Category Archives: Sociology

“World first” PhD in snowboarding really a sociology of religion PhD

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I saw this story yesterday: the first man in the world to receive a PhD in snowboarding. But the story is actually a little more complicated: this was actually a PhD in the sociology of religion having to do with having spiritual experiences while snowboarding.

A vicar has become the first person to be awarded a “PhD in snowboarding” after studying at Kingston University.

The Rev Neil Elliot’s doctorate in the sociology of religion involved analysing the relationship between spirituality and snowboarding in his thesis.

A snowboarder for 15 years, he was inspired to research the area after hearing fellow fans of the sport describe moments of “Zen” while on the slopes – and concluded that despite church attendance falling, spirituality is still important in youth culture…

He interviewed 35 snowboarders who described spiritual moments they had experienced. “Riders found it sometimes all went silent and it was just them and the snow,” he said. “Even the sensation of constant turning disappeared.”

This could be less about snowboarding and more about how younger generations find spiritual experiences in non-traditional activities. It would be interesting to hear how these experiences are discussed, spread, and promoted within the snowboarding community.

And who wouldn’t want a vicar termed “Dr. Soulride”?

Argument: college students are poor writers because they ape the academic prose of their professors

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An English professor argues that the problem with what students learn about writing in college is that they learn to write in the style of professors:

This Wall Street Journal article implies that our poor communication skills fresh out of college result from simple laziness or stupidity on our part. But Dr. Richard Lanham, professor emeritus of English, UCLA, believes the problem is not lack of learning.

Rather, he believes, when we are undergraduates, we learn all too well: we learn to ape the bureaucratic, academic, clear-as-swamp-water prose of our professors. He writes in his book, Revising Prose (in my opinion the single best practical book on prose writing in existence):

“Much bad writing today comes not from the conventional sources of verbal dereliction—sloth, original sin, or native absence of mind—but from stylistic imitation. It is learned, an act of stylistic piety, which imitates a single style, the bureaucratic style I have called The Official Style. . . .”

And to drive home his point, Lanham cites a passage from Talcott Parsons. This particular passage appears to be from Parsons’ book The Social System and you can see the passage here on page 7 in Google Book. (Interestingly, this passage is edited. Yes, it is difficult but why not cite a complete passage rather than starting at the end of a paragraph and cutting some of another?) Lanham says this about Parsons’ passage:

This is not prose. This is the systematic abuse of prose. Anyone hoping to learn writing should stay a thousand miles away from people who write in such a manner. That is, they should stay a thousand miles away from most university professors.

The author of this article goes on to cite Sokol’s Social Text hoax, argue that computers could teach academic writing (though it may not make any sense), and suggest that college students need to get beyond typical college classes.

The trend these days in college seems to be to train students to write in discipline specific styles: if you are a biology major, write a biologist, a sociology major, write like a sociologist (though not like Parsons), and son. This makes some sense for faculty as our professional careers are based on particular writing styles. It may not make sense for all students as they may not be interested in graduate school or professional careers. But, if students are specific majors, part of their senior-level competency should be an ability to communicate within that sphere.

However, the problem referenced at the beginning at the article may not be the same problem cited in the rest of the article. The article begins by citing a Wall Street Journal article saying that businesses are having a hard time finding possible employees who can write and speak effectively. But this problem is not the problem of academic writing; rather, it is an issue of basic communication. Employers aren’t saying that college grads are writing postmodern gibberish; rather, they are saying that applicants write as though they are interacting with friends. Academic writing may be problematic (and it is recurring issue within sociology though most work doesn’t read like Parsons) but the problem employers are discussing is a few steps before academic writing.

If college students are trained in any discipline specific style and can successfully write within that world, that’s better than not being able to write any prose. Theoretically, students should be able to write basic prose before they write discipline specific prose but some prose is better than no prose, right? Students need to learn the basics, thesis, supporting evidence, etc., and perhaps the average professor is not able to offer much help in this since they are immersed in academic language.

For students to move beyond simply aping the academic style of their professors, they need to practice writing a lot. Even while there might be guidelines and norms within particular disciplines, there is still freedom within these areas to exhibit some personal style. Within sociology, for example, there is a wide range between ethnographic and statistical/mathematical work. Styles are not formulas. Of course, more writing means more work for students and professors. But there is evidence that an increase in writing within academic courses leads to better educational outcomes.

