Tag Archives: American culture

Undergraduates discovering positive deviance

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While we might typically consider deviance to be negative, an activity in one sociology class illustrates how deviance can also be positive:

“Can I pay for her drink, too?” asked Caitlin Hendricks.

Peterson was pleasantly surprised but still taken aback; she and Hendricks didn’t know each other…

Hendricks’ random act of kindness wasn’t entirely random: She was completing an assignment for sociology professor Michelle Inderbitzin’s deviant behavior and social control class at OSU, which studies the concept of social deviance and how it can vary based on history and context.

Inderbitzin has assigned the “positive deviance” exercise in her social deviance class at OSU for six years. She asks students to simply do something nice for a stranger — bag someone else’s groceries, for example, or hold an umbrella over someone’s head while it’s raining. Students then write a page-long recap of their experience, focusing on the recipient’s reactions as well as their own feelings before and after the act and discuss their experience in class.

This is a good reminder about positive deviance that might lead to the world of Pay It Forward in popular culture but can be examined more closely sociologically. This reminds me of the ideas of Emile Durkheim who thought deviance could help reinforce existing norms. By seeing people break norms and then experience the consequences, others are reminded of the norms. At the same time, it seems that most sociologists have focused on the creation of or breaking of social norms. For example, Robert Merton’s strain theory describes how when people are faced with anomie, they respond in different ways including breaking norms.

It is interesting to think about why we as a society tend to focus on negative deviance more than positive deviance. Perhaps it is tied to findings that show we experience loss more deeply than gain. Perhaps it is because we have media sources that tend to lead with crime (and presumably they do this because it brings an audience). Perhaps it is because some argue we have a violent, individualistic culture. Simply throwing in a few positive stories on the nightly news may not be enough to overcome society’s emphasis on negative deviance.

What will the 2012 election look like if the public is dreading it?

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I saw the results of a recent Gallup poll that suggests Americans are not looking forward to the 2012 election:

With the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses serving as the kickoff of voting in the 2012 presidential election campaign, Americans would likely prefer to fast-forward to the end of the campaign than watch it unfold. Given a choice, 70% of Americans say they can’t wait for the campaign to be over, while 26% can’t wait for it to begin…

Nationally, there is little difference by party in feelings about the upcoming campaign — 67% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans can’t wait for the campaign to be over…

The greatest differences in feelings toward the campaign are by age. Senior citizens, who have seen more presidential elections than younger Americans, are least likely to be looking forward to the campaign, with 16% saying they can’t wait for it to begin. That compares with 27% or more of those in each of the younger age groups…

Importantly, despite their generally negative feelings toward the campaign, Americans are not necessarily going to tune it out completely, or decline to participate. The same poll finds that 57% of Americans have already given “quite a lot” of thought to the upcoming election, and 72% are at least somewhat enthusiastic about voting in next year’s election.

Several thoughts come to mind:

1. Does this make independent voters more important than ever as most people aren’t looking forward to it plus you already have a majority who has spent a lot of time thinking about it (and has made up their minds?)? Walmart moms, be prepared.

2. If you are the manager of a major candidate, what sort of campaign do you run? How do you not anger people or turn them off but also reach them? Might we get some innovative strategies to deal with this? Will people even respond positively to candidates who run against the system/current politicians/as outsiders to Washington?

3. Pundits like to suggest that Americans should be more involved in politics and exercise their right to vote. This poll, and others, suggest a number of Americans are dissatisfied with the actors and/or the system. How will this tension be resolved? More or better civics classes are not the answer.

4. Gallup doesn’t suggest this but could this dread be related to geographic area and wealth? One analysis suggests the majority of big campaign donations are coming from just a few areas around and in big cities.

5. It would be nice to have some context for this story. In recent history (in the post-World War II era), how often have Americans been really excited about upcoming elections?

Social science findings can help you find the perfect gift

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As you shop this holiday season, some recent social science research can help you find just the gift you need. Keep these principles in mind:

1. You don’t have to spend any time looking for “thoughtful” gifts.

2. You don’t have to spend much money, either.

3. Actually, you may not have to spend any money.

Yes, I know this sounds too good to be true. I was skeptical, too, if only because it contradicts a previous holiday column of mine. After looking at anthropological research into the potlatch, and talking with a Kwakwaka’wakw Indian chief who carries on this gift-giving ritual in British Columbia, I concluded that lavish presents are essential to social harmony.

Read on to find out the results of experimental studies and how this compares to the ritual of potlatches. In this whole process, you may be best off using your “generalized other” and trying to anticipate what the receiver might want rather than doing what you would want.

