Author Archives: legallysociable

Lady Gaga mentions that she studies “the sociology of fame”

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A recent course at the University of South Carolina titled “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame” drew a lot of attention. But it appears that Lady Gaga herself has an interest in the sociology of fame. Here is part of the conversation Lady Gaga had with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes:

“You’ve studied the fame of other people, how they got it, how they kept it and how they lost it,” Cooper remarked.

“The sociology of fame and how to maintain a certain privacy without, feeling like you’re withholding anything from your fans. My philosophy is that if I am open with them about everything, and yet I art direct every moment of my life, I can maintain a sort of privacy in a way. I maintain a certain soulfulness that I have yet to give,” Lady Gaga said.

The pressures of maintaining fame and the deadly price other superstars have paid for it are frequent themes in Lady Gaga’s performances. At the MTV Video Music Awards she shocked the audience by the ending of her song “Paparazzi.” Drenched in blood and hanging above the stage, she resembled a blond icon dying before our eyes.

“That’s what everyone wants to know, right? ‘What’s she gonna look like when she dies? What’s she gonna look like when she’s overdosed?’ on whatever they think I’m overdosing on? Everybody wants to see the decay of the superstar,” Lady Gaga said.

“Do you think people wanna see your decay?” Cooper asked.

“What? Of course they do! They wanna see me fail, they wanna see me fall on stage, they wanna see me vomiting out of a nightclub. I mean, isn’t that the age that we live in? That we wanna see people who have it all lose it all? I mean, it’s dramatic,” she replied.

“And then climb their way back,” Cooper remarked.

“Right. It’s a movie. And yet I just am not like that on my own time. I’m not a vomit-in-the-club kind of girl,” she said.

A few questions come to mind:

1. Would sociologists agree that the cycle that celebrities go through (rise to stardom, decline, comeback attempt) is “the sociology of fame?”

2. Does this mean that Lady Gaga is simply playing a role for her fans and for others? If she is so aware of how the script goes, is she doing anything original or authentic? She suggests she “art direct[s] every moment of [her] life” but also claims she is still able to maintain a private side. A classic front-stage/back-stage Erving Goffman explanation.

2a. If she knows that the decay is coming, will she choose to initiate it herself or at least push in a certain direction to maintain some control over it?

2b. There could be some interesting material in thinking about the entertainment or spectacle that Lady Gaga offers and why this is attractive to people.

3. What did Lady Gaga think of having a sociology class named after her (even though the class was about popular music in general)? Is this when she started thinking about “the sociology of fame”?

Baylor opens 25% of board to non-Baptist Christians

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American Christian colleges and universities have different structures in place in order to maintain their Christian distinctiveness. Baylor just made a change in their policy for their board:

While a number of Baptist colleges and universities in recent years have loosened or ended ties to state Baptist conventions, the move by Baylor is notable because it is widely considered the flagship university of Southern Baptists. The move came despite opposition from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which last year voted down a similar proposal by Houston Baptist University to permit the election of a minority of non-Baptist trustees there, with church leaders arguing at the time that allowing non-Baptist trustees would dilute the university’s religious identity…

Of Baylor’s 14,900 students, the university states that nearly 5,287 identify as Baptists — making them the largest religious group, but by no means a majority. The next largest groups are Roman Catholic (2,128), nondenominational Christians (2,091), and Methodists (1,156). Most of the other students identify with various Christian denominations, but the college also enrolls 125 Hindu students, 122 Muslim students, 84 Buddhist students, 22 Jewish students and 43 atheists.

Samuel Schuman, who studied Baylor for his 2009 book, Seeing the Light: Religious Colleges in 21st Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press), called the vote by the university’s board both “significant and inevitable.” He explained that “there has been tension for quite a while at Baylor about aspirations to be a national research university and their strict Southern Baptist tradition, and I think it was almost inevitable that something would have to give a bit.”

