Category Archives: Sociology

Considering the ethics of adopting children to study them

Posted on by

An ethicist look at three scenarios to help sort out the difference between studying one’s biological vs. adopted children:

Ethics has a bizarre blind spot around parents and children. For no justifiable reason that I can discern, we deem it perfectly tolerable for a parent to decide unilaterally to raise their child genderless or under the Tiger Mother or laissez-faire method of parenting, but horror at the idea of someone “testing” one of these parental styles on a child. Recall, there is no test to become a parent, no minimum qualification or form of licensing. In fact, if you are so irresponsible as to unintentionally have a child you do not want and cannot support, you have more of a right (and obligation) to rear that child than a stranger with the means and desire to give that child a better life…

I would like to test this reproduce-rearing correlation with a thought experiment. The details of the thought experiment appear below the fold, but the conclusion is as follows: it would be ethically permissible for a scientist to adopt a large group of children and then perform specific, non-harmful, nature-vs-nurture social experiments on those children…

After running through three scenarios, here is the conclusion:

Therefore, if it is morally permissible for parents to independently decide how to raise their children in regards to gender, it should be morally permissible for a team of scientists to conduct a rigorous experiment with their own adopted children on the impact of rearing on gender and sexual preferences.

I imagine an IRB would have a very difficult time approving a formal proposal for this.

Several other methodological issues come to mind:

1. There could be issues of objectivity: how do we know parents of either biological or adoptive children could “objectively” observe their own kids? This may be a bigger problem in some disciplines than others: ethnographies, for example, utilize participant observation which parents would certainly be a part of. But even then, there are concerns about the researcher becoming too immersed in the setting of the study and losing an outsider’s point of view. Scenario #3 simply suggests that sociologist parents would make “unbiased observations.”

2. How could an experimenter be sure that results from adopted (or even biological) children are the result of the treatment rather than prior experiences and behaviors? Experiments try to isolate the effects of treatments but adopted children could have numerous confounding factors from their pre-adoption days.

Wheaton sells Hubble site, plans for new grocery store

Posted on by

For over a decade, the City of Wheaton has sought a developer for the Hubble Middle School site on the southeast edge of downtown Wheaton. The city now has an agreement with a developer who wants to build a new grocery store:

The effort to sell the old Hubble Middle School site ended Thursday when Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 revealed the terms of a recently announced sale to Chicago-based Bradford Equities LLC.

At a special meeting, school officials said they were thrilled to move on and look forward to seeing a grocery store at the highly visible northwest corner of Roosevelt and Naperville roads…

The sale also prohibits the developer from seeking or accepting tax increment finance help from the city, gives Bradford seven months to inspect the property and obtain permits, and most importantly to some people, asks Bradford to make a “good-faith effort” to work with the park district on 13 acres not suitable for development because they are on a flood plain…

Board President Rosemary Swanson said the resolution meets several goals the school district has had all along, including placing the site on the city and school district’s tax rolls.

This story hints at some of the reasons Wheaton has paid so much attention to this site:

1. Wheaton is a built-out community so there are few opportunities to purchase and develop sizable portions of land.

2. The site has a very important location: it is at the busy intersection of Naperville and Roosevelt Roads. It is also an opportunity to expand Wheaton’s downtown to the south. While the downtown has traditionally been more on the northern side of the railroad tracks, the city has made an effort in recent years to expand to the south. This new development will expand the city’s gateway on Roosevelt Road which currently consists of a large welcome sign at Main Street.

3. A grocery store will help bring in tax dollars. This matters because Wheaton has few opportunities to add commercial property but more broadly, refers back to the city’s large amount of institutional/church property which don’t contribute tax dollars. This new project will broaden the city’s tax base.

4. The grocery store will offset the loss of the Jewel store which closed in early 2008. While the city wanted to save that store, Jewel decided it was too small (and old?) to maintain – and the chain has newer, more modern stores on both the north and south side of Wheaton. This new store fits with the city’s goals of adding residential units to the downtown as residents will now be able to walk to a grocery store.

5. Earlier suggestions for the Hubble site had included a hotel, residential units, and some stores. It sounds like the new development will be much more limited and some of the recreational functions of the property will be retained in parkland and gymnasiums.

