Author Archives: legallysociable

Jimmy Kimmel helps show what happens when Christmas gift-giving norms are broken

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A recent Jimmy Kimmel bit titled “I Gave My Kids a Terrible Present” exposes what happens when Christmas gift-giving norms are violated:

Judging by YouTube comments, some view the tears as an indictment of children’s materialism at Christmas. Others, including the playfully sadistic parents in some of the videos, just think it’s funny…

Some viewers have equated the tantrums of some of the children with greediness. But Lisa Wade, an assistant professor of sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, argued that while some children appear greedier than others, all are reacting to a perceived break in social rules about gifting.

“Because social rules are so complicated, when kids are little, they’re really trying to learn them, so they take them very seriously,” she said…

Some critics have called the videos cruel, as they did in November when Mr. Kimmel invited parents to pretend they had eaten all their kids’ Halloween candy. (That montage has more than 25 million YouTube views.) But, as Dr. Wade noted, learning to take a joke is another crucial social skill.

Are these the sort of sociological insights and life lessons one should share with someone else’s kids? After seeing the horrified and tearful reactions of some of these kids, would this easily get IRB approval?

Also noteworthy: giving young kids opposite gender gifts is very problematic. This hints at how quickly kids are socialized into gendered roles.

The sociological guide to giving Christmas gifts

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Here are nine sociological rules for giving gifts at Christmas. Several things to note:

1. This comes out of the long-running study of “Middletown,” otherwise known as Muncie, Indiana. I am still amazed at all of the material uncovered over the decades in this project.

2. These rules were originally published in a 1984 article in the American Journal of Sociology titled “Rule Enforcement Without Visible Means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown.” I tend to think of AJS as being austere so I’m not quite sure what to make of the inclusion of this article…

3. I wonder if some of these rules have changed in recent years.

4. One final question: if a sociologist started explaining his or her family’s gift giving practices in this way to the participants, how many families would have a favorable reaction?

Getting married to mark one’s social status

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With marriage rates on the decline, especially among younger Americans, one editor asks if marriage is the new status symbol:

It’s clear that the trends TIME noted in its cover story this time last year are not dissipating. But that doesn’t mean the tide has turned against marriage forever. The institution is losing its status as a social obligation, but not necessarily its desirability. Indeed, since marriage is now largely practiced among high-status, college-educated individuals, it may even be becoming more prestigious — the relationship equivalent of owning a luxury car.

With more education and money, marriage becomes a luxury good, desirable for some. If marriage is mainly for people of a certain social class, its effect on society could be more limited.

Two other quick thoughts:

1. Is this the conspicuous consumption of relationships?

2. I wonder how this ties in with a continued push for higher education in the United States. There will still be plenty of people who desire marriage. But this could get particularly interesting with the increased number of women earning college and graduate degrees.

3. How does this fit with the popular image of the defenders of marriage being conservative religious types who also are stereotyped to have less education and lower class standings? Could marriage also become a religious status marker?

Study: people tend to make friends on Facebook with people of similar tastes

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A recently published study of college students argues that people become Facebook friends with people of similar tastes:

“The more tastes that you and I share in common, the more likely we are to become friends,” said study author Kevin Lewis, a graduate student in sociology at Harvard University.

The findings seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that people are easily influenced by those around them. Instead, “we’re seeking out people we already resemble rather than learning new perspectives and liking new things,” Lewis said…

The goal of the study was to understand how people choose friendships, Lewis said. The researchers started with 1,640 students at an unnamed U.S. college in 2006 and tracked their Facebook friendships and tastes — in popular music, movies and books — until they were seniors in 2009…

The study found that “students who share some tastes in movies and music are more likely to become friends,” Lewis said. Shared tastes in books were less influential.

Sounds like an interesting study. I haven’t read the full study but there are two other things I would want to know:

1. The study is restricted to college students. Might this influence the results? Of course, these college students will become the adults of the next few decades.