It strikes me that all of this is inherently cultural. As gift givers and receivers, we have ideas about what the social norms are for each of these positions. When the norms (and our expectations) are not met, we feel hurt. It seems like these experiments are suggesting that the norms about gifting are changing and “manners” and “polite” behavior hasn’t quite caught up yet. If my cultural idea is correct, then experiments done in different cultural settings or perhaps even among different American generations would show differences.

An alternative takeaway: the Amazon wish list will (or already is?) taking over the whole ritual of gifting in American culture.

The “vibrant cottage industry in polemics against consumerism”

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In reviewing two new academics book on consumerism, Megan McArdle takes a look at the field of “polemics against consumerism”:

All this profligacy supports a rather vibrant cottage industry in polemics against consumerism. Authors as varied as the economist Robert H. Frank (1999’s “Luxury Fever”) and the political theorist Benjamin R. Barber (2007’s “Consumed”) have ganged up on what they see as the particularly unequal and excessive American spending habits. Unsurprisingly considering their abhorrence of waste, they are avid recyclers; the same arguments, behavioral economics studies and anecdotes appear time and time again. Access to credit makes consumers overspend. Materialistic people are anxious and unhappy. The conspicuous-consumption arms race is unwinnable. Down with status competition! Down with long work weeks, grueling commutes and McMansions! Up with family time, reading and walkable neighborhoods! The effect is rather like strolling down the main tourist strip in a beach town: Each merchant rushes out of his shop, gesticulating wildly and showing you exactly the same thing that you saw at all the previous stores…

Like their forebears in this robust polemical genre, neither Mr. Livingston nor Mr. Roberts gets us much closer to answering the essential questions: What makes American consumers spend as they do—and is it a bad thing? For some thoughts on these matters, I’d suggest turning to James B. Twitchell’s “Living It Up” (2002), a wry account of the author’s own complicated relationship with luxury brands that explores the moral and psychological aspects of our free-spending ways without seeming to be a paternalist rant against the folly of BMWs. “The pleasure of spending is the dirty little secret of affluence,” says Mr. Twitchell, a professor of English literature and advertising at the University of Florida. “The rich used to do it; now the rest of us are having a go.” He is keenly alive to the risks—and occasional risibility—of American-style consumerism. But he never pretends not to understand its undeniable appeal.

This could be a very interesting research project: what are the common arguments against consumerism, how many of these arguments are backed by data and social science theories (rather than just opinion), how do the authors position themselves within the debate (I assume generally they suggest they are above it), do these arguments have a sizable effect on readers, and do the books address structural issues and solutions or primarily peddle in individualistic concerns? Additionally, how often are these ideas tied to other ideas like environmentalism, New Urbanism, and other popular schools of thought?

This is also often a complaint within the Christian marketplace of ideas. And yet, have Christian consumption patterns changed or been reduced by these books/sermons/polemics? This reminds me of something one of my graduate school professors said: even the monks who took a vow of poverty couldn’t get rid of their books. (I don’t know the actual truth of this statement.)

Do any of these authors consider the irony that they are making money by selling books about reducing consumerism? Perhaps the book is supposed to be the last item purchased…

The “theology” of “inevitable suburban decline”

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Joel Kotkin keeps firing at suburban critics:

Perhaps no theology more grips the nation’s mainstream media — and the planning community — more than the notion of inevitable suburban decline. The Obama administration’s housing secretary, Shaun Donavan, recently claimed, “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.”…

In the past decade, suburbia extended its reach, even around the greatest, densest and most celebrated cities. New York grew faster than most older cities, with 29% of its growth taking place in five boroughs, but that’s still a lot lower than the 46% of growth they accounted for in the 1990s. In Chicago, the suburban trend was even greater. The outer suburbs and exurbs gained over a half million people while the inner suburbs stagnated and the urban core, the Windy City, lost some 200, 000 people.

Rather than flee to density, the Census showed a population shift from more dense to less dense places. The top ten population gainers among metropolitan areas — growing by 20%, twice the national average, or more — are the low-density Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Atlanta. By contrast, many of the densest metropolitan areas — including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York — grew at rates half the national average or less…

What about the other big demographic, the millennials? Like previous generations of urbanists, the current crop mistake a totally understandable interest in cities among post-adolescents. Yet when the research firm Frank Magid asked millennials what made up their “ideal” locale, a strong plurality opted for suburbs — far more than was the case in earlier generations.

Is this simply a battle of interpreting statistics? For example, Kotkin says Millennials aren’t completely enamored with the suburbs while others have used these statistics to mean other things. Kotkin says that Americans continue to vote for the suburbs with their actions. When given a choice, Kotkin seems to be suggesting that a majority of Americans, young and old, would choose the suburbs if all things were equal. In contrast, Kotkin suggests that urbanists want people to want the city. This ideology (“theology” in his terms) guides their interpretation of the data and leads to wishful thinking.

