Now Playing!

For those of you who think sociology is just in the books and articles assigned for you to read, think again. Sociological topics and reports are now being transformed into plays! A rare occurrence, yet it seems that the effects of dangerous weather have come to grab our attention. Sure, we all heard about Hurricane Katrina and the 3 feet of snow that fell this winter, but we read about the Chicago Heat Wave in 1995 just weeks ago.

If you’re planning on visiting Chicago over Spring Break, why not stop by and see the new play adapted from Eric Klinenberg’s book? Too afraid it will be like studying on your day off? Well, not really. Steven Simoncic (screenplay writer) claims that his adaptation is “unique in that it uses nonfiction reporting as a jumping-off point for fictional dramatization.” Simoncic claims “I didn’t want to put Mayor Daley on stage. I imagined ordinary characters and moments that might be happening at City Hall in the middle of the bureaucracy” (Time Out Chicago Review). Afraid it’s just going to be a couple people on stage, pretending to be hot? Not likely. A diverse company of actors, the visual spectacles on stage, and the “sonic environment” created to mimic the heat wave is designed to present a provocative look at Chicago in crisis. After all, Klinenberg’s book gives us an image of how Chicago’s racial fault lines crack, so it can’t be that boring.

Best of all, Heat Wave retains the complexity of the event and the diverse interpretations of what happened. Laura Beth Neilsen, legal scholar and blogger on Controlling Authority, gives it “two thumbs up!”

Bourdieu on Bookshelves

"In fact, the position of the different fractions ranked according to their interest in the different types of reading-matter tends to correspond to their position when ranked according to volume of cultural capital as one moves towards the rarer types of reading, which are known to be those most linked to educational level and highest in the hierarchy of cultural legitimacy." (Bourdieu, Distinction, page 116)

In this morning’s edition of insidehighered.com, Scott McLemee has an article about professors’ bookshelves. I read the article as an affirmation of Bourdieu’s insights about the centrality of cultural capital and the display of markers of our cultural knowledge. He quotes journalist Ezra Klein as saying “Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read. Those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject.”

Although I’ve read plenty of Bourdieu, and although I realize that I’m caught in these webs of cultural capital acquisition and exchange just as much anyone else, I try to rise above it by only having books on my shelf that I’ve read or intend to read in the next year. But, now that I think about it, all of my books about Jonestown, and all of my books about movie stars from the 1920’s and 30’s, are at home. Could Bourdieu explain this shelving choice? Maybe I don’t want my colleagues to think that I’m obsessed with a so-called “death cult” when they walk into my office? Maybe I want to convey the impression that I just don’t have time for Jean Harlow or Greta Garbo (because I’m thinking about sociology all the time)?

But enough about me – what does your bookshelf say about YOU?

-- Brian

Durkheim in the New York Times

The New York Times published an article last week noting rising suicide rates among the middle-aged. Today in the letters-to-the-editor section, a number of letter-writers shared their thoughts about the article. Jack D. Spiro, a rabbi from Richmond Virginia, obviously paid attention in his introductory sociology class. Here’s what he wrote:

As a rabbi in one congregation for 25 years and as a professor of a course on death for the last 30 years, I have observed this gloom (or sadness, ennui, feeling of emptiness) in this age group.

It is not so much the means as it is the psychosocial and spiritual condition of boomers — what Émile Durkheim described in his 1897 pioneering book on suicide as anomie, referring to a lack of regulation or a breakdown of norms.

To quote one statement from his writings, “Man is the more vulnerable to self-destruction the more he is detached from any collectivity.”

Anomie as a cause of suicide is rare when human beings share their lives in intimate connection with others, when there is a sense of mutual interdependence in the human community.

The breakdown of personal relationships has been a major cause of depression and anomie among boomers. With the impermanence of friendships, unremitting mobility, job insecurities and the breakdown of the family structure, it should not be surprising that the suicide rate in this age group has increased.

The observation about the “impermanence of friendships” is well-supported by recent sociological research (see the full study here).

-- Brian

Thoughts on Our First Exam

I’ve received a couple of questions from student that I’ll answer here:

Question: I was wondering what reading materials are going to be on the exam? Up to what day?
The exam covers material up until the 20th. There will be a question or two based on the most recent reading.

Question: I wanted to know if we have to know the names of the people in the readings other than Sidewalk. I also wanted to know will the test be more on the readings or the lectures.
Yes, you should know the names of the key people surrounding the Jonestown tragedy, but I won’t ask any questions about specific people in Heat Wave. The exam will cover the reading and lecture on about a 50-50 basis, with the more difficult questions coming from the reading.