2. How does this fit with existing research that shows that people tend to be Facebook friends with people they already know? Things are a little different in college where students are more willing to friend people in these classes (actual academic courses and year in school). But, most Facebook users are not going online to find new friends with whom they don’t previously have a connection.

3. The last paragraph I cited above makes me think of branding. Younger people in particular define themselves by some of their tastes and it doesn’t shock me that this is done more through music and movies than books. So are books more private tastes or are very few people in college reading?

A reduced Federal tax break for commuters?

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Many would argue that the United States has clearly privileged the suburbs in its fiscal policies including helping to make mortgages more available and providing money for highway funding. At the same time, buried within Washington’s recent debate over tax cuts is a little tax break for commuters:

The amount of income that commuters who use mass transit will be eligible to shelter from taxes to pay their fares drops on Jan. 1 to $125 a month from the current $230 a month, while the tax-free parking benefit for drivers will increase from $230 to $240 a month, officials said today.

The steep reduction in the transit provision is due to Congress’ failure to renew the higher limit in the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, officials said, adding that they are hopeful lawmakers will approve a higher limit sometime in 2012…

The cut in benefits will have a similar effect as a fare increase because riders whose employers participate in the transit benefits program will be able to shield a maximum of $1,500 in income from taxes in 2012, down from $2,760 this year.

It interesting that these changes would boost the break for parking/driving to work while lowering the benefits for mass transit (perhaps temporarily). I bet this law has a fascinating history.

If the public is not particularly interested in tax breaks for large corporations, are they in favor of tax benefits for commuting? Does the approval for this depend on whether someone claims the tax break?

Thinking about the larger topic, it would be interesting to see how much the average driver benefits or pays for driving and mass transit. How much of a typical tax burden goes for transportation? How much does the average driver or mass-transit commuter get in return for the tax money that they pay in? Of course, we could have a much longer discussion about what the government should promote in its policies but I assume this is not at the top of the discussion pile in Washington.

Sociologist discusses the Living Earth Simulator

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A sociologist explains a little bit more about the Living Earth Simulator that aims to model society:

Time travel: probably not going to happen any time soon. At least, not in the physical, “Back to the Future” sense. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to peek into the future. In the December issue of Scientific American, writer David Weinberger chats with Dirk Helbing, a Swiss physicist and sociologist who is pitching a project called the Living Earth Simulator, a billion-euro computer system that would absorb vast amounts of data, use it to model global-scale systems — economies, governments, etc. — and predict the future.

Well, maybe. Weinberger speaks with researchers who point out the roadblocks. While it’s possible to model small systems, such as highway and pedestrian traffic, getting a read on the economy, the environment and public health all at once is a much more complicated process. For instance, how would you account for feedback loops in the system — that is, what happens when the computer model’s conclusions alter the situation that it’s modeling? And if you can’t understand the process through which the model generates an answer, the whole thing is just a giant Magic 8 Ball, anyway. The computer may call upon world leaders to “set fire to all the world’s oil wells,” writes Weinberger. “That will not be actionable advice if the policymaker cannot explain why it’s right.”

So data mining will not be encouraged or will the model’s supervisors insist that every discovered pattern come with an explanation?

Interestingly, Helbing is also featured in a recent article in The Economist about pedestrian traffic:

In 1995 Mr Helbing and Peter Molnar, both physicists, came up with a “social force” computer model that used insights from the way that particles in fluids and gases behave to describe pedestrian movement. The model assumed that people are attracted by some things, such as the destination they are heading for, and repelled by others, such as another pedestrian in their path. It proved its worth by predicting several self-organising effects among crowds that are visible in real life.

One is the propensity of dense crowds spontaneously to break into lanes that allow people to move more efficiently in opposing directions. Individuals do not have to negotiate their way through a series of encounters with oncoming people; they can just follow the person in front. That works better than trying to overtake. Research by Mr Moussaid suggests that the effect of one person trying to walk faster than the people around them in a dense crowd is to force an opposing lane of pedestrians to split in two, which has the effect of breaking up the lane next door, and so on. Everyone moves slower as a result.

