Author Archives: legallysociable

Nielsen reports a drop in American household TV ownership in America

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A new report from Nielsen suggests fewer American households have televisions:

The Nielsen Company, which takes TV set ownership into account when it produces ratings, will tell television networks and advertisers on Tuesday that 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent previously.

There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.

The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.

Nielsen suggests that affordability is really behind this drop in TV set ownership. But of consumer goods that are truly American, isn’t having a television at the top of the list? More than owning a car or a home (granted, these are more expensive) or a radio or a microwave (a lower ownership rate than TVs according to this), the television is a critical part of average American life. And with all of the purchases in recent years of nicer TV sets (LCD, plasma, 3D, LED, digital tuners), there are plenty of older TVs laying out or available for a low price at garage sales, consignment shops, and on Craigslist.

It makes sense that Nielsen is very interested in these figures. Nielsen’s methodology may not seem important to some people but these ratings are incredibly important for the TV industry. These ratings help set advertising rates which drive the industry and dictate which shows survive on the air and which do not. If ratings go up (whether that is because the show is more popular or because Nielsen can show that more people watch it), then networks can ask for more money.

If household TV ownership rates keep dropping, how might this affect the TV industry and TV networks?

Quick Review: Nickel and Dimed (theater version)

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I recently saw Nickel and Dimed in a local theater production. The text is a staple of Introduction to Sociology classes but I was not aware until recently that the 2001 book had been adapted for the stage. While the New York Times reviewed the play in its 2006 New York City debut, I have a few thoughts about the production I saw:

1. Like the book, the play follows Barbara to her three new professions that pay minimum wage (or a little higher): working as a waitress at Kenny’s, working as a housecleaner for a maids company, and working on the sales floor at Mall-Mart. From what I remember of the book, the basic story is the same: Barbara decides to do this in order to understand the experiences of the American working poor, finds that the work is physically taxing and also takes time to master, and concludes that such a life is quite difficult and unfair.

2. Besides Barbara, the key characters are some of her co-workers. These people are often caught in dead-end jobs that offer little money and few or no benefits. With nowhere else to go, some of the coworkers doggedly follow the rules in order to maintain their jobs, others rebel a bit, while others show Barbara compassion that she was not expecting to need. In the final moments of the play, we hear about some of these workers have fared in the long run even as Barbara has returned to her cushy life.

2a. One of the more interesting scenes from these co-workers comes toward the end of the play when her Mal-Mart manager speaks directly to the audience for a few moments. As a manager, he says “the numbers don’t lie” and suggests that there is little that can be done to improve work for he or his employees as the prices dictate the wages and benefits. Of course, he is suggesting that the problem extends higher up in the company.

3. One of the fun parts of the evening was thinking about how the audience was reacting to these scenes. Barbara plays up some of the class conflict ideas and says some uncomfortable things, particularly to a fairly wealthy, suburban crowd.

4. This particular production included four musical numbers which I don’t believe are part of the typical stage production. While I am not a fan of musicals, I thought these numbers added something to the show. I always find it interesting to hear cheerful-sounding numbers about less-than-cheerful themes such as unjust working conditions.

5. Several of my students saw the show and their comments to me suggested that the play hit an emotional nerve in a way that a lecture on social class in America in my Intro to Sociology course has a hard time doing. In additional conversations, we found that my students and I have worked in some similar jobs but the difference was that we knew that we had better educational and career options down the road.

Overall, I enjoyed thinking about these topics in a new way though the theater. Now that Ehrenreich’s book is 10 years old, is there another book that was recently published or that is in the works that can address some of the same issues while attaining the popularity of Nickel and Dimed? That might be a tall task but such works help keep sociological discussions alive in the public sphere.

(I also found that Ehrenreich’s personal page for the book includes positive reviews from a number of sociologists.)

Assassination, Gaddafi, and Bin Laden

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Instapundit recently posted about how there has been general support for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Being involved in assassinations is a tricky area for the United States, particularly since we were implicated in some nefarious activity back in the 1950s through the 1970s (see the Church Committee report of 1975). Here how this has played out in recent days:

1. The recent attack on Gaddafi was intended to kill the Libyan leader. This is not the first time the US has attempted this with the earlier efforts coming in a bombing attack in 1986. This would seem to fit the classic definition of assassination: the killing of a foreign leader when his actions against the United States were not part of a larger war.

