Monthly Archives: December 2011

Arguments against Georgetown sociology course on Jay-Z

Posted on by

In a story that continues to have legs, here is the summary of some arguments against the sociology class about Jay-Z at Georgetown:

While the chairman of Georgetown’s sociology department defends the class, outraged students like junior Stephen Wu have called it “poppycock” and said serious scholars should be delving into Homer not Shawn Carter (Jay-Z’s real name).

“The great bard inclines toward the divine; he brings to light much of the character of human nature and puts man in communion with higher things,” Wu sniffed in the Georgetown campus newspaper, The Hoya. “Rap music frolics in the gutter, resplendent in vulgarity and the most crass of man’s wants.”

Other critics contend Dyson is giving a pass to a rapper who made his bones with raunchy lyrics that ripped women as greedy gold diggers in songs like “Big Pimpin’.”

The two arguments are these:

1. Whether colleges should be teaching about the best of Western Civilization, a constant argument on college campuses. Can any “popular” topics be taught about on campus? Can there be room in a curriculum for both the “great books” and modern topics? This is a broader issue about what belongs in a college curriculum.

2. The content of Jay-Z’s lyrics which can be crude. Should these lyrics simply be condemned and never discussed or could classes like these try to provide some context and explanation?

Another matter in this article: the professor of the class, Michael Eric Dyson, is described first as a “TV pundit.” It does appear Dyson is often in the media but he also has a doctorate so he is not simply another commentator. I don’t know Dyson’s work at all but does calling him a “TV pundit” also denigrate the subject of the class?

I wonder if underlying these arguments is also the idea that this class sounds preposterous compared to a perceived need for American students to pursue STEM degrees.

Occupy Wall Street to move into foreclosures?

Posted on by

As Occupy Wall Street moves forward, here is one of the next steps is to move into foreclosures:

Occupy Wall Street has left the street and gone legit. They’ve rented office space in the Financial District and meet daily at a public atrium inside Deutche Bank.

“We’ve managed to, in basically two months, propel the issues of inequality and social justice to the top of our national discussion,” said one Occupier.

In various cities today there were marches on a variety of issues, but the movement plans new tactics. On Tuesday around the nation, it plans to occupy foreclosed homes. In mid-January, a call to pitch tents outside of Congress.

Foreclosures have generally taken a back seat recently to issues like jobs, stock markets, and Republican presidential nominees. Can OWS turn attention back to housing? It will be very interesting to see where they occupy homes (the worst areas like Merced, California or Las Vegas?), how they sustain their collective energy if they are more indeed spread out, and how neighbors respond.

Some recent polls on the most important issues in the minds of Americans:

–PwC Health Research Institute in mid-November: job creation is most important and healthcare and the deficit are tied at number two.

–Gallup in early November: the economy leads the way but there is no mention of housing or foreclosures.

–Rasmussen Reports in mid-October: economy leads by wide margin with 84% saying it is “very important.” No separate category for housing so hard to parse out jobs, stock market, housing.

Perhaps there aren’t many people tracking dissatisfaction with housing in recent months?

If these polls are correct, should the OWS focus on job creation and the economy rather than branch out into foreclosures/the housing market?

Adding sociology to the MCAT

Posted on by

I’ve wondered recently about sociology in grade schools and here is news that sociology has been added to the MCAT, the entrance exam for medical schools:

The 2015 change marks the fifth major alteration of the MCAT since it was introduced in the 1920s.

The new MCAT will include the addition of an entirely new section titled “Psychological, Social and Biological Foundations of Behavior,” as well as a more intense examination of the biomedical sciences, such as genetics and biochemistry…

Koetje said the addition of psychology and sociology to the test was necessary because of the advances made in health care as well as the sociocultural changes within the health care system.

“Patients are more complex today, and medical schools have to ensure that these students will be capable of treating the whole person and everything that comes with that,” Koetje said.

As the article hints at, will more schools now have pre-med students take courses in sociology and psychology in order to prepare? In response to this question (part of a larger set of FAQs about the change), here is what the AAMC says:

Examinees who would not otherwise take biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, introductory psychology, and introductory sociology would need to study the concepts tested. We do not anticipate the need for additional coursework in research methods and statistics.

I wonder exactly what sociological concepts will be included on the test. I assume race, social class, and gender are non-negotiable?

This also gives sociology teachers more room to tell undergraduates in Intro to Sociology classes that sociology is helpful for many fields, including medicine.