Why Details Are Important
I think dates, places, and names are important for understanding the conceptual and analytical elements of the course material. At the end of the course, I’d ideally like you to retain general sociological concepts and conceptual frameworks that speak to the first two learning goals of the course (being able to see the connection between social forces and our everyday lives and gaining 21st century information literacy). In other words, I’d rather you walk away with “the concept of social solidarity is important for understanding inequalities in contemporary America” in your head than “a lot of poor people died in the Chicago heat wave because they had no friends or family.” But, the only way to make a case for the first, more abstract, concept is to reference real-life evidence like the statistics & evidence Klinenberg uses. I think you’re more likely to hold onto the theoretical and conceptual ideas if you have examples you can reference. In this way, I think of names, dates, and places as “mental coat hangers” on which we hang more elaborate ideas.

Also, I think it’s important to know details instead of just concepts because it allows you to argue more effectively in civil society. Here’s an example of what I mean by that: let’s say you’re at a local bar and someone next to you starts yapping about how religion is the root of all suicide terrorism in the world and if we just ban Islam we’ll all be safe. To counter this, you could respond with: “That’s not true, there’s this one terrorist group in Sri Lanka that uses suicide terror tactics, and they’re secular and they have secular goals. In fact, the forms of terror that seem the most irrational (like suicide attacks) often involve more of a rational personal and political calculation than you’re comment seemed to suggest. There’s this professor at the University of Chicago that wrote a book about this. You’re totally wrong.” That’s persuasive, but not as compelling as this: “That’s not true the Tamil Tigers from Sri Lanka use suicide terror tactics and they’re a secular Marxist organization. Robert Pape, University of Chicago political scientist, analyzed over 400 suicide terror attacks and found that suicide attacks often involve more of a rational personal and political calculation than you’re comment seemed to suggest. You’re totally wrong.” The second line is much more persuasive (although both responses risk a physical confrontation with this hypothetical person).

Details are important because they’re the building blocks of general, abstract, and conceptual arguments. Therefore, you can expect some straightforward fact-based questions. I also ask this style of question because it measures whether or not, and how closely, the test-taker read the reading. That said, I won’t ask an absurdly detailed question. I might ask “about how many people died in Jonestown? 400? 700? 900? 1,400?” but I won’t ask “exactly how many people died in Jonestown?”

In general, it’s good to read the material with an eye for detail, but some details are just too nit-picky to be included on the exam. The trick is being able to distinguish the two. For instance, I might ask “Who is Tim Stoen?” because he was a semi-major figure in Peoples Temple, is discussed in both Jonestown readings, and I talked about him (albeit, very briefly) class. I wouldn’t, however, ask “Who’s Jack Beam?” even though his name is probably mentioned in at least one of the readings. There will be some fact & detail oriented questions to see if you’re reading the material, but I’ll also ask plenty of questions that have more of a theoretical angle to them (“Which of the following scenarios illustrates Durkheim’s idea of ‘organic solidarity?’”).

Elements of Bourdieu: Three Videos

Distinctions Create Class Boundaries


Jackson Pollock's Social Capital


Distinctions Have Consequences

Race & Class in Trading Places

Sex Education Policies Incite Protest

Last week a blog at The Nation caught my eye because the town of St. Louis was mentioned in the title. It tells the story (albeit lacking in much detail) of two eighth grade girls who were suspended because they protested their school's abstinence-only sex education policy by decorating tank tops with condoms and the words "Safe sex or no sex!" Here's a CNN video news story about what happened.

The government-supported program of abstinence-only sex education has surfaced in the news recently, and its effectiveness has come under fire. According to Advocates for Youth, a group concerned with the sexual health of young people, pregnancy rates among teens in the United States have been declining since the early 1990's, but our country still has one of the highest teen birth rates and rates of sexually transmitted infections in the industrialized world.

Their investigation of abstinence-only education programs in the U.S. over the last five years came to the conclusion that there are "few short-term benefits and no lasting, positive impact," and in comparison to comprehensive sex education programs, they found that "regardless of which program was implemented in the seventh and eighth grades, sexual attitudes, intentions, and behaviors were similar by the end of the 10th grade." Additionally, researchers found abstinence-only sex education was associated with a resistance to using any form of contraception, putting them at risk for sexually transmitted infections making pregnancy when they decide to become sexually active a real possibility.

Importantly, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy also evaluated abstinence-only sex education programs and found that "the vast majority of the public does not see abstinence and contraception as an either/or proposition—they want teens to be informed of both." According to an April 2007 report about abstinence education programs, $87.5 million is put into them annually, a mix of federal and state funding.

