Author Archives: legallysociable

Comparing ethnography and journalism, stories vs. data

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A letter writer to the New York Times unfavorably compares ethnography and social scientific methods to journalism:

David Brooks’s review of George Packer’s book “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America” (June 9) is befuddling. First, Brooks praises Packer’s “gripping narrative survey” of recession-era life, comparing it to earlier efforts like that of John Dos Passos. Then, bizarrely, he faults Packer for not providing a “theoretical framework and worldview” that would include “sociology, economics or political analysis.” Narrative description and evocation has for centuries been among the most powerful forms of argument — so powerful, in fact, that the social psychologists Brooks admires appropriated the styles and cloaked them in the pseudoscientific garb of “ethnography” (which we used to call “journalism”).

Have we reached a point where devotion to instrumental reason is so maniacal we can’t handle mere stories anymore? Or perhaps we accept stories only when they’re accompanied by the tenuous methodology of social “scientists.” I would bet that a single profile by Packer, one of America’s best journalists, provides a better snapshot of real life than the legions of sociology and economics articles published since the crash.

Here is someone suspicious of social science. This is not an uncommon position. There is no doubt that stories and narratives are powerful and also have a longer history than the social sciences which developed in and after the Enlightenment. Yet, we also live in a world where science and data have also become powerful arguments.

Intriguingly, ethnography is a social scientific method that might help bridge this gap between narrative and data. This method differs from journalism in some important ways but also shares some similarities. The ethnographer doesn’t just work with statistics and data from a distance or through a few interviews. Through an extended engagement with the research subject, even living with the subjects for months or years, the researcher gets an insider perspective while also trying to maintain objectivity. The participant observer is engaged with larger social science theories and ideas, trying to understand how more specific experiences and groups line up with larger theories and models. The research case is of interest but the connection to the bigger picture is very important in the end. At the same time, ethnographies are often written in a more narrative style than social science journal articles (unless we are talking about journal articles utilizing ethnography).

Stories and data can both be illuminating. I know which side I tend to favor, hence I’m a sociologist, but I also enjoy narratives and “mere stories.”

Colbert: watch out for “egg McMansions”

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In discussing a recent stance by Iowa House member Steve King, Stephen Colbert suggests chickens don’t deserve McMansions:

Now, King is fighting a California law that would give egg-laying hens more room in their cages and trying to keep it from becoming national law.

“Damn straight,” said Colbert. “This is just another case of the left-wing loons in California imposing their deviant values on the heartland. I’ll bet those California chickens don’t even have to be married before they have an egg.”

The law mandates that a poultry cage must measure 200 square inches, which Colbert called an “Egg McMansion.”

“This is a chicken Xanadu,” he said. “It’s way bigger than the cages I keep my interns in.”

Two quick thoughts:

1. It sounds like Colbert is primarily hinting at two traits of McMansion. First, they are big homes. They have lots of space. For chickens, that apparently equates to 200 square inches. Second, also suggesting the homes are like Xanadu also plays out the wealthy and luxurious aspects of McMansions.

2. Since Colbert is poking fun at King, this might be the commentary: conservatives and others might want themselves and other Americans to have the opportunity to own McMansions and large homes, but they don’t want to extend these privileges to other living creatures.

Making a clear contrast: “Micro-apartments: The anti-McMansions”

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CNN profiles micro-apartments and frames them as the opposite of McMansions:

Move over McMansions: These days, pint-sized, micro-apartments are all the rage.

Typically ranging between 180 and 300 square-feet, these tiny apartments are becoming increasingly popular among the young-and-single set and even some retirees, seeking affordable places to live in the nation’s costliest cities.

Nowhere is the micro trend hotter than in Seattle. More than 40 micro-apartment developments have been built in the city in the past three years, according to Jim Potter, chairman of Kauri Group, a Seattle-based developer. Many of these apartment buildings offer shared patios, roof decks and even communal kitchens. (Zoning laws in Seattle allow up to eight apartments to share one kitchen)…

The key selling point is affordability. In Seattle, 250-square-foot apartments rent for under $800 a month, almost half the average $1,400 people pay for newly built studios of 400 square feet or more in the city, according to Potter.

The first comparison is not surprising: as McMansions came to be the symbol of large houses, micro-apartments are just the opposite. The whole unit is the size of perhaps a smaller owner’s suite in a McMansion and often features space-saving designs.

