Category Archives: Sociology

New homes getting bigger, greener

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Buried underneath a story about a Generation Y home was some interesting information about the new homes of 2011: they are getting bigger and greener.

“Homes are getting bigger,” said Rose Quint, the NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. She said the average home completed in 2011 had 2,522 square feet, up from 2,381 the year before. “On average, new homes have more square footage and are getting more expensive,” Quint said.

It’s a seeming anomaly, considering the economy. But the key to the size resurgence lies in who built new homes last year: The economy favored those with wherewithal and who were moving up the housing food chain…

And about that environmental awareness that’s supposed to be at the heart of consumer demand these days (I heard variations on the phrase “green is the new granite countertop” no less than five times in three days here): It depends on who’s asking the questions, apparently.

McGraw-Hill Construction, a trade publisher and researcher, released a survey during the conference that painted the green share of residential construction as booming, having increased from 2 percent in 2005 to 17 percent in 2011. Further, it should reach 29 to 38 percent of the market by 2017, representing $87 billion to $214 billion in business, the report said. Driving this demand, McGraw-Hill said, is consumers’ desire to reduce their energy bills…

Grail Research, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that studies green-related issues, contends green may be less of a revolution than an evolution, if even that. The researchers found that the number of consumers with preferences for green products is decreasing as the recession continues, and that significant numbers of green consumers have switched back to conventional products.

These might be viewed as competing trends but I have argued that I think these could actually go together: Americans want space as well as greener (and perhaps greener as normal) features.

The new figures about housing size from 2011 are fascinating because the downward trend in recent years has been hailed by many as a sign that Americans have gotten their spending under control, lowered their expectations, and are moving away from sprawl and McMansions. But the 2011 figures suggest that there are still people who want (and can pay for) large houses. I’ve suggested before that housing sizes will go up when the economy improves and perhaps this is some evidence for that.

I wonder if we can reconcile different reports about consumers and green products by suggesting that green is simply becoming more normal. It is one thing to add the latest or expensive green features such as solar panels or rainwater retrieval systems. It is another thing for all new homes to have very insulated windows or an efficient furnace, improving features that all homes have to have anyway. What this would mean is that it would be more difficult to market a home as green and ask a premium price as opposed to having some expected or more basic green features. The phrase “green is the new granite countertop” fits with this idea: if you want your home to sell, you will need to have some basic green features.

Could Abraham Lincoln secure Republican nomination today?

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A sociologist argues that four traits held by Abraham Lincoln would make it difficult for him to become the Republican candidate for president today:

1. Lincoln ‘invented’ income tax…

2. He didn’t advertise his faith…

3. He wasn’t a looker…

4. He tended toward moderate positions and long, complex arguments.

I think #3 and #4 are more recent cultural trends than facts about the Republican party but #1 and #2 are interesting. Here is what they suggest and this would be helpful to remember during this upcoming presidential campaign: political parties do change their positions in response to their historical and cultural circumstances. Political parties may stand for some basic ideas and viewpoints but how these play out in response to changing cultural and historical conditions can vary. Therefore, Lincoln could push for an income tax because of a perceived time of need while current Republicans would like to limit income taxes. Additionally, strong outward demonstrations of conservative faith are relatively recent among Republicans (since the rise of evangelical voters in the late 1970s/early 1980s?) even as Americans generally prefer their presidential candidates to be persons of faith. Lincoln was elected by mostly northern voters as a Republican president (due mostly to northern voters, which goes against the image today of Republicans as southerners and midwesterners) roughly six years after the Republican Party was founded in response to issues of slavery. The Republican Party of today is far away from the particular issues of the late 1850s.

Of course, lots of people, including President Obama, like to claim Lincoln as their inspiration. As time passes, political parties and historical legacies change and are difficult to directly transpose into the present.

(This list of Lincoln’s traits was put together by a sociologist who studies Lincoln. See this earlier post about her thoughts about how Lincoln is regarded today.)