Two quick thoughts:

1. Combining physics and sociology to explain social behavior seems to be growing in popularity. Here is what I assume: the physics side brings experience in dealing with complex models and a more naturalistic way of explaining human behavior while sociologists bring more theories and knowledge about human contingencies. (But I could be wrong.) It does seem like the combination of these two disciplines could uniquely bridge the gap between the natural and social sciences.

2. Overall, I assume there will be many more projects like this. Getting the data is not so much a problem and we have the computing power to calculate complex models. If this does increase, this will mean some changes within the discipline of sociology: a shift toward mathematical sociology (making regression look relatively simple), thinking about “natural laws” in a way that sociology has generally avoided, and viewing the world in a different way (individuals operating within complex systems).

Sociologist Richard Sennett: Wall Street offices lack cooperation

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After talking with a number of workers involved in the Wall Street troubles of 2008, sociologist Richard Sennett argues that Wall Street offices lack cooperation:

The financial industry is a high-stress business that requires people to work extremely long hours, sacrificing time for children, spouses and social pleasures. But after 2008, many of my subjects were no longer willing to make those sacrifices. Looking back, they realized how little respect they had for the executives who’d worked above them, how superficial was the trust they had for fellow workers and, most of all, how weak cooperation proved in the wake of financial disaster.

The fragility of this social triangle is disturbing. When informal channels of communication wither, people keep to themselves ideas about how the organization is really doing, or guard their own territory. Weak social ties erode loyalty, which businesses need in good times as well as bad. Many of the employees I’ve been talking with have come to feel embittered by the thin, superficial quality of social ties in places where they spend most of their waking hours…

Even for those workers who have recovered quickly, the crash isn’t something they are likely to forget. The front office may want to get back as quickly as possible to the old regime, to business as usual, but lower down the institutional ladder, people seem to feel that during the long boom something was missing in their lives: the connections and bonds forged at work.

This is an example of how sociology can help inform economics and/or social policy. In order for offices or any social group to work well, there has to be trust, solidarity, and cooperation. These traits cannot simply be dictated or ordered. Rather, relationships and social ties need to be started, developed, and maintained over time. These relationships may seem silly or unnecessary to some but it will be difficult to accomplish great things without them.

I expect an analysis like this is just the beginning of a flood of academic work and commentary about the recent economy crisis. And I would guess that a lot of research will show that people were not acting “rationally” but rather were working off of different emotions that led to “irrational exuberance.” Cultural and social factors played a role but it will up to scholars to determine how much.

Documentary about sociologist Zygmunt Bauman

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Based on a few stories in the last few days, I have again realized that sociology outside the United States may be quite different. While there is a dance performance in Quebec celebrating the life of a political scientist and sociologist, there is a new Polish documentary examining the life of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman:

“Love Europe World by Zygmunt Bauman”, a film about the world famous Polish-Jewish philosopher and sociologist had its premiere last week.

The documentary was commissioned by the National Audiovisual Institute as a part of the Cultural Program of the Polish EU Presidency in 2011 and directed by Krzysztof Rz?czy?ski.

In the four-parts film (Culture, Europe, The World, and Himself), Bauman reflects upon issues that are central to his work as a sociologist: culture and the times, in which we live.

“The ultimate result of the blossoming of culture, which we have undoubtedly witnessed in the passing years, is a feeling of having gone astray”, says Bauman in the film.

I imagine that European sociologists as public intellectuals might just be considered normal material for documentaries. People like Bauman, Giddens, and Habermas have been quite influential.

What if someone wanted to make a series on the lives of American sociologists? Think of the possibilities: George Herbert Mead, Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, Peter Berger, Robert Bellah, Robert Wuthnow, William Julius Wilson, and more. (I know I’m leaving a lot of big names out here.) Are there particularly notable paths sociologists took to reach the top of the discipline? Even so, perhaps there is a better question to consider before thinking too much about this: would anyone ever watch these?

