Category Archives: Sociology

From luxury item to throwaway good: cable TV

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Following up on Joel’s post from Wednesday, Figures from the last quarter suggest the cable TV industry continues to lose customers:

The phone companies kept adding subscribers in the second quarter, but Dish lost 135,000. DirecTV gained a small number, so combined, the U.S. satellite broadcasters lost subscribers in the quarter — a first for the industry…

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett estimates that the subscription-TV industry, including the untallied cable companies, lost 380,000 subscribers in the quarter. That’s about one out of every 300 U.S. households, and more than twice the losses in the second quarter of last year. Ian Olgeirson at SNL Kagan puts the number even higher, at 425,000 to 450,000 lost subscribers.

The second quarter is always the year’s worst for cable and satellite companies, as students cancel service at the end of the spring semester. Last year, growth came back in the fourth quarter. But looking back over the past 12 months, the industry is still down, by Moffett’s estimate. That’s also a first.

The article goes on to mention a number of reasons for this: a bad economy so consumers are cutting back, younger people don’t see the necessity of cable, and there is a lot of content available through the Internet.

More interesting to me is the idea that cable TV is no longer the luxury good that it once was. Once the industry began in the 1970s and later consolidated, cable moved from being a rarity to being a necessity. As late as mid 2009, “11% of U.S. TV homes only have the capability to receive TV reception “over the air”.” Having cable simply became part of how Americans spend their disposable income. Cable became prism through which many Americans viewed the world. Certain channels arose, such as MTV which has been getting a lot of attention recently because of its 30th anniversary or ESPN which was the subject of an interesting book, and became part of the national consciousness. These channels, for better or worse, came to represent American culture and were exported around the world. I wonder if having cable at home signaled a middle-class lifestyle even if other traits don’t match this standing.

But now the world may have moved on. (At the same time, despite all the articles suggesting people stop paying for cable, bad economic times, and more competition, the drop in subscribers was only 0.2-0.3%.) How exactly will cable companies convince people that their product is a necessity, particularly among the younger generations? What will be the new narrative regarding cable that will push people to include this in their lives?

“The Marginalization of Marriage” report says marriage is helpful in achieving the American Dream

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A new report from the Brookings Institute, written by one conservative sociologist and one liberal sociologist, suggests that marriage is helpful for achieving the American Dream:

To be sure, not every married family is a healthy one that benefits children. Yet, on average, the institution of marriage conveys important benefits to adults and children. This advantage may be due to the greater stability of the marriage bond, or to the kinds of people who choose to marry and to stay married, or to qualities associated with the institution of marriage (such as a greater degree of commitment and investment in family life). Let us assume that all of these factors play a role. The fact is that children born and raised in intact, married homes typically enjoy higher quality relationships with their parents, are more likely to steer clear of trouble with the law, to graduate from high school and college, to be gainfully employed as adults, and to enjoy stable marriages of their own in adulthood. Women and men who get and stay married are more likely to accrue substantial financial assets and to enjoy good physical and mental health. In fact, married men enjoy a wage premium compared to their single peers that may exceed 10 percent. At the collective level, the retreat from marriage has played a noteworthy role in fueling the growth in family income inequality and child poverty that has beset the nation since the 1970s. For all these reasons, then, the institution of marriage has been an important pillar of the American Dream, and the erosion of marriage in Middle America is one reason the dream is increasingly out of reach for men, women, and children from moderately-educated homes.

This strikes me as an odd defense of marriage. This reasoning is very pragmatic: because marriage is successful in helping people reach the American Dream, therefore, people should look for such relationships. I could imagine several objections to this argument:

1. There are better reasons for defending marriage as an institution. Tying marriage to a particular successful life sequence could take the emphasis away from the relationship and move it to acquiring particular material possessions, life chances, and statuses. Ultimately, it seems to me that the current debate around marital practices in the United States comes down to moral beliefs.

2. Perhaps the notion of the American Dream is changing. Just because this has worked in the past doesn’t mean that this is what Americans want to pursue in the future.

3. There are other notable reasons for the growing inequality and rise in child poverty in the United States over the last few decades.

All in all, I imagine this report could generate a significant amount of debate.

Evidence of sociology being viewed as an easy major for athletes

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It is about that time of year when broadcasters and fans start poring football media guides. One enterprising fan of the University of Arkansas posted some tidbits from this year’s guide and one involved sociology:

Do you know what Greg Childs, Knile Davis, Cobi Hamilton, and Joe Adams all have in common? Well, besides being stars on the offense. They are all majoring in sociology. Arkansas actually has twenty players who are majoring in sociology with sports and recreation management being the second most popular choice. I can assure you that all those players didn’t come to the UofA with a desire to learn more about sociology. No doubt, someone in the athletic department has told them that sociology is a “football friendly” major.

