Category Archives: Sociology

Sociologist explains why her course “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus” is needed

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The new class “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus” at Skidmore College has garnered a lot of attention and the sociologist behind the course explains why it is needed:

With all the very real problems we’re facing as a nation, right — violence against women and children in communities of color, the collapse of the public education system, ongoing poverty and wealth stratification — it’s a convenient distraction to say that a barely post-teen girl or woman is a moral apocalypse. So on one hand, it’s a convenient distraction.

On the other hand, I think that the things that get people so incensed about Miley are the same reasons that I’m trying to teach this course — to help people deconstruct and better understand media, systems of representation, and ideas of power and privilege in the contemporary U.S…

All the best, most inflammatory stuff — all of the pearl-clutching about “Oh, the liberal arts are a cesspool; oh the social sciences are a cesspool! Can you believe that someone would do something so silly!” — is more grist for the mill. It’s more data about why we need to rigorously study media and representation. If you look at the flyer for my class that got tweeted, and if you look at the content of that, this is, you know,  serious sociology. This is rigorous stuff, looking at understanding the world. So in some senses, all of the hubbub in the blogosphere sort of proves the need for a class like this…

I mean, officially, anything that lets me remind people why sociology as a discipline is a rigorous and relevant, why this is useful, why what happens in a liberal arts school is helpful to society? That’s great. I can talk about that all the live-long day.

This is not new criticism – courses about Jay-Z and other parts of popular culture draw similar attention – but it misses the point. Sociologists study social behavior and interaction so theoretically anything is fair game for sociological instruction. Classes can work even better when using current examples, like the attention Miley Cyrus gets for her actions, to illustrate important sociological points. In this case, it sounds like the course will look at how the media presents celebrities and women, to think about how all that media (roughly 11 hours a day for American adults) affect our viewpoints of the world and reflect power dynamics between different groups. The purpose of a sociology course isn’t to psychoanalyze Miley Cyrus or to judge the morality of her actions but rather to think through what she represents and what it reveals about American society.

Answering suburban critiques by firing back at educated urban elites

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After one professor suggests strip malls are closely tied to the ills of global capitalism, one conservative’s response is to fire back at urban, educated elites:

Because Deneen cannot wring meaning from big-box stores and six-lane roads, we are meant to assume that no one can. But this elision of any distinction between personal aesthetic preferences and objective universal laws is as empirically false as it is politically problematic. As a happy son of the suburban Midwest, I can personally attest that plenty of good people have little difficulty finding much to worship and be thankful for, no matter what they drive or where their kids’ toys were constructed.

Erudite, comfortable people are always so bemused that middle-income Americans could possibly opt for a suburban life of cars, backyards, and affordable goods. The alternative, of course, is an urban life spent waiting for buses and watching the erudite, comfortable people enjoy boutique brunches that they will never be able to sample. For millions of our brothers and sisters without PhDs, the parking lots and mini-malls that Deneen dismisses are sites of real grace and meaning. They are places where paychecks are earned, conversations are shared, and the sanctification of even mundane work can transpire.

While there are some interesting conversations to have about how spaces shape social life (think of the differences between the strip mall and the urban street with mixed uses), this particular response simply falls into an argument pattern that has been around at least 60 years. When a critic attacks the suburbs, someone is bound to respond that middle Americans seem to like the suburbs and the pretentious of the elites prevents them from seeing the good side of suburbs. And, this often devolves into name-calling and generalizations, elites versus average Americans, city dwellers against suburbanites, about morality and community life. Does this get anybody anywhere?

In other words, this is nothing new.

The beauty of highway over ramps

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A sample of photographer Alex MacLean’s aerial photography includes this picture of a highway intersection in Albuquerque.

Alex MacLean 2008

Beautiful. There are several dimensions to this:

1. The interplay of light and dark both from the sunlight as well as the darker roadway and the lighter desert.

2. The modernist twists of the highway ramps.

3. The smallness of the cars, a reminder of the limited lives we lead.

I know highways are concrete entities that lead to traffic and air pollution but I’ve always enjoyed seeing them from above.

The flying odds are (but may not feel like they are) ever in your favor

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James Fallows points out that the saga of Flight MH370 reinforces ideas about the dangers of flying, even though plane crashes are quite rare:

First-world commercial air travel has become so extremely safe that when something does go wrong, figuring it out can be a huge challenge — which heightens the mystery and, for many people, the terror of these episodes, by making them seem so random. You’re sitting there grumbling about the discomforts of modern flight — and then, for no apparent reason, your plane is the one headed into the sea…

I remember that when the 777 was introduced it was such a sales success and was expected to live such a long service life that some people speculated the fleet could actually make a billion flights. Of course, you don’t need to make a billion flights to draw the magic short one-in-a-billion straw. But it is something to think about. Transport flying is now so safe that the long time standard of 10 to the minus 9th may not satisfy the public.