Stanford student bristles at question: “What are you going to do with a sociology degree?”

Posted on by

A Stanford student writes about having to answer a question common to sociology majors:

What annoys me, however, is when people ask “So what are you going to do with a Sociology degree?” Within the phrasing and intonation of this question are often a number of subtle assumptions and judgments. The first is the implication that I’ve chosen a useless degree because it doesn’t give me a clear path or job field to enter after college. The second is the assumption that my undergraduate degree determines my next steps; that because I am getting a B.A. in Sociology, I will pursue work in this field. The ultimate frustration I have with this question, one that often comes out during the course of the conversation, is the need for the person asking me the question to fit my answer and future plans into a discrete career label such as teacher, lawyer or lobbyist. In reality, none of these is true. My degree is not useless. Nor am I required to pursue things related to sociology. In fact, my job will probably not have any sort of neat label at all.

I find these issues crop up when talking to Stanford students as well, and I often feel looked down upon for not having chosen a more pre-professional path. I’ve had numerous conversations with techie students in which it is clear that they look down upon fuzzy majors. The culture among Stanford students lauds techie degrees as practical, which ends up framing fuzzy majors as useless. Although it is true that a Stanford engineering degree offers higher salaries and a guaranteed job right out of Stanford, a liberal arts degree is not a death knell. Liberal arts degrees have tremendous value even though they don’t shepherd the student into an obvious career trajectory and throw money at them.

My degree opens up a world of possibilities to me. Although the skills I’ve gained are less quantifiable than those from techie majors, my time at Stanford has vastly improved my writing, my critical thinking skills, my research skills and my ability to put together a coherent and convincing argument. All of these are qualities that employers look for and make me a valuable commodity on the job market. Every company that employs those high-paid CS majors also needs people to do marketing, HR, management and public relations. Any and all of these options are available to me with my liberal arts degree from Stanford.

People forget that many Americans have jobs have little to nothing to do with their undergraduate department, so it’s of little concern to me that my job be related to sociology. Some of my relatives get this and some don’t, but as our conversations continue they struggle to find a job label for the future me; do I want to be a consultant? A social worker? I should be a teacher! It’s like they’re grasping at straws for a name that they know and understand, failing to realize that jobs don’t always fall into these labels. Like most adults, I will probably have a job that has a title that you’ve never heard of and that doesn’t fall cleanly into any category. What’s important to me is that I find a job that accomplishes something that I believe is a valuable use of my time; the end goal is what’s important, not the name.

Some of this argument sounds very common to the perspective of millennials  such as a career needs to be “a valuable use of my time.” But she is also making a common defense of the liberal arts and the need for these skills in the workplace.

I don’t know that I would tell students that they could do anything “with my liberal arts degree from Stanford” (is the Stanford part here much more important than the liberal arts component?) or that it should be “of little concern to me that my job be related to sociology.” I think there is plenty to sell about sociology which she hints at: a way of looking at the world that is difficult to find in other majors. The broad overview and theoretical approach sociology offers that gets at the complex patterns present in society through a set of data collection and analysis skills is very valuable. Of course, this can be packaged and used in a number of different fields but sociology is simply not just a “fuzzy major” or just another major option. In a globalized society marked by increasing levels of complexity and dynamic change, we need more sociology majors.

Why cases of scientific fraud can affect everyone in sociology

Posted on by

The recent case of a Dutch social psychologist admitting to working with fraudulent data can lead some to paint social psychology or the broader discipline of sociology as problematic:

At the Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson looks at the “Chump Effect” that prompts reporters to write up dubious studies uncritically:

The silliness of social psychology doesn’t lie in its questionable research practices but in the research practices that no one thinks to question. The most common working premise of social-psychology research is far-fetched all by itself: The behavior of a statistically insignificant, self-selected number of college students or high schoolers filling out questionnaires and role-playing in a psych lab can reveal scientifically valid truths about human behavior.

And when the research reaches beyond the classroom, it becomes sillier still…

Described in this way, it does seem like there could be real journalistic interest in this study – as a human interest story like the three-legged rooster or the world’s largest rubber band collection. It just doesn’t have any value as a study of abstract truths about human behavior. The telling thing is that the dullest part of Stapel’s work – its ideologically motivated and false claims about sociology – got all the attention, while the spectacle of a lunatic digging up paving stones and giving apples to unlucky commuters at a trash-strewn train station was considered normal.