I wonder how the sociology department at the University of Arkansas might respond.

On the whole, I don’t think having the reputation as an “easy major” helps the broader discipline of sociology.

US government thinking of renting foreclosed homes

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Different people have different opinions about what to do with the glut of foreclosures: perhaps convert them into multi-family units, bulldoze them, or donate them. It appears the federal government might try another route: renting them.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday it is seeking input from investors on how to rent roughly 250,000 homes owned by government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration. All of the homes are foreclosures…

Converting the homes into rentals may reduce “credit losses and help stabilize neighborhoods and home values,” said Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie.

Homes in foreclosure sell at a 20 percent discount on average, which can hurt prices of surrounding homes.

It also might meet the growing demand for rentals. Since the housing meltdown, nearly 3 million households have become renters. At least 3 million more are expected by 2015, according to census data analyzed by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and The Associated Press.

This sounds like it could turn into a large program with a lot of moving pieces. Would these homes essentially be converted into temporary public housing?

If done well, this could help deal with a rental problem. Even before the economic crisis, a number of metropolitan areas suffered from issues of affordable housing: there simply were not enough cheaper and good units available. Additionally, there was often a mismatch between where these homes were located and where jobs were located. Could renting these foreclosures be a viable solution?

How many communities would be interested in supporting a program like this? I could imagine some interesting battles within better-off suburbs. On one hand, as the article mentions, foreclosures tend to drag down home values. On the other hand, having the federal government actively involved as a landlord in more neighborhoods would make a lot of people nervous.

Seeing sociology in the US men’s national soccer team coaching change

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A number of articles have noted the new approach of the new coach of the US men’s national soccer team, Jurgen Klinsman. But this is the first one I’ve seen that suggests Klinsman’s outlook is sociological in nature:

What Klinsmann’s hiring is really about is the big picture, about where soccer is going in the United States, how it will be played and by whom?

It is a grand experiment that is as much about sociology and psychology as it is soccer, and one that promises to be — even to Klinsmann — at least as interesting as whatever happens on the field.

“I deeply believe that soccer, in a certain way, reflects the culture of a country,” Klinsmann, who since 1988 has lived in Huntington Beach, Calif., said at his introductory news conference. “You have such a melting pot in this country with so many different opinions and ideas floating around there. One of my challenges will be to find a way to define how a U.S. team should represent its country. What should be the style of play? It is important over the next three years, especially in the beginning, that I have a lot of conversations with people engulfed in the game here to find a way to define style. What suits us best?”

The question of style posed by Klinsmann — one of the few people with the gravitas and wherewithal to carry such a debate from his perch — isn’t simply about aesthetics. It is about empowerment.

Some Americans might think that having a “national soccer style” might seem odd (is there a “national football style”?) but other countries have such approaches. How exactly cultural values match up with soccer play would be interesting to look at in more depth. Are the explanations that the team fits the values simply post-hoc explanations? (A similar argument: the Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers play a particular style of football – tough, good defense, hard running, etc. – because of the industrial cities in which they started.) I suspect a “national style” works because it is meaningful and traditional (and perhaps successful), rather than necessarily more true than other possible styles.

Part of the issue raised by Klinsman (and hinted at in this article) is the culture of US soccer that seems to privilege a particular path related to race and social class: going to expensive sports academies as teenagers and then going to college. Few, if any, other countries follow this route. This is a structural issue: how could the path to playing for the USMNT be altered to open it up to more players, particularly those who can’t afford or don’t want to pursue the “typical” route? As Malcolm Gladwell suggests in Outliers, these certain structural advantages help some and not others.

A lot is being asked of Klinsman and cultural changes are difficult to make. But it sounds like Klinsman has some ideas about what to do and US soccer seems to be at a point where people realize it needs to take “the next step.” It will be interesting to watch how the Klinsman sociological experiment goes.

The first Apple sociology app?

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I didn’t see this coming:

Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, medical and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is launching its first mobile application in Sociology, accessible via iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Wiley-Blackwell Sociology Spotlight is a must-have app for all Sociologists. It shines a powerful spotlight on Sociology, enabling you to instantly read all of the latest news and developments in the field. Whether you want to keep track of broad trends across the discipline or focus in on a subfield, Sociology Spotlight is an essential tool for your research and teaching.

A few questions:

1. Is there a market for this? It does appear to be free…

2. Might this set off an arms race among publishers to make their content available through apps?

3. The iTunes preview app page suggests certain articles have “video abstracts.” Is this the new wave of the future?

Would having a math PhD really help you win the lottery?

