“The Sociology of Harry Potter” course about culture

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Taking advantage of student’s knowledge of the Harry Potter series, one sociology instructor is using “The Sociology of Harry Potter” to teach about culture:

“The basic idea is to have students use sociology to analyze the society of the wizardly world to be able to understand and compare and contrast between the Muggle world and the witching world,” Vandivier said.

About 30 students are taking the course, which Vandivier said is a large number for an online course, but she is glad for the active participation.

“Many of them are big Harry Potter fans. They get into arguments — not online, but when I’ve talked to some on campus — who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy and who’s the Hufflepuff, and what that’s got to do with anything. It’s just so fun listening to them, and they are really emotionally invested in the different houses, in the different characters, in the different circumstances that happened and where they think things came from. Just all the ideology; it’s almost like a religion,” she said…

“If I were to teach a class on say, the cultures of India, I would first have to educate them on what the culture of India is. But in this situation, they already know, they already have it down,” she said. “And I’m just facilitating a compare and contrast, what’s the theme, what’s the difference, and what does that mean for each society? So that’s the great thing about Harry Potter.”

Why not use what students already know in order to demonstrate sociological concepts? And with the new Harry Potter play in the works, this might be a good time to capitalize on continued interest.

While the sociological study of pop culture may have been taboo decades ago, it is increasingly common today. The impact of such narratives are hard to deny, even as other traditional institutions (nations, families, race and class structures, education systems, etc.) draw ongoing attention.

Taking a meat axe to Manhattan for a highway

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This retelling of efforts to build a highway across lower Manhattan include this graphic description of what Robert Moses was proposing:

Even Moses acknowledged that his methods were extreme. In fact, he had a term for it: The meat ax. New York, he argued, was already so dense and complex that you had to make cuts somewhere. Sure, other newly-planned metropolises could preserve history and make sure everyone was happy. But according to Moses, New York City needed drastic measures, as he argued in a quote from The Power Broker:

“You can draw any kind of pictures you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra and Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis you have to hack your way with a meat ax.”

Imagine a bureaucrat saying that today! It was a time before preservation and urban advocacy existed in organised form. Preserving the grit of the city was a laughable idea — the city needed to be purged of its dirt, not protected…

This strange, antiseptic mindset can be traced alllllll the way back to Europe at the turn of the century, when academics and architects first started thinking about cities as living networks. The sociologist Georg Simmel, writing in 1903, was the first to really describe how cities affected the mental outlook of their inhabitants — city dwellers, Simmel reasoned, were blasé, even neurotic, because of the impersonal, overwhelming, and money-obsessed demands of the city.

But to the architects of 1920s and ’30s Europe, the city wasn’t just neurotic. It was actually sick. The thinking went that a city’s ills — crime, poverty, you name it — could be linked to its poor design its thoughtlessly narrow alleys and dirty streets, its crumbling tenements and poor plumbing. Le Corbusier described “the Cancer of Paris,” as Andrew Lees recounts in his book about the urbanism of the time.

If cities or neighborhoods are diseased, planners and others can justify all sorts of actions. Urban renewal in the mid 1900s operated on a similar premise: slums (often home to non-whites or immigrants) could not be redeemed and instead should be replaced with land use that would be much more valuable (and make a lot more money for developers and politicians). Why should older buildings or poorer residents stand in the way of progress for the city and region? Thus, many American cities moved forward with plans that did what Moses suggested: used a meat axe to chop away land from existing neighborhoods for highways, high-rises, and other land uses. While some of these projects have since been reversed (think the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco) or others never got off the ground (see freeway protests as detailed by historian Eric Avila), other projects continue to influence city life. In Chicago alone, think the major expressways in the city including the Eisenhower, the Dan Ryan, and the Kennedy as well as the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.

Can religion not be fully studied with surveys or do we not use survey results well?

