The austerity project and its ties to the Euro, is an attempt, like the Gold Standard that Karl Polanyi wrote about in 1944, to disembed the market from society.  Polanyi argued that the economy cannot be disconnected from society and that such attempts were destined to fail. He noted that an economy is dependent on social, historical, and political relationships.  Such relationships are not simply impediments to the free market but instead the foundation upon which such markets rest.  Polanyi argued that the disembedded economy is a utopian ideal, which could not exist for any “length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society.  It would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.”

Polanyi, however, didn’t believe it would come to that.  Instead, attempts to disembed the market from society would inevitably fail as the public sought to reembed the market.  Polanyi called this process the “double-movement.”

The crux of Polanyi’s argument deals with commodification.  A commodity is an item produced for sale.  In a market economy, commodities should operate according to supply and demand.  As supply increases, prices drops which then causes supply to drop eventually creating a equilibrium.  In this view, the price mechanism, rather than state planning, will most efficiently regulate the price and availability of goods and services.  However, this tidy economic model includes economic inputs that are not real commodities – particularly land, labor, and money.  Land is just subdivided nature which as the environmental movement has long pointed out will cease to function in its life-sustaining capacity if treated as a commodity.  Money is only a means of exchange and not a commodity at all.  And perhaps most importantly, labor is simply another word for the activity of human beings who can (and will) refuse to be treated as commodities. 

Neoliberal economics, of which the austerity project relies upon, begins with the false assumption that land, labor and money can be treated as commodities.  Polanyi makes two arguments against this assumption.  First, it is morally wrong to treat nature and people as things for sale and secondly, that it is impossible.  Society will always manage these fictitious commodities.  Therefore non-market forces (like democracy for example) will embed the market.

Europe’s attempts to run society as an adjunct of the market – by slashing wages, laying off workers, and cutting deficits to balance budgets and please investors – posits that negative effects are only short term.  But people must eat, clothe themselves, and house themselves in the short term.  As Keynes once remarked, in the long run, we are all dead.  The cost of adjustments in terms of falling wages and high unemployment are simply too high.  The public will not bear them.  The laissez-faire market makes demands on ordinary people that are not sustainable. 

Polanyi saw two impulses stemming from this reality.  One is to curtail the market through democracy or what Polanyi called socialism.  The other is to sacrifice democracy for the market or what Polanyi called the fascist impulse (and what newspapers like to call technocratic management of the economy).  Of course, technocratic management or libertarian economics is not fascism and Polanyi did not say it was.  What he argued was that fascism is the only way to maintain those policies.

While I have faith that Europe will avoid fascism, and if recent reports are any indication, begin moving toward reembedding the market.  My main point here is not to issue warnings or make predictions.  Instead, I wish to point out, as Polanyi did over 50 years ago, that economic decisions cannot be made without regard to society.  While Polanyi was not necessarily a sociologist, he offers a useful corrective to the belief that economic theory alone can fully explain the economy and society.  The crisis in Europe, and in the United States, is a reminder that society matters.  The recent electoral turmoil should remind us that the study of markets is incomplete without the study of human groups and sets of social relationships – or in other words, sociology.

Further Reading: 

Velez-Velez – Anti-American Resistance in Latin America: An Issue of Sovereignty, Militarization, and Neoliberalism

Bandelj et al. – Work and Neoliberal Globalization: A Polanyian Synthesis

Perhaps it is best to start with the social construction of youth with contemporary society. The perception of youth today holds – perhaps – the same way it did some time ago; with the catchphrase “today’s youth are so bad” continuing forward with every generation. This sense of nostalgia, the fondness toward the past has not been divorced from how the youth today are constructed. Making evening news headlines and front pages are perceptions of the “monster child” – the ever worsening condition of the younger population. On the one hand, as a risky population, youth have become something to be protected from. On the other hand, however, the youth also need to be protected – they are often defenseless, ignorant to larger societal ills, and require protection.

While youth behaviors may not have change all that much, it is clear that public opinion, institutions, and policies think otherwise. For example, Lind and Irwin’s Beyond Bad Girls demonstrate that while female aggression has remained relatively stable, the glorification of their “relational violence” in the media and popular cultural avenues have been enough to spark a near moral panic. The authors contend that due to the construction of highly policed gendered roles, females are unable to achieve any status – whether academic or social.

The construction of the deviant female is also prevalent in Nikki Jones’s Between Good and Ghetto. Her argument is that black females must choose between black or mainstream femininity. However, given their harsh social conditions, the conventional female role is blocked – thus, forcing them to choose a role between being “good” or being “ghetto.” Given the intersection of their economic, gender, and racial marginality, females must try to preserve femininity (to fit the mainstream feminine construction) without become a victim within their own community.

Scholars attempting to understand contemporary practices have taken note of large scale shifts that have influenced the juvenile justice system since its creation. Scholars including Beck, Simon, Garland, and Giddens, for instance, have begun taking note of such trends that are affecting practices and policies aimed at youth. Simon, for instance, argues that with the collapse of the new deal and decreased support for government, crime has become a perfect mechanism to gain backing from the population for legislation and crime control practice. In essence, as the title of his book states, Simon argues that the U.S. is currently governing its people through crime.

However, in efforts to increase formal mechanisms of control, the government has demonstrated its limits as a sovereign state (Garland, 1997). That is, although implementing longer sentences, tougher sanctions, zero-tolerance policies, and surveillance technology, crime has held a tight grip on public consciousness. According to Aaron Kupchik’s Homeroom Security, some of these practices have made their way into the school setting and juvenile justice system. No longer are drug sniffing dogs, security cameras, police officers, and zero-tolerance sanction limited to the adult court. However, instead of creating active civic participants, Kupchik notes that these practices may have the opposite consequence of producing over-controlled disciplined bodies which are being prepared for position in the labor force or incarceration.

As a final note, Feld’s Bad Kids, touches on how the construction of youth have influence the development of the contemporary juvenile court. As youth, it was thought that the adult court was too harsh, and that youth should receive more protection. However, given the current state, the juvenile courts have been interpreted as being too lenient. As a result, the juvenile system has purged many of its safeguards and has adopted the penal mentality of the adult system. Returning to the opening thought – it is the construction of youth that helps pave the way for specific practices and policies. All together, the social construction of youth, as being a threatening and vulnerable population has paved the way for a more invasive, penal oriented, juvenile justice system.

Read: “Beyond Fear: Sociological Perspectives on the Criminalization of School Discipline“, in The Sociological Forum.

Read: “Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear“. By Aaron Kupchik, published by NYU Press (2010).

The earliest crime film may be traced to the silent epoch of 1897-1927, during the Progressive era in the United States. Social conditions that existed during this time, such as immigration and urbanization led to a proliferation of organized crimes, social anarchy, and distrust of the government. The alarming rate of crime and social disorder created a leeway for the emergence of crime movies, such as the Great Train Robbery, which Rafter (2006) believed may have been the first crime film. The prohibition code that was expected to restrict alcohol and other illicit acts had the reverse effect on the public. It created further rebellion for the law and produced an increased fascination for gangster films, such as Scar Face and Little Caesar, which portrayed outlaws as heroic figures that sought to gain economic status through illegal means. The fact that gangster films portrayed urban neighborhoods and criminality in a realistic fashion allowed the audience to better identify with the motivation and criminal lifestyle of the gangster. This in itself contributed to the endurance of the gangster genre even into the 21^st century.