If we can take Schuman at his word, then this sounds like a common struggle for Christian schools: maintaining distinctiveness while also pursuing education and status. Baylor is not the only school to struggle with this; the University of Notre Dame is an example of a Catholic institution that a decision decades ago to become a major research school while also maintaining its Catholic identity. Juggling these two identities, research school plus Christian school, takes a lot of work on the ground on a campus.

What colleges can do to avoid situations like the shooting in Tucson

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While much of the aftermath of the Tucson shootings was about political rhetoric and discourse, there has been less focus on how Pima Community College might have helped or stopped Jared Loughner. Lucinda Roy suggests that at first glance, Pima’s actions are an upgrade based on what we learned from the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. But, digging deeper, Roy argues that Pima and other schools could still continue to improve their strategies.

Has America reached a saturation point for driving?

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The Infrastructurist sums up some recent arguments that suggest “America has reached a “saturation point for vehicle ownership and travel.”

If this is all true and it ends up being a sustained trend, what does this mean for American culture? From the advent of the mass-market automobile in the 1920s, Americans have spent much time and resources with their vehicles. Getting a driver’s license was a rite of passage, perhaps the main one our culture has for teenagers (though perhaps it is being replaced by going to college for some). Car companies advertise incessantly and tie their products to American values (this recent Dodge Challenger commercial featuring rebel Americans dispersing the British redcoats with their vehicles is quite appropriate here). Fast food restaurants depend on drive-thrus. Could this all change? Perhaps this all depends on whether driving behavior has plateaued or is actually decreasing. If the younger generation doesn’t drive as much, it will take time for them to replace the figures from older Americans who do drive more.

And the other interesting question is whether this is the beginning of the end of suburbs: if new generations don’t want to drive as much, what does this mean for low-density development? Is this really going to lead to a new urban era with a movement to large cities or simply denser suburbs where the amount of driving is reduced but never disappears completely?

San Fran “coffeehouse and tech incubator” inspired by idea of “third places”

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Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said in recent years that the company seeks to become a “third place,” a space between work and home. This term was popularized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place. But exactly how a coffee shop should operate in order to be a third place is up for debate. A new San Francisco firm, The Summit Cafe, envisions a coffeeshop plus a center for technological incubation:

With its copious power outlets, Gouda-wrapped meatballs, and a curated magazine rack featuring vintage Steve Jobs covers, the Summit café sits at the intersection of San Francisco’s three most conspicuous tribes: techies, foodies, and yuppies. Yet what separates the Summit from being just another Wi-Fi boîte is the dual-purpose nature of the 5,000-square-foot space. One floor above the Laptop Mafia, the café features a cluster of offices where groups of programmers and developers toil away in an effort to launch the next Twitter—or at least the next OkCupid. Created by i/o Ventures, a Bay Area startup accelerator comprising former executives from MySpace (NWS), Yahoo! (YHOO), and file-sharing site BitTorrent, the Summit is equal parts Bell Labs and Central Perk—and probably the country’s first official coffeehouse tech incubator. Every four months, i/o selects and funds a handful of small tech ventures to the tune of $25,000 each in return for 8 percent of common stock. In addition to the cash, each team gets four months of office space at the Summit, mentoring from Web gurus like Russel Simmons of Yelp, and discounts on all the Pickle & Cheese Plates or White Snow Peony Tea they could possibly need. Since the café opened on Valencia Street last fall, two companies have already been sold, including damntheradio, a Facebook fan management tool. To hedge against any potential risk, i/o also rents half of the Summit’s other desk space to independent contractors and fledgling Web entrepreneurs. It’s even experimenting with an arrangement in which customers can pay $500 for a dedicated desk—on top of a $250 membership fee.

Is this sort of thing only possible in San Francisco (high-tech culture) or perhaps just in major cities?

But this space does seem more like a work space than a true third place. Are there people who come here just to hang out? Do fledgling companies that come here mix with other fledgling companies to form new ideas and firms?

Sociologist immerses himself in dumpster diving

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Sociologist Jeff Ferrell spends “a couple of hours each day” dumpster diving. Here is some of what he has discovered while dumpster diving:

“There is a stereotype that (dumpster diving) is done mostly by the homeless. Yes, many were. But they were generous and helpful to me and helped me survive. But they were only one group doing this.”