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In a new book (which I have not read), sociologist Robert Wuthnow critiques the use of survey data to explain American religion:

Bad stats are easy targets, though. Setting these aside, it’s much more difficult to wage a sustained critique of polling. Enter Robert Wuthnow, a Princeton professor whose new book, Inventing American Religion, takes on the entire industry with the kind of telegraphed crankiness only academics can achieve. He argues that even gold-standard contemporary polling relies on flawed methodologies and biased questions. Polls about religion claim to show what Americans believe as a society, but actually, Wuthnow says, they say very little…

Even polling that wasn’t bought by evangelical Christians tended to focus on white, evangelical Protestants, Wuthnow writes. This trend continues today, especially in poll questions that treat the public practice of religion as separate from private belief. As the University of North Carolina professor Molly Worthen wrote in a 2012 column for The New York Times, “The very idea that it is possible to cordon off personal religious beliefs from a secular town square depends on Protestant assumptions about what counts as ‘religion,’ even if we now mask these sectarian foundations with labels like ‘Judeo-Christian.’”…

These standards are largely what Wuthnow’s book is concerned with: specifically, declining rates of responses to almost all polls; the short amount of time pollsters spend administering questionnaires; the racial and denominational biases embedded in the way most religion polls are framed; and the inundation of polls and polling information in public life. To him, there’s a lot more depth to be drawn from qualitative interviews than quantitative studies. “Talking to people at length in their own words, we learn that [religion] is quite personal and quite variable and rooted in the narratives of personal experience,” he said in an interview…

In interviews, people rarely frame their own religious experiences in terms of statistics and how they compare to trends around the country, Wuthnow said. They speak “more about the demarcations in their own personal biographies. It was something they were raised with, or something that affected who they married, or something that’s affecting how they’re raising their children.”

I suspect such critiques could be leveled at much of survey research: the questions can be simplistic, the askers of the questions can have a variety of motives and skills in developing useful survey questions, and the data gets bandied about in the media and public. Can surveys alone adequately address race, cultural values, politics views and behaviors, and more? That said, I’m sure there are specific issues with surveys regarding religion that should be addressed.

I wonder, though , if another important issue here is whether the public and the media know what to do with survey results. This book review suggests people take survey findings as gospel. They don’t know about the nuances of surveys or how to look at multiple survey questions or surveys that get at similar topics. Media reports on this data are often simplistic and lead with a “shocking” piece of information or some important trend (even if the data suggests continuity). While more social science projects on religion could benefit from mixed methods or by incorporating data from the other side (whether quantitative or qualitative), the public knows even less about these options or how to compare data. In other words, surveys always have issues but people are generally innumerate in knowing what to do with the findings.

Does sprawl contribute to difficulty for adults in making friends?

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One writer suggests the suburbs and their isolated spaces reduce the opportunities for friendship:

But when we marry and start a family, we are pushed, by custom, policy, and expectation, to move into our own houses. And when we have kids, we find ourselves tied to those houses. Many if not most neighborhoods these days are not safe for unsupervised kid frolicking. In lower-income areas there are no sidewalks; in higher-income areas there are wide streets abutted by large garages. In both cases, the neighborhoods are made for cars, not kids. So kids stay inside playing Xbox, and families don’t leave except to drive somewhere…

One is living in a real place, with shared public spaces, around which one can move relatively safely. It seems like a simple thing, but such places are rare even in the cities where they exist. (I live in North Seattle, undoubtedly coded as urban for census purposes, but my walkshed is pretty lame. Meanwhile, a few miles south of me they’re building million-dollar single-family homes square in the middle of a perfect walkshed, right across from the zoo.)

A robust walkshed is an area in which a community of people regularly mingles doing errands, walking their dogs, playing in the parks, going to school and work, etc. Ideally, cities would be composed of clusters of such walksheds, connected by good public transit…

Both these alternatives — walkable communities and co-housing — likely sound exotic to American ears. Thanks to shifting baselines, most Americans only know single-family dwellings and auto-dependent land use. They cannot even articulate what they are missing and often misidentify the solution as more or different private consumption.

