Category Archives: Sociology

Vatican newspaper says Homer J. Simpson is a Catholic

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The Vatican’s newspaper recently said that they consider Homer Simpson to be a Catholic:

But in an article headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics”, the newspaper said: “The Simpsons are among the few TV programmes for children in which Christian faith, religion, and questions about God are recurrent themes.”

The family “recites prayers before meals and, in their own peculiar way, believes in the life thereafter”…

“Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J Simpson is a Catholic,” insists L’Osservatore Romano.

This must be a very loose definition of what a Catholic is or how one should act. In fact, it strikes me as a very American sort of idea: Homer’s Catholicism is a grab-bag of practices and beliefs of his own choosing. Is Homer’s approach to religion really much different than many Americans?

But one point the newspaper makes seems accurate: the Simpson’s portray “old-fashioned family values” in a way that few other shows do today.

The four easy steps to writing a novel

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Writing a novel in one month has become a popular goal: “just head over to the NaNoWriMo website and check out how many people have actually done it: More than 165,000 people participated in 2009, and more than 30,000 managed to crank out the 50,000-word goal.”

This sort of guide from Wired that reduces a novel this size to four smaller steps is actually a good reminder of the writing process. It is a common perception that writers are geniuses, able to crank out inspired complete works in one extended session. In reality, writing requires sitting down, working on small chunks, and repeatedly doing this. With this method, reaching 50,000 words isn’t actually that hard – what would be much harder would be to write those 50,000 words and then edit and re-edit everything to craft a coherent and interesting work.

The difficulty of defining culture

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The term “culture” can be tricky to define – as is evidenced in a story from the New York Times about culture and poverty. One writer tries to sum up the definition and the argument:

The important thing is, you can’t isolate culture as one element of a society and change it without changing anything else. You can’t ignore the roles racism, lack of fundamental necessities, and social isolation play in shaping culture, and you can’t use it as a convenient way to blame poverty on the individuals who suffer from it.

While I would agree that it is difficult to separate culture from other areas, sociologists of culture tend to stress that culture is “patterns of meaning-making.” All people do this: develop narratives and ways of understanding their surroundings.

What seems to be the new wave of research is looking at how culture and structures (such as unemployment, isolation, lack of opportunity) interact with and influence each other.

Fighting “cultural addiction to shoes”

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A professor from Liberty is on a “crusade to challenge America’s cultural addiction to shoes.”

The barefoot movement is gaining attention, particularly among runners who say it is more natural to run barefoot.

I would be curious to know what kind of conversations this professor has with people in public. He is breaking a basic social norm that most people wouldn’t think twice about.

Another question: are stories like these generally positive for professors?

New Urbanists explain side effects of sprawl

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Two New Urbanists, Andres Duany and Jeff Speck, argue that sprawl contributes to two more issues that some might not think of: climate change and rising health-care costs (obesity and car crashes).

h/t The Infrastructurist

The miners are rescued – now the true stories can come out

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It appears the Chilean miners agreed to a pact that they would not tell the worst things that happened between them while trapped underground. But a few members of the group have suggested that they may break the pact in order to cash in.

Much of the media coverage up to this point has been positive: this is a remarkable story of how these men were able to stay alive, stay sane, and wait to be rescued. And yet, it couldn’t have been easy and there must have been some difficult moments. Which narrative will win out in the end: the composed miners who maintained a sense of civility and dignity while trapped in a terrible situation or the miners who barely were able to keep it together as they lost hope? Apparently there is a lot of money to be had if some of the miners tell of the darker side of their ordeal. How long until we get the first TV movie on the subject?

Overall, we should expect that there are both good and bad sides to this story. We are not served well by an overall story that only focuses on the heroic. This is human nature: being cooped up with anyone for that long, let alone at the bottom of a mine shaft, is bound to lead to some antagonism and strife. What might make the story even more remarkable is knowing that they were able to overcome difficulties and issues and still be rescued. How exactly did they band together? What kept their hope alive?