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A journalist suggests that one woman who won four multi-million dollar lottery payouts was able to do so because she had a mathematics PhD:

First, [Joan Ginther] won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2 million, then two years later $3 million and finally, in the spring of 2008, she hit a $10 million jackpot.

The odds of this has been calculated at one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.

Harper’s reporter Nathanial Rich recently wrote an article about Ms Ginther, which questioned the validity of this ‘luck’ with which she attributes her multiple lottery wins to.

First, he points out, Ms Ginther is a former math professor with a PhD from Stanford University specialising in statistics.

A professor at the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Mr Rich: ‘When something this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest ‘em first and ask questions later.’…

Three of her wins, all in two-year intervals, were by scratch-off tickets bought at the same mini mart in the town of Bishop.

Mr Rich proceeds to detail the myriad ways in which Ms Ginther could have gamed the system – including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.

He believes that after Ms Ginther figured out the algorithm, it wouldn’t be too difficult to then determine where the tickets would be shipped, as the shipping schedule is apparently fixed, and there were a few sources she could have found it out from.

At first glance, the story does seem unlikely: four wins and three from scratch-off tickets from the same retail location. But here are three reasons to doubt the claim that this woman beat the system:

1. If lottery algorithms could be figured out by the public, wouldn’t other people have figured this out as well? A math PhD sounds problematic but other smart people could figure this out if it could be figured out. Additionally, couldn’t this woman win more than 4 times if she had it all figured out?

2. Just because someone won the lottery four times does not mean that something underhanded happened. Just because some events are “random,” like winning the lottery or being struck by lightning, does not mean that people can’t win multiple times. Aren’t there plenty of other multiple lottery winners?

3. The quote from the professor is interesting: be suspicious first and then figure out what is happening. This is the view from the business end. If someone is gambling and consistently winning your money, you might respond. For example, this book about card-counting MIT students is fascinating (much better than the movie based on the book) not only for how the students figured out how to count cards but also because of the response of the casinos. (My favorite part – and I think I am remembering this correctly: the students leave Las Vegas because they are raising suspicions with their winnings. But they eventually find that their names and photos have been sent to casinos around the country. It gets to the point where they are escorted out of a casino just moments after entering.) But it sounds like the Texas Lottery Commission doesn’t think anything is wrong. Shouldn’t they be the ones who care the most?

If you read the original story, Ginther’s buying habits do sound strange. But I still think this reporter needs to find some more evidence before Ginther could be accused with certainty.

The rise of granite countertops from a sociology of culture perspective

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Homebuyers today seem to want certain features in a new home: stainless steel appliances, updated bathrooms, and granite countertops. But how exactly did the granite countertops become so popular?

Granite is relatively new to the kitchen counter; back in 1987, it was pretty much available in only two colours, it was incredibly expensive and was not even considered good counter material because of its lack of resilience. Yet in less than a decade, it went from being luxurious to ubiquitous- it is in every new condo and apartment regardless of price. It became the cherry on top of the McMansion sundae. The price dropped so far and so fast that one can now order it online in Florida for $19.95 per square foot, almost as cheap as a laminate counter. (Although at the time of this writing no doubt there is a significant oversupply in Florida.)

Here is why it became so cheap: “it got globalized…containerized…computerized.” Here are a few details about these:

Granite used to be a very local business- if you lived in the Northeast you got it from Vermont, in the midwest from Minnesota, in eastern Canada from Quebec. It is heavy stuff, and the main market was architectural stone, cut by craftsmen to exacting specifications for the commercial building industry. Taking it out of the ground was dangerous work; granite quarries were often ecological nightmares. However the industry provided a local material, and well-paying skilled jobs…

But granite is found all over the world, and it is cheaper to dig it out in India and Brazil. The environmental standards are not quite as high either…

Unlike architectural stone used on the exterior of buildings, the stone for counters and floors is a uniform 3/4″ thick. By cutting the stone on site the flawed slabs can be separated before they are shipped, and can even be processed further into tiles, so that there is less transport of waste. Once sliced into the new standard, the 3/4 inch thick slab, it can be put into the standard solution for transport, the shipping container. So what if most of the container is full of air, the cost of shipping is more than compensated for by the low cost of the material. Suddenly granite was no longer just available in two colours, but in dozens…

Where cutting granite used to be a skilled craft working in three dimensions, as counters it became a simple matter of cutting the slabs in two dimensions. Often the slabs would be shipped from India or Brazil to shops in China with finishing and edging equipment. Now a kitchen designer in Toronto might send a CAD file to the shop in China where a computerized saw cuts the Indian granite into a countertop, which is then put into a container and shipped to Toronto and installed in a condo.