Five quick thoughts:

  1. There is a lot of emphasis on the nuclear family in the United States, whether in suburbs or other areas. This could be contrasted with other societies that place more emphasis on multigenerational households or living near extended families.
  2. You don’t necessarily have to be in a city to have public spaces or walksheds like these. Many Americans express a preference for small towns and these communities can often be tight knit. Or, you could have denser areas in suburbs that have such public spaces.
  3. The article argues that college is a good example of what can happen when people are put in close proximity. I would argue that college is a very unusual outlier for many Americans where they are forced (they pay for this too) to live in close proximity and then spread out as soon as they get a chance. In fact, many college students try to get out of dorms ASAP while many others are commuters. The residential college experience is not one everyone experiences and it is an unusual setting for relationships.
  4. The broader American emphasis on individualism makes friendships more difficult regardless of public spaces. Think of the frontier or pioneer mentality or our current celebration of mavericks and solo entrepreneurs. Did Steve Jobs need friends? Would Americans have fulfilled their Manifest Destiny if they had stayed in their neighborhoods or small towns?
  5. Does the data back this up? What if Americans are satisfied with their friendships? Does the number of close friends differ by spatial context? This argument is made via anecdote but there are plenty of surveys that ask about friendships. For example, here is a simple table with GSS data on how much satisfaction Americans get from their friendships by spatial context:

GSSSatfrndBYXnorcsiz

The differences in this table are not large but this incomplete analysis suggests people from smaller communities derive more satisfaction from their friendships.

More lurking, less sharing on Facebook

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Social media interactions can thrive when users share more. Thus, when sharing is down on Facebook, the company is looking to boost it:

Surveys show users post less often on the social network, which relies on users for an overwhelming majority of its content. In the third quarter, market researcher GlobalWebIndex said 34% of Facebook users updated their status, and 37% shared their own photos, down from 50% and 59%, respectively, in the same period a year earlier.

Facebook users still visit the network often. Some 65% of Facebook’s 1.49 billion monthly users visited the site daily as of June. But these days, they are more likely to lurk or “like” and less likely to post a note or a picture…

So Facebook is fighting back with new features. Since May, the social network has placed prompts related to ongoing events at the top of some users’ news feeds, aiming to spur conversations. The prompts are partly based on a user’s likes and location, according to Facebook and companies working with Facebook…

Facebook has introduced other features to encourage sharing, including new emojis that give users a wider range of expressions beyond “like.” In March, Facebook launched “On This Day,” a feature that lets users relive and share past posts.

The article notes that isn’t necessarily a big problem for now – Facebook is expected to announce a jump in revenue – but it could be a larger issue down the road if the social media site is seen as boring. If users aren’t gaining new knowledge or reacting to interesting things posted by people they know, why should they keep coming back?

It would be important to find data to answer this question: is the decrease in sharing on Facebook limited to this one social media source or is it down across the board? This could be an issue just facing Facebook which then could be related to its particular features or its age (it is ancient in social media terms). Or, this might be a broader issue facing all social media platforms as users shift their online behavior. Users have certainly been warned enough about sharing too much and social norms have developed about how much an individual should share.

Hard to counter China’s aging, even with change in one-child policy

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The change in China’s one-child policy may not have much effect on its demographics:

“The population in China is going to continue to age,” said Kristin Bietsch, a research associate at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C. “Even though they’re hoping to increase their fertility, they’re still going to have a substantial population aging — and this is going to happen even with the increase in fertility.”…Adrian Raftery, a professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle, agreed: “The (United Nations) has already been projecting a small and slow increase in China’s fertility rates over the coming decades, and this news makes this even more likely to happen,” he said. “The increase is not likely to be large, though.”…

Like much of Europe, China’s population is aging rapidly — India’s population, now at 1.3 billion, is expected to surpass China’s within seven years, according to the United Nations…

But many demographers argue the birthrate would have fallen anyway as China’s economy developed and education levels rose. They foresee a looming crisis because the policy reduced the young labor pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires.