A good moment for reaction from a conservative perspective: two favorite whipping boys, liberal (and fraudulent!) social scientists plus journalists/the media (uncritical and biased!), can be tackled at once.

Seriously, though: the answer here is not to paint entire academic disciplines as problematic because of one case of fraud. Granted, some of the questions raised are good ones that social scientists themselves have raised recently: how much about human activity can you discover through relatively small sample tests of American undergraduates? But good science is not based on one study anyway. An interesting finding should be corroborated by similar studies done in different places at different times with different people. These multiple tests and observations help establish the reliability and validity of findings. This can be a slow process, another issue in a media landscape where new stories are needed all the time.

This reminds me of Joel Best’s recommendations regarding dealing with statistics. One common option is to simply trust all statistics. Numbers look authoritative, often come from experts, and they can be overwhelming. Just accepting them can be easy. At the other pole is the common option of saying that all statistics are simply interpretation and are manipulated so we can’t trust any of them. No numbers are trustworthy. Neither approaches are good options but they are relatively easy options. The better route to go when dealing with scientific studies is to have the basic skills necessary to understand whether they are good studies or not and how the process of science works. In this case, this would be a great time to call for better training among journalists about scientific studies so they can provide better interpretations for the public.

In the end, when one prominent social psychologist admits to massive fraud, the repercussions might be felt by others in the field for quite a while.

The role of sociology in Illinois learning standards for social science for grades 1-5

Posted on by

Building on a post from yesterday about textbook errors in sociology textbooks for fifth-graders in Macedonia, I was interested in knowing more about Illinois learning standards for social science for grades 1-5. Here are the five goals related to social science (pgs. 3-6 of the PDF):

Goal 14 – Understand political systems, with an emphasis on the United States.
The preservation and advancement of a free society within a constitutional democracy demands an informed, competent, and humane citizenry. Toward this end, civic education must be provided to students to help them learn, practice, and demonstrate the traits of a responsible citizen. This goal can be accomplished through developmental steps by giving students the knowledge, skills, and opportunities to illustrate their understanding of the following…

Goal 15: Understand economic systems, with an emphasis on the United States.
People’s lives are directly affected by the economies around them. All people engage in economic activity: saving, investing, trading, producing and consuming. By understanding economic systems and learning the economic way of thinking, students will be able to make informed choices and more effectively use resources. Such understanding benefits both individuals and society as a whole…

Goal 16 – Understand events, trends, individuals and movements shaping the history of Illinois, the United States and other nations. History encompasses the whole of human experience, from the earliest times to the present. As such, it provides perspectives on how the forces of continuity and change have shaped human life, both our own and others’. The study of history involves more than knowing the basic names, dates, and places associated with an event or episode. This knowledge is an essential first step to historical interpretation of the past, but historical study also moves on to a methodology that develops a deeper understanding within an individual…

Goal 17: Understand world geography and the effects of geography on society, with an emphasis on the United States. The study of geography is a lifelong learning process vital to the well being of students, the state of Illinois, the United States, and the world. As an integrative discipline that brings together the physical and human dimensions of the world, geography strives to make sense out of the spatial arrangements of people, places, and environments on Earth. Geography is a field of study that enables us to find answers to questions about the world around us. Geographers ask and attempt to answer questions about where something is located, why it is there, how it got there, how it is connected to other things and places, how it is arranged in relation to other things, and the significance of its location…

Goal 18 – Understand social systems, with an emphasis on the United States. Humans belong to groups from the moment of birth. In order to better understand their roles as individuals and group members of a diverse society, students must know and understand how culture has changed and how it is expressed. Students should also understand how and why groups and institutions are formed. When students understand these concepts, they are better able to contribute to their community and society.

I suppose sociology would fit mostly into Goal 18 though anthropology could also fit here with the emphasis on culture. But it is pretty clear in these goals that politics, economics, history, and geography are emphasized and these disciplines are more clearly described.

Before these goals (pg. 3 of the PDF), there is some clarity about the disciplines involved in the social sciences: “Among the integrated social science disciplines are political science, economics, history, geography, sociology, anthropology, and psychology.” And later in the document (pg. 76), in the glossary specifically for Goal 18, here is the definition of sociology: “Sociology: The scientific and positivistic study of society.”

It would be interesting to know more about how these goals were developed. A later portion of the document doesn’t suggest that the forming of Goal 18 was guided by national or state advisory groups; however, two sociology textbooks that are cited in the bibliography.

