Category Archives: Sociology

Brit Derren Brown to test four sociology (?) theories on TV

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If you search for YouTube videos of the famous Milgram Experiment, you’ll run into an interesting recreation on the BBC hosted by Derren Brown (see part one of three here). When I’ve showed this to students, they tend to ask why a TV performer gets to perform this experiment but no university IRB would likely allow this. I don’t know the answer to this. But, Brown is back with a new show where he is going to test four more sociological theories:

His new show, The Experiment, will see Brown trying out four sociological theories on unsuspecting citizens.

The performer said: “Three of them are relatively dark, looking into the darker side of human behaviour, and one of them is rather positive and jolly. The first one is called The Assassin.”…

He explained: “It’s whether or not it’s possible to hypnotise somebody to kill, to carry out an assassination. This is based on the testimonies given by political assassins who say they were brainwashed by the CIA.”

Some of the theories have their origins in academia, while some of them are developed by Brown himself. Which is even more concerning.

So perhaps this isn’t terribly sociological and is more entertainment/conspiracy theory. What would it take to get an American host to replicate some famous or intriguing sociological experiments on TV? What about things like the Ultimatum Game and how the results can differ across groups and cultures? Instead, we are stuck with weaker shows like What Would You Do. A show that could demonstrate that sociological studies are both intriguing and beneficial for society could go a long way toward boosting the image of the discipline.

French suburbs moving away from mainstream French culture

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The American suburbs are pretty unique compared to suburbs in other countries. For example, a new study shows that residents in French suburbs are moving away from mainstream French culture:

Local communities in France’s immigrant suburbs increasingly organize themselves on Islamic lines rather than following the values of the secular republic, according to a major new sociological study.

Respected political scientist Gilles Kepel, a specialist in the Muslim world, led a team of researchers in a year-long project in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two Paris suburbs that exploded in riots in 2005.

The resulting study ? “Suburbs of the Republic” ? found that religious institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the state and the French Republic, which has a strong secular tradition.

Families from the districts, which are mainly populated by immigrants from north and west Africa and their descendants, regularly attend mosque, fast during Ramadan and boycott school meals that are not “halal.”

American culture is dominated by suburban themes and values while this study suggests the suburbs of France are the alienated portion of society. The study also looked into why the alienation is present, particularly following the 2005 riots:

While the resentment in the poor suburbs has social roots, essentially the residents’ virtual exclusion from a tight jobs market, the rioters expressed frustration in a vocabulary “borrowed from Islam’s semantic register.”

Islamic values are replacing those of a republic which failed to deliver on its promise of “equality”, and the residents of the suburbs increasingly do not see themselves as French, the researchers said.

American culture has some similar issues: we talk about equal opportunities, which is something different than “equality” in the French sense – compare “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Of course, this doesn’t exactly happen: the American system is set up so that certain groups have fewer opportunities over time. The disconnect between official rhetoric and the actual situation on the ground tends to lead to problems at some point.

So which country will effectively tackle these issues first: the French dealing with immigrants in the suburbs or the United States with poor inner-city neighborhoods? Does either country have the political will to truly tackle the root problems rather than simply treating the symptoms?

Movie stars: the political comments you make before your movie releases will affect who will see the film

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Last November, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Republicans and Democrats like different primetime television shows. A new survey now shows that political affiliation of the viewer affects how much the political views of major movie actors influences movie-going behavior:

With Dolphin Tale opening with a strong $19.2 million that first weekend and finishing No. 1 with $13.9 million in its second, the financial impact of Freeman’s comments is hard to quantify. But they did have an effect. In a far-ranging poll Penn Schoen Berland conducted for The Hollywood Reporter of 1,000 registered voters to gauge moviegoing tendencies of Democrats vs. Republicans, it’s clear political allegiances have shifted entertainment viewing habits. Jon Penn, the firm’s president of media and entertainment research, says that before Freeman’s words, interest in Dolphin Tale was considerably higher among conservatives and religious moviegoers than among liberals. After the remarks, 34 percent of the conservatives who were aware of them, and 37 percent of Tea Partiers, said they were less likely to see the film — but 42 percent of liberals said they were more likely. (Five days after Freeman’s remarks, 24 percent of all moviegoers were aware of them.)