This is a bigger debate that isn’t addressed directly here: are the cities or suburbs better for people, society, and the world? Kotkin’s writings lean toward giving people freedom which is found more in the suburbs. Urbanists make arguments the other way: cities are greener, more diverse, and more cultured. Would or could Kotkin make his arguments if most Americans lived in cities rather than suburbs? This is really a discussion about values: should people live in the cities and suburbs and isn’t just about current or future realities.

h/t Instapundit

Responses to AIDS as told through posters

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A collection of “more than 6,200 posters in 60 languages from 100-plus countries” regarding AIDS is being made available to the public through a website. Here is what these posters can tell us:

Well, naturally, you would think about it as medical history since AIDS was then a uniformly fatal disease. But the reason it’s more important as social history is because, if you look at a whole lot of the posters, you will see how different countries approached the subject. Here you’re dealing with a new disease, dealing with the closeted subject of sex, and it was really amazing to see the variation from country to country and even from groups within a country. To me, that’s by far the most striking thing about the collection.

Generally speaking, in the United States, the posters were less interesting because they had to be neutral. They had to be careful not to offend some group or some sensibility so the best American posters were usually put up by private organizations. Abroad, that wasn’t quite as true. There were some good ones that the CDC put out. One shows a young woman sitting on a chair dressed from the waist down, her legs are crossed, and it says, “A sure way not to get AIDS.” Another one, my children’s favorite, shows a young man and woman necking through the back window of a car. It says, “Vanessa was in a fatal car accident last night. Only she doesn’t know it yet.”…

The watershed was October 1986 when Surgeon General [C. Everett] Koop published his AIDS report. That totally changed the picture. That was the beginning of a huge outpouring of posters all over the world, not just the United States. He really made [it acceptable] to talk about using condoms. If you look at The New York Times, the word “condom” I don’t think appeared until the mid 1980s. I may be mistaken but it certainly didn’t appear very early.

This sounds like a very interesting collection which would be useful for examining two things:

1. How the medical knowledge was translated into cultural narratives across different countries. As the cited part above suggests, this public message would need to fit with cultural messages regarding sex and diseases. It is also interesting to think in which countries and settings posters are very effective ways for disseminating information as opposed to other options like television or radio shows and commercials, public service announcements in various forms, or through state influenced facilities like schools and hospitals.

2. How the cultural message changed over time, particularly as medical knowledge improved and the public became more educated. For example, did more recent posters have to be more edgy in order to remind people that AIDS is still something they should be concerned about?

This may just make a great example for a class session on medical sociology.

As a side note, I wonder if there is much interest in posters among historians, art museums, and those interested in social history. Earlier this year, I saw an extensive exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago of TASS (the “Soviet press agency”) posters during World War II. The exhibit was quite interesting as the posters combined art with text and design in creating a negative cultural image of Germans. Are posters primarily a mid to late 20th century phenomenon and how much can they tell us about the larger society compared to other media options?

Not something to be thankful for: the US as world leader in incarceration

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The United States is a world leader in incarceration:

The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail.

Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan…

There’s also a national election in the United States soon. This issue isn’t on the agenda. It’s almost never come up with Republican presidential candidates; one of the few exceptions was at a debate in September when the audience cheered the notion of executions in Texas.

Barack Obama, the first black president, rarely mentions this question or how it disproportionately affects minorities. More than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.

The fact that this isn’t even part of the political discourse is very interesting in itself. I suspect it is because that no politician can afford to look even somewhat soft on crime. Why is this? Two quick reasons not mentioned in this article:

1. We tend to emphasize punitive punishments in the United States. Not all countries have this same belief – Norway is a good example of a contrasting approach.

2. Crime is so sensationalized and the average citizen really does believe that they are at risk. If people really think they could be victims at any time, it is little surprise that we put so much money into fighting crime and housing prisoners.

And, as the article suggests, there is no arguing that race and social class play a role.

Sociology classes tackling social taboos

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In the opening paragraph of a longer blog piece, a teacher sociology provides a view of what sociology classes often do:

While having class discussions with my sociology students sometime back, I noticed that some of my students, although very bright and intellectually capable, seemed to be uneasy with various debates within the stream of sociology about topics that are considered taboo in our society.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that sociology classes are pushing ideas to which the rest of the broader society wouldn’t necessarily subscribe. More commonly, sociology classes include discussions of either controversial or hidden topics in a society. In American sociology classes, this means that topics like race and class are commonly discussed. This is because while these areas have a profound influence on American social life, public discussions about these topics tend to veer toward trying to halt these discussions because of promoting “class warfare” or because talking about race simply divides us. Such answers that suggest these issues will simply go away if we don’t act like they matter are silly and misguided. However, for many college students, sociology classes may be the only place where these subjects are truly addressed and hopefully with data and analysis and not just ideological fervor.

