Author Archives: legallysociable

Is there such a thing as “wealth addiction”?

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Citing the writings of a PhD in sociology, a commentator suggests that we should pay attention to wealth addiction:

The Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement named the core issue of our time: the overwhelming power of Wall Street and large corporations. Now it’s time we named the problem underlying this issue. It’s called addiction. I’ve been treating addicts for more than 40 years and when I hear the descriptions of those for whom millions and billions of dollars in wealth drives them to want more and more, I know we’re dealing with addiction.

Philip Slater has an A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and taught sociology at Harvard, Brandeis and UCSC. He is the author of numerous books including Wealth Addiction. He says:

“Those who devote their entire lives to amassing or retaining huge sums of money are neurotically addicted, trying to fill an inner void with money. And since such psychic voids cannot be filled with money — any more than with alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, food, or sex — even a billion dollars doesn’t satisfy them.”We say people who can’t stop drinking when they’ve had enough are alcoholics. We say people who can’t stop eating when they’ve had enough are food addicts. We say that people who can’t stop gambling when they know they should quit are gambling addicts. “But people with a billion dollars who can’t stop trying to make more,” Slater says, “we call successful.”

I imagine this could be a good conversation starter. But this would have to be part of a larger conversation taking place right now about some other kinds of addiction including sex addiction and Internet addiction. Some might ask whether saying billionaires are suffering addiction lets them “off the hook” for amassing so much wealth.

Media and product consumption by political views

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This article looks at how political campaigns are using media and production consumption data to make appeals to voters and also includes some interesting charts that map out the differences between those with different political leanings:

Inside microtargeting offices in Washington and across the nation, individual voters are today coming through in HDTV clarity — every single digitally-active American consumer, which is 91 percent of us, according to Pew Internet research. Political strategists buy consumer information from data brokers, mash it up with voter records and online behavior, then run the seemingly-mundane minutiae of modern life — most-visited websites, which soda’s in the fridge — through complicated algorithms and: pow! They know with “amazing” accuracy not only if, but why, someone supports Barack Obama or Romney, says Willie Desmond of Strategic Telemetry, which works for the Obama reelection campaign…

All of these online movements contribute to what Gage calls “data exhaust.” Email, Amazon orders, resume uploads, tweets — especially tweets — cough out fumes that microtargeters or data brokers suck up to mold hyper-specific messaging. We’ve been hurled into an era of “Big Data,” Gage said. In the last eight years the amount of information slopped up by firms like his, which sell information to politicians, has tripled, from 300 distinct bits on each voter in 2004 to more than 900 today. We have the rise of social media and mobile technology to thank for this.

What I like about this analysis is that it starts to get at an understanding of different lifestyle behaviors or groups that underlie both consumer choices as well as political choices. Voting decisions are not made in a vacuum nor are consumer choices: these are guided by larger concerns that sociologists often talk about such as class, education level, race/ethnicity, and two factors that doesn’t get as much attention as perhaps they should, where people live and who they interact with on a regular basis (not necessarily the same things but related to each other). While the microtargeting may help tailor individual appeals, it might also obscure some of these larger concerns.

While the article suggests this data collection is all very creepy, this is made tricky because of one fact: some of this information is offered voluntarily by users.

Both Obama and Romney’s sites allow, if not encourage, visitors to login to their campaign websites with a Facebook account, thereby unveiling a wealth of information: email address, friend list, birthday, gender, and user ID. Obama’s team, in accordance with the president’s call for greater transparency, details his campaign’s privacy policyin an exhaustive 2,600-word treatise. It begins like an online Miranda Rights: “Make sure that you understand how any personal information you provide will be used.” Then things get a little weird.

Among other points, the policy says the campaign can monitor users’ messages and emails between members, share their personal information with any like-minded organization it chooses, and follow up by sending them news it deems they’d find worthwhile. In other words, target anger points. Then there’s something called “passive collection,” which means cookies — lots and lots of cookies. Obama’s campaign, as well as third-party vendors working with, spray trackers so other websites can flash personalized ads based on knowledge of the trip to barackobama.com. And finally, near the end of the policy, comes one more caveat: “Nothing herein restricts the sharing of aggregated or anonymized information, which may be shared with third parties without your consent.”

Romney’s site apparently wants even more from its visitors, asking users who login with Facebook to “post on (their) behalf” and “access (their) data any time” they’re not using the application. You can deny both functions.