The prison genre also made an impact during the early 1930s with the onset of movies such as The Big House and I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. The stock prison films are usually centered on the convicts, a harsh warden, rebelliousness, and a young hero who tries to escape.  It often provides one with the theme of hope versus despair. Stock prison films for the most part, are optimistic in tone as it appeals to the audience’s virtue of patience—which allows them to partake in the hardships and sufferings of the convicts, but also sustains the hope that freedom will soon be achieved. The Alternative tradition of prison films, however, tends to emphasize the brutalities of prison life. This genre feeds the audience’s appetite for daring films that do not justify the prison system, but instead demonstrate films in which innocence and morality is blurred. American Me, for example, portrayed explicit sodomy, gang related activities and drug trades. There was an increase of ethnic diversity among the characters in the film. Examples of such groups include the Hispanic community, the Aryan Brothers, and the Black Guerilla Family. Such diversity enables the audience of different ethnic groups in theU.S. to relate to the experiences of the characters. In contrast to traditional prison films, alternative tradition recognizes and accepts despair and provides no reform.

The prominence of the gangster and prison genre declined in the 1940s due to the infiltration of European techniques and style of expression that became embedded in American filmmaking. British born director,  Alfred Hitchcock migrated to the U.S and brought with him highly expressionistic styles that were darker, had high shadows, and versatile camera angles. This new type of film became known as film noir. Hollywoodbegan borrowing noir traditions and incorporating them into American movies. The theme, characterization, and linear storytelling that were once emblematic of American films rapidly began to decline. Films now included a pessimistic outcome, complicated plots, and psychological motives derived from Freudian analysis that were prominent in Europe. The introduction of film noir led to the development of a femme fatale category that portrayed women as ruthless and conniving. The femme fatale category gave women more prominent roles in films, albeit still being sexually objectified. However, this change appealed to the audience as it not only created a new way of depicting gender roles but it also reflected the social changes occurring in the larger society. For example, America’s involvement in World War II led to a decline of males in the workforce. As a result, women took on the responsibility of providing for the household and held traditionally male dominated jobs. This period initiated the onset of women’s independence, and films such as Maltese Falcon and Rear Window started portraying the female character as witty, deceitful, and even treacherous—which is a reverse of the dedicated subservient housewife.

The film noir tradition, however, did not flourish indefinitely. During the 1950s to the 1970s, several new genres emerged that included the courtroom drama, police genre, slasher, and serial killer and psycho genre. This change in dimension evolved due to the advent of home television that cut into Hollywood profits; thus propelling Hollywood to respond by targeting the pop culture of the youth with new and brighter thrillers, better Technicolor and widescreen television. Serial killers, slashers, and psycho movies became the avenue through which Hollywoodcould reach a different and larger set of audience. The slasher genre emerged in the 1970s with the onset of movies such as Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween. These films were primarily aimed at the younger audience and usually entail a teenaged protagonist, preferably a female who is hunted down by a dark, sadistic, male character. According to Rafter (2006), slashers are not true crime films as they are not concerned with crime and justice. Instead they are modeled after figures of folklore and myths. (p. 89). The imagery in the film is haunting to the viewer but at the same time intriguing as it keeps the suspense afloat. Other prominent features of the slasher films are the use of excess blood and gore and the fact that the villain kills repeatedly and does so in a violent manner. In Halloween for example, Michael, the antagonist of the film carries out violent acts on numerous occasions and kills out of anger and for mental relief. Images of dead bodies were displayed on the screen with blood stained victims and the weapon used to commit the murder. The slasher film genre targets teenaged audience specifically and speaks to the fears of increasing crime and dislocation.

Serial killer movies have far more cerebral-thinking characters than slasher movies. Serial killers have specialized victims and a consistent way of committing crimes. Furthermore, these movies emerged during a time when conservative criminal justice policies were dominant and society viewed criminals as inherently evil. There was a greater need for research and funding in investigating serial murderers. And to compound matters, criminologists and psychologists paid little attention to this pattern of behavior. However, serial killer movies grew in popularity due to the increase of actual serial killer cases nationwide and human interest in movies that are awry. The psycho films, though not a relatively new genre of the 70s had more pathological and dark characters. American Psycho, for example portrays a Wall Street executive, who kills out of disgust, jealousy, and anger. Patrick’s actions are eccentric and preposterous with deep seated psychological motives. He, like other psycho killers, has a set routine that he carries out dutifully. Furthermore, he is unfeeling towards his victims, egotistical, and highly manipulative–traits that are emblematic of serial killer characters.

During the 1990s, at a time when the public was concerned about increased crime and violence, the police subgenre emerged. The police subgenre, however, is not an original genre as it is rooted in detective films, amateur sleuth films, and films about private eyes. Nonetheless, for the most part, they were concerned with crime and the administration of justice. Rafter (2006) contends that the earliest police films did not survive as audience considered them boring and predictable. Furthermore, police had low status in American society and were considered brutal and corrupt. Events, such as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, in addition to civil war riots across the nation produced social turmoil during the 60s, and engendered increased police brutality. It is therefore no surprise that widespread distrust in law enforcement officers directly affected the way the public viewed the police subgenres.

Films such as Dirty Harry and Coogan’s Bluff changed the face of police films due to the fact that they emerged at time when public opinion was more accepting of the role of police officers. Both films emphasized the role of the ideal man who is fearful, heterosexual, independent, unemotional, and superhumanly powerful (Rafter 2006, p. 119). These films focus on the restoration of moral order and justice; which is achieved through the acts of powerful, tough, and vigilant cop heroes. Coogan’s Bluff and Dirty Harry reestablishes in the audience for an hour or two that  law and order are of optimum importance to  society and that it will always be there to protect civilians. The police genre did not essential fade; instead it expanded to include the postmodernist tradition that represents cops as helpless and unable to restore law and order and the critical alternative tradition that focuses on the brutality and corruption of police officers in which no hero exists. In the 20^th and the 21^st century, cop films have reached beyond the traditional role of the white hero cop to include diverse ethnic groups and heroic females.

Another genre of crime films includes the law film genre. Law films development can be traced to the 1930s during which traditional courtroom drama was widely popular in the United States. These films emphasized the nature of law and justice and focused extensively on the courtroom setting and the procedures of the judicial system. The traditional courtroom drama however declined due to the public’s disinterest in courtroom debates and disengaging justice figures. The law noir tradition of the 1940s portrayed justice figures as outsiders who try to fight an elusive and infallible justice system; one in which innocent persons may be wrongly prosecuted and the guilty may escape.  For example, And Justice for All denotes the idea that the legal system can become invalidated and justice figures can indeed become outside forces that challenge the system within. Arthur, the main character in the movie, recognizes the corruption and failures of the criminal justice system and tries to work against its philosophy. However, while doing so he becomes an outcast in his own environment.

Crime films speak specifically to the American mass culture. It serves as a medium through which the unsavory and explicit desires of the public are met—whether it is the gangster genre that glorifies the hoodlum criminals or the police and law genres that seek to restore the moral order, the essential point is that these movies are a reflection of society that penetrates deeply into the conscience of man. It speaks theoretically, philosophically, politically, and historically to both nationwide and worldwide events, such as the Vietnam War or the Great Depression, which shaped public opinion of society. Crime film genres may be said to have  a fascination for the literary imagination whenever social orders have been in flux and this idea has  been expressed quite superbly through  the various crime films of the 19^th and 21^st century.

Work Cited

Rafter, Nicole. (2006). Shots in the mirror: Crime films and society (2^nd ed.).New York,NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.

