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

Solidarity & Electronic Dance Music Culture

I talked about social solidarity on Monday in class, and so I was excited to see the new issue of The Sociological Quarterly in my mailbox today with an article titled “Solidarity and Drug Use in the Electronic Dance Music Scene” by sociologists Philip Kavanaugh and Tammy Anderson. In fact, some of it perfectly supplements Monday’s lecture: “Solidarity generally refers to the degree or type of integration in a society or within a social group. Initially discussed by Durkheim, solidarity is defined by personal attachments within one’s primary group (such as the family), as well as emotionally strong bonds to larger, more complex social groups” (Kavanaugh & Anderson, pg. 184). They cite two of Durkheim’s books in the bibliography.

Kavanaugh and Anderson explored the electronic dance music subculture in Philadelphia, interviewed about 50 participants in the city’s rave scene, and conducted ethnographic observation at 33 late-night dance events. Characteristically, these parties entail DJs playing some form of electronic dance music like house, trance, or drum-and-bass. Party-goers dance all night in a high-energy environment fueled by psychedelics and amphetamines. The researchers wanted to discern the role of drugs in creating solidarity among ravers and clubbers. Their research confronts two common viewpoints about the role of drugs in dance music culture. The first (articulated by both party-goers and some researchers) avoids the e-lephant in the room and insists that other subcultural factors create solidarity (“it’s all about the music and the lifestyle”). In fact, one of the first sociological books on underground electronic dance music culture (Sarah Thorton’s Club Cultures) oddly ignored the centrality of ecstasy (or MDMA) in the rave and club scene, instead focusing on the PLUR ethos and subcultural hierarchy as the central social glue of the subculture. The second perspective views the camaraderie found at these parties as just a “synthetic byproduct resulting from the pharmacological properties of ecstasy” (pg. 184). In other words, the second perspective considers the appearance of solidarity as a drug-produced illusion.

Kavanaugh and Anderson suggest that both of these viewpoints are too simplistic. From their research, they created about 600 pages of field notes and 750 pages of interview transcripts. Analyzing these data, they argue that there are two broad dimensions of solidarity: social-affective and behavioral-organizational. Social-affective solidarity was built “in the moment” by creating shared experiences (pg. 189). They write “Here, drug use played an important role, as it allowed participants to develop a personal and social identity defined against their mainstream parent culture, and participate in an affectively meaningful social group that was uniquely ‘their own’” (pg. 190). Behavioral-organizational solidarity was generated through the common experiences of party-goers. This tracks somewhat with Durkheim’s notion of mechanical solidarity. Through shared experiences, like dancing until 4 in the morning, the subculture develops behavioral-organizational solidarity. They show up to the same events, they visit the same websites, they’re similarly affected by the enforcement of drug laws, and so on. Drug use plays a role in sustaining this form of solidarity as well.

But can’t drug use wreck solidarity just as easily as it can build it? Yes. The authors include an extensive discussion about the role of drugs in eroding solidarity, and they refer to this process as “detachment.” More and more participants start abusing cocaine and methamphetamines, the crime associated with illegal drug markets starts to seep into club culture, and older members of the scene become disillusioned and leave. Taken together, the relationship between drugs and social solidarity within the electronic dance music scene is much more nuanced and multifaceted than other studies have suggested. Their study is informed by sociological theory and rooted in empirical findings, and so the authors avoid both clichés that tend to dominate representations of electronic dance music culture: ravers and clubbers as a collection of alienated drugged-out kids, and raves as utopian and spiritual countercultural spaces where youth culture achieves true freedom from mainstream society. They challenge both of these stereotypes, yet find a bit of truth in them as well. Along the way, we learn that Durkheim’s notion of social solidarity isn’t just an artifact of 19^th century sociology, but it’s relevant for understanding the diversity and complexity of our modern age.

If you’re interested in reading this article, go to the KU Library Catalog, type “sociological quarterly” in the search field and select “journal articles” next to “search by.” Select the third choice (“Blackwell Synergy”) and you’ll find the article in the first 2008 edition.

-- Brian