Perhaps at the least, users should be made more aware upfront of how their information is going to be used. This could be similar to the new boxes included on credit card statements: the consumer should be able to clearly see what is going to happen rather than have to dig through online user agreements. At the same time, making users aware is different than stopping companies from using information in certain ways. I also wonder how these online companies, like banks and credit card providers, will find other ways to collect data and money if these avenues are closed off. For example, would the average internet user rather give up some of this personal information for the sale of targeted advertisements or pay a small fee to access a website each year?

Economist argues best restaurants often in “dumpier locales”

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Over at the Atlantic, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen explains why excellent restaurants consistently appear in the “cultural wasteland” of suburbs:

Low-rent restaurants can experiment at relatively low risk. If a food idea does not work out, the proprietor is not left with an expensive lease. As a result, a strip-mall restaurant is more likely to try daring ideas than is a restaurant in, say, a large shopping mall. The people with the best, most creative, most innovative cooking ideas are not always the people with the most money. Many of them end up in dumpier locales, where they gradually improve real-estate values…..

I love exploring the suburbs for first-rate ethnic food. Many people consider suburbs a cultural wasteland, but I am very happy searching for food in Orange County, California; the area near San Jose; Northern Virginia, near D.C.; Somerville, Massachusetts; and so on….It is especially common to see good ethnic restaurants grouped with mid-level or junky retail outlets. When it comes to a restaurant run by immigrants, look around at the street scene. Do you see something ugly? Poor construction? Broken plastic signage? A five-and-dime store? Maybe an abandoned car? If so, crack a quiet smile, walk through the door, and order. Welcome to the glamorous world of good food.

Cowen’s argument about restaurants reminds me of another Atlantic piece celebrating “low road” buildings which Brian previously discussed.  It’s not surprising that great work–and great food–often happens in low rent locales like “junky” suburban strip malls and office parks given their lower (financial) barriers to entry and lower operating expenses that free up more cash to flow each month into improving their tenants’ business.

Still, it strikes me that the financial health of restaurants is more location-dependent than for many of the business populating “low road” office parks.  Whereas many office-based business are not dependent on high volumes of foot traffic for survival, restaurants almost invariably are.  (Unless, of course, that particular restaurant focuses primarily on a delivery and/or catering business model.)  A less prestigious restaurant location is a good value for the owner (and likely to survive long term) only if the drop-off in foot traffic/customers due to the “bad” location is more than outweighed by lower rent.

Gearing up for a “quick-take” approach to the land for the Illiana Expressway

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The Illiana Expressway has been talked about for decades but now it looks like the government is determining how to acquire the land:

Compounding the fear for the couple and hundreds of others who live along or near the 47-mile corridor is legislation pending in the Illinois House that would give the state controversial “quick-take” power to acquire land for the project.

Quick-take allows local governments to act fast in seizing land for public projects, skipping the possibly lengthy legal proceedings under eminent domain condemnation.

Anxiety levels are sky-high among many farmers and homeowners who could be affected by the expressway that would connect Illinois and Indiana. Public meetings have been standing room only. Property owners in Lake County, Ind., and Will County have been flocking to an interactive map at illianacorridor.org to see whether their homes, businesses, backyards or back 40s are within the path.

“There’s no question property can be condemned for a highway. The state or whoever is going to get it,” said Dan Tarlock, a professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. “The question is how much the landowner is going to get paid. Quick-take is designed to take first and then fight about the money.”…

State Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Chicago Heights, sponsored the quick-take legislation in the Senate, where it passed 44-8 on March 28. She said the measure is necessary to streamline the process so that ground can be broken for the Illiana by 2016…

Hutchinson, whose district includes much of the Illiana corridor, said the project is vital for job creation and economic development in southern Cook and northern Will counties.

This is a classic situation pitting the interests of the “greater good” versus individual property owners. The article also suggests there is little or no opposition to the project itself, rather the opposition is to how the land is seized. I wonder why the article doesn’t talk more about what prices landowners get for their property in the quick-take process compared to a more protracted process. Isn’t that what is at stake here?