Is Charles Murray really a sociologist?

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I’ve seen a number of news stories about Charles Murray’s latest book and one thing caught my eye: the claim that Murray is a sociologist. (See examples from the Philadelphia Inquirer, BusinessWeek, and the National Catholic Reporter.) Is he really?

Murray’s page at his current scholarly home, the American Enterprise Institute, says he is a “political scientist, author, and libertarian.”

Wikipedia’s main entry for Murray clearly calls him a political scientist and records his PhD in political science but this list of sociologists includes Murray.

Perhaps the confusion comes from the fact that Murray is working with a lot of topics that are commonly covered by sociology such as race, social class, and family life. Even the New York Times describes his work as sociology:

Few people today would dismiss the idea that values, culture and intelligence all play a role in economic success. But it is hard to know what to make of some of Murray’s findings. As with David Brooks’s “Bobos in Paradise,”Murray’s sociology depends a lot on his own, sometimes highly idiosyncratic, fieldwork. To demonstrate that the elite are more likely to drive foreign cars than domestic ones, Murray notes the makes of automobiles in a couple of mall parking lots. In an otherwise persuasive chapter arguing that Ivy League graduates tend to live near one another, Murray quotes a remark by Michael Barone, the conservative commentator, complaining about the profusion of Harvard and Yale graduates on his former block. If Murray believes that wealthy yuppies suffer from creeping nonjudgmentalism, I invite him to spend an hour on UrbanBaby.com.

This quote suggests that Murray’s work is sociology because he is explaining sociological phenomena, not because he is working within the sociological tradition, utilizing sociological theories and methods, or even thinking like a typical sociologist. Practicing sociology (sometimes termed “pop sociology”) is quite different from being a sociologist. Is this simply lazy journalism or a bigger problem in that people don’t know how sociologists actually go about their work?

In a related question, how many sociologists would claim Murray is a sociologist? First, this could be tied to whether he is practicing good sociology. Second, this could be about whether he is espousing ideas that fit with sociological theories and data (and they generally don’t). How many sociologists would want to add libertarian as a descriptor of their image?

Exploring the Gen Y home

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The International Builders Show that recently concluded featured a Gen Y home. Here is what it involved:

The so-called Gen Y House, one of a trio of Builder Concept Homes constructed for the show, also departs from housing’s (and the trade show’s) long-running obsession with the baby boom generation.

Its 2,163 square feet marry indoors with outdoors: One all-glass exterior wall literally disappears, folding away to open the home to the patio and pool. The party-hearty vibe is hard to miss…

It’s a wide-open floor plan that emphasizes flexibility and gives a nod to the fact that, being in Florida, relatives and friends are likely to show up to visit: There’s a separate studio apartment with kitchenette just off the front courtyard. That courtyard provides a roomy alternative to the traditional notion of a front yard. Out back, there’s that pool and hot tub; a separate entrance from the master bedroom leading to the pool practically screams “midnight swim.”

The architect said that homes have to have contemporary styling for this age group.

One architect quoted in the story suggests that Generation Y “can lead out of this [down housing] market.” Thus, it sounds like builders and others think there is a lot of money in designing homes for the younger generation.

Four thoughts about this home:

1. Does it work outside of Florida? This home seems to take advantage of its setting but it might look a little different for a Gen Yer in Minneapolis.

2. This goes along with a larger industry theme that smaller might be better today. Again, however, this home is not short on features and has a price tag of $300,000. This is not exactly affordable housing though it appears that people want to make clear it is not a McMansion.

3. Would this home stand the test of time? What I mean here is whether this home would look dated in 15 to 20 years or if it is so geared to a particular group that it would have little appeal for the larger market. Styles and accoutrements do change over time but I assume builders don’t want to limit who would purchase these homes.

4. This home seems to emphasize fun and entertainment. Would these homes encourage sociability in the long run or reinforce a lack of attachments to civil society a la Bowling Alone?