2. The recent killing of Bin Laden is being called an assassination by some but doesn’t seem to be in the same category. Bin Laden was not a political leader and I’m sure he had been named something like an “enemy combatant” by the United States. Because he was killed as part of a war effort (the “war on terror”) and he wasn’t a politician, this isn’t really an assassination. The problem comes in here when the media talks about assassinations as any attack on a prominent person. Not all such attacks are assassinations.

In both of these cases, people have made the argument that killing “the head” of the organization (al Qaeda or Libya) would be better than fighting a more traditional war. Perhaps so – but such actions might be against international law (see a quick discussion of the ambiguities here). And whether the killing of one person actually gets rid of larger, structural problems is another matter (witness the case of Iraq and the death of Saddam Hussein).

I recently thought of an example that illustrates some of the problems with assassinations or “targeted killings”: imagine that a foreign leader called for the killing of President Obama because of US actions around the world. I imagine that we would be fairly outraged: how dare another country threaten our voted-in leader. But is this much different than NATO leaders openly discussing killing Gaddafi?

Bin Laden and his McMansion

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As the details of Osama bin Laden’s death have become public, some attention has been paid to the house in Pakistan in which he was staying. Here is an extended description from Politico:

The White House says the compound that housed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was “extraordinarily unique” and had many signs that indicated he was hiding there.

The structure, which has been described as a mansion, was on a “large plot of land” in a “relatively secluded” area, a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call. The residence itself was “eight times larger” than other homes in the area, said the official, who refused to be identified.

“We were shocked by what we saw,” the official said after President Obama announced that bin Laden had been killed at the compound in Abbottabad.

The security measures at the compound were “extraordinary,” the official said, describing walls that were 12 to 18 feet high and topped with barbed wire, in addition to walls on the inside. Access to the mansion was restricted with two security gates, officials said.

Another sign was that the residents of the mansion burned their trash, unlike their neighbors, who simply put their garbage outside, they said.

The property, valued at $1 million, had no telephone or Internet access, the White House said. It was “custom built to hide someone of significance,” the official said.

When I first heard about this house in a Pakistani community, I wondered if anyone would tie this kind of unusual house to the idea of a McMansion. I found three examples. First, a columnist links bin Laden’s house to McMansion complaints in an Austin neighborhood:

And so much for the legend that bin Laden was a really big camper who survived in caves. Bin Laden was found in a huge house, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, eight times larger than any other house in the area. So if he had been hiding in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, they would have found him years ago because people would have called the city to complain about his McMansion.

They must have a lot of complaints about McMansions in this neighborhood.

Second, a Brooklyn-based publication links bin Laden to McMansions and Martha Stewart:

As for the details, we’ll find out over time (we’re expecting a big spread in Martha Stewart Living about how you can make your house look like Osama’s Abottobad Dream McMansion).

I don’t think we’ll be seeing that particular spread soon.

Third, the blog SpyTalk has this headline for a blog post: “Mystery: Who Financed Bin Laden’s McMansion?”

Why exactly would people say bin Laden was living in a McMansion? Perhaps a few reasons: the house was quite large. The house was larger than anything nearby (the relative size argument). The home was quite private with its walls, gate, and barbed wire. But this seems kind of ridiculous: the typical suburban McMansion looks nothing like this nor are its typical residents dangerous terrorists (regardless of what the movie Arlington Road might lead you to believe). But if you don’t like McMansions and you don’t like bin Laden, perhaps this makes sense…

(A Time piece suggests the house was not even a mansion:

The compound doesn’t quite fit the descriptions of a mansion, as some have labeled it. The walls are 12 feet high walls and about 13 inches thick – enough to shield the tall terrorist leader from public view. The property itself is spread over an area slightly smaller than an acre. The house is a great deal smaller, rising over two-storeys. In other ways, it was unremarkable but sometimes noticed.

So there are some differing opinions on this.)

The mean population center of Illinois is close to Chicago but this wasn’t always the case

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The mean population center of Illinois is relatively close to Chicago:

[B]ased on new data from the U.S. Census, the true center point of Illinois’ population is about 70 miles southwest of Chicago’s bustling Magnificent Mile.