On the whole, I think this is a bigger issue than academics passing along bad prose to their students. Sociologists could indeed do better than writing like Talcott Parsons. All classes should help students write basic, effective prose that can be used outside of the college classroom. How all this could and should be worked out within a typical four-year degree needs to be developed.

Reasons for saving “Modern homes” in New Canaan, Connecticut

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Teardowns often raise a furor in a community when they result in the razing of significant older homes. Regulations developed by a New England preservationist group have helped protect Modern houses built by Marcel Breuer, the rationale for saving the New Canaan homes is interesting:

New Canaan became a center for Modern houses when the Hungarian-born Breuer — a product of the Bauhaus school of design in pre-Nazi Germany — and four other architects moved to the town in the 1940s and used it as a canvas for their creations. Breuer adapted new designs to American architecture, such as a flat or nearly flat roof and cantilever construction.

Other Modern characteristics include muted colors, the lack of ornamentation and the emphasis on structural systems. The homes have since become a New Canaan tourist attraction. The town’s zoning rules do not forbid razing the homes but require 90-day notice for tear-downs.

“People come from as far away as Japan on a routine basis,” First Selectman Jeb Walker said.

Modern homes also serve as models for today’s new energy-efficient houses. Their modest size, overhangs that provide shade and features that take advantage of sunlight for solar power are old features suddenly new again.

The article suggests several possible reasons for saving these homes:

1. One involved person said “the preservation effort is “a way for America to keep its architectural memory.””

2. The homes are older and older homes deserve some recognition. Too many new homes at one time can radically alter the character of a community.

3. The homes were designed by an important architect and were part of an important style (Modernism).

4. The houses draw visitors which adds up to tourist dollars. This also helps make New Canaan distinct from other communities.

5. The Modern homes were the opening wave of environmentally-friendly homes.

Of course, there could be counterarguments to these five arguments. But this particular community has decided that these Modern homes are worth saving. Interestingly, another community (the article hints at a case in Westport, Connecticut) might choose otherwise. I suspect Reason #4 above, the fact that New Canaan is known for these homes, goes a long way in protecting these homes. The Wikipedia entry for the community says about 80 modern homes were built after World War II, something few suburbs could boast of.

The hypersexualization of female stars on the cover of Rolling Stone

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A sociologist found that Rolling Stone cover images of female stars have become more sexualized over the last few decades:

Hypersexualized images of women, on the other hand, went from representing six per cent of female covers in the 1970s to 61 per cent in the 2000s…

During the 2000s, women were 3 1 /2 times more likely to be hypersexualized than nonsexualized, and nearly five times more likely to be sexualized (hyper or otherwise) than non-sexualized.

Hatton acknowledges that many people will dismiss this conclusion as old hat, citing the venerable advertising maxim that “sex sells.”

But Hatton argues that to simply shrug off the findings is to ignore evidence that popculture’s accepted image of femininity is narrowing, dangerously, by the decade.

Several thoughts come to mind:

1. Rolling Stone has certainly changed over the years. From my own vantage point, it was once more serious, particularly about music, but has now become simply another pop culture magazine with occasional over-the-top political coverage.

2. The biggest surprise here is that the hypersexualization has become much worse over the years. And this is from a “progressive” magazine?

3. I wonder if large-scale surveys have presented such images to Americans and asked for their opinion. If so, then might we see a shift in opinion similar to the shift in images on the cover of Rolling Stone? In other words, are these covers simply a proxy for larger cultural opinions?

Pew again asks for one-word survey responses regarding budget negotiations

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I highlighted this survey technique in April but here it is again: Pew asked Americans to provide a one-word response to Congress’ debt negotiations.

Asked for single-word characterizations of the budget negotiations, the top words in the poll — conducted in the days before an apparent deal was struck — were “ridiculous,” “disgusting” and “stupid.” Overall, nearly three-quarters of Americans offered a negative word; just 2 percent had anything nice to say.

“Ridiculous” was the most frequently mentioned word among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. It was also No. 1 in an April poll about the just-averted government shutdown. In the new poll, the top 27 words are negative ones, with “frustrating,” “poor,” “terrible,” “disappointing,“ “childish,” “messy” and “joke” rounding out the top 10.

And then we are presented a word cloud.