Ferrell said there are several categories of trash pickers. “The good old boys,” he says, are an ethnic mix of mostly older males who drive pickup trucks and scrounge for scrap metal.

Some, Ferrell said, are immigrants from Mexico and Central America who came looking for the American dream and were left with “scraps of the American dream.”

Another group Ferrell describes a “freegans,” people who came out of the vegan movement and consider eating thrown away food less harmful to the earth than “going to Walmart to eat a vegetarian sandwich.”

Alternative artists also make frequent dumpster dives, searching for scrap metal, broken glass fragments and other material.

Ferrell’s friend, Dan Phillips, builds low-income homes in Texas made entirely from salvaged items.

“These people are not lazy, ignorant and shiftless,” said Ferrell. “They are remarkably resourceful and smart.”

The last group of participants, said the professor, are those who shop retail and don’t have to dumpster dive to survive.

This is not an area that many Americans spend much time thinking about but texts like Ferrell’s Empire of Scrounge and the 2001 book, Rubbish!, written by two archaeologists working on the University of Arizona’s garbage project, shed some light on what happens to what we throw away.

It is also interesting to note that Ferrell seems to become quite involved in his research. The article also mentions his research time of five years as a graffiti writer (published in the book Crimes of Style).  In both of these instances, studying dumpster diving and graffiti, it would be near impossible to conduct a typical survey or even a broad range of interviews due to the more hidden and deviant nature of these activities. Additionally, this consistent insider perspective can provide much different information including insights into motivations and social hierarchies within these activities.

Scorecasting looks at data: Cubs not unlucky, just bad

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The recently published book Scorecasting (read a quick summary here) has a chapter that tackles the question of whether the Chicago Cubs are cursed or not. Their conclusion after looking at the data: the team has simply been bad.

But how can anyone disprove the existence of a curse? According to the authors, teams that frequently field good teams but finish in second place, or make the playoffs but fail to win a title, justifiably can claim to be unlucky. So, too, can teams that have impressive batting, hitting and defensive statistics, but whose strong numbers don’t translate into victories.

On both scores, the Cubs proved to be “less unlucky” than the average team. That is, not unlucky, just bad.

“Relative to other teams, we could easily explain the Cubs lack of success from the data — both their on the field statistics and where they finished in the standings,” Moscowitz said.

Since their last Series appearance in 1945, the Cubs have finished second fewer times than they have finished first. They also have finished last or next to last close to 40 percent of the time. According to the book, the odds of this happening by chance are 527 to 1.

The authors of “Scorecasting” believe that what has been stopping the Cubs the last three decades is the extreme loyalty of their fans, which has served to reduce the incentive for Cubs management to win.

According to their analysis, which is primarily based on attendance records and the team’s won-loss percentage from 1982-2009, Cubs fans are the least sensitive to the team’s winning percentage, while White Sox fans are among the most sensitive.

There are two interesting arguments going on here, both of which commonly come up in conversation in Chicago:

1. The data suggests that the Cubs have just been a bad team. It is not as if they have reached the playoffs or World Series multiple times and lost. It is not that they have impressive statistics and this hasn’t translated into wins. They just haven’t been very good. It would be interesting to read the rest of this chapter to see if the authors talk about the MLB teams that have been truly unlucky. I don’t know if a chapter like this will put the talk of a Cubs curse to rest but it is good to hear that there is data that could quiet the curse talk. (But perhaps the curse is what Cubs fans want to believe – it means that the team or the fans aren’t at fault.)

2. Cubs fans like to think that they are loyal while White Sox fans argue that Cubs fans will go to Wrigley Field no matter what. So is the answer for more Cubs fans to stay away from the ballpark until the team and the Ricketts show that they are serious about winning?

USA Today says McMansions are “out of vogue”

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Citing recent housing figures, USA Today argues that McMansions are “out of vogue”:

Fran DiBello of Cleveland didn’t need a lot of room. For her, a three-story townhome has everything she could need.