After Mrs. Romney’s defense of stay-at-home moms, those on the left were quick to point out the Romney campaign’s inconsistent stance on childcare and work.  Mitt Romney had argued a few months earlier that mothers on welfare needed the dignity of work.  Combined with his wife’s statements, the Romney campaign gives voice to the popular, but often unstated, view that those with financial support from individual men have earned a form of dignity through their husbands and thereby earned the non-deviant designation of “stay-at-home mom.”  The status remains unavailable to single mothers who must contend with accusations of irresponsibility.

The rhetoric of personal responsibility and independence dominated much of the 1996 welfare reform overhaul.  The reform bill itself was titled, the “Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act.”  Despite talk of independence, Mink (2001) argued that welfare reform’s work requirements are alternatives to marriage not welfare – a dependency shift not independence.  She asserts that the work requirements and marriage initiatives cast work as a punishment for women’s independence from men.  While both spousal and state financial support are each forms of dependence or more accurately forms of interdependence, a valuable contribution, in the form of childcare, is, however, only recognized for married women.

Ann Romney did not cite her dependence, or everyone’s dependence on others, but instead defended her “choice” to be a stay-at-home mom.  In doing so, she presented staying home as akin to a consumer choice and guided by personal preference, morality, and/or ideology.  In response, editorials pointed out that the choice to stay home with children is not one that most mothers (or fathers) can make.  Mrs. Romney had, therefore, decontextualized her choice.

Even for those for whom the option is available, the word “choice” is too simple.  As Stone (2007) notes the rhetoric of choice regarding so-called “opting-out” among white college-educated professionals masks the social context of such choices.  For example, the women in Stone’s study noted “supportive” husbands who recognized that staying home or working was a women’s choice and were prepared to accept their decision.  However, Stone points out that saying “it’s your choice” is also another way of saying “it’s your problem.” 

Due to cultural norms regarding work and mothering as well as the structural constraints of inflexible work environments such choices are not as free as they seem.  Even a woman as privileged as Ann Romney are caught in the double-bind between work as a source of dignity and the ethic of intensive mothering.

However, I can’t muster much sympathy for Mrs. Romney.  Not because of her level of wealth, but because her political statements deny the role of social factors in shaping motherhood.  Such a stance is troubling from a presidential campaign that does not support changing the workplace to accommodate breast-feeding or leaves of absence without penalties, or equal pay protections and enforcement or seems willing to consider a caregiver income. 

That last one means paying women (or men) to take care of their own children.  To be fair, I haven’t seen any Democrat support such a policy either.  However, a caregiver income is not as radical as it sounds.  Our society already subsidizes out-of-home childcare (through direct subsidies and tax write-offs), a 1,000-dollar per child tax credit, a higher tax deduction for dependents, public schools etc.  We could raise taxes, on people like the Romneys (and Obamas), and expand resources for childcare.  At the very least, both campaigns should avoid propping up the phony “mommy wars” and acknowledge the social and economic factors surrounding childcare in contemporary America.  After all, Obama and Romney are competing for votes on the basis that they can change some of those social and economic factors.

Further Reading:

Cassiman – Resisting the Neo-liberal Poverty Discourse: On Constructing Deadbeat Dads and Welfare Queens

Kissane and Krebs – Assessing Welfare Reform a Decade Later

Caragata and Cumming – Lone Mother-led Families: Exemplifying the Structuring of Social Inequaulity

A mentor and I are currently writing about the financial context of certain school practices and policies. When discussing school budgets, the primary concern is with which programs – on a continuum of being financed – receive budgeted funding given both the economic situation of the school and, more broadly, the larger economy? Stated another way, are there programs and policies that remain funded while others are cut, and if so, what is the reasoning or rational behind how budgeted funds are distributed?

Over the last decade or so, the public discourse surrounding ‘saving the arts’ in schools has gained steam. For example, the Music Education Advocacy Resource Center was established among many others to protect music programs from being removed from the education curriculum. They report that: “Music education programs in California have received a disproportionate number of cuts compared to all other subjects between 1999 and 2004”. A quick look at secondary schools also reveals a similar story with more developmental and counseling based programs. According to Ingerson, “Keeping new teachers in education is a serious problem. After the first year of teaching, 14 percent of teachers leave their field. After the fifth year of teaching, 46 percent leave their field”. While similar resources may be removed from school budgets, it seems that other, less devepmental, initiatives remain in place.

This insight becomes all the more problematic as schools must stretch every dollar and consider all policies and programs to adapt to today’s harsh economic conditions. No doubt a microcosm of larger economic crises, schools may now face significant budget cuts, decreases in funding, and an overall lack of support. This financial tighten has no doubt limited the number of school personnel, high-quality full time educators, educational resources, and avenues for student development. Despite the little economic slack in school budgets, there is no indication that school performance has sidestepped public and political attention. This comes at a time when a premium is given to test scores, school rankings, proficiency scores, and student placements. Schools may now be forced to run a race that they are ill equipped for. More now than ever, it appears that schools are under more pressure to achieve high standing and compete in high stakes competition although left with diminishing resources to do so.

These questions imply (or sometimes explicitly state) that blacks are obsessed with finding racism to blame for problems that stem from their own communities.  White people, for the most part, ask these kinds of questions and make these kinds of assertions.  Partly because whites are generally unaware of what happens in black neighborhoods.  There is no lack of protest over inner-city violence among blacks.  For example, a few years ago, there were a slew of protests over the murder of three young men in Newark, NJ.  The story, unlike many other black protest marches received widespread media coverage.  The reason was the innocence of the victims.  The media consistently noted that the kids were “good” kids, college students etc.  The status of the victims was crucial to the outrage and the media coverage.

Americans like to imagine ourselves as masters of our own destinies.  Contrary to the beliefs of many whites, blacks share these beliefs about personal responsibility.  Parents of black boys believe that they can limit the risk to their sons by being good parents, keeping their kids away from drugs, gangs, or “the street,” by earning money and moving to a low-crime area, etc.

When I brought up the Newark case in my Intro class, a student from Newark characterized the perception that blacks are whining or unjustly complaining as insulting.  She pointed out that her father had worked hard to move to the nicer neighborhood in Newark where the murders took place and that her family had a right to be outraged by the crime.  In the Newark case, the parents of the victims were successful in raising “good kids” and they were in a “decent neighborhood”, yet their children still became victims of homicide.  The protests were a realization and a complaint that some risks to their children were out of individuals’ control and therefore collective action on the societal level was required.

The Trayvon Martin case is similar in this regard.  The implication that black people do not value personal responsibility is a persistent racist stereotypes that underlies complaints about black protest.  Such stereotypes also underlie much white denial of racism in contemporary America.  The protests are not an abdication of personal responsibility but a concrete example of the sociological imagination and its corresponding democratic impulse.  Protests represent the realization that larger social forces matter and that such forces are human creations alterable through collective action.  These particular protests are a recognition that while parents can take responsibility for the lives of the children, keep them out of trouble, move to a good neighborhood etc., they cannot take off their son’s black skin nor can they – and this is the crucial part – change the cultural and structural position of blackness without collective action.