Looking at the proposed routes for the expressway, who exactly is this supposed to serve? Here is the overview of the project:

Previous studies have indicated possible benefits for an east-west transportation corridor extending from I-55 in Illinois to I-65 in Indiana. These include providing an alternate route for motorists traveling the I-90/94 corridor, relieving traffic on the I-80 Borman/Kingery Expressway and U.S. 30, serving as a bypass for trucks around the congested metropolitan highways, providing access to one of the largest “inland port” intermodal freight areas in the U.S. and the proposed South Suburban Airport, supporting economic development in this area, and the potential for substantial job creation. Will County, IL was one of the fastest-growing counties in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010, adding 175,000 residents and increasing demand for additional transportation options.

This doesn’t seem aimed at the Chicago area really because a better route for the Chicago region might be to extend I-355 south and then loop it over to I-65. Is this primarily for warehouses in Will County so they can have easier access to both I-55 and I-65? Are there expectations for more suburban growth south of Chicago?

A reminder: some of funding for studying the Illiana Expressway was to come from the increased tolls on Chicago area highways.

YMCA survey: 58% of Americans would move if they could

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A new survey commissioned by the YMCA suggests that more than 50% of Americans want to move out of their current neighborhood:

The Y Community Snapshot found:

  • 58 percent of respondents say they would move away from their community right now if they could, but the economy and their financial situations make moving increasingly difficult and not an option. Unable to move, Americans are putting more responsibility on local governments and themselves to impact change;
  • 63 percent of respondents say they will get more involved in their communities this year and will contribute goods, services, facilities or other non-monetary resources to a worthy cause or organization;
  • 76 percent of respondents say they are concerned about crime in their community, and according to a recent Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans say there is more crime where they live today than there was a year ago. A safe environment ranked as the most important quality in building a strong community;
  • The vast majority of respondents (72 percent) reported that budget cuts by government, social services and non-profit community organizations have had a negative impact on themselves and their families, with 22 percent saying they’ve felt a big negative impact.

The results to the individual questions may make sense: Americans have always been a mobile people (though mobility is down in recent years due to the economic crisis), Americans tend to be worried about crime even when crime rates are down (how likely is it that major crime rates are down and more than 50% of Americans say crime is up in their particular neighborhood?), and people are unlikely to respond favorably to budget cuts that impact them.

But I’m intrigued by how you would put all of these figures together: do Americans think there are a lot of wealthy, low crime, service-rich neighborhoods out there? Is this simply a case of “the grass is greener on the other side” or is everyone truly aiming to reach these fantastic neighborhoods? Even if there are enough neighborhoods that might fit this bill, how many of these great neighborhoods would not throw open their gates but would instead hunker down and restrict access and new development that might change their paradise?

“Intellectual slums” in China

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China’s economy may be growing but this doesn’t necessarily mean that young engineers have great living standards:

However, life as a Chinese engineer is not necessarily paradise or even a guarantee of decent living. Some of Beijing’s most recent graduates are labeled “ants” for their hardworking attitude but cramped living quarters. Until being relocated by recent redevelopment, many young Chinese engineers lived in small, 20 square-meter rooms in the poor Beijing suburb of Tangjialing. According to Chinese sociologist Lian Si, there are no fewer than 10 “intellectual slums” near Beijing.

Not exactly the choices that we assume the “creative class” has in the United States.

Here are some photographs of a Chinese “intellectual slum” that is slated for a transition from a poor village to new development. In a 2009 story, Lian Si describes his work summarized in the book Ant Tribe.

I became interested in this problem in 2007. I then spent two years researching; I visited seven ‘colonies’ on the outskirts of Beijing, living in them each for some time, and in total, interviewing 600 graduates.

I noted that the graduates earn an average of 1950 Yuan (€200) a month. Most of the time they work on stalls, as waitresses or doing other temporary jobs. The rent costs around 400 Yuan (€40) a month. They spend a lot of time travelling to and from the centre of the city on public transport.

The ‘ants’ have three characteristics in common. They’re graduates, they’re low earners, and they stick together. They’re labelled ants because they’re undersized and have limited living space, but at the same time they’re intelligent and they don’t grumble about their situation.

About 80% of them come from isolated villages cut from the world. They try to make a living in big cities like Beijing. It’s also because of this that they stay in a group, to have the feeling of community and security in their unfamiliar surroundings.

At what point will people in these communities start to grumble?