Land for mosque to be annexed by Naperville

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Here is an update on a story I’ve been following: Naperville agreed earlier this week to annex a parcel of land on its southern border that is intended to be used for a mosque.

Naperville officials agreed to annex land owned by the Islamic Center of Naperville, capping several months of resistance among neighbors of the parcel in the southwest part of the suburb.

Representatives of the religious group say the 14 acres along 248th Avenue between 95th and 103rd streets, could be home to a mosque in five to 20 years.

For now, the Islamic Center plans to use a house on the property — formerly owned by HOPE United Church of Christ — as a residence and office and may occasionally hold small prayer gatherings there.

For several months, the proposed annexation has generated protests by residents in the nearby Tall Grass and Penncross Knolls subdivisions who have said they are worried about issues like noise, traffic and parking once the mosque is built.

See the earlier post here.

I suppose I am still a little perplexed by the opposition this proposed mosque has encountered. I used this as an example in my American Suburbanization class this fall along with several other recent cases regarding proposed mosques in DuPage County. At this point, the building is still years away and the main question was about whether the land should be annexed into Naperville. One quote reported from a public meeting about the annexation is still in my head:

“I’d prefer a trailer park,” said Richard Wylie, a nearby resident. “It would be a lower frequency of people coming and going.”

Is there really anybody in Naperville who can really say this with a straight face? A trailer park in Naperville? Beyond the fringes of the metropolitan region, is there any community that would openly desire a trailer park? I’m not saying these are necessarily bad places but many suburban communities would want to avoid these because of their image.

I’ll keep watching this to see what happens. At this point, it sounds like the annexation will go forward and the landowners will continue to think about a possible mosque for the future.

Improving suburban roads in Montgomery County

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The suburbs are full of roads. But, as many have noted, these roads are primarily built for the fastest automobile speeds between Points A and B. Montgomery County, Maryland has put together a plan to improve their roadways:

As a result, Montgomery has actually been in the business of “retrofitting” or “repairing” the suburbs (very gradually, to be sure) since before planners began to call it that. Now, it has undertaken a pilot study on two stretches of roadway in the county to evaluate the use of green infrastructure – strategically placed vegetation and other methods that reduce polluted runoff by using or mimicking natural hydrology – along with measures to better accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists. One is an arterial road that goes through residential areas, the other a wide commercial street. Both showed there was much potential, and Montgomery is now planning to integrate more environmental features into its streets…

Note that the changes are not extensive, for the most part, but incremental: subtle narrowing of traffic lanes to slow auto speed; plantings in medians, along sidewalks and in parking lots to capture and filter rainwater; bike lanes and wider sidewalks to accommodate non-motorized users; striping to mark a people-first pedestrian lane where a sidewalk may not be feasible…

There’s a lot to like about Montgomery’s initiative, including that it brings together three relatively new and successful – but often independently successful – lines of sustainability thinking and planning: redesigning suburbs; green infrastructure; and “complete streets” that accommodate all types of users. It reminds us that the greatest potential for sustainable communities lies with the integration of ideas and purposes. I hope this kind of initiative continues to catch on.

This seems to include a number of techniques New Urbanists have talked about for years.

What I like best about this is that it is hard to argue against these changes. Generally, busy roads are either nondescript or unattractive so these changes help improve the aesthetics. Runoff is a common suburban problem and no one likes having to drive through big puddles. Carving out space for other users of the roads would appeal to a lot of people (as long as the bikers and drivers can get along – not a guarantee in some places). And this should be safer as we know that narrower roads tend to slow drivers down.

The only problem that I could envision: how much do these subtle but helpful changes cost? It might be a good amount of money upfront but then reduced costs (and perhaps even savings?) down the road (fewer accidents, fewer cars on the road so less road maintenance, etc.). Are taxpayers willing to pay to improve already pretty good roads (generally defined as very drivable and fast)?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how much they expand the program.