“I really like the style of this home,” she says. “It’s very efficient. The appliances, the heat.”

It also has a view of Lake Erie and an 8-minute commute to work. Ten years ago, this neighborhood wasn’t here; 10 years ago, these homes would have been over shadowed by the McMansion.

“A McMansion was a trophy — often times a house with five or six bedrooms when you only needed two,” says Scott Phillips, real-estate agent with Keller Williams in Clevekand.

The median size of homes purchased in 2008, the most recent year for which figures are available, is 1,825 square feet. For first-time buyers it is 1,580 square feet, according to the National Association of Realtors.

A majority of the homes Phillips sells are less than 1,700 square feet.

Some consider it an outgrowth of being green; others see it as people living within their means.

Another shift in housing trends also means a move closer to the city’s core, Phillips says.

Numbers show that 90% of home sales nationwide are to young professionals looking for urban housing.

“People like to live where they’re closer to the amenities, the parks, nightlife, grocery stores,” he says.

The article seems to invoke several meanings of McMansions:

1. A more suburban home. This is contrasted with a desire for more urban homes in these tougher economic times.

2. A large home, a “trophy” where people bought a bunch of space that they really didn’t need. It is also suggested that this is wasteful of both money and resources (not being “green”).

But overall, the real story of the article seems not be about McMansions but about the most recent patterns: a shrinking median size of homes purchased and a rise in demand for urban housing among young professionals. This is contrasted with the “McMansion,” that exemplar of all suburban housing and of American housing excess.

About these newer trends:

1. This article cites the median size of homes purchased in 2008. The typical figures cited for home size is the size of the average new home purchased. This figure is still over 2,400 square feet though this is down a bit from the peak of several years ago. The median size is rarely cited and this article doesn’t provide any comparison so that we would know how this size in 2008 compares with previous years.

2. I also had not heard of this figure that “90% of home sales nationwide are to young professionals looking for urban housing.” This is remarkable if it is true. It suggests that this group is the primary one driving the market and that they clearly prefer more urban living. This corroborates what the National Association of Home Builders has discussed.

3. Is this a long-term trend or will Americans seek larger homes once the economy picks up? See my thoughts here.

The silent Supreme Court judge

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The New York Times examines the five year silence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in cases that have argued before the court. While there are a number of possible reasons given for this silence, I want to know two things:

1.  Does this silence improve his standing in front of others (in the legal community, the general public) or does people dislike him because of this?

2. How does this silence affect the workings or camaraderie among the Supreme Court justices? Do they lose something in their court proceedings when Thomas is silent?

Is search engine optimization key to Huffington Post’s success?

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This article suggests the Huffington Post’s value (exhibited in its recent sale to AOL) is based more on search engine optimization than on news or citizen journalism:

In addition to writing articles based on trending Google searches, The Huffington Post writes headlines like a popular one this week, “Watch: Christina Aguilera Totally Messes Up National Anthem.” It amasses often-searched phrases at the top of articles, like the 18 at the top of the one about Ms. Aguilera, including “Christina Aguilera National Anthem” and “Christina Aguilera Super Bowl.”

As a result of techniques like these, 35 percent of The Huffington Post’s visits in January came from search engines, compared to 20 percent for CNN.com, according to Hitwise, a Web analysis firm.

Mario Ruiz, a spokesman for The Huffington Post, said search engine optimization played a role on the site but declined to discuss how it was used.

Though traditional print journalists might roll their eyes at picking topics based on Google searches, the articles can actually be useful for readers. The problem, analysts say, is when Web sites publish articles just to get clicks, without offering any real payoff for readers.

This is an ongoing issue with online news providers: simply producing good journalistic content doesn’t get the same number of clicks as celebrity and gossip-laden stories. And as the article suggests, some search engines, such as Google, may fight back by reducing the rank or placement of pages or sites that rely heavily on popular keywords.

But aren’t these sorts of practice inevitable when making money on the Internet is based around page views and clicking on advertisements? The goal has to be simply getting the most viewers rather than providing the best or more complete or most useful content.