Further Reading:

Tim Berard – The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism

Byrd – Conflating Apples and Oranges: Understanding Modern Forms of Racism

Race, Tragedy and Outrage Collide After a Shot in Florida, New York Times

A Shooting and Instant Polarization, New York Times

Increased population growth in metropolitan cities necessitated the creation of transit stations where persons could transfer from one transportation to the next (Iseki & Taylor, 2010). During the early 19^th century, as cities expanded and horse-drawn transportation became accessible, the U.S. witnessed the exodus of the rich from areas close to the city to more suburban areas, leaving the poorer classes who were impotent to afford similar amenities— residing adjacent to the city (Glaser, Kahn, & Rappaport, 2008). According to Glaser, Kahn, and Rappaport (2008), slightly over 19% of the population of residents living in metropolitan areas are poor, in comparison to less than 8% of persons living in suburban areas.  Lower population density in the suburbs— and availability of finances to purchase cars— explains the lower levels of public transportation in those regions. While, on the contrary, high population density and financial mediocrity in metropolitan cities fostered the need for public transportation. Individual level characteristics, such as age, gender, and disability in combination with socio-economic characteristics, such as income and location determine travel preferences. For example, persons from lower-income households prefer to take the bus and are more concerned about cost than individuals from higher income brackets. Also, individuals with disability were more concerned about accessibility and comfort of the bus than younger able-bodied individuals (Stradling, Carreno, Rye,  & Noble, 2007).

It is crucial to note that transportation by bus is not a confined phenomenon to metropolitan areas in the United Sates. In fact, according to Stradling, Carreno, Rye, and Noble (2007), Britain alone experienced more than 4.1 billion bus passengers between 2005 to 2006, with Scotland showing a rapid increase in bus users over the past five years. However, given that cities are rapidly growing and the poverty gap has been exacerbated by unemployment and a constellation of social ills, bus services becomes a necessity for a large populous of residents in the city (Stradling, Carreno, Rye, & Noble, 2007). The advent of bus services comes with cost, wait time, transfer time, and other nuances that impact the quality of services passengers received. And, with more individuals using the bus in contemporary society compared to previous years, it will continue to be a common occurrence for transit users to spend considerable time outside of transit vehicles than inside the vehicles. In fact, much time is expended waiting, transferring, and walking to the bus stop than the amount of time spent during the actual ride to one’s destination. Therefore, the ease and accessibility in using transit services will be a crucial determinant of bus patronage (Iseki & Taylor, 2010). Despite the importance of reduced wait times for users, a more crucial concern of bus passengers pertains to the issue of safety while waiting on or riding the bus. According to Iseki and Taylor (2010) safety is a key concern of transit users, more so than transfer and reliability. The authors note that satisfaction with safety varies based on the time of day and gender of the user. For example, users are more likely to feel safer during the day than at nights, and issues concerning safety were primarily, but not exclusively, voiced by females (Stradling, Carreno, Rye, Noble, 2007).

The physical condition and amenities of the bus and bus station is a marginal concern of  users, while information about  bus schedules and routes and accessibility of the bus station (navigating to one’s stop) are key issues consistently related to users’ satisfaction ( Iseki & Taylor, 2010).  Despite that wait and transfer times are known to play a crucial role in the level of bus patronage, previous research has neglected to investigate the impact of wait, walk, and transfer time on people’s travel behavior, but have devoted much investigation to in-vehicle travel experiences and the physical conditions of transit stops and stations (Iseki & Taylor, 2010). While public transportation by bus provides passengers with an element of social interaction that cannot be replaced by cars— as well as reducing environmental pollutants, many individuals are still reluctant to reduce car travel and employ public mode of transportation, possibly because of the inconvenience it may have on travel patterns, or because individuals do not assess gas emissions as crucial environmental concerns to warrant radical change (Gatersleben & Uzzel, 2003).

Given the many concerns of public transportation, it is understandable that some users would not desire to employ public transits. Besides, the accessibility and privacy of one’s car create more comfort and eliminate a lot of frustrations that accompany the use of public transits. Nonetheless, as a society, we all have a role  to play in protecting our environment and reducing gas emissions, and if one mode of reducing environmental pollutants is by reducing car travel,  I advocate for a reduction (but not elimination) of private vehicles.  I believe that this would help to foster an equal balance between the use of private and public vehicles that would create a ‘greener’ environment.

Civility, according to Freud (1961), was the result of individual efforts to protects themselves from the outside world and collective relationships. In his classic text, Civilization and its Discontents, Freud also argued that while civilization is a safeguard against a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’, it also breeds displeasure as individuals repress their pleasure principle. Coupled with today’s fetish for security and order, this perspective may highlight the increased efforts to domesticate would be deviants. However, Horkheimer (1980) once argued that criminality would always exist so long as control was the order of the day; that barbarism is the flip-side, an element, to the refinement coin (Mestrovic, 1993: 57)

Such acts of rebellion and deviance, for Fromm, are “rooted in the unbearableness of individual powerlessness and isolation” (1941: 177). He continues that:

‘Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individuals and social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular hostile tendencies – either against others or against self – are nourished (1941: 182).’

This position no doubt calls forth the work of Mestrovic as he concludes that contemporary practices resembling those of the Enlightenment “cannot contain the forces of barbarism – that the will is stronger than rationality (1993: 278).’

So, here it rests. Can an act of transgression be interpreted as the individual’s reaction to today’s highly rationalized modes of governance? Are graffiti ‘tags’, underground brawls, base jumps, and unorthodox clothing styles simply deviant acts as they are often labeled or can be they seen as the need for expression, feeling, thrill, and identity construction (see Hayward, 2004)? More broadly, are these everyday forms of resistance a microcosm of time-tested dialectic between civilizing tendencies and acts of barbarism? Maybe the answer lies in one’s perspective, prior experiences, and social position.

Perhaps, as structural theorists would argue, there is more to play than just individual motivation. That is, when untangling the complex web of crime and deviance, we must consider both individual and structural level elements. When entertaining this orientation, are there macro level conditions that must fall under the critical microscope. That is to say, can the same practices and policies that attempt to secure rationality and order be a causal mechanism propelling individuals toward unrest and discontent – a feeling that often materializes in the form of moments of transgression? Stated another way, is it possible deviance grows from the same soil that brought about today’s preoccupation with safety and order?

• Read: Williams, Patrick (2007) Youth-Subcultural Studies: Sociological Traditions and Core Concepts. Sociology Compass
• Read: Roberts, John M. (2008) Public Spaces of Dissent. Sociology Compass
• Read: Hayward, Keith (2004) City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture, and the Urban Experience.

Photograph by: Red Huber , Orlando Sentinel/MCT

The Trayvon Martin case has become a national media event complete with competing individual evaluations, competing definitions of racism and competing blame narratives.  In these “racial events,” Americans propensity for individualistic analysis coalesces with America’s racialized culture in order to produce a mix of individual evaluations and sweeping claims about racial groups and the institutional privileges and disadvantages of different racial groups.  In my experience, this process reinforces many of the flawed ideas about race that sociologists regularly debunk and challenge.

Americans disparage racism because of its ultimate impact on individuals, but too often imagine that free and unencumbered choices of individuals are the sole source of racism.  Americans are likely to view racism as solely individual acts of bad or ignorant individuals (Zamudio and Rios 2006, 485).  In this case, a great deal of speculation has centered around whether or not the shooter uttered a racial slur on the 911 call.  Indeed, the shooter may have been motivated by a strong belief in racial stereotypes about blacks and negative affect towards blacks.  However, such individual level analyses promises to yield definitive answers of guilt or innocence that ignore or dismiss the role of culture and structure and reduce racism to “isolated incidents” (Bush 2004, 72) or create a search for a blameworthy racist in order to confirm the existence of racism (Ford 2008).

