Author Archives: legallysociable

Columbia anthropology class about Occupy Wall Street

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I’m sure this new anthropology class at Columbia about Occupy Wall Street will get a lot of attention:

Columbia University will offer a new course for upperclassmen and grad students next semester. An Occupy Wall Street class will send students into the field and will be taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, a veteran of the Occupy movement.

The course begins next semester and will be divided between class work at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork that will require students to become involved with the Occupy movement outside of the classroom…

Appel is a staunch defender of the Occupy movement, in her blog she said that, ““it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”

Appel told the New York Post that while her involvement with the movement will color the way she teaches it will not prevent her from being an objective teacher.

This class will receive criticism for three reasons:

1. The professor has been involved with the movement.

2. It will draw attention from conservatives who will argue that liberals are continuing to use college classes to indoctrinate America’s youths.

3. People will see it as a waste of time and money as this expensive college should be teaching “useful” things. (This is similar to criticism about classes about Jay-Z or Lady Gaga.)

At the same time, the class has a number of advantages:

1. The professor may be connected to the movement but it is a unique opportunity for students to have an entry point into this group. I would bet the professor could get the students unique access to certain people or events that would lead to a better class experience.

2. The class addresses an important current phenomena. Whether you agree with the purposes of the movement or not, it is something worthy of study to understand why and how it developed and whether it will lead to change. How many people want to sit in a class about dry material when they could be learning about something happening right outside?

3. This is a chance for students to gain research experience in a unique setting. Aren’t colleges pushing research experiences for students?

From my point of view: I think a key here is that students develop their critical thinking and research skills in the course. This does not necessarily mean agreeing with the Occupy Wall Street movement but students should leave the course with a better understanding of the issues, the protestors, and how to do research.

Picking the white doll or black doll in Mexico

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The Mexican government has started a conversation about racism based on a video that shows an experiment where children have to pick between a black and white doll:

Is Mexico’s an inherently racist society? Does the culture overwhelmingly favor those with light skin over those with dark skin? And if so, is that a legacy of European colonialism or present-day images in television and advertising?

These are among the thorny questions emerging in online forums in Mexico since a government agency began circulating a “viral video” showing schoolchildren in a taped social experiment on race.

The kids are seated at a table before a white doll and a black doll, and are asked to pick the “good doll” or the doll that most resembled them. The children, mostly brown-skinned, almost uniformly say the white doll was better or most resembled them…

Mexico’s National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, in mid-December began circulating the video, modeled on the 1940s Clark experiments in the United States. The children who appear in it are mostly mestizos, or half-Spanish, half-Indian, and a message said they were taped with the consent of their parents and told to respond as freely as they could.

See the full video here.

This reminds of Jane Elliott’s famous blue-eyed, brown-eyed experiment with a third-grade class (highlights here). One of the most powerful parts of this exercise is the fact that these are supposedly innocent children who are quite capable of reflecting the racist attitudes of society. Similarly, the doll video suggests that even young children know full well about race and what skin color is valued more.

I can only imagine the outcry if a US government agency released a video like this…

Considering the effects of a “flush tax” in Maryland

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Officials in Maryland are discussing a different way of finding revenue: raising the “flush tax.”

Maryland’s already got a flush tax, it runs about $2.50 a month for sewer customers, and $30 a year for homes on septic systems. The money raised goes to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

Citing the continued damage to the watershed, Md. Governor Martin O’Malley told reporters he’d consider doubling or tripling the tax…

“Right now, there’s a flat flush tax, such that a senior citizen living in the 1600 block of North Avenue pays the same flush fee as a single person living in a giant McMansion.”…

“The Governor dropped a bomb last year in his State of the State address where he proposed banning developments of five or more homes on septic systems,” says Michael Harrison, Director of Government Affairs for the Homebuilder’s Association of Maryland. Harrison says such a ban wouldn’t hurt the big national builders, but local, small scale developers who work in rural areas.

This is not an uncommon situation: a government official suggests raising or enacting a new fee tied to growth and builders respond negatively. While I can understand how raising the fee might impact future building, it seems like it would be difficult to argue that bigger houses shouldn’t have to pay a higher “flush tax.” As the tax currently stands, it is more about paying a fee per lot of development rather than for the usage of the sewers.

The talk of septic systems in suburbia reminds me of the possible problems as laid out in Adam Rome’s book The Bulldozer in the Countryside. Despite the issues with septic systems, building sewers out to more rural areas can be quite expensive for smaller communities so septic systems can seem cheaper in the short-term.

Crumbling McMansions as “wildlife habitats”

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Mix together a few recent stories about animals encountering people in the suburbs and you can reach an interesting conclusion: McMansions could become “wildlife habitats”.