So, I've thrown some facts, opinions and studies at you. But what does this all mean? If we could have a discussion about this, I would point it in the direction of asking these specific questions:

• If these studies are true and abstinence education programs aren't making a difference, why are we still using them?
• What does it say about the culture of the United States surrounding sexuality (and specifically teen sexuality) that in some states abstinence is the only formal education students receive?
• What is it about teen sexuality that scares people? Can we boil it down to an aversion to teen pregnancy or is something else going on here?

Thanks to Ada Van Roekel-Hughes for her help in finding some info online!

--Brittany Hanstad

Dirt Cookie, Anyone?

Did anyone see the Kansas City Star's "Haitis Poor Eating Cookies Made of Dirt" on Tuesday the 29th (available from http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/story/466837.html)? The article revealed a poor Haitian family eating dirt cookies because they couldn't afford anything else. Those poor children, eating dirt!! How could this happen? What has this world come to?

But what the article didn't explicate was that the situation in Haiti is due to larger social forces...

Here's a quick article summary:

Haiti's dire economic conditions are causing the poor to rely on some unconventional food choices. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, food prices are up as much as 40 percent on some Carribbean islands due to the flood and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season. At the market, "Two cups of rice [a daily food staple] now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate." But with rising food prices, what are the poor able to afford to eat? The answer has come in a traditional remedy for an enduring hunger problem: dirt cookies. Haitians can purchase dried yellow dirt from the local market--dirt which is prized as an antacid and source of calcium--for about $5.00, up by $1.50 a year ago. The dirt, mixed with salt and vegetable shortening and left to dry under the sun, is enough to make 100 cookies and costs much less than a bowl of rice.

Here's what else to think about:

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Almost 80 percent of its population lives below the poverty line. Today, the country is vulnerable to extensive deforestation, soil erosion, and inadequate supplies of clean water. It not only faces growing environmental cocners, but suffers from trade deficits, higher inflation than similar low-income countries, and a lack of investment due to insecurity and limited infrastructure.

Haiti's position in the world shows us the inequality that exists between the Developed and Less Developed Countries. When industrialization was taking place in the Developed Countries, it was often at the expense of their colonies, who have since been unable to industrialize themselves thanks to imperialism. These social causes have been the topic of much inquiries in sociology. For example, Immanuel Wallerstein (World Systems Theory) has written extensively about the social causes of unequal development and the history of colonialism. Further, Dependency Theory (see Andre Gunder Frank and Eduardo Galliano) claims that the Developed World was able to industrialize due to the exploitation of the Less Developed. Both theories are a criticism to Rostow's Modernization Thesis, claiming that all countries pass through key stages of development and that Less Developed Countries just haven't made it there yet.

What the KC Star article seemed to skip over was that macro-social policies and and macro-social causes--like development--have profound effects at the individual level. In this case, it's food choices (or lack thereof). So pass the dirt cookies.

Ada Van Roekel-Hughes/ Robert Hughes; Soc 104 GTAs

The Sociology of 'Hooking Up'

Kathleen A. Bogle, a sociologist at LaSalle University, recently published a book called Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus. Her research is a qualitative study of college students at two universities in the eastern part of the United States--one large public university and one small Roman Catholic school.

If you follow this link, you'll find an interview with Bogle in which she answers some questions about the implications of her research findings as well as the limitations of her study and whether it can be generalized to other universities or the general population.

I'd like to focus on two related points from the interview: first, Bogle discusses how she found that "students tend to overestimate what their peers are doing" as far as their sex lives, and second, that this culture of hooking up is seen as more beneficial for men than women.

The first issue relates directly to social norms. Bogle's research shows that college students look to other people who are largely the same age and status to make decisions about how they should act.

This concept also ties in to the gendered double standard of player/slut Bogle mentions. If male students look around and see their male peers hooking up and reaping rewards for doing so, they're likely to follow suit if it's something they want. Females, however, might think twice about hooking up after overhearing or being apart of discussions in the dining hall about how so-and-so from the 5th floor sleeps around. If this discussion is laced with negative connotations, the female student may even feel guilty for wanting to hook up. This is one of the reasons Bogle claims women benefit less than men from hook up culture.

If men and women are socialized to believe that it's okay for males to hook up without being harshly judged on "how often they hook up, who they hook up with, how far they go sexually during a hook up, and how they dress when they out on a night where hooking up may happen" whereas this is a constant danger for females, then hook up culture certainly seems like a better deal for the male population.

Thoughts?

Thanks to Brian for the link!

--Brittany Hanstad, GTA