Sociology of gambling laboratory in Las Vegas

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While Chicago might still be the urban laboratory of choice for some sociologists, a sociologist at UNLV talks about Las Vegas as a fantastic laboratory for studying human motivations and gambling:

We live in the largest gambling laboratory in the world. A sociologist who studies gambling in Las Vegas is probably like being a physicist and living in a vacuum. I tell all my students to sit on a bench and watch all the humanity. That’s why market research firms like to come to Las Vegas. In an hour and a half, they can meet 40 people from 40 countries and states. Humanity comes here…

You’re struck by the similarities and differences in various markets. Las Vegas is a sea of slot machines with a smattering of table games. Macau is a sea of table games with a smattering of slot machines. As a social scientist, you watch the different behaviors. In Macau, no one is consuming alcohol. There is always a calculus going on, where gamblers are demonstrating math skills while hoping to be smiled upon by the gods of chance. What’s fascinating is to contrast the Chinese gambler against the American or European gambler.Question: You recently authored a report that said Las Vegas could learn much from Houston. How?

Answer: Houston suffered a downturn when its main economy, oil production, moved overseas and became a global industry. The slump ended when Houston began exporting its intellectual capital.

Las Vegas could do the same thing as gaming becomes more international. In some ways, our companies are already doing that. Las Vegas can become the global command center of the international gaming industry. One way you do that is education. Of course, I’m completely biased but the gaming institute can play a leading role in this transformation.

I bet you could use gambling research in a lot of examples within a research methods class.

I’m intrigued by a couple of ideas mentioned above:

1. There are different cultural approaches to gambling. I should have known this but I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it before. It would be interesting to hear if Americans live up to typical stereotypes (confident, brash, etc.).

2. I wonder if social scientists would be allowed by casinos to conduct academic studies with gamblers/customers. I’m guessing this is likely off-limits unless the work could be beneficial to the casinos. If there are a lot of people already in Las Vegas who want to engage in gambling, why not let them do it in the context of monitored academic research?

3. What holds Las Vegas back from becoming a finance center? Gaming requires large flows of capital from both companies and visitors. To truly become a world-class city, this would seem to be a way the city could go by working with the money in innovative ways.

This reminds me of comments from sociologists after the American Sociological Association meetings were held there last August. Do most sociologists think the city is simply an oddity or are there real things that could be learned from the city (Sun Belt city, center of the gaming industry, ecological concerns, many foreclosures) and applied elsewhere?

When only bad people live in McMansions

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I doubt I will see the movie Wanderlust but this quick description of the film caught my eye:

Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston star in “Wanderlust,” the raucous new comedy from director David Wain and producer Judd Apatow about a harried couple who leave the pressures of the big city and join a freewheeling community where the only rule is to be yourself. When overextended, overstressed Manhattanites, George (Rudd) and Linda (Aniston), pack up their lives and head south to move in with George’s McMansion-living jerk of a brother, Rick (Ken Marino), they stumble upon Elysium, an idyllic community populated by colorful characters including the commune’s alpha male, Seth (Justin Theroux), the sexually adventurous Eva (Malin Akerman), and the troupe’s drop-out founder, Carvin (Alan Alda).

This reinforces an idea I have seen hinted at in many other places: the people who live in McMansions are jerks or bad people. McMansion owners don’t care about the environment, love to consume, have little taste, and don’t want to interact with people unlike them. The converse would look like this: smart or nice or enlightened people would not live in the homes. This is a great example of drawing moral boundaries by attaching character traits to certain home choices. This could be tied to the idea that living in a large home is viewed as morally wrong by some.