On the whole, I think this technique can suggest that Americans have generally unfavorable responses. But the reliance on particular terms is better for headlines than it is for collecting data. What would happen if public responses were split more evenly: what words/responses would then be used to summarize the data? The Washington Post headline (and Pew Research as well) can now use forceful and emotional words like “ridiculous” and “disgusting” rather than the more accurate numerical figures than about “three-quarters of Americans offered a negative word.” Why not also include an ordinal question (strongly disapprove to strongly approve) about American’s general opinion of debt negotiations in order to corroborate this open ended question?

This is a possibly interesting technique in order to take advantage of open ended questions without allowing respondents to give possibly lengthy responses. Open ended questions can produce a lot of data: there were over 330 responses in this survey alone. I’ll be interested to see if other organizations adopt this approach.

Comparing the economies of US cities to countries

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A little fun information: New York’s GDP is similar to Canada, Los Angeles’ GDP is similar to the Netherlands, and Chicago’s GDP is similar to Switzerland.

This is a reminder that US cities/metropolitan regions are economic powerhouses.

h/t Instapundit

Translating Ritzer for Iranian audiences

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An Iranian translator says he will translate sociologist George Ritzer’s theory textbook into Persian:

Iranian author and translator of sociology works said that he will release two translations of American sociologist George Ritzer in Iran and added that he has decided to translate a book in the field of “Social work” as well as “Sociology in the internet era”…

Dr. Khalil Mirzaee told IBNA that one of the books which he has translated is George Ritzer’s “Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots” which had been previously converted into Persian as well. The inappropriate Persian equivalents encouraged me to re-translate the book, he added.

He said that George Ritzer reviews his works once in every four years which include omitting some theories as well as adding new theories.

It is interesting to hear how a common textbook is being used in other countries. But I wonder how this relates to news from last year that the Iranian government wanted to review sociology departments (among others) because of Western influences. Ritzer’s theory books are mainly about European and American theorists but Ritzer’s own ideas about globalization might also be of interest to both scholars and the government.

Sociologists on the “chore wars”

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Time magazine’s latest cover story on “chore wars” features two competing explanations from sociologists:

The assumption that working women had become the Clydesdales of contemporary marriage can be traced back to the publication of Arlie Russell Hochschild’s The Second Shift in 1989. In the 1970s, Hochschild was a sociologist with two young children who was trying to get tenure at Berkeley, where she saw her male colleagues unencumbered by demands at home and was inspired to write about the working women’s double day. “It came from my own anguish, my own conflict,” she says…

Hochschild came up with that number by averaging data collected in the 1960s, spotlighting what is now clearly the product of a culture in transition, a lag between women’s entry into the workforce and the great domestic shakeout in which working women cut back on housework, often by outsourcing, and men reduced office hours and chipped in more at home. Yet Hochschild’s interpretation of that statistical blip in the 1960s came to define the plight of women in the 1990s and 2000s. The Second Shift was a huge crossover hit and sparked a huge surge of academic writing on the inequalities of the household…

One American sociologist, Suzanne Bianchi, stood on the sidelines of the why-men-aren’t-doing-more debate for many years. From 1978 to 1994, she was a demographer and statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau working with large represtnative samples that shed light on long-term changes at thepopulation level. Bianchi was looking at almost everything but housework – education, earnings, changes in employment – so she became aware of the pitfalls of focusing only on the domestic sphere. “Maybe men really were all jerks and not doing their fair share, or maybe they were allocating their time to other things. By isolating housework from other kinds of work, you lost track of the fact that families need money as well as time,” she says. “I began to get interested in what we really know. We think men don’t do anything, but is that right? Are we systematically missing what they do do?”…

Bianchi and her colleagues analyzed time-diary data from 2003 to ’05 and found that among couples in which both partners work full time, men’s greater hours of paid work counterbalanced women’s greater hours of unpaid work. A second shift, where it still existed, was most evident in dual-earner couples with children under the age of 6, but it was a difference of five hours more of combined paid and unpaid work for women a week, not 15. “That didn’t mean that The Second Shift was completely wrong, just that it was misleading,” says Bianchi, who published her analysis in 2009. “Another thing that got missed was that women shed housework when they’re employed full time, but they hold on to a lot of child care, and that’s a big piece of why The Second Shift resonates so much.”

The article suggests that the gap between the work of men and women has closed and there needs to a more nuanced explanation about the subject. It seems like the larger conversation would also be enhanced with more data rather individuals relying on personal anecdotes. For the forthcoming edition of The Second Shift (January 2011), will Hochschild also include updated/new data?