Shop to feel altruistic this holiday season

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Even as some people react negatively to big retailers moving up their Black Friday hours, perhaps there is hope for conquering Christmas commercialism: you can shop and feel altruistic.

Sociologist Keith Brown of Saint Joseph’s University said the holidays bring many motivations to buy, buy, buy — but beyond the sale prices and must-have items is something greater for consumers to consider.

“The current recession coincided with an ‘ethical turn’ in the markets,” Brown said in a statement…

“An increasing number of consumers from all socioeconomic segments are looking to pay it forward, but especially those who have been only minimally impacted by the recession,” Brown said. “They’re looking for ‘Made in America,’ ‘Fair Trade,’ or ‘Eco-friendly.’ They want to add a socially responsible dimension to their gift-giving. Many consumers sincerely want to make a difference in the world through shopping. Consumers like to give gifts that have a story about where the product came from, who made it and how the producer benefited by selling the object.”

Conversely, Brown said that the recipients often feel good, too.

Extra Christmas shopping bonus: the more you spend, the more you are helping the US economy!

This does alert us to the values that get attached to buying products.

How much it costs to live in the cheaper suburbs or expensive New York City

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Opponents of sprawl argue that while many prospective buyers move further away from work in order to buy bigger yet cheaper homes, there is a cost. One website argues that the each mile closer to work is $15,900 that could be spent on a house:

We all know that driving to and from work every day is costly, but exactly howmuch of a toll does each mile of commuting take on your finances? This True Cost of Commuting graphic breaks it down.

Taking stats and calculations previously mentioned by Mr. Money Mustache, the infographic illustrates just how expensive commuting is. Each mile you live from work costs $795 in commuting expenses per year (assuming a driving cost of 34 cents per mile and factoring time lost with a salary of $25 per hour). $795 a year for just one mile! You could buy a house worth $15,900 more with that, as Mr. Money Mustache pointed out in his article, since $795 would cover the interest on a 5% mortgage rate.

If you don’t want to calculate in the time-is-money factor, each mile (one way) of commuting will cost you $170 a year. It’s a compelling reason to move as close to work if you can (or bike to work or telecommute).

See the large infographic here. I don’t know about Mr. Money Mustache’s calculations but this is a sizable number.

At the same time, there were reports this week that the Occupy Wall Street protestors tend to live in pricier homes. As Megan McArdle notes, this is a consumption choice where people decide to spend more of their income on a home in a great city:

My initial reaction was the same as many people I’ve seen in comments sections: the protest is in New York, which is expensive.  This is hardly surprising.

But on second thought, I don’t think that’s quite right.  At least some of the houses identified by the Daily Caller are in places like Texas and Wisconsin.  But more importantly, I’m not sure we should “discount” these home values for location.  The fact is that living in an expensive city is a consumption choice.
You hear this argument all the time from people in New York.  “Rich?  Hah!  We’ve got four people in 1600 square feet, and our school bills are going to put us into bankruptcy.”  Many New Yorkers believe that they should be given some sort of income tax abatement because of the expense of living there (with the lost revenue being made up from “really rich” people, natch).  Slightly less affluent New Yorkers frequently believe that landlords should be forced to offer them “reasonably sized” apartments at a modest fraction of their income, because after all, otherwise they couldn’t afford to live in New York…
Living in a blue state is a choice.  If coming to New York meant that you had to put four people in a three bedroom apartment that’s uncomfortably far from a subway line, instead of buying a nice little condo in Omaha, this does not mean that you are not “really” better off than your counterpart in Omaha; it means that you have chosen to consume your extra wealth in the form of “living in New York” rather than in the form of spacious real estate, cheap groceries, and an easy commute.

So what people in the Midwestern suburbs might spend on a daily 20 mile each way commute in a SUV translates into a more expensive apartment in New York City.

Both stories cited above suggest consumption is a choice. But is it truly an unfettered choice? What would lead some people to aim for the bigger yet cheaper house in the suburbs and others to spend more money on a smaller place in a cosmopolitan paradise? Perhaps this information would help both sides engage in conversation rather than talk past each other and try to force the other side to follow their logic…

Of course, we could look at the broader trend of American political and cultural discourse on this subject. On the whole, government policies have promoted suburban living while a few big cities, such as New York City, have successful dense, mass-transit oriented living. Cultural discourse, even if it is shifting toward the younger generation’s increased interest in denser living, still privileges the suburban American Dream.