In fact, overall, 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Tea Partiers consider a celebrity’s political position before paying to see their films, compared with 20 percent of Democrats.

Many exhibitors say privately that they cringe when a star waxes politically just before one of their movies opens — like when, seven weeks before Contagion, Matt Damon attended a Save Our Schools march where some attendees compared Republicans to “terrorists.” Videos of Damon mocking conservatives for their fiscal policies spread like wildfire on the Internet.

I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised at this information since we hear all the time about our overly partisan public sphere.

If this is true, should movie actors muzzle themselves and avoid sharing their political opinions? Why do movie actors often share this information while sports stars are more demure about this topic?

It would be interesting to know exactly why Republicans let these political actions and views affect them. Has this always been the case? Is this due to the commonly heard idea that Hollywood is a liberal place pushing liberal ideas? Do most Republicans think Hollywood puts out “enough” family-friendly or conservative-friendly films – do they really want to go to the movies more and the content is simply lacking? What are the movies most loved by Republicans and Democrats? (The article suggests people of both parties “say comedy is their favorite genre, popcorn is their favorite theater snack, Forrest Gump is their preferred blockbuster and Indiana Jones is their favorite action hero.” Now that’s bi-partisanship!)

A proposal to unite the Great Lakes region

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The idea of the megapolis describes uniting metropolitan regions. But what about bringing together an entire region? A Chicago architecture firm has made a proposal to bring together both the American and Canadian sides of the Great Lakes:

The bi-national blueprint from Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill is still in its infancy, but the concept has garnered support from several mayors in Canada and the United States. The proposal calls on the two nations to re-imagine the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River region as a shared space, where Canadians and Americans work together to protect waterways, ease traffic congestion, promote tourism and develop new economic ventures…

The bi-national vision, presented this week at a global green-building conference in Toronto, isn’t so far-fetched. The Brookings Institution in Washington and Mowat Centre in Toronto have been studying the idea, consulting 250 business, government and community leaders. The public-policy think tanks will present their regional blueprint at an international Great Lakes water-quality meeting in Detroit next week…

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River region is massive, encompassing Ontario, Quebec and eight U.S. states. It contains about 84 per cent of North America’s fresh water and almost 18,000 kilometres of lake frontage. Nearly a third of Canadians and about a tenth of Americans live here, in more than 15,000 towns and cities…

But with the manufacturing sector waning in many parts of the Great Lakes and glum forecasts of a deepening economic downturn, Mr. Hjartarson says the region should forge closer ties to capitalize on its assets. Those would include top-notch educational institutions, a wealth of corporate head offices and a population of 105 million people. New industries could be created through stronger co-operation. Mr. Enquist, the urban designer, points to renewable energy and green technology as possible opportunities for the region.

This article seems to suggest that environmental concerns, such as clean water and air, would provide the backbone for this partnership with later opportunities for joint infrastructure and economic initiatives.

My biggest question: how in the world could all of the government bodies agree so that things could get done within this partnership? Take the Chicago region as an example: there are many separate taxing bodies so putting together regional plans is very difficult. This proposal would up the ante, putting together many metropolitan regions, Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, Toledo, Buffalo, Hamilton, Montreal, Quebec, and more. And this doesn’t even account for two different nations that would need to make concessions for the region rather than national interests.

On the other hand, this sort of proposal  should be applauded for pushing a new way of thinking about things even if they may be difficult to implement. It could lead to some interesting questions. Again taking Chicago as an example: is Chicago more tied to other Midwestern cities like St. Louis, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Omaha or more to Great Lakes cities?

It is also intriguing that this proposal comes from an architecture firm. Have urban planners or government types not thought of something like this?

Drop in US homeownership rate the greatest since the Great Depression

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The title of this post is what the headline for this AP story should say – instead, the AP headline is “Census: Housing bust worst since Great Depression.” The problem with the headline is this: do people know what a “housing bust” is? Does this mean that the American housing market is in the worst shape that it has been since the Great Depression? Is the homeownership rate or are housing values at the same level as the Great Depression? Not necessarily. Here is what the story really is:

The American dream of homeownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday.

