same kind of protest? See the Facebook page here. Apparently, no one is protesting around-the-clock but there is a sign-making operation in conservative downtown Wheaton.

2. Is the reason this group is only gathering on Saturdays at 10 AM versus an around the clock protest like in New York City because: (1) there are not enough protestors to go around-the-clock (2) they are suburbanites who can’t be there all the time (3) Naperville wouldn’t allow this or there isn’t space for it (imagine if the Riverwalk became the site – what might the city do?)?

Is America caught between democratic inclusion and economic stratification?

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Here is an interesting discussion topic: America’s ability to weave/meld new people groups into the democratic process seems inversely related to America’s ability to have more economic equality.

It’s a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.

At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world…

European countries have done a better job of protecting workers’ salaries and rights but have been reluctant to extend the benefits of their generous welfare state to new immigrants who look and act differently from them. Could America’s lost enthusiasm for income redistribution and progressive taxation be in part a reaction to sharing resources with traditionally excluded groups?

“I do think there is a trade-off between inclusion and equality,” said Gary Becker, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a Nobel laureate. “I think if you are a German worker you are better off than your American equivalent, but if you are an immigrant, you are better off in the U.S.”

I often bring this up in my introduction to sociology course: while the United States has a less than pretty racial and discriminatory history (and there is still much to do), the scale of inclusion in the United States (in a country of roughly 310 million people) is remarkable, particularly compared to some of the issues European countries face.

In the end, does this have to be a zero sum game? Is there a country in the world that has successfully done both of these things? Is there a system that can accomplish both?

And getting into the territory of values and morality, which of these outcomes is more worthwhile if you could only have one?

President Obama vs. Mitt Romney on dealing with housing crisis

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Even though President Obama and Mitt Romney are not officially running against each other yet, they have presented contrasting plans to deal with the housing crisis. Yesterday, President Obama offered a new “revamped refinancing program” that would help 1 to 1.5 million homeowners:

Under Obama’s proposal, homeowners who are still current on their mortgages would be able to refinance no matter how much their home value has dropped below what they still owe…

At the same time, Obama acknowledged that his latest proposal will not do all that’s not needed to get the housing market back on its feet. “Given the magnitude of the housing bubble, and the huge inventory of unsold homes in places like Nevada, it will take time to solve these challenges,” he said…

Presidential spokesman Jay Carney criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for proposing last week while in Las Vegas that the government not interfere with foreclosures. “Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process,” Romney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”

“That is not a solution,” Carney told reporters on Air Force One. He said Romney would tell homeowners, “‘You’re on your own, tough luck.'”

How much of these proposals is about looking for votes versus actually seeking out a plan that will help ease dropping home values, foreclosures, and a housing glut?

At the same time, the Washington Post reports that government efforts in recent years haven’t helped much:

President Obama pledged at the beginning of his term to boost the nation’s crippled housing market and help as many as 9 million homeowners avoid losing their homes to foreclosure.

Nearly three years later, it hasn’t worked out. Obama has spent just $2.4 billion of the $50 billion he promised. The initiatives he announced have helped 1.7 million people. Housing prices remain near a crisis low. Millions of people are deeply indebted, owing more than their properties are worth, and many have lost their homes to foreclosure or are likely to do so. Economists increasingly say that, as a result, Americans are too scared to spend money, depriving the economy of its traditional engine of growth.

The Obama effort fell short in part because the president and his senior advisers, after a series of internal debates, decided against more dramatic actions to help homeowners, worried that they would pose risks for taxpayers and the economy, according to numerous current and former officials. They consistently unveiled programs that underperformed, did little to reduce mortgage debts owed by ordinary Americans and rejected a get-tough approach with banks.

Too risky meaning that it was politically untenable when more people are concerned with risk and deficits?

The conversation about housing could play an interesting role in the 2012 elections as both parties look to claim the mantle of defenders of the American middle-class dream of homeownership.

The intellectual bloodlines of Talcott Parsons

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In response to a review of Robert Bellah’s new book, a sociologist writes to the New York Times to link Robert Bellah and Clifford Geertz to Talcott Parsons:

His contrast of Bellah’s theories of religious evolution with Clifford Geertz’s outlook was also illuminating, but I was surprised he did bnot mention that both Bellah and Geertz were students of Talcott Parsons, a towering figure of mid-20th-century sociology. Indeed, a fuller understanding of Bellah’s and Geertz’s intellectual trajectories demands appreciation of their continuity with Parsonsian theory as well as their breaks with it. Parsons struggled to provide a vision of human agency that makes a place for morality, reason, emotions and biology, and of social order as the product of both human initiative and pre-existing collective forces, which are themselves both cultural and coercive. As Wolfe points out, his two illustrious students continued to struggle with the complexities of how we can be agents as well the product of external forces — and the unique role religion has played in how we struggle to manage these elements.