6. The whole process has been slowed down by the economic crisis. Earlier requests for proposals generated a good deal of interest but it has taken a lot of time to get to this point.

In the end, it sounds like the final product will be less ambitious than some had hoped for but it will still help bring more tax dollars into the city and a grocery store will return to the downtown.

Possible issues with interstate megachurch sites

Posted on by

American megachurches have had multiple satellite sites for years. But now at least several have pursued satellite sites in other states:

Pastor Mark Driscoll’s megachurch recently announced plans to expand into Portland, Oregon, and Orange County, California, using multi-site campuses that feature live bands and a sermon piped in from the main campus in Seattle.

The move is part of a trend among megachurches to extend their brand of church to new communities, in hopes of reaching unchurched people with the gospel. But critics fear the out-of-state campuses turn churches into franchises like McDonald’s or Starbucks.

The reason for the new campuses is simple, according to the Mars Hill website.

“Oregon needs Jesus Christ,” claims the introduction of the new location. “The city of Portland is known for many things, but the gospel of Jesus is nowhere on the list.”

What might be the issues with this and responses to these issues?

1. It is unclear how far away a satellite campus has to be to be objectionable. Let’s say Willow Creek opened a satellite campus in northwestern Indiana, still within the Chicago region. Is this a problematic interstate campus or not? The distance between Seattle and Orange County or between Oklahoma and Phoenix does seem larger.

2. The McDonaldization/commodification/branding of churches seems to go against the local community aspect of church. This seems to be typically related to the popularity of a particular pastor/preacher who could draw a viable audience all over.

2a. There is a strong case to be made for emphasizing local community or even a parish model. But, evangelical churches left this behind a long time ago so is this simply a logical extension of this trend?

2b. How much of opposition to these new sites is based on the need for community in church versus how large churches tend to draw their members from existing churches rather than from non-attendees? If a megachurch satellite moves into an area, local churches may lose congregants.

2c. How much will this matter in the future as anybody with an Internet connection can easily access sermons and podcasts? If the primary purpose of a satellite church is to share a sermon, people can get this elsewhere.

2d. This is a reminder of the pastor-centric nature of many evangelical churches.

3. It would be interesting to hear discussions within megachurches that go forward for interstate sites: what is the primary motivation for doing this?

Explaining our social world to alien visitors

Posted on by

Sociology has a meme involving aliens: what would someone from Mars observe or conclude if they came to Earth and looked at modern society? Although it doesn’t come from a sociologist, here is an update on this idea that includes McMansions:

Since they haven’t answered, we could assume that the humans in space aren’t sophisticated enough to interpret our radio signals.

But just imagine how we can help them when we do find them. We can teach them everything we know and speed up their evolution into modern man in a flash. We could have them skip over the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, the industrial revolution, and be flipping microchips and tweeting by sunset. How exhilarating it will be for us to teach them about fire and wheels. We could bypass the telegraph, and give them 3DTV! Imagine their excitement, moving from a cave to a McMansion with granite countertops? Once they learn how to use all the gadgets — iPod, iPad, iPhone — they would only need to learn the basics of reading and math.

The sequence of what we teach would be important. It would be terrible to show them how to accumulate stuff before we taught them how to defend themselves from those who would take their stuff away. Would spears be good enough or would we need to give them guns, guided missiles, or maybe an atomic bomb? And if they come from a tribal background, would every tribe need an atomic bomb?…

Of course, there is a chance that humans, way out there in space, have been receiving our signals. Maybe, they’re a lot smarter than we imagine. Maybe, they know all about us. Maybe, they have decided it’s better not to answer our call.

This may seem like a silly exercise but it has some value: it can be hard to take an outsider’s perspective of our own world. By trying to adopt the viewpoint of someone who might come from a completely different social system (and planet), it helps us take a broader and overhead look at our own actions and social relations.

I sense some satire here about showing our visitors 3DTV, McMansions, and iPads. This sounds like a suggestion that we pay too much attention to technological and physical comforts without remembering the foundation beneath them such as social structures, basic tools, government, and moral values. This seems related to the question of what civilization relies on.