In practice, is the term sociology ever used with students in connection with these goals? Do common textbooks ever use the term? Is sociology introduced to students regularly before high school or college? The social science standards for grades 6-12 perhaps allow for a little more room (see page 60 of the PDF).

Connecting Arrested Development’s George Bluth and McMansions

Posted on by

Amidst news that the television show Arrested Development will return via Netflix, I saw recently a connection between the patriarch of the show, George Bluth, and McMansions in an opinion piece dealing with a New York Times op-ed on sprawl from earlier in the week:

Rarely is a discouraging word ever spoken against government spending millions to widen roads, install sewerage mains, and build schools so George Bluth Bill Pulte can build yet another exurban mcmansion development.

The reference to Bill Pulte refers to Pulte Homes, self-described as “one of the nation’s largest homebuilders.” (From personal experience, I can safely say Pulte did not build only McMansions.) This is not the first time I’ve seen this connection. Indeed, a quick Google search of “George Bluth” AND McMansion turns up 708 results. One poster in a discussion of McMansions at DemocraticUnderground.com even went so far as to ask ” WWGBD? What would George Bluth do?” Probably not the best question to guide one’s life.  An Entertainment Weekly review after the pilot emphasized McMansions as part of the setting for the show:

Shot in digital video and freed from the enhanced indulgence of a studio audience, the show romps in McMansionland and finds plenty to laugh at: grad students practicing Native American drum rituals, maids on public transportation carting racks full of furs for storage, and housing developments with names like Sudden Valley.

I don’t know if this is an authoritative site including all AD scripts but this search for “McMansions” turns up no matches. And having seen all of the episodes, I do remember the show poking fun at these neighborhoods (giant homes built in what looked like partially completed neighborhoods in a desert) but can’t recall the main characters really ruing the fact that the family business involved building McMansions. While the irony was surely intended to draw attention to the absurdity of such homes, are they ever specifically denounced on the show?

This isn’t the only television show connected to McMansions. The Sopranos also invited comparisons as they lived in a well-appointed New Jersey home and certain reality shows, like The Bachelor/Bachelorette have prompted critics to say the contestants live in McMansions.

Errors in sociology textbooks for fifth-graders in Macedonia?

Posted on by

As part of a story about the larger “textbook trauma” in Macedonia, there was this interesting tidbit:

Widespread mistakes in Macedonian textbooks came to light last year when journalists wrote about an error-riddled sociology text for fifth-graders. The scandal resulted in the recall of that book and a massive, ongoing review of all of the country’s textbooks. Corrections and new books have still not been released, and in the meantime teachers and parents are essentially on their own to police the existing books…

In the case of the sociology textbook that started the controversy, the government spent 1 million denars ($22,000) to withdraw and replace a reported 15,400 copies. Among its shortcomings: listing popular entertainers alongside venerated names as lights of Macedonian culture; two visual depictions of the prophet Muhammad; no listing of Catholicism among the country’s faiths; contradictory estimates on the percentage of the population that is Muslim; and mistaken depictions of the flags of Macedonia and Kosovo.

The Education Ministry has sued the book’s panel of reviewers for the cost of pulping and replacing it.

The sociology book that took its place states, mistakenly, that Greece has a coastline along the Adriatic Sea.

The fact that textbooks contain errors is not surprising: sociologist James Louwen pointed some key American examples in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. But these errors seem quite problematic for an area of the world where there is a (tenuous?) blend of cultures and countries.

What is more interesting to me is that fifth-graders in Macedonia have sociology textbooks. Perhaps these books are similar to geography or history books but having sociology in the schools at younger ages sounds great. Students should learn about their own culture and society as well as think about how it differs from other societies. Perhaps they don’t need sociological theory at that point (Weber and Durkheim for fifth-graders?) but this could be a good start.

A musician who argues he can make more money by giving music away for free

Posted on by

Musician Derek Webb argues that he can make more money in the long run by giving away his music than selling albums or tracks on iTunes and providing his music to streaming services like Spotify:

For example, I am paid $0.00029 per stream of a song on Spotify, and even this amount depends on whether the song is being streamed by a paid user or someone using the service for free.  This means it will take upwards of 3,500 streams of a single song on Spotify to earn $1.00 versus that same revenue for one iTunes song purchase (not to mention the fact that Spotify refuses to pay the same amount to independent artists as they pay major labels, unlike iTunes)…