Three quick thoughts:

  1. See more about demographic transition here: as countries develop and have more wealth, residents have fewer children. Even as the one-child policy disappears, there may not be a rush to have two children.
  2. Governments have the ability to set policies such as these but one problem with influential policies is that they also need good timing. If the goal was to reduce the proportion of older residents, this change came late and it will now take more time to counteract the unintended consequences of the initial policy.
  3. I haven’t seen much about the real reasons China reversed this policy. Presumably, it has to do with aging – a modern society needs a broad base of young workers both for economic growth as well as to pay into the system to take care of older residents. Yet, this article brings up the population of India – might the shift also have to do with the population growth of India? Are there other reasons as well?

Multigenerational families, multigenerational mortgages

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A new Fannie Mae program allows salaries of relatives living in a home but not listed on the mortgage count towards the mortgage:

New rules adopted last month by Fannie Mae will allow mortgage applicants to qualify for a home loan by counting the salaries of other relatives who live in the house — although their names may not be listed on the mortgage…

“For the first time, income from a non-borrower household member can be considered to determine an applicable debt-to-income for the loan, helping multi-generational and extended households qualify for an affordable mortgage,” said the news release issued by the mortgage giant, which said its research found such extended households typically have incomes that are as stable or more stable than other households at similar income levels…

“What we don’t want is for a borrower to qualify for a mortgage on $5,000 monthly income and then family members move out and the borrower only has $2,500 income. Then we are setting ourselves up for a mortgage problem like we had not too long ago.”…

HomeReady loan applicants also will be required to complete an online education course preparing them for the home buying process.

If more families are living together – probably more commonly with grandparents or children – then there are more resources available to go toward housing costs. And it is not easy to find affordable housing in many metropolitan markets, leading to more extended family arrangements like this in the first place.

It will be interesting to see (1) how many mortgages are made in this program and (2) what the success rate is over time given the concerns expressed above about household members moving out and harming the ability to pay off the mortgage.

One last note: a move such as this provides a reminder that this country is still committed to pushing homeownership.

Record numbers of displaced people and refugees

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One writer suggests the current refugee and displaced persons crisis is truly epic:

There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa. They are unofficial ambassadors of failed states, unending wars, intractable conflicts.

And the numbers may continue to be significant for a while:

While the flow of migrants to Europe this year already represents the biggest influx from outside the Continent in modern history, many experts warn that the mass movement may continue and even increase — possibly for years to come. “We are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said in a recent Twitter posting…

“I don’t think this wave can stop,” said Sonja Licht of the International Center for Democratic Transition. “It can maybe from time to time be somewhat less intensive, we simply have to prepare. The global north must be prepared that the global south is on the move, the entire global south. This is not just a problem for Europe but for the whole world.”

Those policy makers who seem pretty unprepared for this – even though there have been hints of migration for a while now – better get moving on a response, both for the refugees and their electorates.

Fatalities due to vehicle-train collisions down dramatically

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As the Chicago Tribune recently remembered a train-school bus collision that killed 7 in 1995, I looked at the statistics on vehicle-train crash fatalities. The numbers have dropped quite a bit in recent decades:

All Highway-Rail Incidents at Public and Private Crossings, 1981-2014
Source: Federal Railroad Administration
Year Collisions Fatalities Injuries
1981 9,461 728 3,293
1982 7,932 607 2,637
1983 7,305 575 2,623
1984 7,456 649 2,910
1985 7,073 582 2,687
1986 6,513 616 2,458
1987 6,426 624 2,429
1988 6,617 689 2,589
1989 6,526 801 2,868
1990 5,715 698 2,407
1991 5,388 608 2,094
1992 4,910 579 1,975
1993 4,892 626 1,837
1994 4,979 615 1,961
1995 4,633 579 1,894
1996 4,257 488 1,610
1997 3,865 461 1,540
1998 3,508 431 1,303
1999 3,489 402 1,396
2000 3,502 425 1,219
2001 3,237 421 1,157
2002 3,077 357 999
2003 2,977 334 1,035
2004 3,077 372 1,092
2005 3,057 359 1,051
2006 2,936 369 1,070
2007 2,776 339 1,062
2008 2,429 290 992
2009 1,934 249 743
2010 2,051 260 887
2011 2,061 250 1,045
2012 1,985 230 975
2013* 2,098 232 972
2014* 2,287 269 849