The second comparison is less common: micro-apartments are also cheap compared to McMansions. Particularly in the cities cited in this article, places like Seattle or San Francisco, affordable housing is in short supply. Micro-apartments may be small but more importantly, they give people an opportunity to live closer to work and in or near places they couldn’t afford otherwise. McMansions were also known for their price, or at least for the mortgages that owners had to take on. The comparison is not perfect since McMansions are assumed to be in the suburbs and less of an issue in the big city.

It will be interesting to see how this comparison plays out down the road. McMansions are a powerful symbol while micro-apartments are on the rise and still could change quite a bit as they grow in number and spread to more places. The article hints at one change: the micro-apartments might be popular with retirees. Such a development could set up some interesting stories of

The changing definition and use of “Latino”

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Here is a quick recap of how American society has defined and used the term Latino in recent decades:

If all ethnic identities are created, imagined or negotiated to some degree, American Hispanics provide an especially stark example. As part of an effort in the 1970s to better measure who was using what kind of social services, the federal government established the word “Hispanic” to denote anyone with ancestry traced to Spain or Latin America, and mandated the collection of data on this group. “The term is a U.S. invention,” explains Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. “If you go to El Salvador or the Dominican Republic, you won’t necessarily hear people say they are ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic.’?”

You may not hear it much in the United States, either. According to a 2012 Pew survey, only about a quarter of Hispanic adults say they identify themselves most often as Hispanic or Latino. About half say they prefer to cite their family’s country of origin, while one-fifth say they use “American.” (Among third-generation Latinos, nearly half identify as American.)

The Office of Management and Budget defines a Hispanic as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race” — about as specific as calling someone European.

“There is no coherence to the term,” says Marta Tienda, a sociologist and director of Latino studies at Princeton University. For instance, even though it’s officially supposed to connote ethnicity and nationality rather than race — after all, Hispanics can be black, white or any other race — the term “has become a racialized category in the United States,” Tienda says. “Latinos have become a race by default, just by usage of the category.”

A good discussion throughout. And, the definition and usage of the term Latino or Hispanic is likely to change in decades to come. All together, it suggests racial and ethnic categories can be quite fluid based on a whole host of social factors.

Returning to past Olympic cities

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Intrigued by the tens of billions of dollars spent on recent Olympics by host cities, a photographer returns to the cities and structures of past Olympic games and documents some of the change:

The result is The Olympic City a book (out tomorrow) and traveling exhibition (opens tomorrow at Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Powerhouse Arena) of the photos Hustwit and Pack snapped, from Helsinki, Finland’s 1952 Olympic Stadium to London’s 2012 architectural spread, from Athens’ “completely unused” village to Beijing’s hulking gray structures. “It’s a little bit of an archaeological excursion,” Hustwit says. “We’re trying to find the evidence of the olympics in these places and look at how it’s affected that neighborhood and how people are living in these spaces.”

The pictures are interesting as is seeing how cities are utilizing these venues:

Beijing’s Lao Shan Velodrome is still being used, though the amount of wear (Pack speculates degradation could be accelerated by pollution) makes it look like a building from the ’60s. The giant parking lots are being used for driver training: “When I was there there were people to there learning how to parallel park,” Pack said…

Another shot of Athens’ Olympic Village, which is now totally empty. “The takeaway [of the project] is that the cities that really needed these venues already have done well,” Hustwit said. “But the majority of these cities weren’t really thinking about the long-term benefit for the people who lived there.”…

Despite the fact that Sarajevo’s Olympic infrastructure is totally destroyed, the Olympics remains “a point of pride” and “very much part of the city’s cultural history,” Hustwit said.

Cities tend to vie for Olympics for the prestige they offer but the buildings and money tend not to benefit the average person of the country (unless you count civic and/or national pride). Given the costs of preparing for the Olympics, I wonder if we are nearing a point where no cities will even want to compete for the games. Yet, my urban suspicions suggest there may just be a few cities who might want the power of the Olympics to do some major redevelopment in their cities that would be much harder to accomplish otherwise.

Google says their creative interview questions didn’t predict good workers…so why ask them?

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Google announced yesterday that their creative and odd interview questions didn’t help them understand who was going to be a good worker. So, why did they ask them?