The analysis by the Census Bureau found the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year. While that level remains the second highest decennial rate, analysts say the U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents…

Nationwide, the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent – or 76 million occupied housing units that were owned by their residents – from 66.2 percent in 2000. That drop-off of 1.1 percentage points is the largest since 1940, when homeownership plummeted 4.2 percentage points during the Great Depression to a low of 43.6 percent.

So the percentage drop is what is important here: it fell from nearly 70 percent in the mid-2000s to 65.1 percent today. This is similar to the 4.2% drop during the Great Depression. But notice: the homeownership rate in 1940 was 43.6 percent while it is still above 65% today. Overall, we are ahead of the 1940 figures even though the homeownership drop suggests that this recent period has had a similar effect on homeownership as the Great Depression.

Another interesting piece of news from this Census data on homeownership:

Measured by race, the homeownership gap between whites and blacks is now at its widest since 1960, wiping out more than 40 years of gains.

This is not good. The homeownership rate for blacks and Latinos increased small amounts from 2000 to 2010 but the gap has widened. Perhaps the American Dream, at least the homeownership part, has never truly really been available to everyone.

When Naperville property switches from proposed church to proposed mosque, opposition emerges

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I’ve thought about this scenario before: in an American community, would a proposed church and proposed mosque of roughly the same sizes and impact on the neighborhood encounter the same amount of opposition from neighbors and community members? Here is a case in Naperville that fits this scenario:

For years, HOPE United Church of Christ advertised on its front lawn plans to build a church on 14 acres it owned just southwest of Naperville, and the minister there says he never heard so much as a peep of displeasure.

But those plans fell through, and now that the church wants to sell the property to another religious group, protests have erupted at the Naperville Planning and Zoning Commission. Handmade signs critical of the deal have sprouted on utility poles…

In DuPage County, the Islamic Center is asking Naperville’s Planning and Zoning Commission to recommend annexing the unincorporated Will County land into Naperville. The city surrounds the parcel, and desirable Naperville subdivisions — Tall Grass and Pencross Knoll — are on three sides of the property.

The Islamic Center says it wants to hold gatherings on the property and use the home located there as an office — just as HOPE United has done in the past.

None of the people who publicly addressed the commission about the center’s proposal at Wednesday night’s meeting specifically objected to a mosque.

But more than a dozen said they opposed the annexation and long-term plan to place a religious center on the site.

Fascinating. The complaints from neighbors sound like a lot of typical NIMBY complaints: concerns about traffic, safety due to more kids being in the neighborhood, whether the mosque will be used late at night or at odd times, and the implicit idea that property values might be negatively influenced by this construction.

At the same time, it seems like there is more going on here. One resident would really rather have a trailer park? In Naperville? So a mosque is more problematic than a trailer park? And there are signs being put up to oppose the mosque? This sounds unusual – but also hints at the real reasons mosques are opposed by suburban residents.

I’ll keep watching the situation.

(I’ve been keeping track of several other mosque proposals in the Chicago region. Here are several posts on a proposed mosque in unincorporated Lombard: 9/13/11, 6/29/11, and 1/28/11. In the Lombard case, it appeared the neighborhood was much more welcoming. One survey suggests Americans would be open to a large Buddhist temple nearby but I would guess this question has some social desirability bias and opinions would change if the proposed temple was right near the respondent’s home.)

Considering Steve Jobs and the role of cultural context in innovation

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David Brooks explores the “innovation stagnation thesis” and one of the ideas of this argument is that cultural context matters for innovation:

Third, there is no essential culture clash. Look at the Steve Jobs obituaries. Over the course of his life, he combined three asynchronous idea spaces — the counterculture of the 1960s, the culture of early computer geeks and the culture of corporate America. There was LSD, “The Whole Earth Catalogue” and spiritual exploration in India. There were also nerdy hours devoted to trying to build a box to make free phone calls.

The merger of these three idea networks set off a cascade of innovations, producing not only new products and management styles but also a new ideal personality — the corporate honcho in jeans and the long-sleeve black T-shirt. Formerly marginal people came together, competed fiercely and tried to resolve their own uncomfortable relationships with society.

The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

If you want to be the next Steve Jobs and end the innovation stagnation, maybe you should start in hip-hop.

So what exactly is Brooks saying? People who want to be innovators need to embrace or immerse themselves into diverse cultural systems so that they can then synthesize different ideas in new ways? Or is it that innovators like Jobs are only possible in certain cultural contexts and our current cultural context simply doesn’t push people into these different ideas or doesn’t promote this?