I would love to get my hands on sociological data to examine this claim. Of course, this would require first determining whether someone lives in a McMansion and this itself would require work. But then you could examine some different factors: do McMansion owners interact with their neighbors more? Are they involved with more civic organizations? Do they give more money to charity? Do they help people in need more often? Do they have a stronger prosocial orientation? If there were not significant differences, how might people respond…

“Scientists and scientific studies have a minimal effect on public opinion” about global warming

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While one might think that scientific data and reports are convincing, a sociologist argues that these matter little in the debate over global warming:

“Scientists and scientific studies have a minimal effect on public opinion,” says Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle, lead author of a new climate attitude study in the Climatic Change journal. “What really drives public opinion on climate change are the ways that political elites describe the science.”…

In the current Climatic Change journal, Brulle and colleagues looked at 74 public opinion surveys from 2002 to 2010, in a bid to figure out the contradiction in opinions between experts and everyone else…

“The science doesn’t matter because the science isn’t the real issue,” Brulle adds. “It’s about politics and money.” All we have with climate change, he suggests, is politicians taking sides in an economic debate over whether we should spend money to address climate change, or not (with one side very strongly opposed), and hiding behind a smokescreen of debate about settled science to avoid making those issues clear.

Brulle is suggesting that instead of debating how much we should respond to global warming (which seems like an interesting debate to have in itself), the debate has turned to the credibility of the actual science. So if conservatives admit that there is warming, then they would have to admit that money needs to be spent on fighting it and they don’t want to do that? There seem to be two issues here: the actual data and then the value judgments about what should be done.

I’ve been seeing reports on Brulle’s findings for several months now. If he is correct, are politicians taking notes about how to change public debates? At the same time, I imagine it is more difficult to make the case for spending money on environmental concerns with such economic issues (see the Keystone pipeline debate).

I wonder if there are other areas where there is something similar going on and scientific studies have little impact. If there is a common view that science is the province of liberals and elitists, how many people will trust what it has to say?

Sociology: challenging common sense

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One simple way to view sociology is that it often challenges common sense understandings of the world:

We talk a lot about common sense; as if that’s a good thing. I remember my uncle describing a guy once by saying that he was smart as a whip but didn’t have a lick of common sense. So it has always been something held up as a good thing. The problem is that common sense is sometimes wrong too. In my sociology classes each semester, we take ten common sense statements and prove their error through research, rather than just assuming they’re correct because they sound right.

A few quick thoughts about common sense.

1. Common sense is often cultural. In other words, different cultures have different default or common understanding about how the world works.

2. Common sense is often learned through socialization. Sometimes this happens explicitly, such as when parents talk to a child, but other times it happens through observation. Kids have to learn about common sense and has to know how society “typically” works.

3. Sociology courses are a good place to discuss common sense because we tend to talk about topics that people haven’t thought through before. Why do people live where they do? Why do some occupations get paid more than others? What is behind going to college? Why do we attach certain ideas or statuses to particular objects, like a house or an Apple laptop? Sociology often “pulls the curtain back” on social life, exposing what is really influencing our actions and group behavior.

4. This is not to say common sense is necessarily wrong. But the issue is that many people do not have the time or take the effort to evaluate common sense. College is a good place to learn how to evaluable common sense through critical thinking, reading, and writing.

5. Challenging common sense is not an easy task. We like our typical explanations for how things work. Even when confronted with better evidence, we tend to stick with our accepted ways of thinking. You see this all the time in the political realm: the ideological commitments of each side can trump evaluating the facts.

6. Common sense is a typical foil for much academic work. Here is a typical academic argument: “the accepted wisdom is X but we have research that shows it actually is more like Y.” Or, “there is a typical explanation for this phenomena but we think the real world is more complex or is more nuanced.”

Sociology grad student: “the Internet is a sociologist’s playground”

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A sociology graduate student makes an interesting claim: “the Internet is a sociologist’s playground“:

The Internet is a sociologist’s playground, says Scott Golder, a graduate student in sociology at Cornell University. Although sociologists have wanted to study entire societies in fine-grained detail for nearly a century, they have had to rely primarily upon large-scale surveys (which are costly and logistically challenging) or interviews and observations (which provide rich detail, but for small numbers of subjects). Golder hopes that data from the social Web will provide opportunities to observe the detailed activities of millions of people, and he is working to bring that vision to fruition.  The same techniques that make the Web run—providing targeted advertisements and filtering spam—can also provide insights into social life. For example, he has used Twitter archives to examine how people’s moods vary over time, as well as how network structure predicts friendship choices. Golder came to sociology by way of computer science, studying language use in online communities and using the Web as a tool for collecting linguistic data. After completing a B.A. at Harvard and an M.S. at the MIT Media Lab, he spent several years in an industrial research lab before beginning his Ph.D. in sociology at Cornell.