Great news for folks who have watched the value of their exurban McMansions circling the drain over the past few years: These fringe habitations can be returned to nature to find new life as wildlife habitats. It’s basically the real estate version of composting.

Okay, so there’s not really an official effort to make subdivisions into sanctuaries, but apparently nobody told bears that. In Hopatcong, N.J., a cable TV repairman recently descended into 85-year-old Frank Annacone’s basement and found a 500-pound black bear slumbering there. The folks at Gothamist dubbed it the “Reverse Goldilocks Bear,” and in a true case of lopsided justice, it was quickly tranquilized and subjected to an “examination” (yikes) before being released back into the wild. (What did Goldilocks get, a good scare and a few hours of community service?)

It’s not the first time wild animals have done the “creative reuse” thing on the outer edges of civilization. BldgBlog has dredged up tales of bobcats lounging around foreclosed exurban mansions, bees that turned a California home into a honey factory, and a pack of coyotes that squatted in a burned-out house in Glendale, Calif.

These sort of animal/human interactions are no small issue in some suburbs. In this area, discussions about coyotes were hot not too long ago.

Trying to imagine McMansions as wildlife habitats is an interesting exercise. One far-fetched solution: some wealthy activist buys up a large McMansion neighborhood and turns it into a preserve. Perhaps people would even pay money to tour the odd preserve. This sounds like it could be a Hollywood thriller where some poor visitors end up trapped in this dystopian world. (Imagine Jurassic Park without dinosaurs and in a neighborhood of crumbling McMansions.) A second option: someone creates art that depicts crumbling McMansions returning to nature and full of animals.

If anyone has images or stories of full neighborhoods that have been “returned to nature,” I’d be interested in seeing them.

Cam Newton as sociologist?

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A commentator in the Wall Street Journal suggests Cam Newton is a sociologist:

All very true, all very interesting, but this was not the part of Fleming’s article—the cover story for ESPN the Magazine’s annual Next issue—that got the most attention on Thursday. That part would be Newton’s refusal to blame the weirdly harsh pre-draft assessments—ESPN’s own Mel Kiper Jr. compared him to former Bengals bust Akili Smith—on any latent prejudices against black quarterbacks. “I can’t sit up here and look at it like, oh man, my critics are racist,” Newton told Fleming. “I blame JaMarcus Russell and to some degree Vince Young. If you have the opportunity to make that kind of money doing something you love to do, why would you screw it up?” Which, admittedly, is an attention-grabbing thing to say.

It was also deemed a mistake by the sport-pundits whose job it is to deem statements like this mistakes. But as Bomani Jones notes in a terrific column for SB Nation, both Newton and his critics seem to miss the point. “The real danger is in the foolishness of the quote and its underlying sadness,” Jones writes. “It’s stupid because the knocks on Cam were based in the same madness that sent his mentor, [Warren] Moon, to Canada seven years before Russell was born. And it’s heartbreaking because, in spite of the progress the world claims it has made with regards to race, the young man who could be the NFL’s future blamed his own unfair treatment on two men who had to fight the same battles.”

Of course, as long as Newton continues to break records and be brilliant, he can—and will—be able to write his own narrative, in his own words. At the very least, it’s refreshing to have a new star who’s as interesting to talk about—and listen to—as he is to watch.

As far as I can tell, the only reason Newton gets dubbed a sociologist is because he brings up the issue of race. Interestingly, he downplays the racial explanation and goes to more individualistic explanations (i.e., two earlier quarterbacks failed). But it is interesting to note that discussing topics of race gets equated with the field of sociology.

While there is no doubt that Newton could have made a bold statement about how black quarterbacks are treated, I wonder if his statement says more about whether athletes can talk about race or feel like they should than about Newton. At this point in his career, what would Newton gain by taking on people like Mel Kiper Jr.? As a rookie, Newton may not want to be outspoken about a controversial social issue. Would his endorsement opportunities go down if he talked about race? Would sportswriters keep hammering on this? I’m not saying Newton is right by downplaying the larger structural forces that make success possible. However, certain athletes don’t address larger issues like some do. For example, Michael Jordan was criticized by some who thought he could have used his celebrity and standing to push for certain things. Jordan, a savvy businessman, chose not to. Newton may be following a similar path.

In the end, I would guess most sports fans and commentators don’t really want to address racial issues even though it clearly matters. On the whole, they would typically suggest sports transcends racial barriers and on-the-field performance is the only thing that matters. Also, the last time I can remember this being a big debate in the NFL with Rush Limbaugh on ESPN, it didn’t work out well.

Six predictions for American suburbs in 2012

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Since this is the time of year for predictions, here are my six broad predictions for American suburbs in 2012:

1. The suburbs will continue to be the space of choice for Americans even as critics argue they are bland, environmentally untenable, and ultimately unsustainable.