* Preliminary statistics

Based on the number of articles I’ve read plus personal experience driving at-grade crossings in the Chicago area (which has many cars driving over railroads tracks each day – in 2014, Illinois had the second most train-vehicle collisions in the country), there are several factors behind this decrease:

  1. Improved signage at many at-grade crossings.
  2. More barriers at crossings that make it difficult to go around gates (longer gate arms) or cross into other lanes (barriers in the middle of the road).
  3. Eliminating at-grade crossings with more underpasses and bridges. These can be expensive but they reduce crashes as well as save time for drivers who don’t have to wait for trains to pass.

Yet, these changes can’t control the actions of drivers as the Chicago Tribune article noted:

But experts say safety is a matter of attitude and awareness, not just signals and signs. That’s the message of groups like Operation Lifesaver and the DuPage Railroad Safety Council, an organization founded by Dr. Lanny Wilson after the death of his daughter at a rail crossing in 1994.

A 2013 University of Illinois at Chicago study found that as many as 4 in 10 Chicago-area pedestrians and bicyclists said they were at times willing to ignore flashing lights, ringing bells and gates at railroad crossings…

Barkan pointed to the Feb. 3 incident in Valhalla, N.Y., when a Metro-North Railroad commuter train struck an SUV at a grade crossing, killing six…

That crash could have been avoided, he said, if the driver had observed the “cardinal rule” of grade crossing safety: “Motorists must never enter a grade crossing until they have a clear exit path that equals or exceeds the length of their vehicle available on the other side of the tracks.”

Reaching zero traffic deaths on the roads also involves continuous improvement at such crossings.

As people use less water, utilities charge more

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To make up for drops in revenue with reduced water use, water utilities have some ways to make more money:

When customers use less water, that means they’re paying less for consumption. This is a good thing, and not just because it’s more ecologically friendly. In the long run, conservation and efficiency are the cheapest ways utilities can avoid needing to develop new supplies in the future.

But in the short-term, conservation and efficiency can put utilities in a pinch, because their sales fall while fixed costs remain the same. Eventually, they need to find a way to make back some of that lost revenue to cover their costs…

That’s why lots of utilities are hiking up the volumetric cost of water itself, even as people are using less of it. But with equity in mind, many water experts advocate for tiered pricing, where customers who use less water pay less per unit. The more you use, the more you climb up pricing tiers. The larger the price increases between the tiers, the more of an opportunity utilities have to make up revenues—and send a message to ratepayers that they shouldn’t ideally be using so much. Likewise, water rates can fluctuate throughout the year, in accordance with use and weather patterns…

Between crumbling infrastructure and downhill sales, it’s going to be hard for utilities to avoid bumping up customer fees to manage systems more effectively. But they also need to start thinking differently about their own business model and how they communicate changes to customers, since those changes are going to be reflected in customer bills.

Which is to say that customers also need to adjust their expectations about water. Is water a commodity to be purchased at a given rate? Or is it more like a public service, like the police or court systems? It might be better to conceptualize it more like the latter.

The infrastructure for many of these systems are expensive and it needs maintenance. Plus, these utilities are usually companies that need to make some money. And, some have argued for years that Americans should pay more for water and other basic goods like this in order to have a better understanding of its value and its limited nature.

More broadly, this could bring American customers back to a recurring issue: at what point do changes due to environmentalism become too costly? This could be quite a shift for many utility users; if they use less water or electricity or natural gas, shouldn’t they save some money?