The sobering point here is again that the very safety of modern air travel makes these episodes both intellectually and emotionally even more difficult.

Why does flying seem so threatening when driving is a much much more dangerous daily activity?

1. Passengers on an airplane have no or little control over their circumstances. Car drivers, in contrast, feel like they have a lot of control though is is part illusion: they can’t control the people around them or the conditions.

2. Plane crashes can involve dozens or hundreds of deaths. A larger death toll from a single event seems far worse than the amalgamation of lots of individual deaths. Think about the difference about the murder toll in Chicago on a yearly basis (spread throughout the calendar) versus the Newtown shootings (one event, worsened because the children couldn’t do anything about it).

3. The media grabs on to tragic events like this and keeps them in public view for weeks. In contrast, single deaths or smaller incidents get short mentions unless they involve unusual circumstances.

All together, the odds of dying in a plane crash are very small. That doesn’t mean those odds carry the same emotional and social weight.

The migration patterns of the world’s millionaires

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Here are the top destinations for the world’s millionaires:

According to a report from New World Wealth, the U.K. was the top destination in the world for migrating millionaires over the past decade. Between 2003 and 2013, the U.K. had a net inflow of 114,100 millionaires (people with $1 million or more excluding their primary residence)…

Singapore, with its tax-friendly policies and security, ranked second in attracting the world’s wandering wealthy. It gained 45,000 millionaires between 2003 and 2013. The U.S. ranked third, gaining 42,400 millionaires.

So where were all these millionaires moving from? Mostly China. According to the report, China had a net outflow of 76,200 millionaires during the 10-year period. India was the next largest loser, with a net outflow of 43,400, followed by France, Italy and Russia…

The study said that overall, London has the most millionaires of any city, with 339,300. New York ranks second with 300,100, followed by Tokyo (226,500) and Singapore (225,000).

Follow the money. Even as these millionaires then move to certain cities, there are certainly patterns within these cities as to where they move and with whom they associate. All of these top urban destinations for millionaires have strong finance sectors as well as some of the world’s most expensive housing even as some of them also have relatively poor areas, sizable immigrant populations, and numerous social problems within a short distance from the residences of some of the wealthiest people in the world.

Tiny houses may be missing TVs, other modern technologies

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Tiny houses differ from McMansions in their size but perhaps also in another feature: a lack of TVs and other modern media technologies.

As I browsed the pages of both company’s full color, Robb Report-quality catalogs, one thing really stood out: In no picture of a fully furnished room did I see a single television. That can’t be a coincidence.

These are not the “Jewel Box” new homes filled with automation and electronics Gordon Gekko and his minions are supposedly building as all Baby Boomers are forced to downsize. Jewel Boxes? More like thumb drives if we are making an accurate size comparison.

There are clearly challenges to designing relevant A/V, home theater, whole house entertainment/convenience and security for a tiny home. Multi-purpose structures and thoughtful use of hydraulics just begin the scratch the surface. An exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York has a full size working model of a mini apartment that shows all sorts of folding and sliding stuff including a television. It almost looks like two different apartments, literally day and night.

This could suggest tiny houses are not just about having smaller houses: it is part of a larger lifestyle package away from consumerism that includes restricting television consumption. However, these two things don’t necessarily have to go together: tiny house or micro-apartment dwellers may have strong interests in different media including streaming TV and video games. I would suspect many tiny house owners have a laptop, tablet, and/or smartphone but I would also guess they don’t want their small homes to be dominated by things like large TVs that are often the focal points of social spaces in McMansions.

Catholic bishop in Germany removed after building new McMansion

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Catholic priests living in McMansions are controversial and one German bishop was just removed from his post due to the uproar about his new large house:

Pope Francis on Wednesday permanently removed a German bishop from his Limburg diocese after his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex caused an uproar among the faithful.

Francis had temporarily expelled Monsignor Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst from Limburg in October pending a church inquiry.

At the center of the controversy was the price tag for the construction of a new bishop’s residence complex and related renovations. Tebartz-van Elst defended the expenditures, saying the bill was actually for 10 projects and there were additional costs because the buildings were under historical protection…

Francis has called on his priests and bishops to be models of sobriety in a church that “is poor and is for the poor.”