2. At the same time, because of the economic crisis, continuing trends in design, and different tastes among Millennials and retiring baby boomers, suburbs will be pursuing denser projects with more certain long-term outcomes.

3. Many suburbs and other local taxing bodies (school districts, etc.) will struggle to find revenue. The budget deficits at the federal and state levels will continue to trickle down. Many communities will struggle to fund basic services.

4. Minorities, immigrants, and lower-class residents will continue to move to the suburbs and more strongly challenge the image of suburbs as lily-white havens. Some suburbs will struggle to adapt. Wealthier suburbs will continue to look for ways to limit these changes.

5. The issues of funding and revenues will trump concerns like providing social services for new populations, being environmentally-friendly, and providing affordable housing. Some will argue these communities would likely stonewall these concerns regardless.

6. Regarding single-family homes: McMansions will continue to be disparaged, the size of the average new home will drop again, the problems with foreclosures will continue, the President and Congress will continue to express how the single-family home is the foundation of the American Dream, and affordable housing will still be unpopular.

(Note: I’ve written about these trends throughout 2011 and I plan to keep writing about them in 2012. While these predictions are somewhat vague, it is difficult to describe trends across all suburbs as they are a varied lot.)

Quick Review: Boomerang

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Michael Lewis’s latest book, Boomerang, gives the current economic crisis some international context. In an entertaining and somewhat breezy manner, Lewis investigates why countries as disparate as Iceland, Greece, Germany, and the United States all fell into the economic mess. Here are a few thoughts about his take:

1. My overwhelming thought about Lewis’s explanations is that he wants to delve into different cultural approaches to the world of finance. Lewis’s argument goes like this: even though these countries have very different histories and cultural mindsets, somehow they all got involved with bad debt in the 2000s. This same topic could spark a fascinating economic sociology or cultural sociology manuscript.

2. Unfortunately, Lewis either doesn’t have much time to spend with each country (he admits the book began as he was working on understanding the US system, which became The Big Short or he doesn’t want to delve deeply into his thin arguments. For example, in Germany he tries to tie their fondness for following rules (which means Germans were the last people to be being disastrous American CDOs) to their fondness for scatalogical humor (which Lewis bases on one anthropological study). While there is a lot of potential here for showing how different cultures can be tied together by a global finance market, Lewis needs a lot more evidence to construct a convincing argument.

3. I found the last chapter to be both exhilarating and depressing. Lewis comes back to the United States in the final chapter and describes how this could all play out. Here is what Lewis suggests: while the centralized governments of Europe struggle, the problem in the US is pushed down the road because the federal government can push off more and more obligations on state and local governments. If this plays out as Lewis suggests (though there is debate over whether it will be as bad as Meredith Whitney suggested), local governments will continue to feel the pain of the economic crisis for years to come and the results may not be pretty.

Summary: I think Lewis is on to something here but I would like to see the topic covered with more depth and include more research.

Argument: “environmental racism” in Aspen

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Two sociologists discuss “environmental racism” in Aspen:

A new book by two sociology professors at the University of Minnesota, blasting the Aspen way of life for fostering “environmental racism,” is stirring up indignation and mea culpas among the glitterati. The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden, by Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow, is a ten-year study of the use of immigrant labor in the ski town that focuses on the stark contrasts between the good life of superwealthy “locals” — many of them absentee landowners who are around only a few weeks of the year — and the legions of foreign-born workers who live in trailer parks and dilapidated rentals “down valley” and commute to menial but essential jobs at the resort.

The authors contend that the privileged have ample use of the beauty and recreational opportunities of the Roaring Fork Valley while systematically excluding the lower-income workers from sharing in that bounty. “This is a bizarre story of a town that prides itself on being environmentally conscious,” they write, “whose city council can approve the construction of yet another 10,000-square-foot vacation home with a heated outdoor driveway, and simultaneously decry as an eyesore the ‘ugly’ trailer homes where low-income immigrants live.”…

Response to the authors’ charges have been heated, with some locals denouncing illegal immigration and “scab labor” — while others have pointed out that the book doesn’t give much attention to the town’s efforts to develop affordable housing and improve living conditions for seasonal workers. The town of Basalt recently signed off on a deal to purchase a trailer park in a floodplain, redevelop it as open space and relocate the residents to better housing.

But Park and Pellow see the notion of “affordable” housing in Aspen to be problematic, at best — kind of like the prissy locals who complain about the older, high-polluting cars driven by immigrant laborers while tooling around themselves in shiny new Range Rovers. Nothing about a bubble of privilege like Aspen is simple, especially at this time of year.