The sociologist director of the Natural Hazards Center discusses how sociology helps us understand responses to disasters

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While disasters seem to be a growing area of interest across academic disciplines, a sociologist who is the director of the Natural Hazards Center talks about how sociology approaches the topic:

What’s sociology’s role in emergency management?

Sociology is a broad area, and sociologists are interested in a variety of things related to disasters and emergency management. They certainly do research and know a lot about individual, group and organizational behavior in disasters; a good deal about warning processes and warning systems; risk perception; the social factors that are associated with preparing for disasters, disaster recovery and some of the social factors that contribute to differences or disparities in the recovery process and outcomes; the politics and economics of disaster mitigation. These are some topics sociologists are interested in.

Have you done any research on what motivates people to prepare for disasters?

There’s been a lot of research on preparedness, especially household preparedness, and the research has [found] that being better prepared is associated with having higher levels of income, homeownership, to some extent with previous disaster experience, and having children in the home. These are all sociological factors that help to explain preparedness…

During your research, has there been a finding that most surprised you?

I found a lot of things that are contrary to common sense or the way most people might think about disaster behavior. One is the overwhelming altruistic pro-social response that most people engage in during disasters. It’s not like the disaster movies. I also think there are many important findings about the importance of volunteer groups and emergent groups in disasters. Ordinary community citizens can be very resourceful and can engage extensively in self-help and mutual aid when disasters happen. They don’t need to be told what to do by others. I’m seeing growing recognition that while we need experts in emergency management — we need well trained, well educated people — that the whole community is involved in mitigating, preparing for and responding to and recovering from disasters. That whole community approach was a big focus last year and will be this year from FEMA and other agencies. But it’s what sociologists have been saying all along.

I like the reference to how disaster movies tend to play up the atomistic responses to disasters. Movies, books, and TV shows tend to play up the image of the lone wanderer (typically a male?) or a few people trying to pick their way through issues with other people and the natural environment. Some of this seems to underlie recommendations about disaster preparedness: you can’t count on others to help and indeed, you might need to protect what you have from others. Granted, a large enough disaster will disrupt the response of organized government but ordinary citizens can still help each other.

This reminds of a humorous scenario I’ve discussed with several family members. In this hypothetical situation, family members would live on some sort of large piece of property where everyone could have a house yet still have some space. On this “compound,” different people could carry out different tasks that could serve the group in the event of some large disaster in the larger world. For example, being a nurse would be really useful here. However, when the conversation turns to what I could contribute to the larger group as a sociologist, I’m left suggesting something like I could help “enhance critical thinking skills.” Now I know I can contribute something else: I can help everyone work together and can helpfully point out the social factors that will aid or hinder our efforts.

Also, perhaps sociology majors would be uniquely suited to work in the area of emergency management?

Implications of “illegal immigration hits net-zero”

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Here is another consequence of the American economic crisis: the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States has hit “net-zero.”

One million Mexicans said they returned from the US between 2005 and 2010, according to a new demographic study of Mexican census data. That’s three times the number who said they’d returned in the previous five-year period.

And they aren’t just home for a visit: One prominent sociologist in the US has counted “net zero” migration for the first time since the 1960s.

Experts say the implications for both nations are enormous – from the draining of a labor pool in the US to the need for a radical shift in policies in Mexico, which has long depended on the billions of dollars in migrant remittances as a social welfare cornerstone.

“The massive return of migrants will have implications at the micro and macro economic levels and will have consequences for the social fabric … especially for the structure of the Mexican family,” says Rodolfo Casillas, a migration expert at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Mexico City.

Sociologist Douglas Massey provides more details about what has happened:

The migration explosion that since the 1970s had pushed millions of men, women, and children into the United States has fizzled, says Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University and codirector of the long-term, binational Mexican Migration Project. “We’re at a turning point, and what unfolds in the future remains to be seen. But I think the boom is over.”

Mr. Massey’s research shows that after the US recession hit, the illegal population fell from about 12 million to 11 million, where it has hovered since 2009. (About 60 percent of the illegal population is Mexican.)

Similarly, Homeland Security estimates released in March suggest that while the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the US grew 36 percent between 2000 and 2011, from 8.5 million to 11.5 million, that growth plateaued in 2010 and 2011.

“With no change in either direction, we’re roughly at a net zero,” says Massey, and adds that it’s something unseen since the late 1950s.