Big cities promote new ideas

Posted on by

Big cities are generally thought of centers of innovation for both business and culture. This article suggests this effect is particularly pronounced in developing Asian countries:

“Cities are the first to embrace many concepts that are a taboo in towns and villages,” says Sandhya Patnaik, a sociology professor at Delhi University, referring to pre-marital sex, live-in relationships or divorces.

“Anything new or modern touches cities first. Trends percolate to smaller towns at a very slow pace.”

Occasionally in India, the battle between village tradition and liberal city culture can have deadly consequences, such as the “honour killings” seen in Delhi’s migrant areas…

But experts say cities across the world generally serve as a positive melting pot, where different cultures intermingle, encouraging tolerance and the interchange of ideas.

“The freedom in a big city comes from diversity,” Jirapa Worasiangsuk, a sociologist at Thammasat University in Bangkok, told AFP. “It’s the choices and the opportunity to choose that make Bangkok or other big cities a better place.

“People have more choices to choose how to live, to choose their career, to do whatever they want.”…

Sociologists say the freedom of cities often stems from a feeling of anonymity — but this can often tip over into loneliness.

This article seems to suggest that modern, Western ideas are found in the city. I assume most Westerners would look at news like this and think that these changes are long overdue but the article suggests these new ideas are not always met favorably. Such changes are not easy (and some places could argue whether they are desired) as the early sociologists recognized when looking at the changes urbanization was bringing to Western Europe in the 1800s.

It would be interesting to read diffusion studies from these countries that track how new cultural and social ideas leak out of cities and come to dominate social interaction.

Thinking more about this, are there major cities in modern times that have been business centers but also that remained culturally conservative? Or does being open to business tend to correlate with more liberal ideas? This would be interesting as neoliberalism is often thought of as being conservative since it is capitalistic.

Except more communities to challenge 2010 Census counts

Posted on by

Amidst an economic crisis that has also affected many municipal budgets, expect more communities to appeal the 2010 Census counts:

Cities have two years to contest their counts under the Census Bureau’s appeals process, which began this month…

In recent decades, the peak for challenges was 6,600, or 17 percent of all U.S. jurisdictions, in 1990, when the census missed four million people, including five percent of all blacks and Hispanics.

In 2000, roughly 1,200 jurisdictions, or 3 percent, contested the count. The net change due to census challenges that year was just 2,700 people.

Apart from the challenges, analysts later determined the 2000 census had an overcount of 1.3 million people, due mostly to duplicate counts of more affluent whites with multiple residences. About 4.5 million people were ultimately missed, mostly blacks and Hispanics.

Interestingly, the article suggests that while government dollars are behind these challenges, it is also about the “psychological impact” on civic pride. I wonder who exactly will appeal: St. Louis, Chicago, and a host of other Rust Belt cities lost population and New York City didn’t have the population increase that was expected. Since budgets are tight everywhere, could we even get appeals from places like Houston which experienced sizable growth?

It would also be interesting to hear how exactly the Census Bureau adjusts these figures based on subsequent analyses of overcounts and undercounts. This is a reminder that Census figures are not perfect even as many things, including many social science studies based on population proportions calculated in the Census, are based on these figures. I am not suggesting that the Census figures are wrong but rather that it is a very complicated process that is bound to be tweaked some after the first figures are released.

Chicago beats out competitors: not on list of America’s 10 Dirtiest Cities

Posted on by

I heard a joke years back: Chicago may be corrupt but at least it’s clean while Philadelphia is both corrupt and dirty. On a new list of America’s dirtiest cities, Chicago isn’t in the top 10:

While such sentiments don’t appear in tourist brochures, that glorious grit has landed Baltimore in the Top 10 dirtiest cities, as chosen by Travel + Leisure readers in the annual America’s Favorite Cities survey. Of course, visitors gauge “dirty” in a variety of ways: litter, air pollution, even the taste of local tap water.

This year’s American State Litter Scorecard, published by advocacy group the American Society for Public Administration, put both Nevada and Louisiana in the bottom five—echoing the assessment of T+L readers who ranked Las Vegas and New Orleans among America’s dirtiest cities.

The top 10 dirtiest cities according to Travel + Leisure readers, starting with the dirtiest: New Orleans, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York City, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Miami, Atlanta, and Houston.