This seems like prescient analysis to me. While undergraduate sociology majors hear in theory classes that Parsons was the end of functionalism and quickly faded from prominence, isn’t this intellectual bloodline a good measure of Parsons abilities? I never knew both Bellah and Geertz, both well-respected and well-known, were his students and this puts Parsons in a slightly different light.

Has anyone ever put together a sociological genealogy where we could see how generations of scholars have emerged from others? While these would no doubt be socially constructed and emphasize famous scholars, I think it would be fascinating to see.

Unusual 60,000 square foot house in northern Ohio

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Big houses tend to draw attention but particularly eccentric big houses. Here are some of the features of an unusual 60,000 square foot home in northern Ohio:

A wealthy inventor conceived of a home with whimsical, underground ‘streets’ built to scale and inspired by those he’d seen in Georgetown, Paris and Savannah. Above ground, it featured a private beach and marina sculpted into the shores of Lake Erie. And a helicopter pad…

“It takes four-and-a-half hours to show this property,” said Scott Street of Sotheby’s, the listing agent for the Waterwood Estate, which is now listed on the Vermilion real estate market for $19.5 million.

The property sits on 160 acres, boasts three-quarter miles of frontage on Lake Erie and contains a series of “pods” connected by glass corridors that were navigated by scooters and golf carts…

Jacobsen used his trademark “pod” style design to give the design more flexibility and allow it to evolve as Brown wanted other things added. The entire home is a series of 20 castle-like concrete buildings connected by glass corridors and each structure is topped with a slate pyramid.

Perhaps one could argue that any 60,000 square foot home is unusual but this has many intriguing traits.

Why build this property on Lake Erie?

Geneologies as “heavily curated social constructions”

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Tracking genealogies is both a popular hobby and big business. A sociologist argues that these genealogies are actually social constructions of our past:

In Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity, and Community, Eviatar Zerubavel, a sociologist at Rutgers, pulls back the curtain on the genealogical obsession. Genealogies, he argues, aren’t the straightforward, objective accounts of our ancestries we often presume them to be. Instead, they’re heavily curated social constructions, and are as much about our values as they are about the facts of who gave birth to whom…

“No other animals have ‘second cousins once removed,'” Zerubavel points out, “or are aware of having had great-great-great-grandparents”; only people have the more abstract sorts of relatives necessary for a real genealogy. In the meantime, as categories for relatives proliferate and family trees expand, we accrue large numbers of ‘optional’ relatives. We construct our genealogies by choosing, out of a nearly endless array of possibly important or interesting ancestors, the ones who matter to us.

Those choices are highly motivated, and often obviously artificial. Because we want to stretch our family lines far into the past, we often “cut and paste” different branches, claiming, for example, a great-great-grandmother’s stepfather as one of our own ancestors, and following his line into the past. We “braid” ancestral identities together, emphasizing, as President Obama has, that we come from two distinct lines of descent (“a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya”). Sometimes, though, the opposite impulses take hold. We might deliberately “lump” our diverse ancestries together, aiming to consolidate them, using a label like “Eurasian,” to lower the contrast (as Tiger Woods does when he refers to himself as “Cablinasian” — a combination of Caucasian, black, American Indian, and Asian). Or we might “clip” our family trees, obscuring their origins so as to preserve coherence and purity. That, Zerubavel writes, is what the Nazis did with Jewish genealogies: “Going only two generations back when formally defining Jewishness… helped the Nazis avoid realizing how many ‘Aryan’ Germans actually also had Jewish ancestors.”…

The point, Zerubavel writes, is that genealogies don’t all follow the same rules. Depending on what you’re trying to emphasize, you accept, reject, combine, or contrast individuals, families, and even whole ethnic identities. The most objective point of view, as Richard Dawkins has written, would probably hold that “all living creatures are cousins.” But genealogies are partial, selective, subjective, and social. They are as much about the present as they are about the past.

This isn’t too surprising: humans commonly pick and choose what we want to believe and then display to others. Could we argue that genealogies are simply another tool of impression management where we show our best (past) side to others and cover up the people we aren’t as proud of? This doesn’t seem that different than communities that cover up infamous parts of their histories or patriotic narratives that emphasize only the positives.

This reminds me of a high school history project I had to do. For my American History class, we had to make a poster out of our genealogies and there was a prize handed out to the person who could go the farthest back. Several of my family lines didn’t go more than four or five generations back but one of them had been extensively researched back to 46 generations and Alfred the Great, king of the Anglo-Saxons in the late 800s. Several things struck me then as odd:

1. I ended up losing out to a girl who could trace her family back 47 generations. Is this a prize-worthy objective anyway?

2. Who has the time and money to spend on tracing one’s family back 46 generations? Perhaps this doesn’t require to many resources these days with online resources plus what is often available at libraries but it still requires time.

3. Some of the family line was strange as I think one time it went through a cousin and another time for a daughter rather than a son. It seemed clearly set up to get back to people like Sir Francis Bacon and Alfred the Great.

But, for the day or two that my poster was up in the classroom, I could say that I could trace my family back 46 generations when most people could not.