On one hand, someone could argue that Americans have developed a taste for granite and have made individual choices to have it in their homes. Americans became fed up with their old counter options, like Formica, Corian, or tile. They developed finer tastes and wanted to show off their kitchens.

On the other hand, one could utilize the production approach in the sociology of culture. Granite became an aesthetic choice because of technological change: it has become cheaper and easier to create and install. Through the process of globalization, granite became a better option for American consumers looking for a more durable and flashier surface. Perhaps granite became cheaper because there was some demand for it but Americans didn’t simply choose granite – it was a choice made for them.

It would be interesting to see figures that would show when homebuyers started looking for granite over other surfaces. And who had it first?

Example of problems with statistics “nearly 1,500 millionaires” (out of more than 235,000) “paid no federal taxes”

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Statistics can be used well and they can be used not so well. Here is an example where the headline statistic suggests something different from the rest of the story:

Of an already small pool of millionaires and billionaires, 1,470 didn’t pay any federal income taxes in 2009, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Just over 0.1% of taxpayers — or 8,274 out of 140 million total — made more than $10 million in 2009, according to the agency. More than 235,000 taxpayers earned $1 million or more, according to a recent report from the agency.

But of the high earners who avoided paying income taxes, many did so due to heavy charity donations or foreign investments.

About 46% of all American households won’t pay federal income tax in 2011, many due to low income, tax credits for child care and exemptions, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The headline makes it sound like there are a lot of millionaires who are avoiding paying taxes. The actual percentage hinted at it in the story suggests something else: less than 0.63% of all millionaires (1,470/235,000 – less than 1 in a 100)) paid no taxes. In the midst of a political debate about whether to raise taxes for the wealthy in America, each side could grab on to factual yet different figures: the 1,500 figure sounds high like the country is missing out on a lot money while the 0.63% figure suggests almost all pay some taxes. It wouldn’t take much to include both figures, the actual number and the percentage in the story.

Examples like this help contribute to the reaction some people have when they see statistics in the media: how can I trust any of them if they will just use the figures that suit them? All statistics become suspect and it is then hard to get a handle on what is going on in the world.

Evangelicals and their propensity to think that everyone is against them

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Sociologist Bradley Wright draws attention to an issue among evangelicals: a common belief that fellow Americans do not like them:

Similarly, somewhere along the line we evangelical Christians have gotten it into our heads that our neighbors, peers, and most Americans don’t like us, and that they like us less every year. I’ve heard this idea stated in sermons and everyday conversation; I’ve read it in books and articles.

There’s a problem, though. It doesn’t appear to be true. Social scientists have repeatedly surveyed views of various religions and movements, and Americans consistently hold evangelical Christians in reasonably high regard. Furthermore, social science research indicates that it’s almost certain that our erroneous belief that others dislike us is actually harming our faith.

The statistics Wright presents suggests evangelicals are somewhere in the middle of favorability among different religious groups. For example, a 2008 Gallup survey suggests Methodists, Jews, Baptists, and Catholics are viewed more favorably than evangelicals while Fundamentalists, Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, and Scientologists are viewed less favorably.

Wright goes on to argue (as he also does in this book) that the perceptions evangelicals have might be harmful:

If American evangelicals do have an image problem, it’s not our neighbors’ image of us; it’s our image of them. The 2007 Pew Forum study found that American Christians hold more negative views of “atheists” than non-Christians do of evangelical Christians. (The most recent Pew survey found similar attitudes; see the chart above.) Now, I am not a theologian, but this seems to be a problem. We Christians are called to love people, and as I understand it, this includes loving people who believe differently than we do. I’m not sure how we can love atheists if we don’t like them.

Ultimately, evangelical Christians might do well not to spend too much time worrying about what others think of us. Christians in general, and evangelical Christians in particular (depending on how you ask the question), are well-regarded in this country. If nothing else, there’s little we can do to change other people’s opinions anyway. Telling ourselves over and over that others don’t like us is not only inaccurate, it also potentially hinders the very faith that we seek to advance.

This is an ongoing issue with several aspects:

1. There is a disconnect between the numbers and the perceptions. Wright looks like he is trying to make a prolonged effort to bring these statistics to the masses. Will this data make a difference in the long run? How many evangelicals will ever hear about these statistics?

2. There may be positive or functional aspects to continually holding the idea that others don’t like you. Subgroups can use this idea to enhance solidarity and prompt action among adherents. Of course, these alarmist tendencies might not be helpful in the long run. (See a better explanation of this perspective from Christian Smith here.)

In the end, this is useful data but there is more that could be done to explain how these perceptions are helpful or not and what could or should be done to move in a different direction. Providing people with the right data and good interpretations is a good start but then people will want to know what to do next.