The risk in these cases is that we deny the systemic nature of racism.  In many ways, media discourse turns Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) reference to ‘racism without racists’ (used to describe how a racialized social system may exist without individual-level hatred of minority groups) on its head by positing that we have races, racism, and racists but no racial system.  This formulation is not simply the result of conservative politics and its outsized influence on media.  Even those discourses associated with liberalism, such as multiculturalism and diversity, frequently ignore systemic racial inequality (Michaels 2006; Bell and Hartmann 2007) focusing on etiquette rather than equality.

Most Americans vociferously deny that they are racist, even those who use and believe racial stereotypes (Myers 2005, 105) or engage in behaviors formerly labeled racism (Johnson et al. 2000, 103).  As Brown et al. (2005) notes, “Today, many white Americans are concerned only with whether they are, individually, guilty of something called racism (4).  Accusation of racism will likely provoke defensive reactions as they often seem directed at individual racists, rather than racist behavior, ideas, practices, structures, or policies.  Under such a construction, if there is white racism or just white privilege then a critical mass of whites must be racists.

As researchers have noted racism (rather than manslaughter or murder) is not reducible to individual intent.  Whether or not someone endorses racial stereotypes, they may still come under their influence.  We notice the race of strangers because we grew up in a society where race (and its physical markers) are significant, skin color provides clues (or we have been socialized to believe that skin color provides clues) about whether a person is, for example, dangerous or not.  Racial stereotypes often influence our judgments and behaviors indirectly by coloring (pun intended) ambiguous information (Pager and Quillian 2005) like walking around a neighborhood looking at houses.

Some meaningful discussion of racism will peak through here and there as the media coverage, but any cursory glance at internet comments around the story will reveal myriad attempts to define the larger social issues using the case to make sweeping generalizations about who or what is to blame for racism in America.  These debates often center on where the floating accusation of racism produced by the controversy belongs.

Berard (2008) urges academics not to ignore the social psychology of institutional racism.  He laments that too many academics “treat institutional racism in terms of the negative effects of institutions on minorities, neglecting, or explicitly dismissing the social-psychological questions about the intentions, the beliefs, and the concerns of those individuals who do the work of the institutions in question and who formulate policies and priorities in these institutions” (737).  I have heeded that call here.  Indeed, several social-psychological questions emerge from this case.  However, a single case is not evidence of any claim.  For example, a research study could examine what role race played in passing Florida’s self-defense laws, or in gun ownership in general.  But, if we find a legislator that sponsored the Florida law sent out a racist email we cannot then say self-defense laws are motivated by racist attitudes.

Further Reading:

Tim Berard – The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism

Clayton Mosher – Racial Profiling/Biased Policing

Obese persons are more likely to be targets of negative stereotypes and treated with disrespect. Social bias and discrimination against these persons could culminate in poorer access to health care, education, and employment (Greenberg, Easting, Hofschire, Lachlan & Brownell, 2003). Targeted persons may feel reluctant to seek certain social and health services because they are sentient of their weight and may believe that they will be discriminated against by health officials (Greenberg, Easting, Hofschire, Lachlan, & Brownell, 2003; Whyte, 2010). This is not a preposterous supposition given that according to a national survey, some primary care physicians felt that overweight persons are lazy and non-compliant to treatment (Whyte, 2010)

The media plays a huge role in broadcasting social attitudes about obesity as they are the conduit through which certain body images are glamorize and others are disparaged. The media functions as the source of information about ideal beauty types by displaying an overrepresentation of underweight individuals and an underrepresentation of average weight or overweight individuals, which in turn shape viewers perception of thinness as an ideal and heaviness as the antithesis of beauty (Greenberg, Eastin, Hofschire, Lachlan, & Brownell, 2003; Fouts & Burggraf, 2000; Himes & Thompson, 2007; Whyte, 2010). These images have negative consequences for young female viewers who are especially susceptible to internalizing television displays of standards of beauty and may express discontentment with their bodies if their own body weight does not equate to the images shown on television. Moreover, idolization of underweight female characters and denigration of heavy female characters may cause women— especially persons who themselves are heavy and identify with heavier females characters—to develop eating disorders symptomatology, decreased self-esteem and self-efficacy (Fouts & Burggraf, 2000).

Top rated programs in prime time television could average as many as 30 million viewers per week. More than half of U.S. residents cited Prime Time Television as one of their top three sources of health information and claim to have confidence in the accuracy of information presented on Prime Time (Whyte, 2010). This may be disconcerting given that portrayal of body images in prime time television are not reflective of reality (Himes & Thompson, 2007; Whyte, 2010) as most persons in society are overweight, yet, most sitcom characters are portrayed as underweight. Moreover, overweight individuals are successful in professional and family life, yet they are depicted in television shows as marginally fruitful in their careers (Whyte, 2010). According to Fouts and Burggraf (2000), 66 percent of female characters on prime time shows are below average in weight. This figure distorts the national average of underweight females in the general society (24 percent).  In other words, there is an overrepresentation of underweight females  on television in comparision to the actual numbers in the general society. However, when overweight characters are portrayed, they are generally older males and females who are passive in their roles, more likely to be seen eating and conducting fewer tasks, had fewer romantic and friendly interactions and were viewed as less attractive (Greenberg, Eastin, Hofschire, Lachlan & Brownell, 2003).

More overweight characters are shown to be African Americans, are associated with greater negative stereotypes, and are portrayed to be passive in characteristics and activities (Greenberg, Eastin, Hofschire, Lachlan & Brownell, 2003). Overweight male and female characters are at a greater likelihood of being targets of fat stigmatization on television sitcoms. However, female characters received greater discrimination than male characters. For instance, larger females were twice more likely to be ridiculed than average weight and underweight females. However, underweight males were more likely to be ridiculed than heavier males (Greenberg, Eastin, Hofschire, Lachlan, Brownell, 2003; Himes & Thompson, 2007).

Fat stigmatization is often portrayed through commentary and humor on television by characters negatively commenting on overweight persons and positively commenting on thin persons. The heavier the character, the more negative comments received followed by audience reinforcement of laughter. Audience reaction of a negative comment strengthens gender stereotypes of what is acceptable or unacceptable body images, and aids to perpetuate thinness as the ideal form of beauty. The laughter of audience at the negative comments made toward overweight characters suggests an acceptance of stereotypical values and discrimination against heavier persons in society (Fouts & Burggraf, 2000).

Based on the extant literature, public opinion and discrimination against overweight persons are depicted in television shows on prime time sitcoms. The implications of negatively portraying obese persons in television shows have the potential consequences of engendering eating disorders, depressive symptoms, and decreased self-esteem among similarly overweight persons in the general society (Greenberg, Easting, Hofschire, Lachlan & Brownell, 2003; Himes &Thompson, 2007; Whyte, 2010; Fouts & Burggraf, 2000). This is a cause for concern as the consequences of these body image protrayals may culminate in self-destructive behaviors (especially for females) such as drug use, suicidal thoughts, and forced starvation.

The slides belonged to Josipa Roksa, a co-author of the 2011 sociology/media sensation Academically Adrift (with Richard Arum) and of its 2012 follow-up report, “Documenting Uncertain Times: Post-graduate Transitions of the Academically Adrift Cohort.” The premise of the talk, as the premise of the book and the premise of its sequel, was that undergraduate students are not improving their critical thinking skills in college, that this claim is sustained by the failure of a putatively representative sample of 2,362 students at 24 four-year institutions to increase their average score on standardized tests of critical thinking, and that this failure in critical thinking is affecting them negatively in the labor market and in civil society (as indicated by the percentage with full time employment or graduate or professional school status, and by self-reported newspaper-reading habits).