I would think that having a background in computer science would be a big plus for a sociologist today. Lots of people want to study social networking sites like Facebook and work with the data available online. But I wonder if there still aren’t a few issues to overcome before we can really tap this information:

1. Do companies that have a lot of this data, places like Google and Facebook, want to open it up to researchers or would they prefer to keep the data in-house in order to make money?

2. How will Internet users respond to the interest researchers have in studying their online behavior if they are often not thrilled about being tracked by companies?

3. Has the sampling issue been resolved? In other words, one of the problems with web surveys or working with certain websites is that theses users are not representative of the total US population. So while internet activity has increased among the population as a whole, isn’t internet usage, particularly among those who use it most frequently, still skewed in certain directions?

4. Just how much does online activity reveal about offline activity? Do the two worlds overlap so much that this is not an issue or are there important things that you can’t uncover through online activity?

I would think some of these issues could be resolved and the sociologists who can really tap this growing realm will have a valuable head start.

When a sociological survey about Hong Kong angers Chinese authorities

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Politics can interfere with research studies and findings. For an example, here is a case of a sociological survey done in Hong Kong that has gotten the attention of Chinese authorities:

In December, a Hong Kong sociologist by the name of Robert Chung found himself at the center of a political storm. A study commissioned by Chung, director of opinion research at a leading university in the territory, discovered that the number of people who identify themselves primarily as citizens of Hong Kong was higher than it’s been for the past 10 years. The survey showed that the number of those who viewed themselves as Chinese had fallen to 16.6 percent. That’s a 12-year low and less than half of what it was three years ago.

Since then the territory’s communist press has launched a vicious attack on the pollster. “Political fraudster” and “a slave of dirty political money” are just two of the Cultural Revolution style epithets trotted out against Professor Chung. Hao Tiechuan, a Beijing official stationed in Hong Kong, called in local reporters to denounce Professor Chung’s work as “unscientific” and “illogical.”

Beijing, always wary of Hong Kong’s loyalty because of its colonial heritage, ratchets up the rhetoric even higher during “election” season. In March, 1200 mostly pro-Beijing loyalists will choose the next chief executive, and in September, Hong Kong citizens will go to the polls to choose 35 of 70 seats in the partially-democratic legislature. Last fall, pro-Beijing candidates won local district-level polls overwhelmingly, although an investigation has been opened into possible vote-rigging. Beijing’s attacks on Professor Chung– as well as on a so-called “Gang of Four” of prominent democracy advocates — may be calculated to keep the minions who choose the chief executive in line and dampen turnout by the solid majority of Hong Kong voters who favor progress toward full democracy.

Does this make complaints about academic freedom in the United States seem rather tame?

The attacks by the communist press are intriguing. First, “political fraudster” implies that the work is unscientific. Second, the charge of being  “a slave of dirty political money” suggests that the work is politically motivated and skewed. In both critiques, the attack is against the scientific credibility of the sociologist. The argument is that Chung has done poor research and the results shouldn’t be trusted. Furthermore, it suggests that Chung himself is not capable of good conducting good research.

These are serious charges for a sociologist. It is one thing to disagree with findings or about their interpretation or suggest that they should have used another method. It is another thing to claim that the researcher intentionally found certain results or can’t do good research. Yes, methodological errors are made occasionally (and sometimes fraudulently) but this cuts to the heart of sociology and the claim that we are searching for replicable and valid results. I hope Chang is able to show his proper use of sociological methods and is supported by others.