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

A list of Google questions compiled by Seattle job coach Lewis Lin, and then read by approximately everyone on the entire Internet in one form or another, included these humdingers:

  • How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
  • Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
  • How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
  • A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
  • You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

Bock says Google now relies on more quotidian means of interviewing prospective employees, such as standardizing interviews so that candidates can be assessed consistently, and “behavioral interviewing,” such as asking people to describe a time they solved a difficult problem. It’s also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT scores.

The suggestion here is that these were more about the interviewer than the interviewee. Interesting. This is just speculation but here are other potential reasons for asking such questions.

1. They really thought these questions would be a good filter – but they learned better later. Was this initial idea based on research? Experience? Anecdotes? Or did this just sort of happen one time and it seemed to work so it continued? For a company that is all about data and algorithms, it would be interesting to know whether this interviewing practice was based on data.

2. Perhaps Google is trying to project a certain image to potential employees: “We are a place that values this kind of thinking.” The interview at Google isn’t just a typical interview; it is an experience.

3. They wanted to be to the wider public as a place that asked these kind of intimidating/interesting (depending on your point of view) questions. And this image is tied to social status: “Google does something in their interviews that others don’t! They must know something.” Were these questions all part of a larger branding strategy? It would be interesting to know how long they have thought the questions didn’t predict good workers. What does it say about the company now if they are moving on to other methods and more “quotidian”/pedestrian/boring interviewing approaches?

Holding a McMansion mortgage limits your American freedom and liberty

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Here is another argument why you should not own a McMansion: it limits your ability to be a free American.

Want to sever from your body an arm and a leg in the name of the American Dream? It’s certainly at odds with what the dream is supposed to be about. If the idioms ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ still reign supreme in the minds of Americans, a mortgage on a single family McMansion is losing its shine.

The lifestyle manufactured by the burbs lacks the luster it once held. Working incessantly to maintain payments on your suburban box and pay for gas to drive EVERYWHERE is less desirable for those who have the luxury of choice in today’s America…

I recently visited a very well planned subdivision. It had a small row of shops, a park, lots of trees and wonderfully manicured lawns as far as the eye could see. It felt false. It felt like the neighborhood committee was the Joneses that enforced the keeping up. In older neighborhoods there are intermittent shops, bars, community halls, schools and houses of all shapes and sizes. Some neighbors are house-proud and commit themselves to a fine garden and home. Others have bottomed out station wagon in their front yard. The lots are different sizes. The houses have assorted kitsch, architectural details. There are old people who have lived there since the Great Depression.

It’s time for an organic refit of those suburbs that reek of bland mass-market ideals. They come from a time that was most certainly thrown overboard in the 2009 housing crisis. Surely, the frugality that was thrust upon us can manifest itself in creativity!

I interpret this argument as an updated version of a decades-old suburban critique. First, the old part of this critique which was quite common in the 1950s. Living in the suburbs stifles your creativity and ability to innovate. This is because all of the houses look the same, everyone has to drive, the zoning only allows for one use at a time, and conformity is encouraged. In this view, you can’t really be an individual in the suburbs because the environment pushes everyone to be the same.

The updated part of this argument is that owning a single-family home may not be worth the cost. For the last 100 years or so, the United States in both policy and culture has pushed homeownership and its ties to individualism and being part of the middle-class. But, taking on a big mortgage limits your options. Indeed, even conservatives like Dave Ramsey might agree with this critique as there has been an increase in advice to avoid taking on unnecessary debt.

In the end, I suspect this argument hinges on what you consider American freedom to be. Is it the “right” to get ahead and purchase a nice home in the suburbs where you can raise a family? Or is it the “right” to be an individual outside of the mass market and mass society and enjoy and contribute to vibrant communities?

The role of culture in defining mental illness

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Defining mental illness may not be inseparable from the culture and society in which the definitions are being made:

This idea—that we might be able to strip away all subjectivity from the diagnosis of mental illness and render psychiatry truly scientific—is intuitively appealing. But there are a couple of problems with it. The first is that the science simply isn’t there yet. A functional neuroscientific understanding of mental suffering is years, perhaps generations, away from our grasp. What are clinicians and patients to do until then? But the second, more telling problem with Insel’s approach lies in its assumption that it is even possible to strip culture from the study of mental illness. Indeed, from where I sit, the trouble with the DSM— both this one and previous editions—is not so much that it is insufficiently grounded in biology, but that it ignores the inescapable relationship between social cues and the shifting manifestations of mental illness…