Sociologists of culture would have something to say about this. While Jobs clearly had unique individual skills, the production approach would emphasize how his combination of cultural contexts was made possible. He came of age in an era when individuals were encouraged to seek out new ideas and learn how to express themselves. He started a computer company in a field that didn’t have many dominant players and two guys working in a garage could create one of the world’s most enduring brands. He was alive in an era when information technology was a hot area and perhaps ranked higher in people’s interests that things like space exploration and medical cures. (One way to think about this is to wonder if Jobs could have been successful in other fields. Were his skills and context translatable into other fields? Could Jobs have helped find a cure for cancer rather than create personal computing devices? Should he have tackled their other fields – what is the opportunity cost to the world of his choice?) He had the education and training (though no college degree) that helped him to be successful.

In the end, we could ask how as a culture or a society we could encourage more people to become innovators. Is studying hip-hop really the answer? What kind of innovation do we want most in our society – scientific progress or self-expression or dealing with social problems or something else? When we talk about pushing math and science in schools, what innovations do we want our students to produce?

The Wall Street Journal on turning McMansions into affordable housing

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Others have already suggested this idea but the Wall Street Journal reports on another call for turning McMansions into affordable housing:

McMansions, a type of home became popular with affluent boomers during better times, have fallen out of favor as more consumers seek smaller, more affordable homes that cost less to operate. They also want to trim the gas tab by living closer to their jobs and public transportation – the opposite of McMansion developments deep in suburbia filled with gas-guzzling SUVs. (There’s no precise definition of a McMansion, but it’s often a case of you know it when you see it.)

Such changes in taste — and, of course, the foreclosure crisis — has left America saddled with about 30 million more homes on large lots than the market needs, The Atlantic Cities writes. But rather than let them languish on the market indefinitely, Mr. Nelson suggests converting these excess homes into affordable housing or housing for multi-generational or multi-family households. (Developments called Mr. Nelson for comment, but he was not available.)

Such homes, he points out, can have more bathrooms than bedrooms, allowing for residential space that could be divided into private units, with a common kitchen and living room. Some already have or could be outfitted with second or third kitchens. Plus, there’s plenty of room for several cars and, usually, enough of a backyard for a swing set or two.

“When you add up the spaces and how they’re distributed, the typical McMansion can be occupied by three-to-five households with their own splendid privacy, their own large space,” Mr. Nelson is quoted as saying.

Just because there may be these larger housing units available does not mean that it would be easy to make them into affordable units and/or rentals. Here are some obstacles:

1. Whoever owns these houses would have to agree to this. Would the owners want this or is this an idea from critics who don’t like these homes that want this to happen? If the homes are in foreclosure, do the banks want to jettison them quickly and do the new buyers want to convert them into more units?

2. One can’t go into many neighborhoods where McMansions are located and simply subdivide the houses into five or six units. This would require zoning changes or special exemptions from a community. If the neighbors found out about this, I imagine many would not be happy. How many would want several houses in a large neighborhood to start being effectively apartments/condos? There would be questions about traffic, safety, and perhaps under the surface, who exactly would be moving into these affordable housing units.

3. The locations of many of these homes could still lead to affordability issues. If the McMansions are in exurbs, it would require a lot of driving to get to jobs, schools, and other places. The houses may be more affordable but the other costs of sprawl would still show up.

These are not insurmountable issues but it is not necessarily an easy or quick path from McMansion to source of affordable housing.

Are the suburbs truly American?

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The suburbs are a key part of American life: a majority of Americans live in them and they are part of the American Dream. So can we really ask whether they are truly American?

In his review of American Horror Story, which premieres tonight on FX, Slate’s TV critic Troy Patterson writes that the show’s “title carries more weight than its content can bear.” He then quotes a book review by Joyce Carol Oates of Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife:

Is there a distinctly American experience? The American, by Henry James; An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser; The Quiet American, by Graham Greene; The Ugly American, by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick; Philip Roth’s American Pastoral; and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho—each suggests, in its very title, a mythic dimension in which fictitious characters are intended to represent national types or predilections…. ‘American’ is an identity fraught with ambiguity, as in those allegorical parables by Hawthorne in which ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are mysteriously conjoined.

