Category Archives: Sociology

The lonely American

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Research shows that we might be more lonely than ever. Daniel Askt sums up some of the research:

In America today, half of adults are unmarried, and more than a quarter live alone. As Robert Putnam showed in his 2000 book Bowling Alone, civic involvement and private associations were on the wane at the end of the 20th century. Several years later, social scientists made headlines with a survey showing that Americans had a third fewer nonfamily confidants than two decades earlier. A quarter of us had no such confidants at all.

In a separate study, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (2009), surveyed more than 3,000 randomly chosen Americans and found they had an average of four “close social contacts” with whom they could discuss important matters or spend free time. But only half of these contacts were solely friends; the rest were a variety of others, including spouses and children.

The rest of the piece is a thought-provoking rumination on friendship, particularly among men.

Young evangelical says churches shouldn’t strive to be “cool”

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In the Wall Street Journal, 27-year old evangelical Brett McCracken suggests churches shouldn’t try so hard to be cool:

If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that “cool Christianity” is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don’t want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.

McCracken sounds like he is suggesting the church should be counter-cultural rather than go along with the culture. This seems fairly obvious given the radical message of Christianity – it is difficult to reconcile this with today’s American culture. But churches also want to attract members and the glitzy and glamorous ways to do this seem attractive.

Follow-up questions: does this approach from churches lead to long-lasting attendance or spiritual growth? Is “real” what most emerging adults are looking for in church and religion? And what is “real” anyway?

McCracken recently published a book titled Hipster Christianity that further examines this issue.

Quick Review: Be Very Afraid

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Robert Wuthnow is a sociologist of religion and culture and I was intrigued when I saw one of his recent books at the public library: Be Very Afraid: The Cultural Response to Terror, Pandemics, Environmental Devastation, Nuclear Annihilation, and Other Threats. A few thoughts about the book:

1. The book examines four threats: the nuclear threat, terrorism after 9/11, global pandemics, and global warming. Each threat has a chapter where Wuthnow provides an overview of the history and then a second chapter that provides more of an analysis. Each of these subjects is interesting and the historical chapters are decent overviews of the social construction of and response to each of the problems. The historical chapters tend to focus on popular culture (movies in particular) and government responses.

2. The primary theoretical aim is to demonstrate that people are not paralyzed or immobilized by such threats (as some have suggested) but rather are spurred into action. For governments and larger organizations, this means the development and expansion of agencies and procedures to deal with threats. Average citizens go about ways of making sense of the situation and preparing themselves. Wuthnow suggests action and searching for solutions is the typical human response to such situations and analyzing these patterns of response is revealing.

3. While the cases are interesting as is the theory, I feel this work could have done more to analyze each case and provide an overarching perspective on threats at the end. I also would have liked to see more of a summary of the interview data that Wuthnow and his team collected (mentioned in the first footnote to the Introduction) – how did this personal-level data fit with the broader social history of each threat?

Overall, an interesting work that left me wanting a little more explanation. These cases suggest that when a new threat arises, both bureaucracies and individuals will respond with action. But what kind of action – is it dependent on the particular threat, the particular culture, or some other factors?

Meeting romantic partners online

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Time reports on some research that suggests meeting romantic partners online is becoming a regular way of life:

Nearly 30% of new couples now meet online. Today the Internet is the second-most common way to meet a partner, according to results from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together Survey, with web introductions ranked only behind introduction by mutual friends.

Taken in 2009, the survey polled more than 4,000 Americans about their romantic relationships.

Looking online for partners is quite different than the traditional methods. For one, it expands the potential pool of partners. Before the Internet, people were generally limited to their personal connections, the institutions in which they were a part (work, religious organizations, civic organizations, etc.) or their weak ties (introductions by mutual friends). Two, it involves a different process of presenting oneself. Instead of an initial face-to-face interaction, the two people create profiles and search for matches.

According to the story, the research also found that those people who met each other through church had the highest relationship satisfaction.

Emerging adults and “the changing timetable for adulthood”

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The New York Times Magazine takes a long look at emerging adulthood. Early on, the article contains a quick description of this recent phenomenon:

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

An interesting read. While this article focuses on the research of psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, there is a lot of recent research on this including research on emerging adulthood and religion by sociologist Christian Smith.

One growing political metaphor: the car

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Politico examines President Obama’s usage of the metaphor of driving a car to describe the national political scene and handling of the economy. The metaphor has grown over the months and recently included the first mention of “Slurpee” by a President in a speech.

Politicians commonly use metaphors and symbols in speeches. The car is such a part of American life that people can instantly grab onto the implications. What would be the metaphorical response from Obama’s opponents?

Moving? Consider the walkability and transit scores

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The Infrastructurist looks at two figures that may become part of the home-buying equation in the near future: a home’s walkability and transit scores.

How much this influences homebuying decisions remains to be seen. I’m sure there is part of the population that wants such a location where daily needs, like parks, food, and transit are within a reasonable walk. But there are certainly others who would emphasize other features, like the size of the home, over the home’s context.

We know that Americans don’t want to walk much more than a quarter mile to get to things. New Urbanists use this information to guide their planning: homes should be within a 5-10 minute walk away from necessities.

Military towns benefit from increased compensation

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USA Today reports “16 of the 20 metro areas rising the fastest in the per-capita income rankings since 2000 had military bases or one nearby.” Compensation packages have increased since 2000: “Soldiers, sailors and Marines received average compensation of $122,263 per person in 2009, up from $58,545 in 2000.”

While places with nearby military bases benefited from these changes, USA Today also found some losers in per-capita income over the past decade. These include high-tech centers, college towns, and industrial cities.

Knowing about college freshmen

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Before the start of each college school year, Beloit College publishes the Mindset List. This list is intended to provide an overview of how incoming college freshman understand the world. While the list certainly serves to get Beloit College on media outlets throughout the country, the list has some value. According to the creators, it is meant to help professors in the classroom:

Being aware of the generation gap helps professors craft lesson plans that are more meaningful, said Ron Nief, a former public affairs director at Beloit College and one of the list’s creators.

Developing lessons that students can relate to can be a challenge, particularly if technological and cultural changes accumulate as a professor ages.

The list is also a good reminder of generational differences. While students and faculty may inhabit the same academic classrooms, their experiences and perspective of the world can differ greatly.

Conspicuous consumption during a recession

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Trying to make sense of how recent events like the lavish wedding of Chelsea Clinton, the furor over Michelle Obama’s trip to Spain, and other similar events, can take place during this recession, Bella English of the Boston Globe turns to the concept of conspicuous consumption.

Sociologist Juliet Schor comments:

“It’s adding insult to injury at a time like this when so many Americans are suffering such extreme economic pain,’’ says Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and author of “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth.’’ “Those kinds of conspicuous displays of wealth undermine everyone else. They make us feel poorer and less satisfied with what we have.’’

Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption. According to Veblen, consumption is not just about buying necessities; it is about projecting an image and establishing status. The wealthy intentionally are wasteful in their consumption in order to show that they can afford to be wasteful.

Schor is expressing what the people toward the bottom of the economic ladder feel when the rich show off their riches. Should the rich cut down on their spending in times like these? Or perhaps they could draw less attention to themselves? My guess is that if one has the money, one is going to spend it whether it is a boom time or a down time. The only barrier to this may be a popular backlash – if the consumption actually leads to decreased status (rather than increased status), it may not be worth it.