Another social arena where race and class matter (and I also imagine there are gender disparities here as well). I imagine the situation is not that different in many tourist destinations: wealthy travelers can easily travel in and out and even practice consumption in environmentally-conscious ways while poorer workers struggle to meet ends meet, have limited mobility, and can’t partake of the natural beauty the wealthy visit to enjoy.

This reminds me of a paper one of my students wrote at the end of this semester suggesting that the environmental movement has ignored issues of race and class when promoting or condoning gentrification (or renewing older urban neighborhoods) because it can then push lower-class residents to the suburbs which the environmentalists would claim are environmentally harmful. Like in Aspen, the wealthy have better chances to be environmentally conscious.

I wonder how much these two sociologists tie these issues to a growing divide in the United States between those with the education and income to pursue desirable behaviors, whether it is being green or getting married, and those who cannot.

Learning about the Republican presidential contenders from their (McMansion) homes

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Perhaps showing that drawn out process for nominating a Republican candidate has gone on long enough, the New York Times takes a new angle in looking at the possible candidates: looking at their homes. And the topic of McMansions comes up:

Where better to look than their homes, to get a sense of their style, and what it might tell us about what they value and how they live? …

The New York Times enlisted interior designers and a design psychologist to scrutinize photos and share their thoughts, political leanings aside, on what the homes reveal about the candidates.

Some points are obvious to an untrained eye. There are a lot of big new houses, for example. “I hate to call them McMansions — it gives McDonald’s a bad name,” said Thad Hayes, a New York designer whose many projects have included restoring the Palm Beach mansion of Estée Lauder. “But with so many of them, you can’t tell where they are. They’re totally anonymous.”…

The candidates all seem to be striving for an American colonial look — there is not a fixer-upper or modernist glass oasis in the mix. And many aspire to the formality of the White House — there are lots of wood-paneled studies and use of a pale gold that Benjamin Moore would surely name Oval Room Yellow.

And read further for more specific critiques of each candidate’s home.

Several quick thoughts:

1. I wonder how much the quip about McMansions is prompted by the houses themselves or political leanings of the commentators. Many of the comments about these houses are similar to those generally made about McMansions: the homes are big, boxy, poorly proportioned, full of flashy luxuries, look traditional but aren’t really, and inhabited by social strivers. Perhaps more liberal candidates or officeholders do actually have more “authentic” homes but I wonder…McDonald’s is better than these homes?

2. Despite my thoughts in thought #1, scholars have noted how important the shift was from seeing the home as a necessity to seeing the home as an expression of oneself. While there are varying opinions about how this should be carried out, homes are like many consumer objects: we want them to help express our individuality.

3. While it is noted that the candidates generally have traditional-looking homes, is this really any different than most Americans? How many people really live in or desire more unique designs? (It might also be interesting to think about what is a “traditional” look – does stucco count? Mediterranean?)

4. Perhaps this is too obvious to note: this doesn’t contribute much to our knowledge about the candidates except to remind us that most (all?) big-name politicians have big homes.

(Side note: others, like The Atlantic, have picked up on the McMansion aspect of this story.)

Using sociological surveys as political weapons

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One commentator suggests that sociological surveys were used as political weapons recently in Russia:

Long before the State Duma elections of Dec 4, the ultra-rightist and liberal mass media, collaborating with anti-Russian elements in the West, forecast that the ruling United Russia party would suffer a serious defeat.

They organized all sorts of sociological surveys to support this thoroughly planned campaign and to push their “predictions” on the “crisis” facing Russian leaders and “sharply declining rating” of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev. The anti-Putin campaign became really vociferous when the United Russia congress officially and unanimously approved Putin as its nominee for the presidential election in March 2012.

It is true that the election results showed the correlation of political forces and sentiments in Russia, which is experiencing the difficult strategic consequences of the disintegration of the erstwhile Soviet Union and the impact of the global economic crisis.

I’m less interested in dissecting recent events in Russia (which are very interesting to read about) and more interested in thinking about using sociological findings as political weapons. The argument made here is that these surveys are part of a larger, unfair, ideological campaign waged by pundits and the media. Perhaps more importantly, there is a claim that the surveys were “organized,” suggesting they were only undertaken in order to push a particular viewpoint.

I don’t doubt that sociological findings are used in struggles for power. Indeed, sociologists are not value-neutral as they themselves have their own interests and class position within society. However, I tend to think the primary purpose of sociological data is to explain what is happening in society. If sociological surveys in Russia show dissatisfaction with Putin, is it incorrect to report this? Of course, statistics and facts are open to interpretation and need to be approached carefully.

Where is the line between sociological surveys illuminating social structures, practices, and beliefs and having viewpoints and using sociological data to push these perspectives? Max Weber’s writings on value-neutrality are still useful today as we think about the proper use of sociological data.