Situated in a corn field east of the intersection of U.S. Route 47 and Illinois Route 113 in Grundy County is the point referred to by the census as the Mean Center of Population for Illinois…

The center point can tell a lot about a state.

It can help explain why Illinois has a state government controlled largely by Chicago politicians.

It can help explain how money gets distributed around the state. It can help explain why some issues — say, gun control — can pit rural interests against urban interests.

“Somewhere close to half the population of the state is within 40 miles of the Loop,” Illinois State University geography professor Mike Sublett said.

This is not too surprising: by far, Chicago is the largest city in the state and the population of the Chicago metropolitan region (2009 estimate of the Illinois portion only – not counting Wisconsin and Indiana populations) is just under 8 million while Illinois’ total population is just over 12.8 million (2010 figures).

But the value of such a measure seems to be not exactly where this mean is located but rather how this population mean has shifted over time. The article goes on to note how the population mean wasn’t always so close to Chicago:

In the 1840s, the center point was located east of Springfield, relatively close to Illinois’ geographical center point in the Logan County community of Chestnut.

But, as Chicago began to grow as an urban center, the population center point began its northward trek along a line nearly mirroring what would become Interstate 55.

The 1880 center of the state’s population was on the south side of Bloomington, near U.S. Route 150 south of where State Farm Insurance Cos. has its Illinois regional office complex.

In 1910, the center moved out of McLean County for the first time in 50 years. The new center was in a farm field just a few miles southeast of Pontiac.

The only time it took a break from its northeasterly trek until recently was in 1940, when the center — then located in Livingston County — briefly moved southward…

The northern movement of the center point also has stalled in recent decades. The 2010 center point near south of Morris in Grundy County is somewhat south of the 2000 and 1990 population centers, located just a few miles away.

Sublett attributes the stall to the rapid growth of Chicago’s western suburbs and the loss of population within the state’s largest city.

“The center point has kind of stagnated. It has just been migrating around Grundy County,” Sublett said.

As I’ve written before regarding the US population mean (see here), the population mean measure seems to make the most sense when placed in a historical context so that people can get a quick look at larger population and migration trends.

I wonder how many Chicago area residents know that the bulk of the state’s early population lived in the central and southern portions of the state and it wasn’t really until the 1840s and 1850s that the population of northeastern Illinois really began to grow and tilt the balance of power in the state.

McMansions and the “inconspicuous consumption” of the 1990s

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One aspect of McMansions that is frequently discussed is the tie between such houses and larger patterns of excessive consumption. Here is a quote from a CEO of a Pennsylvania construction company that does just this:

“The new-home industry will have to respond to the market for smaller lot size and efficient home construction,” Wagman said. “We’re past the building of McMansions. That type of inconspicuous consumption is so ’90s.”

To be honest, I didn’t quite know what this term “inconspicuous term” meant. I know what conspicuous consumption as it is a common sociological term first introduced by Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 work The Theory of the Leisure Class. So I went digging around Google for the meaning of this term and how it relates to Veblen’s term. This piece from The Economist in 2005 argues that conspicuous consumption is now much more complex in wealthy, Western societies and so inconspicuous consumption still shows off wealth but in more subtle ways:

As well as traditional conspicuous consumption and “self-treating”, Ledbury Research identifies two other motives that are driving buying by the rich: connoisseurship and being an “early adopter”. Both are arguably consumption that is conspicuous only to those you really want to impress. Connoisseurs are people whom their friends respect for their deep knowledge of, say, fine wine or handmade Swiss watches. Early adopters are those who are first with a new technology. Silicon Valley millionaires currently impress their friends by buying an amphibian vehicle to avoid the commuter traffic on the Bay Bridge. Several millionaires have already paid $50,000 a go to clone their pet cat.

Who knew that spending lavishing to show off one’s wealth and status had become so difficult? In 2008, Virginia Postrel says something similar:

The shift away from conspicuous consumption—from goods to services and experiences—can also make luxury more exclusive. Anyone with $6,000 can buy a limited-edition Bottega Veneta bag, an elaborately beaded Roberto Cavalli minidress, or a Cartier watch. Or, for the same sum, you can register for the TED conference. That $6,000 ticket entitles you to spend four days in California hearing short talks by brainy innovators, famous (Frank Gehry, Amy Tan, Brian Greene) and not-so-known. You get to mingle with smart, curious people, all of whom have $6,000 to spare. But to go to TED, you need more than cash. The conference directors have to deem you interesting enough to merit one of the 1,450 spots. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a velvet rope.