The primary instrument with which Arum and Roksa document students’ drift away from critical thinking is the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a self-described “authentic assessment” or “test worth teaching to” developed by the Council for Aid to Education, non-profit organization created by a group of “enlightened business leaders” for the purpose of

…promot[ing] a better understanding of the substantial contribution which higher education makes to the effectiveness, skill, growth, and success of American business, and to the development of the country.

CLA claims to present test-takers with “real-life” scenarios, to which students respond in writing rather than multiple choice. Arum and Roksa (2011: 21-22) share an example: “You” are an assistant to the president of “Dynatech,” a company that wants to purchase a plane. But the model of plane Dynatech President Pat Williams wants to purchase was recently involved in a crash. “You” are charged with the assignment of writing a memo using news articles, consumer report data, and reports about the sorts of accidents it has encountered. You are to advise Pat Williams whether or not Dynatech should purchase the plane.

This “real-life” scenario begs the question for whom is this real-life? This is not a rhetorical question. The ways in which I make meaning of the scenario and my response to it are likely to be shaped by how I relate to “Dynatech”: am I really an employee, as the scenario dictates? Can I imagine a future as an employee? Can I imagine a future somewhere similar? Am I imagining a future somewhere else, concerned with quite different decisions? Or am I, like that junior faculty member sitting in front of me at the Research I institution where Roksa gave her talk, “bored to tears” by this test? And if so, is this instrument an adequate measure of the way I think and an adequate provider of feedback to the people – the faculty – who are supposed to be supporting me as I develop my thinking?

Engaging thinking means engaging people – their identities, their experiences, their imagined futures. Indeed, Arum and Roksa are correct that an ability to perform the sorts of tasks the CLA asks students to do is a necessity and an asset in what education scholar Lisa Delpit calls the culture of power. Equity in education, Delpit argues, calls for equipping students for success in the culture of power – while valuing and building on the cultural identities and resources they bring with them to school, especially when those identities and resources may be ignored, or even derogated by the culture of power. What happens when schools and teachers are asked – demanded, even – to focus solely on the culture of power without coming to know, and to draw in, and engage and develop, the resources students carry with them?

In documenting the “uncertain times” of the college graduates that Arum and Roksa identify as “academically adrift,” the authors observe that the students with stagnant CLA scores during college are more likely to be the young adults living at home after college, or not reading newspapers, or not finding full time jobs. What the authors do not observe is the extent to which their results speak to patterns of social reproduction – in which those whose home cultures are deeply tied to the culture of power are also those who perform best on the “real-life” abstractions of the CLA and are those for whom reading a newspaper constitutes a more legitimate form of civic engagement than reading a blog or a Twitter stream. Yet coverage of the murder of high school student Trayvon Martin did not trickle into the print of major newspapers until after weeks of deeply, civically engaged blogging and tweeting and talking and petitioning.

What Arum and Roksa count as “critical thinking” matters, no doubt. But it seems that the inequities in college learning about which they claim concern persist because they are so often relegated to the spaces akin to those that Arum and Roksa do not count, spaces of lived experience and meaning making through which one man can understand his being “bored to tears” as a sign of academic worthiness, and through which another might feel he’d be better off drifting out of academia. Again, engaging thinking means engaging people. So when it comes to assessing thinking, I say we need relationships before we need measurements, and when we measure, we need to do so in dialogue with those real, human relationships. But I hope you’ll share with me: what do you think?

Coming across Linster’s article entitled ‘Is the Quantified Life Worth Living’, he highlights that the tagline to the quantified self-project is ‘self-knowledge through numbers.’ There can be little doubt that people are, now more than ever, able to capture their daily activities numerically and reflect upon them. This, however, is also becoming more evident in today’s corporate and commercial worlds. Whether assessing employing productivity, one’s level of satisfaction, or how many times a specific web-page is visited, it seems that more of our lives are being measured in efforts to ‘better’ them. Kevin Kelly, blogging about the quantified self, writes:

Through technology we are engineering our lives and bodies to be more quantifiable. We are embedding sensors in our bodies and in our environment in order to be able to quantify all kinds of functions. Just as science has been a matter of quantification — something doesn’t count unless we can measure it — now our personal lives are becoming a matter of quantification. So the next century will be one ongoing march toward making nearly every aspect of our personal lives — from exterior to interior — more quantifiable. There is both a whole new industry in that shift as well as a whole new science, as well as a whole new lifestyle. There will be new money, new tools, and new philosophy stemming from measuring your whole life. Lifelogging some call it. It will be the new normal (Linster, 2011).

As a side note, this emerging phenomenon certainly reflects larger trends and shifts in society. While measuring ‘life’ has its roots firmly in the medical field, recent literature suggest that the medical and even actuary model for capturing life quantitatively is being adopted for other purposes. Today’s contemporary social-scape has been gripped by a remarkable trend: the insecurities stemming from a profound risk awareness and aversion that has transformed operating paradigms. Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) wrote on the idea of a risk society in which “risk has become a central, generalized preoccupation, to the extent that it is configuring contemporary institutions and contemporary consciousness” (Hudson, 2003: 43). Consequently, crime control practices and policies have made predicting, identifying, and managing irrational risks that threaten the rational order a central objective (Erikson, 2007; Simon, 2007).

To return – as more of life becomes data, are its qualitative aspects diminishing? As the quest to become better quantitatively becomes the model, does qualitative reflection take backseat? To be clear, there are advantages to quantitatively capturing certain aspects of life; whether for health reasons or self-improvement. However – when this becomes the dominant model, when it organizes, manages, and controls – when does it begin to infringe upon the qualitative moments?

Read: Binkley (2007) Governmentality and Lifestyle Studies. Sociology Compass.

Females’ involvement in delinquency may encompass gang membership and participation, individual delinquent acts, and minor and serious forms of offenses, ranging from underage drinking to homicide. The disregard meted out to female delinquency is disheartening given that female involvement in crime has been pronounced over the previous three decades. While female gang membership was once largely confined to male gangs, in which females were employed in mediocre roles or used as objects during sexual exploitation, female gang memberships have presently evolved beyond females’ roles of sub ordinance to male gang leaders toward gangs dominated by females and/or consist solely of females.

I can precisely remember a notorious female gang leader in Kansas City, Missouri, named Shauntay Henderson. Henderson‘s rage of terror in Kansas City gave her the coveted title of being on the FBI’s most wanted list for 2007. Shauntay was eventually arrested and charged for multiple crimes comprising of serious felonies. She was being sought for an execution-style murder of a Kansas City man in his truck, among other related charges. I am sure there are other equally notorious females sought after for other atrocious crimes. However, given the undeserved attention to their behavior, any prospects of rehabilitation for these criminals become diminished. Being that females are equally capable of committing vicious crimes as men, why then has their involvement in criminal behavior been trivialized? One proposition has been postulated by Cobbina, Like-Haislip, and Miller (2010) who suggested that the interpretation of women’s involvement in crime is largely construed by the opposite sex who sees women’s delinquency and/or criminality as inconsequential, simply because it is committed by a female. According to the authors, young men viewed male violence as necessary to earn respect, settle monetary disputes, and defend one’s loved ones. Male violence was viewed as lethal, explosive, and dangerous, especially violence stemming from gang wars. However, these same boys viewed female violence as emotionally driven, irrational, and unpredictable. These boys indicated that female violence is ineffectual because it is less lethal than male violence. Additionally, they believe female violence to be stupid, as females generally fight over petty stuff, such as gossip, boys, or jealousy.