The top 10 dirtiest states according to the “2011 American State Litter Scorecard,” starting with the dirtiest: Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Montana. The best states: Washington, California, Iowa, Maine, and Connecticut. I like the conclusion on the slideshow: “Scorecard not definitive: Contributing inquiry into poorly probed matter.” Somebody should study the issue…

Having been to many of these places, I have always thought that Chicago’s tourist area, including the Loop and River North, was quite clean and attractive, as far as cities go.

Aging suburbs might change suburban priorities

Posted on by

The demographic shift in America due to the aging of the Baby Boomers could also affect American suburbs:

Although the entire United States is graying, the 2010 Census showed how much faster the suburbs are growing older when compared with the cities. Thanks largely to the baby-boom generation, four in 10 suburban residents are 45 or older, up from 34 percent just a decade ago. Thirty-five percent of city residents are in that age group, an increase from 31 percent in the last census…

“When people think of suburban voters, it’s going to be different than it was years ago,” Frey said. “They used to be people worried about schools and kids. Now they’re more concerned about their own well-being.”

The nation’s baby boomers — 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964 — were the first generation to grow up in suburbia, and the suburbs is where many chose to rear their own children. Now, as the oldest boomers turn 65, demographers and local planners predict that most of them will not move to retirement areas such as Florida and Arizona. They will stay put…

Local governments are starting to grapple with the implications.

The article then goes on to detail the changes some suburbs have made, primarily in the areas of public safety and civic services. Frankly, I was expecting some bigger changes.

Here are a few predictions about how this might have play out. Some of this has already started.

1. Aging suburbanites will be less likely to favor new development that bring in a lot of children in the community. This comes up primarily as a property tax issue in many communities. With many seniors on more fixed incomes, how can they adjust to rising taxes? And if they are long past supporting school-age children, why should they have to pay more money to schools? While one could argue that more money leading to better schools helps everyone in the form of higher property values, this is still a high price to pay.

This could lead to a shift in many communities away from new homes or multi-family units to a more diversified tax base (more industrial and commercial properties) and developments friendly to seniors. A community like Naperville pursued some of these goals in the 1990s and 2000s: seeing the dwindling supply of open land, Naperville pursued some senior-living communities and more commercial and industrial uses to reduce the strain on the schools and help provide some housing that would enable seniors to stay in the community.

2. They will aim to keep their suburbs similar to way they were when they moved in. As the first generation who primarily grew up in suburbs, they will want to preserve their idyllic nature. How this works itself out in each community may differ but this could be an era of hyper-NIMBYism or at least hyper-vigilance to make sure such uses benefit from the older citizens.

 

Small Islamic mosque in unincorporated Lombard approved by DuPage County Board

Posted on by

A small mosque for an unincorporated site near Lombard has been approved by the DuPage County Board:

Proclaim Truth Charitable Trust, which currently holds services in Villa Park, won approval to build a one-story, 5,200-square-foot brick and stone mosque on a 1-acre unincorporated site at 1620 S. Highland Avenue.

The board, by a vote of 13-4, endorsed plans for the group’s mosque at the same time that several other zoning applications to construct mosques elsewhere in unincorporated DuPage County have drawn significant opposition from neighbors. Proclaim Truth’s plans attracted minimal public opposition.

However, unlike the other area proposals, which include a recently approved 47,000-square-foot mosque near Willowbrook and a pending proposal for a 43,000-square-foot mosque on the south side of Roosevelt Road just east of Interstate Highway 355 near Lombard, Proclaim Truth plans to build a relatively small worship facility on its 1-acre property on Highland Avenue…

The mosque will have a full-service worship area that will hold no more than 150, along with a classroom for Saturday school, and a men’s and women’s lobby. In addition to the mosque, the group also will construct a 50-space parking lot.

Based on what I have read about this in the Chicago Tribune, here are several things that seemed to be working in this mosque’s favor:

1. When I wrote about this mosque on January 28, 2011, I noted that it sounded like this mosque had “a stronger welcome from residents in the neighborhood” compared to other proposals. This article seconds that idea.

2. The size of this mosque is pretty modest. I would guess this would affect how residential neighbors would view a proposed church, mosque, or other religious center with larger buildings attracting more negative attention.