As for goods, forget showing off. “If you want to live like a billionaire, buy a $12,000 bed,” says a financial-planner friend of mine. You can’t park a mattress in your driveway, but it will last for decades and you can enjoy it every night.

So we’ve moved away from garish displays of spending to more exclusive but somewhat more hidden ways to display wealth.

If we return then to the quote from the construction CEO, what exactly was he getting at? A few thoughts:

1. If he is adhering to a similar definition as The Economist piece or Virginia Postrel, then he is suggesting that McMansions were a more subtle display of wealth. But it seems that a lot of the criticism of McMansions comes from the idea that the owners are trying (desperately) to flaunt their wealth in the form of their large, garish house. So is McMansion buying a conspicuous or inconspicuous act? Might there be different opinions if we talk to the buyers/owners of such homes (after all, people need to live somewhere) versus McMansion critics (but people don’t have to live in mass-produced, poorly designed homes)?

2. He suggests that the inconspicuous consumption of McMansions took place during the 1990s. The late 1990s is where the term McMansion started to take off but the houses themselves seemed to receive the most attention from roughly 2000 to the start of the current economic/housing crisis. Perhaps the 1990s get singled out here because of a good economy in the latter half of the decade but much McMansion building and purchasing was still taking place until recent years.

(3. I wonder if he simply didn’t mean to say “conspicuous consumption” and said “inconspicuous consumption” instead.)

(Amazon also has a 1997 book that uses this term as a title: Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure. Interestingly, it is written by Paul Lukas, the mind also behind Uni Watch, a blog with the tagline of “The Obsessive Study of Athletics Aesthetics.” It appears Lukas is still writing about the same topics for ESPN.com but I haven’t seen his material featured in years. When it was more prominently featured, I would read his thoughts quite often.)

Current trends in Finnish suburbs

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This blog contains a number of posts about American suburbs but I am also interested in learning more about suburbs in other countries. Here are some insights into the changes taking place in Finland’s suburbs:

Urban geographer Venla Bernelius says that the same process that took place in other parts of Europe is now under way in Finland. A previous low level of immigration, combined with relatively small income disparities has delayed the phenomenon.

“The direction appears clear. Differentiation is increasing all the time.”

Experiences from other parts of Europe and North America suggest that it is very difficult to reverse a process of ethnic differentiation. Bernelius says that the time to act is now.

At present, conditions in Finnish suburbs are nowhere near those of slums or ghettoes in other countries.

However, Matti Kortteinen, professor of urban sociology at the University of Helsinki says that isolation from the population at large makes it more difficult for immigrants to adapt to Finnish society.

“The development harms people’s overall well-being”, Kortteinen says.

One reason for the trend is that immigrants often end up living in areas where there is much municipal housing. Many Finns who are long-term unemployed also live in these areas.

“The issue is not only about ethnic differentiation. The worst-off Finns and the worst-off immigrants live in isolated suburbs”, Bernelius says.

It might be helpful to compare these trends with what is taking place in American suburbs. To start, more minorities and immigrants are moving to the American suburbs (just as it sounds like Finland). More broadly, the American suburbs contain a variety of communities and suburbs, some very wealthy and some quite poor. But, the suggestion here is that immigrants and minorities become isolated in Finnish suburbs while we would tend to think the opposite in the United States. If people have “made it” in the US or have certain income levels, they tend to move to the suburbs. A more general European pattern works in reverse: the poorer segments of the population, immigrants and natives, live in suburbs away from the city and its wealth.

It will be interesting to see how Finland, and other European nations, adjust and respond to this kind of suburban population growth.

The Sociology of Funeral Service

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Through the short history of this blog, I have highlighted a number of sociology courses that tackle interesting topics:

1. The course Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame is taught at the University of South Carolina and drew a lot of media attention.