Theoretical explanations of female delinquency and/or criminality have largely been placed into a dichotomy of the liberation hypothesis or the injury hypothesis. The liberation hypothesis proposed by Adler (2011) posits that the drive to achieve equality resulted in crimes committed by women. The notion is that the transformation of gender roles, such as liberation from cooking and cleaning and the adoption of nontraditional gender roles, such as working in the political sphere, created a social revolution with increased opportunities for women to engage in criminal activities. For example, the author notes that during the war years in the 1940s, crime for women peaked when women were employed in factory and industry jobs. However, prior to industrialization, women were largely non-criminals because of the cultural institutions that barred them from engaging in crime. The author notes that the four sex differences that have been linked with criminal patterns are size, strength, aggression, and dominance; men tend to be superior in these traits. As a result, these traits and socially constructed gender roles (girls are taught to be dependent and disciplined while boys are taught to be aggressive and strong) led to the dominance of men and their higher percentage in crimes. However, when technology/industrialization was included in the criminal model, both sexes became equally capable of being criminals (Adler, 2011).

Chesney-Lind (2004), proponent of the injury hypothesis, enunciates that existing theories concerning delinquency are not sufficient to explain female delinquency and that most theories cannot explain status offenses committed by females.  In addition, most of the existing theories of delinquency fail to explicate gender stratification in a male-dominated society and how this impacts female delinquency. The author notes that a feminist theory of delinquency needs to include how the criminal justice system reinforces gender stereotypes, and a deeper emphasis should be placed on the personal lives of young girls and how racism and poverty affects their behavior. The author contends that some young girls are sexually abused in their homes, and as such, they run away from these environments only to find themselves on the street being forced into crimes such as prostitution and theft in order to survive. The author notes that women, by nature of their sex, are seen as sexual properties and are more likely to run away from their abuser. However, because running way is a crime, these girls are forced back into the home by the criminal justice system and the abuser, and if they refuse to stay in the home, they will be incarcerated. In essence, it is the patriarchal system that forces women into crime and the criminal justice system plays a huge role in this process (Chesney-Lind, 2004).

The conduit through which female criminality is developed is important to explicate; however, the measures needed to prevent or reduce such behaviors should not be prejudicial toward one theory,  but rather an integrated focus must be met in order to adequately address female criminality. As members of society, we need to develop proactive measures and assess ways to reduce females’ gang and criminal involvement. Policies to decrease violence should focus on solutions that take gender into consideration. The focus should be aimed at economic conditions and how it “plays upon gender” to produce violent situations. In addition, greater focus should be placed on the structure of inner cities, i.e. informal economy, drug market and how it contributes to violence. More efforts need to concentrate on recognizing the ideologies that sustains violence, such as a patriarchal society where power is unequally distributed among gender, class, and race. Finally, the author calls for a collective effort to reduce violence; one which deals with crime from a gendered perspective.

References

Adler, F. (2011). Sisters in crime. In F. Cullen & R. Agnew (Eds.), Criminological theory: Past

to present, essential readings (pp. 333-340). New York: Oxford University Press.

Chesney-Lind, M. (2004). Girls’ crime and woman’s place: Toward a feminist model of female

delinquency. In J. Jacoby (Ed.), Classics of criminology (pp.336-345). Illinois: Waveland

Press, Inc.

Cobbina, J. E., Like-Haislip, T.Z., & Miller, J. (2010). Gang fights versus cat fights: Urban

young men’s gendered narratives of violence. Deviant Behavior, 31 (7), 596-853. DOI: 10.1080/01639620903231522.

Puzzanchera, C., Adams, B., Sickmund, M. (2011). Juvenile Court Statistics 2008. Pittsburg,PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice.

Prior research has examined capitalisms tendency to package social phenomena for mass consumption/popular culture. Although this position is instructive, it does little to observe the formal mechanisms of the state in this process. For instance, sociological and criminological scholarship has tended to overlook the legitimization/legalization of deviant activities. Perhaps there are nuances being missed – a nexus that exists between the state and market. In essence, this post highlights a perhaps false dichotomy existing between the state and market. More consequently, it considers the role that legalizing and commercializing forces played in ensuring the survival of once ‘deviant’ activities.

One avenue to explore the legitimation of deviance is to examine how it is discussed, framed, and acted upon. Discourse, that is, refers to the way individuals think and talk about things. With an emphasis on language, the issue of discourse comes from the structuralism tradition (see Saussure). For Foucault however, language and discourse is not limited to the written or spoken word (Foucault, 1972a, 1972b). Rather, it refers to languages, behaviors, and practices. Foucault’s intent is to look beneath word choice and practices to examine why they are employed, and what meaning they provide. Given that ‘discourse sets the parameters for what is possible and impossible, examining power, meaning, and language becomes more profound than at first appearance (Allen, 2006 – see Chapter on Foucault).

At this junction, one cannot help but to evoke the writings of Harvey (2006a, 2006b) as he argues that the primary function of the state is to create lucrative conditions for the market. In characterizing the neo-liberal state, he writes ‘The fundamental mission of the neo-liberal state is to create a ‘good business climate’ for social well-being…The neo-liberal state looks to further the cause of and to facilitate and stimulate all business interests.’ Here, the main ability of the state lies within its authoritative discourse, monopoly of power, coercive influences over legislation, and ability to provide fresh capital for the market. Each definition applied to deviance by dominant structures has implications for the public’s reaction. For instance, deviance defined by the economy and not the state is an unsanctioned activity that presents something to be acted against and controlled. However, activities that are defined by the economy and the state become acceptable activities and consumable entertainment.

It seems that the legitimation practices of the state provide the means needed to vindicate once controversial illicit activities. Here, state backed institutions may have a part in ensuring the survival and acceptance of deviance in two ways. First, they provided the means that shifted the construction of illicit behavior from being immoral to legal and therefore socially palatable. Second, they answered the markets call to establish conditions allowing for the expansion and commercialization of deviance. It is evident that the demands of the market and the discourse of the state (together) were effective in altering the construction of deviance from being ‘criminal’ to being legitimate.

* Read: Patrick Williams ‘Youth-Subcultural Studies: Sociological Traditions and Core Concepts’, Sociology Compass

The experience of the destitute is understandably a harsh reality as many homeless persons have to contend with abysmal living conditions, pitiable hygiene, unsanitary food, and inadequate nutrition (Meanwell, 2012). The deprivation of basic amenities afforded to the normal population engenders grander potential for malnutrition, poor mental health and a range of other physiological and psychological illnesses. Though men on average experience chronic homelessness than any other group, recent trends in the homeless population have expanded the demographic profile of the homeless to include women, children, families, substance abusers, the unemployed, and mentally-disabled (Wolch et al., 1988). Nonetheless, despite the recent diversity (age, race, gender, and ethnicity) in the vagrant population, homelessness largely remains a gendered experience, in the sense that, overall men are more likely to experience chronic homelessness than females and homeless women are typically single parents accompanied by children (Meanwell, 2012; Wolch, Dear, & Akita, 1988). Moreover, certain social services provided to the homeless are contingent on gendered social expectations. For example, women are more likely to have access to shelters than men as females are considered to be at a higher risk of violent victimization and sexual abuse. Additionally, women are also more likely to be involved in sex crimes as a means of survival, such as the commercial exchange of sex for food and shelter (Meanwell, 2012).