If someone buys my music on iTunes, Amazon, or in a record store (remember those?), let alone streams it on Spotify, it’s all short-term money.  That might be the last interaction I have with that particular fan.  But if I give that fan the same record for free in exchange for a connection (an e-mail and a zip code), I can make that same money, if not double or triple that amount, over time.  And “over time” is key, since the ultimate career success is sustainability.  Longevity.  See, the reality is that out of a $10 iTunes album sale, I probably net around a dollar.  So if I give that record away, and as a result am able to get that fan out to a concert (I can use their zip code to specifically promote my shows in their area), I make approximately $10 back, and twice that if they visit the merch table.  I can sell them an older/newer album and make approximately $10 back.  The point is, if I can find some organic way to creatively engage them in a paid follow-up transaction, I increase my revenue 10 times on any one of these interactions.

This is all an equation of scale. I might be able to outright sell 20,000 albums for $10 each (again, netting around $1 each).  Or I can remove any barrier from someone hearing about or discovering my music by giving it away, which will result in an order of magnitude more albums distributed, maybe around 100,000.  If I can then convert 20% of those free downloads into paid transactions of any kind over time, I have probably well over doubled or tripled my money.  And I can do this repeatedly as I continue to grow, and learn more about and invest in my tribe, to whom I now have a direct connection (rather than having to go through Facebook, Twitter, or Lord forbid, MySpace to access them).

If this is true for middling to struggling artists, what does this mean for the music industry in the long term? Will many artists follow Webb’s example and can they if they aren’t already established artists? I assume the low compensation for artists from streaming services has to do with the services making money.

I wonder if this is just about the money or if this is also about certain artists wanting to truly connect with fans as opposed to simply selling them music. Webb suggests there has to be a more meaningful relationship between artist and consumer for the whole industry to thrive:

Music does have monetary value.  But more than its monetary value is its emotional value, its relational value, its artistic value, even its spiritual value.  When you make meaningful connections with people based on artistic self-expression, I think you’re actually increasing the value of that art based on the many ways it’s valued.

How many musicians see it this way?

A side note: I haven’t yet tried Spotify but I have been tempted, particularly since my Facebook feed has been full of messages noting the songs my friends have heard through the service. If you think I should really jump on board, let me know. Webb’s opinion wouldn’t necessarily stop me from trying the service but I would now think more than before about joining.

The “theology” of “inevitable suburban decline”

Posted on by

Joel Kotkin keeps firing at suburban critics:

Perhaps no theology more grips the nation’s mainstream media — and the planning community — more than the notion of inevitable suburban decline. The Obama administration’s housing secretary, Shaun Donavan, recently claimed, “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.”…

In the past decade, suburbia extended its reach, even around the greatest, densest and most celebrated cities. New York grew faster than most older cities, with 29% of its growth taking place in five boroughs, but that’s still a lot lower than the 46% of growth they accounted for in the 1990s. In Chicago, the suburban trend was even greater. The outer suburbs and exurbs gained over a half million people while the inner suburbs stagnated and the urban core, the Windy City, lost some 200, 000 people.

Rather than flee to density, the Census showed a population shift from more dense to less dense places. The top ten population gainers among metropolitan areas — growing by 20%, twice the national average, or more — are the low-density Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Atlanta. By contrast, many of the densest metropolitan areas — including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York — grew at rates half the national average or less…

What about the other big demographic, the millennials? Like previous generations of urbanists, the current crop mistake a totally understandable interest in cities among post-adolescents. Yet when the research firm Frank Magid asked millennials what made up their “ideal” locale, a strong plurality opted for suburbs — far more than was the case in earlier generations.

Is this simply a battle of interpreting statistics? For example, Kotkin says Millennials aren’t completely enamored with the suburbs while others have used these statistics to mean other things. Kotkin says that Americans continue to vote for the suburbs with their actions. When given a choice, Kotkin seems to be suggesting that a majority of Americans, young and old, would choose the suburbs if all things were equal. In contrast, Kotkin suggests that urbanists want people to want the city. This ideology (“theology” in his terms) guides their interpretation of the data and leads to wishful thinking.

This is a bigger debate that isn’t addressed directly here: are the cities or suburbs better for people, society, and the world? Kotkin’s writings lean toward giving people freedom which is found more in the suburbs. Urbanists make arguments the other way: cities are greener, more diverse, and more cultured. Would or could Kotkin make his arguments if most Americans lived in cities rather than suburbs? This is really a discussion about values: should people live in the cities and suburbs and isn’t just about current or future realities.

h/t Instapundit