3. Does it matter that this proposal was approved by DuPage County, which has control over some unincorporated land uses, as opposed to needing approval from a particular municipality? The article suggests other proposals for unincorporated land have drawn more opposition so it sounds like it is more about the neighbors than it is about who grants final approval.

4. Speaking of neighbors, if you look up the site, 1620 South Highland Avenue, Lombard, IL, Google Maps shows two nearby congregations: Chicago Christadelphian Ecclesia and Congregation Etz Chaim. Did the presence of these two groups drive the positive neighborhood response?

Quick Review: Those Guys Have All the Fun, Part 2

Posted on by

In Part 1 of my review of Those Guys Have All the Fun, I commented on some of the things I liked and didn’t like. In Part 2, I want to tackle what I saw were two main themes: the business side of ESPN and ESPN personalities.

The authors provide some guidance in pointing out the steps that ESPN took to achieve global dominance. Like all TV networks that want to compete, ESPN had to pay big money for league packages and it took until the late 1980s for ESPN to even acquire a piece of the almighty NFL. I was surprised by the strong relationship between ESPN and NASCAR (perhaps because I am not a big fan): ESPN was willing to take a shot with racing in its early days when other networks were not so the two entities grew in popularity together. And one prominent negative for the network came when they finally acquired Monday Night Football only to find that the NFL and NBC had worked out a better deal for Sunday nights.

But like all businesses, ESPN needs to generate money. The key to this is that from its early years, ESPN charged cable services a per-subscriber fee. As it added content, particularly the NFL, ESPN raised these fees and now the book suggests something like around $4 of every cable bill goes toward ESPN. With advertising and subscriber revenue, ESPN was able to build its company.

Also from the early years, ESPN aimed for a particular corporate culture that valued the company above individual stars. Once ESPN became more popular, this became more difficult as certain individuals, like Keith Olbermann, who is featured a lot in this book, wanted to do things their own way and also wanted to make more money. While some of the executives seem to suggest that this corporate culture was about creating a tight-knit family, it also sounds like this was a business decision as it would help keep salaries down.

Even within this culture, I was surprised by the amount of sniping between personalities. This takes place in all companies, particularly in high-pressure situations, but some of it seemed silly here. Certain personalities, like Bob Ley, were cited as respected team players while others, like Mark Shapiro, were depicted as divisive. But there were a number of stories about yelling and aggressive behavior that made it sound like work life at ESPN could be quite unpleasant at times.

Another point of contention amongst the personalities was the strong emphasis on journalism, primarily attributed in this book to John Walsh. Many of the interviewed on-air personalities suggested they thought of themselves more as journalists in wanting to accurately and quickly report a story. Some personalities had some other thoughts and ended up leaving. Employees generally sounded like they didn’t get wrapped up or emotionally invested in individual stories, which I found a little surprising since the network seems to thrive on covering particular prominent athletes like Michael Jordan or Lebron James.

But this issue of journalism is where ESPN often seems to get into trouble these days: are they a news organization that just happens to only cover sports, or are they an entertainment company? The lines are blurred when ESPN becomes the story rather than reports the story and this seems to happen a lot. I understand why ESPN would want to appear more objective and ethical but I think they also need to acknowledge that they entertain and viewers are drawn to interesting voices and ideas.

(A side note: frankly, I am glad that the 1990s Chicago Bulls won their championships then compared to the over-analyzed and over-covered sports world of today. What might have ESPN done with such a dominant team and stories like Jordan’s gambling if their current form existed then? Back then, it seemed to be more about highlights than analysis – but I suppose they would argue that people can find highlights all over the place and so ESPN has to give them something else.)

These two issues, the business side and personalities, raise some questions:

  1. What would it take for ESPN to begin a decline or lose its prominence in the sports world?
  2. Why hasn’t there been a better competitor to ESPN over the years? (Perhaps they couldn’t access subscriber fees?) Ted Turner is portrayed as a competitor at times for league packages but he ends up fading away.
  3. How is ESPN viewed by other networks? There is some of this in the book but it is limited.
  4. Is ESPN’s corporate culture similar or different compared to other TV networks and other firms in other industries?

On the whole, I found this book to be quite engaging. If you are familiar with some of ESPN’s key shows and personalities, there is a lot of interesting material here. But if you want to better understand how ESPN became the behemoth that it is today, this is a good place to start.