This bears watching. Now that I think about it, we have heard little about this topic on a national scale in recent months. Do the majority of Americans only care about this issue under certain circumstances? Thinking more broadly, does American news coverage focus on only a narrow set of issues (such as jobs, political responses and approval ratings, spending vs. accumulating debt, possible solutions) during an economic crisis rather than looking at the broad range of social spheres, including the relationships between the United States and other countries, affected by a downturn?

History – facts = sociology?

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Lamenting how history is taught in today’s schools, one writer argues that history without facts is just sociology:

My son’s teacher confirmed that this is broadly true. The teaching of history in British schools is increasingly influenced by US methods of presenting the past thematically rather than chronologically. Thus pupils might study crime and punishment, or kingship, and dip in and out of different centuries. Consequently, dates lose their value. So 1605, which for me means the Gunpowder Plot, for my son simply means that he is five minutes late for games.

I didn’t argue with his teacher, and in any case there is more than one way to skin a cat, as Torquemada (1420-1498) knew. Besides, a slant on history that was good enough for two of our greatest historians, WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman, ought to be good enough for me. The subtitle of their enduringly delightful 1930 book, 1066 And All That, was A Memorable History of England comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings, and 2 Genuine Dates.

Maybe it wasn’t crusty American academics but Sellar and Yeatman, having a laugh, who really popularised the notion that history can be taught largely without dates. “The first date in English history is 55BC,” they wrote, referring to the arrival of Julius Caesar and his legions on the pebbly shores of Kent. “For the other date, see Chapter 11, William the Conqueror.” They didn’t specify the year in which the King of Spain “sent the Great Spanish Armadillo to ravish the shores of England”.

Whatever, I can see the logic of going down the thematic rather than the chronological route. And I made sympathetic noises when my son’s teacher explained that “it’s helpful for those pupils who struggle to take in lots of facts”. But even if we leave out dates, aren’t facts what history is all about? The rest, as they say, is sociology.

This is not an unusual complaint: the next generations always seem to know less history and perhaps even more troubling is that they don’t seem to care.

A couple of other thoughts:

1. Why can’t you have both dates and thematic approaches? Knowing dates doesn’t necessarily know that a student knows what to do with the information or that they know the broad sweep of historical change.

2. I think the argument in the final sentence is that sociology is devoid of facts. While sociologists may indeed care about certain topics (such as race, class, and gender) that others don’t care as much about, we also care about facts. For example, many sociology undergraduate programs have students take statistics and research methods courses. We don’t want students or sociologists simply interpreting data and information without having their findings be reliable (replicable) and valid (measuring what we say we are). There is a lot of debate within the field about how we can best know about the world and determine what is causing or influencing what. This is not easy work since most social situations are quite complex and there are a lot of variables at play.

3. Why can’t history and sociology coexist? As an overgeneralization, history tends to tell us what happened and sociology helps us think through why these things happened. Why can’t sociology help inform us about history, particularly about how certain historical narratives develop and then become part of our collective memory?

Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins has a master’s degree in sociology

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I’m always on the lookout for famous people with sociology degrees. Being the President of a country counts: Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins is considered a sociologist.

Higgins holds a graduate degree in sociology.In his academic career, he was a Statutory Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at University College Galway and was a Visiting Professor at Southern Illinois University. He resigned his academic posts to concentrate fully on his political career.

Higgins received a master’s degree in sociology from Indiana University in 1967:

“On behalf of Indiana University, I would like to congratulate IU alumnus Michael D. Higgins upon his election as the ninth president of Ireland and culmination of a long and distinguished career as a politician, lecturer, author and human rights activist,” McRobbie said. “Over the course of four decades, President-elect Higgins has dedicated himself to championing Irish culture and passionately defending human rights causes in many parts of the world. He is also renowned for the many intellectual contributions he has made to modern political, philosophical and literary discourse. All of us at IU wish him the greatest success as he prepares to apply his extensive knowledge and experiences to his new role as Ireland’s senior ambassador.”

Higgins received a master of arts degree in sociology at IU Bloomington in 1967.

Higgins is also apparently an honorary life member of the Sociological Association of Ireland.

I wonder if anyone has done a study on the effectiveness of leaders with sociological degrees. Sociology is an unusually broad field, containing insights for many areas of social life as well as for social interactions. I would hope that sociologists can do unique things because of their training…