But wait: Are only Americans “fraught with ambiguity”? Oates lets these titles—and, especially, the many, many lesser books she might have mentioned—off the hook too easily. Too many books—and movies, and now TV shows—use the word “American” in their titles as a cheap shortcut to gravitas and sociological importance…

Besides bullying us with their national import, these titles often reinforce the fairly exaggerated ideas we tend to have about the uniqueness of this country. There are many things particular to and remarkable about the United States, but let’s not get carried away. Capitalism is not uniquely American (sorry, American Psycho). Suburbs are not uniquely American (sorry, American Beauty—the movie, I mean; and yes, plastic bags float in the wind in other countries, too).

This seems related to American exceptionalism: we like to think we have done everything in the best way. Perhaps we have the best capitalistic system. (A lot of people might argue with this these days.) But to pick on the suburbs here seems misguided: are there really other countries in the world that can match the American suburbs? A few countries have suburbs like ours such as Australia and Canada. Most other developed nations have limited suburban developments and sometimes they are the inverse of American suburbs where the wealthier live closer to the center of the cities and the poor live more on the edges. But Australia and Canada have relatively few people compared to the United States and I’m not sure they have the same suburban culture that pervades their national identity.

Perhaps we are particularly jingoistic in our naming but the American suburbs do seem to be uniquely American.

Audit study shows “employers less likely to interview openly gay men for job openings”

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Audit studies have been used for decades to show discrimination by race and sex. In these studies, two otherwise equal candidates are separated by one feature, perhaps race, perhaps first name, perhaps gender. Then the researcher looks at the differing response rates from mortgage companies or landlords or businesses. For example, see this notable 2003 study that showed that whites with a criminal record had better job prospects than blacks with no criminal records. This mode of analysis was recently utilized in an article in the latest issue of the American Journal of Sociology to show differing response rates for gay men looking for a job versus those applicants who were not openly gay:

The study, which is the largest of its kind to look at job discrimination against gay men, found that employers in the South and Midwest were much less likely to offer an interview if an applicant’s resume indicates that he is openly gay. Overall, the study found that gay applicants were 40 percent less likely to be granted an interview than their heterosexual counterparts…

For the study, Tilcsik sent two fictitious but realistic resumes to more than 1,700 entry-level, white collar job openings — positions such as managers, business and financial analysts, sales representatives, customer service representatives, and administrative assistants. The two resumes were very similar in terms of the applicant’s qualifications, but one resume for each opening mentioned that the applicant had been part of a gay organization in college.

“I chose an experience in a gay community organization that could not be easily dismissed as irrelevant to a job application,” Tilcsik writes. “Thus, instead of being just a member of a gay or lesbian campus organization, the applicant served as the elected treasurer for several semesters, managing the organization’s financial operations.”

The second resume Tilcsik sent listed experience in the “Progressive and Socialist Alliance” in place of the gay organization. Since employers are likely to associate both groups with left-leaning political views, Tilcsik could separate any “gay penalty” from the effects of political discrimination.

The results showed that applicants without the gay signal had an 11.5 percent chance of being called for an interview. However, gay applicants had only a 7.2 percent chance. That difference amounts to a 40 percent higher chance of the heterosexual applicant getting a call.

Has this methodology not been used before when looking at discrimination against gays? If not, I’m a little surprised.

The methodology of the audit study is interesting: it essentially is an experiment where one detail between the resumes or applications is changed to isolate its effect. In this study, the detail is what college organization the applicant worked for. It was clever to differentiate between these two particular organizations in order to rule out a political effect.

I assume the next step would be to expand this study to more states/locations and to more job categories beyond “entry-level, white collar job openings”? How much would the results differ if the study involved more blue collar jobs or managerial, white collar jobs?

When I’ve told students about audit studies, several have raised issues of deception: aren’t these fake applicants? Yes, but the harm to the companies is minimal outside of some time spent looking at them. (However, from what I have read about how much time hiring people look at the hundreds of job applications they see for these types of positions, looking at one or more applications wouldn’t seem to matter.) I do wonder if hiring people have ever spotted these applications from researchers – or the pool of applications is simply so broad that they see all sorts of interesting things.