(This reminds me of Lost and the agreement made by the Oceanic Six to tell a certain story after they had been rescued. Who will be the first to crack and provide the “true” story?)

Different definitions for welfare

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Apparently the gubernatorial race in Maine has included discussions about how welfare provided by the government might be defined differently:

“Essentially, we all get welfare in some fundamental form or another,” said Luisa Deprez, a sociology professor at the University of Maine.

Unemployment, Social Security, school lunches, subsidized college loans and even federal tax refunds can be considered forms of public assistance, according to those who favor a broader definition.

In the context of the gubernatorial campaign, however, welfare has been discussed in its more common, narrow definition: public anti-poverty programs that help provide basic needs, such as food and shelter.

I’ve other studies that suggest the public favors government intervention more when it is called something like “government assistance” as opposed to “welfare.”

This is a reminder that there are very few people who really want no government involvement in the lives of individuals. In reality, people who are supposedly at different ends of the political spectrum are debating how much government should be involved. How many people, of any political persuasion, are willing to completely give up unemployment benefits, Social Security, or Medicare?

Findings about mixed-use communities and crime rates

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Mixed-use developments are the rage these days among architects and planners, both in urban and suburban settings. However, there is some contradictory research about whether these developments have higher or lower crime rates. One recent study suggests that crime is reduced once there are enough people on the streets even as there might be a short-term increase in crime before the neighborhood has enough people on the streets. An earlier study had suggested that mixed-use neighborhoods lead to higher levels of crime and therefore, planners should design neighborhoods with features to reduce crime.

This reminds me of Jane Jacob’s ideas of “eyes on the street.” Jacobs suggested this was easier to maintain in mixed-use urban neighborhoods where storekeepers, shoppers, residents and others maintained a steady watch on what happened in the neighborhood.

Looking at the educationally rich Washington D.C. metro area

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Based on recently released figures from the 2009 American Community Survey, the Washington Post describes the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, the most educated region in the country:

The data, drawn from questionnaires, underscore the academic primacy of the Washington area: 47 percent of adults – or nearly 2 million – hold bachelor’s degrees, the highest rate among the nation’s large urban areas. Six of the 10 best-educated U.S. counties are within commuting distance of the District.

Half of all degrees in the region are in natural and social sciences, well above the national average, under a broad Census Bureau definition of “science” that includes everything from nuclear physics to sociology. That’s a starting point for looking at variations within the region: So-called hard sciences reign beyond the Beltway, soft ones within.

There are some other interesting facts in here as well, such as the finding that the proportion of people of business degrees in the region is lower than the national average.

What I would be interested to know is how these statistics change the day-to-day lived experience of an average resident of the region. Are there more civic events with more involvement from nearby residents? Is there a large perceived gap between the lives of those who are well educated and those with less education? Do people strike up deeper conversations at any gathering? Does this concentration of people lead to more interdisciplinary work and research?

Dealing with being wrong in science

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A doctor who challenges the faulty research of his peers is profiled in the latest issue of Atlantic. His conclusion is that expectations about science, specifically reactions to being wrong, need to be changed:

We could solve much of the wrongness problem, Ioannidis says, if the world simply stopped expecting scientists to be right. That’s because being wrong in science is fine, and even necessary—as long as scientists recognize that they blew it, report their mistake openly instead of disguising it as a success, and then move on to the next thing, until they come up with the very occasional genuine breakthrough. But as long as careers remain contingent on producing a stream of research that’s dressed up to seem more right than it is, scientists will keep delivering exactly that.

Negative findings, typically meaning that an alternative hypothesis is rejected, tend to receive less attention. Yet they are still useful as they advance science by ruling out alternatives. Both positive and negative findings are needed to build science (and any of its disciplines in the natural or social sciences).

But this doctor also suggests that the incentive system for scientists needs to be changed. As long as breakthroughs and big findings are what are rewarded, that is what scientists will look for and claim to find.