2. Taught by a sociologist, the course Baseball in American Society is offered at Florida Southern College.

3. Recently, I highlighted a sociologist who teaches the Sociology of Self-Improvement.

4. I offer an addition to this list from Malcolm X College in Chicago: The Sociology of Funeral Service. Here are some insights about this industry:

Women have entered many educational and professional fields in recent decades. But the nurturing-woman stereotype seems to explain why more and more female students have decided to study funeral service. They have grown from a small minority to a small majority at the country’s 56 mortuary science programs.

In 2010, 56.8 percent of new enrollees were women, virtually unchanged from 56.9 percent in 2006, according to the American Board of Funeral Service Education.

The article goes on to talk about women still encounter some issues even as more women enroll in this field. On the whole, I would think that there is a lot of sociology that could apply to this field, particularly cultural ideas about death, emotions, aging and the lifecourse, gender, family, and race.

A few additional questions come to my mind:

1. While the article seems to suggest that women would be particularly well-suited for this field because of the “nurturing-woman stereotype,” it is also interesting to note that it has historically been a male field. Why was this the case and how exactly is this changing in the field?

2. It is interesting that this is now an academic field of study known as “mortuary science.” How has this field become professionalized over time? And has this shift toward a science helped lead to the increase of female students since women are now getting more degrees?

A call to collect better data in order to predict economic crises

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Economist Robert Shiller says that we would be better able to predict economic crises if we only had better data:

Eventually, these advances led to quantitative macroeconomic models with substantial predictive power — and to a better understanding of the economy’s instabilities. It is likely that the “great moderation,” the relative stability of the economy in the years before the recent crisis, owes something to better public policy informed by that data.

Since then, however, there hasn’t been a major revolution in data collection. Notably, the Flow of Funds Accounts have become less valuable. Over the last few decades, financial institutions have taken on systemic risks, using leverage and derivative instruments that don’t show up in these reports.

Some financial economists have begun to suggest the kinds of measurements of leverage and liquidity that should be collected. We need another measurement revolution like that of G.D.P. or flow-of-funds accounting. For example, Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton, Gary Gorton of Yale and Arvind Krishnamurthy of Northwestern are developing what they call “risk topography.” They explain how modern financial theory can guide the collection of new data to provide revealing views of potentially big economic problems.

Even if more data was collected, it would still require interpretation. If we had the right data before the ongoing current economic crisis, I wonder how confident Shiller would be that we would have made the right predictions (50%? 70% 95%?). From the public narrative that has developed, it looks like there was enough evidence that the mortgage industry was doing some interesting things but few people were looking at the data or putting the story together.

And for the future, do we even know what data we might need to be looking at in order to figure out what might go wrong next?

A sociological case for scientific innovation

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A physicist makes a sociological case for innovation in the sciences:

So, here is a general, sociological case for why we researchers should always be ahead of our time, even at the cost of frustrating ourselves trying to solve insoluble problems. Suppose that the tank of a given field has another 10 or even 15 years of gas left in it. Why should we abandon the field and try to train our students in a different area? Good training in science doesn’t depend on the subject. But more important, why not enter a new field in which, like almost any subject in the life sciences, the time left to have fun does not have a foreseeable upper bound?…

Scientists are conservative even when their job description could be succinctly summarized as “innovator” because the culture in which we operate is chock full of traditions that represent the opposite of innovation and intellectual freedom. We are still afraid of making mistakes—even simple terminology mistakes!—even though in the age of Google those can be corrected in an instant! We are still organizing our institutions of higher learning around power centers (the departments) that are built like fortresses meant to divide people instead of bringing them together!…

In conclusion, let me offer a note of hope, but of caution, too.

Many of the scientific questions that await answers will, I hope, be solved in the second part of this century. Then, having solved the last of the big puzzles—that is, having explained the origin of life—scientists will turn their attention and the power of their quantitative tools toward explaining the sociological complications that arise when these very complex machines called Homo sapiens interact with each other. Let us hope the fruits of that research will respect the freedom of our minds—and of our bodies too!

Sounds good: a physicist arguing that once some of the big natural science issues are solved, attention should be turned to studying human interaction. However, does this suggest that the view from physics that disciplines that study human interaction, like sociology, aren’t doing an adequate job?

It would be interesting to see a companion piece here that summarizes research regarding scientific innovation: how many scientists do switch fields or even subfields of study, how many feel like they could actually do this, and what do they feel are barriers to this.