Two further issues:

1. The argument in this story works because of a methodological concern: men’s paid work counts in their total. If we look at just the figures for work within the home, there is still a decent gap between men and women. On one hand, we could consider all kinds of work to be equal (and work at a paid job certainly has its own stress and advantages). On the other hand, if an earlier goal was for men and women to equally share work at home, it hasn’t happened.

2. Where do we go with this data? The article suggests the arguments of The Second Shift resonate with newer generations. Will this article convince anyone that men are doing more work (or more equal work) or will it simply reinforce existing divides?

God gets good job approval ratings in recent survey

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I’m not sure why Public Policy Polling decided to recently include these questions in a mid-July survey (just to make comparisons with current politicians and Rupert Murdoch?) but here is how Americans rate God’s job performance:

While many polls have asked what Americans’ beliefs are about God, there has been little measurement of voters’ evaluation of its performance. It turns out, if God exists, voters would give God a strong 52-9 approval rating. This is hardly a surprise considering the vast majority of the country believes in an infallible deity, but some of the crosstabs are quite interesting.

There is a considerable age divide on God’s approval with those 18-29 approving 67-18 compared to a 40-6 approval rating among those over 65. What jumps out from this divide is not just that young voters are more likely to be critical of the job performance of the omnipotent figure, but that they are considerably more likely to voice their opinion. Only 15% of those 18-29 said they were unsure whether they approved of God, while 54% of those over 65 said they were unsure. This could indicate that the youth is much more comfortable answering silly questions about religion while the elderly feel a question on God’s approval is taking religion too lightly. There is also an ideological divide over God’s performance. Those who identify as very liberal approve of God 54-18, while those who identify as very conservative are almost uniform in their approval, 61-4.

God also performs well on some of the issues it could be responsible for if it exists. God scores its best rating on its handling of creating the universe. The big bang may be messy, but most voters must feel it gets the job done as they give God a 71-5 rating on the issue. As for the animal kingdom, if God exists it may have been off its game when it evolved up the giraffe’s laryngeal nerve, but perhaps the elegant Monarch butterfly makes up for it as voters give God a 56-11 rating on its handling of animals. As one would expect, God’s worst ratings are on its handling of natural disasters; however, Americans may feel the occasional earthquake or hurricane builds character as voters give God strong marks, rating it 50-13.

These figures seem pretty high but they are rather vague questions. If you are going to ask these questions, why not add a few more: do you feel God has treated you fairly lately? Do you think God has blessed the United States? Which political party do you think God would side with more? Do you feel that God approves of your job performance in life?

Maybe these figures do indicate some generational and political gaps. There are also some differences by race as African-Americans are more likely to approve of God’s performance. Or perhaps these figures don’t tell us much of anything. PPP could start asking this question more regularly and track the data over time.

It would be interesting to follow these questions by asking respondents why they gave the rating they did. Were respondents afraid to give God negative ratings?

Also, how come there is no indication of how many people didn’t answer this question since it starts with “If God exists”? Cross-tabs give us percentages but we don’t have Ns for the categories or cells.

An attempt to define the American middle class

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Determining who exactly is middle-class in America can be difficult as many Americans, of all income ranges, consider themselves to be middle-class. In the middle of a review of the tough American economy, one columnist provides an interesting definition of the middle-class:

So how come the middle class continues to struggle? To answer that question, we need first figure out what this nebulous thing called the middle class is. Let’s leave aside the fine sociological distinctions about white collars and blue collars and pink collars, and say this: The American middle class is vast middle tier of people who work to live, and who strive to work a little harder to get a little more in life. Middle class people may save, but they don’t accumulate enough wealth to live off. Almost every buck they get, they spend.

This is why we need these “fine sociological distinctions” as this definition offers little to go on. Here is what this might mean:

1. Middle-class Americans have jobs mainly for income so they can support their family and do what they want outside of work.

2. Middle-class Americans are always striving for a little bit more.

3. Middle-class Americans spend most of their income and don’t accumulate enough wealth to stop working.

“Typical” middle-class values are often said to be hard work, striving to own a home, and helping one’s children get ahead. Regarding the three definitions in this article, what about the shift toward seeing one’s job as a vocation or a career? What about a return to saving in recent years? Spending may be a key feature, particularly to chase the American Dream, but is the spending simply essential to the economy or is it considered consumerism? These three definitions above might fit some Americans but I’m not sure they fit most in the middle.

On the whole, this seems like an incomplete and/or sloppy definition. Defining the middle-class by income level, job status and education level, and even self reporting makes more sense.