The trick is not to scrub culture from the study of mental illness but to understand how the unconscious takes cues from its social settings. This knowledge won’t make mental illnesses vanish (Americans, for some reason, find it particularly difficult to grasp that mental illnesses are absolutely real and culturally shaped at the same time). But it might discourage healers from leaping from one trendy diagnosis to the next. As things stand, we have little defense against such enthusiasms. “We are always just one blockbuster movie and some weekend therapist’s workshops away from a new fad,” Frances writes. “Look for another epidemic beginning in a decade or two as a new generation of therapists forgets the lessons of the past.” Given all the players stirring these cultural currents, I’d make a sizable bet that we won’t have to wait nearly that long.

Intriguing assessment of American society: unable to see how mental illness is both culturally influenced and real. This more complicated view may not fit as easily into American tendencies toward pragmatic approaches to issues, a belief in scientific progress, and a belief in individual effort and responsibility.

Can you name “America’s 50 Healthiest Counties for Kids” when you only account for 38% of US counties?

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US News & World Report recently released a list of “America’s 50 Healthiest Counties for Kids.” However, there is a problem with the rankings: more than half of American counties aren’t included in the data.

About 1,200 of the nation’s 3,143 counties (a total that takes in county equivalents such as Louisiana’s parishes) were evaluated for the rankings. Many states don’t collect county-level information on residents’ health, whereas populous states, such as California, Florida and New York, tend to gather and report more data. In some counties, the population is so small that the numbers are unreliable, or the few events fall below state or federal reporting thresholds. And because states don’t collect county-level information on childhood smoking and obesity, the rankings incorporated percentages for adults. Catlin says this is justified because more adult smokers mean more children are exposed to secondhand smoke, a demonstrated health risk. Studies have also shown a moderately strong correlation between adult and childhood obesity, she says.

The experts who study community health yearn for more and better data. “We don’t have county-level data on kids with diabetes, controlled or uncontrolled, or on childhood obesity rates,” says Ali Mokdad of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. “Almost every kid in this country goes to school. We could measure height and weight, but nobody’s connecting the dots.”

This won’t stop counties high on the list from touting their position. See this Daily Herald article about DuPage County coming in at #20. But, there should be some disclaimer or something on this list if a majority of US counties aren’t even considered. Or, perhaps such a list shouldn’t be too together at all.

Mapping wealth by locating iPhone, Android, and Blackberry owners

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Check out the maps of cell phone owners in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, and a number of other major American cities:

Among other things, cell phone brands say something about socio-economics – it takes a lot of money to buy a new iPhone 5 (and even more money to keep up with the latest models that come out faster than plan upgrades do). Consider, then, this map of Washington, D.C., which uses geolocated tweets, and the cell phone metadata attached to them, to illustrate who in town is using iPhones (red dots) and who’s using Androids (green dots)…

That picture comes from a new series of navigable maps visualizing some three billion global, geotagged tweets sent since September of 2011, developed by Gnip, MapBox and dataviz guru Eric Fischer. They’ve converted all of that data from the Twitter firehose (this is just a small fraction of all tweets, most of which have no geolocation data) into a series of maps illustrating worldwide patterns in language and device use, as well as between people who appear to be tourists and locals in any given city.

The locals and tourists map scales up a beautiful earlier project from Fischer. You could kill a few hours playing with all of these tools, built on the same dataset. But we particularly liked looking at the geography of smart phone devices. As in Washington, above, iPhones are often more prominent in upper-income parts of cities (and central business districts), while Androids appear to be the dominant device in lower-income areas.

It sounds like there could be some methodological issues here. The data doesn’t cover all Twitter users and then Twitter users are already a small subset of the US population. Nonetheless, these are interesting maps. I saw recently that over 50% of Americans now have smartphones – it jumped from 35% to 56% in several years. But, not all cell phones cost the same or aim for the same markets. iPhones aren’t just expensive. They also have a certain aesthetic and set of features that appeals to a certain set of Americans. Samsung had a set of recent commercials that played off the cool factor of iPhones, raising the idea of the phone as (expired?) status symbol. If you asked smartphone owners why they chose the phone they did, how many would admit that the status of the phone significantly factored into their decision?

More broadly, it would be interesting to think about what other common consumer goods could be mapped in ways that show clear patterns.