McMansions don’t get many favorable reviews for the average homebuyer so it is not too surprising they may be even more disliked for religious figures. But, this sounds like it could be more than just a personal McMansion in a suburban neighborhood and more about luxurious finishes and a larger complex. At the least, this is a good example of the term McMansion being used more in a moral judgment sense rather than strictly matching a home that has all of the typical American McMansion characteristics.

Large “sociological exercise”: nearly 1 in 6 global residents to vote in India’s elections

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While Americans may think our country does things on a large scale, nothing quite matches the “sociological exercise” of democracy in India:

The world’s largest democracy is bracing itself for the most anticipated event every 5 years. To keep things in perspective, almost 1 in 6 on earth would be voting this April-May 2014. More than the election extravaganza, this is the world’s largest sociological exercise; an exercise that places everything else outside and puts the Indian at heart and mind while casting the ballot. As much as the focus on this has been the youth, there is a particular section of society which is slightly undermined yet equally important; the Indian women.

India has over 1.2 billion people while the US has over 310 million. While the American Revolution led to a new kind of country and government sometimes referred to as the American experiment (attributed to de Toqueville), this is quite different than developing a modern government and economy for so many people.

I sometimes think part of the current issues in the United States simply have to do with our relatively large population. Coming to a consensus among so many groups and interests is difficult. In comparison, other industrialized nations have smaller populations and are often more homogeneous. But, these issues are multiplied in India with even more interests.

The evolving definition and usage of “selfie”

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The word “selfie” was the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2013 but its usage and meaning continues to evolve:

A selfie isn’t just “a photograph that one has taken of oneself,” but also tends to be “taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website,” as the editors at Oxford Dictionaries put it. That part is key because it reinforces the reason why we needed to come up with a new name for this kind of self-portraiture in the first place.

Think of it this way: A selfie isn’t fundamentally about the photographer’s relationship with the camera, it’s about the photographer’s relationship with an audience. In other words, selfies are more parts communication than self-admiration (though there’s a healthy dose of that, too).

The vantage point isn’t new; the form of publishing is.

This explains why we call the photo from the Oscars “Ellen’s selfie” — because she was the one who published it. Selfies tether the photographer to the subject of the photo and to its distribution. What better way to visually represent the larger shift from observation to interaction in publishing power?

Ultimately, selfies are a way of communicating narrative autonomy. They demonstrate the agency of the person behind the lens, by simultaneously putting that person in front of it.

The key to the selfie is not that people are talking photos of themselves for the first time in history; rather, they are doing it with new purposes, to tell their own stories to their online public. This is what social media and Web 2.0 are all about: putting the power into the hands of users to create their own narratives. The user now gets to decide what they want to broadcast to others. One scholar described it giving average people the ability to be a celebrity within their online social sphere. The selfie is also part of a shift toward telling these narratives through images rather than words – think about the relative shift in updating Facebook statuses years ago to now posting interesting pictures on Instagram.

Sociologists argue it is difficult to find causal data for how inequality leads to different outcomes

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Two sociologists tackle the question of how exactly inequality is related to a variety of social outcomes and argue it is difficult to find causal, and not correlative, data:

For all the brain power thrown at the problem since then, however, specific evidence about inequality’s effects has been hard to find. Mr. Jencks said he could already picture the book’s reviews, “Professor Doesn’t Know What He Is Talking About.”…

One problem with these analyses is that they are based on correlations between levels of inequality and variables like life expectancy or the odds of poor children climbing the income ladder. But such correlations can’t prove inequality causes other social ills. They can’t disentangle inequality from the myriad things pushing American society this way and that.

Life expectancy in the United States might lag that of other countries because the United States still does not have universal health care. Scandinavia may enjoy higher upward mobility than the United States because governments in Sweden, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries invest a lot in early childhood education and the United States does not.

Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, is all too aware of these limitations. He was to be Mr. Jencks’s co-author on the book about inequality’s consequences. Now he is going it alone, hoping to publish “Should We Worry About Inequality?” next year.

“People that worry about inequality for normative reasons have been very quick to jump on plausible hypothesis and a little bit of evidence to make sweeping conclusions about its consequences,” Professor Kenworthy told me.

It sounds like these sociologists are asking for some more methodological rigor in studying how inequality affects social life. Finding direct relationships between social forces and outcomes can be difficult but I look forward to seeing more work on the subject.

Read more in this follow-up interview with Lane Kenworthy.