One can surmise that lack of affordable housing is a basic cause of homelessness. However, in conjunction with this source of vagrancy, other conditions in the United States have precipitated homelessness, including deindustrialization, deinstitutionalization, and welfare state reorganization. According to Wolch et al. (1988), these events played a chief role in the development of vagrancy. The authors elucidated that the economic consequences of deindustrialization impacted homelessness due to the decline in the manufacturing sectors, especially in the snowbelt cities of the North-east. The process of deindustrialization was compounded with economic recessions and fluctuations in the U.S. currency that resulted in job losses and weakening of union membership. According to the authors, “these factors raised unemployment levels and created the highest rate of official poverty since the early 1960s. [And], by 1982, 15 percent (34.4 million) of the nation’s population was living below the poverty line” (Wolch et al., 1988, p.446).

Deinstitutionalization of the mentally-ill in the United States created the release of a large group of mentally-disabled individuals who lacked residence upon discharge from mental institutions. Being that the government’s provisions of community-based programs and community-based shelters were inadequate to meet the demand of this special population, many released persons ended up on the periphery of poverty—seeking shelters in the most deprived neighborhoods and on the streets. Additionally, the decrease in federal expenditure on welfare budgets during the 1980s, specifically under the Reagan administration, caused many persons who were previously dependent on welfare and social services to seep deeper into poverty (Wolch et al., 1988).

Interestingly, public views on homelessness tend to be benign and commiserating in nature, but ironically, some individuals who are sympathetic about the issue would not support unstinting policies or social service programs for this population. The unfavorable responses for allocation of resources towards this population may stem from the prejudicial view of these persons as lazy. Additionally, citizens may deem homeless persons culpable for their fiscal failure that led to their residence on the street. These stigmas may not be derived solely from being homeless but may be a result of a combination of other stereotypes, such as prior criminal history, drug dependence, and racial stereotypes, particularly if the homeless person is black. The homeless are aware that persons stigmatize them and in order to relinquish that identity; some persons would dissociate themselves from other homeless persons and social service agencies that would serve to help them— which marks a preservation of self-pride (Meanwell, 2012). However, this mechanism of self-salvage engenders more harm than good as alienation from social service resources only exacerbate the struggles of the street.

I have had many personal experiences with the homeless population as I reside not too far from a domicile where many homeless persons tend to stay, which is ironically in a middle class suburban residence. I have had conversations with homeless persons and most of these conversations ended in me querying their reason for becoming homeless. The responses from the majority of persons are that they have lost their job, got divorced, or have just financially encountered hard times. Despite the diverse rationale, the consensus is tied to a single economic variable, “money”. Homeless persons are on the street because they cannot afford housing, are most times dearth of family members’ monetary assistance, and are not receiving or are not eligible to receive certain government benefits. The economic burden makes it insurmountable for them to have any other avenue but to resort to tenancy on the street. To compound matters, some of these homeless persons have meager qualifications or educational attainments, making it even more challenging to obtain employment. Therefore, the streets or shelters remain their only place of refuge.

The phenomenon of homelessness is, I believe, a product of societal stratification and social inequalities. Ideologies of social stratification and its effect on poverty were originally proposed by Karl Marx (2004) who contended that the capitalist society produces two prominent classes that are in conflict with each other:  Bourgeoisie and Proletariats. The bourgeoisie are the oppressors who own the means of production and the proletariats are the oppressed workers who labor for the bourgeoisie. The author suggests that capitalism produces social inequalities, but the state never sees social imperfections as a consequence of the state, but rather as a consequence of natural law, private life, and inadequacies of the administration. The author explains that capitalism is distinguished not by privilege but instead by individuality of property ownership and that those who create the conditions of the oppressed group express this power in the form of laws that function to serve the bourgeoisie’s interests (Marx, 2004, p.129). Hence, based on the earlier writing of Marx, capitalism is responsible for the manifestation of certain social conditions that have led to homelessness. The structural stratification of society enables the development of inequality in the labor market and other areas of social life, which forces persons to be confined to certain marginal economic statuses; due to the frailty of these economic conditions poverty becomes an inevitable consequence.

The literature suggests that vagrancy is not a problem easily combated as the structural inadequacies that birth and perpetuate its development cannot be easily changed. To advocate for an entire restructuring of society may be ideologically appropriate but far-fetched from practicality. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of homelessness is essential in order to address this phenomenon. It is clear that more generous welfare policies are needed in order to provide individuals with assistance; increased federal expenditure on housing is required along with job and skills training for individuals currently homeless. Additionally, the creation and expansion of social service agencies that offers residence to the homeless is necessary. However, it is indispensable that these agencies cater to specific categories of homeless persons (i.e. substance abusers, mentally-ill, unemployed) instead of housing multiple types of homeless individuals together as each person has special needs and requirements. It is only through more ardent liberal approaches that we will eventually work to eradicate vagrancy.

References

Marx, K. (2004). Class conflict and law. In J. Jacoby (Ed.), Classics of criminology

 (pp.124-130). Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.

Meanwell, E. (2012). Experiencing homelessness: A review of recent literature.

Sociology Compass, 6 (1), 72-85.

Wolch, J.R., Dear, M., & Akita, A. (1988). Explaining homelessness. Journal of the

American Planning Association, 54 (4), 443-453.

Photo courtesy: Official Site of the City of Dayton, Ohio

Editor’s note: This post has been printed with permission of the author.

By Dr. Jamie Longazel

We should certainly applaud Dayton’s willingness to embrace immigrants and refugees, especially at a time when many cities and states are passing sweeping anti-immigrant legislation. Yet for this countertrend to generate meaningful social change, it must be more than a redevelopment ploy. What we need is the formation of class-based alliances that are unwilling to submit to anti-immigrant scare tactics and eager to challenge the economic processes that have distressed these communities in the first place.

My position stems from research I conducted in Hazleton, Pa. — a city much like Dayton that is well past its economic prime, with its share of abandoned buildings and empty storefronts. In 2006, Hazleton passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA), one of the first in an eventual wave of state- and local-level legislation that includes Arizona’s SB1070 and Alabama’s HB56. Supporters touted it as a means to root out undocumented immigrants and the “social ills” that supposedly accompany them.

Jamie Longazel is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Dayton and was previously a Doctoral Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. His research interests are in the areas of race, law, and inequality, and his recent work has appeared in the Chicana/o-Latina/o Law Review, Race & Justice, and the Journal of Criminal Justice. He is currently working on a book manuscript from the ethnographic study he conducted on the community politics surrounding Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s passage of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA).

However, fines often prompt behaviors different from what those trying to mould behavior (e.g., governments or organizations) intend. Many studies have shown that the death penalty/prison is not a deterrent to violent crime (see here). In a study of a daycare where several parents repeatedly picked up their children late from school, researchers found that the imposition of a fine for late pick-ups actually increased the number of parents picking up their children late. Additionally, when the fine was lifted, the behavioral change remained such that more parents still picked up their children late. Gneezy and Rustichini, the authors of the study, argue that parents saw the fine as a cost, which they were willing to pay, when previously there was a moral, not a financial, meaning to picking up children late.

An alternative approach to behavioral change that has received plenty of attention in the last several years is described by the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and the legal scholar Cass Sunstein in their 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. In it, Thaler and Sunstein argue, using copious evidence from cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, that our cognitive architecture creates systematic biases in decision making that cause problems in certain domains. Because we often rely on heuristics deriving from automatic processing of information (as opposed to deliberative processing, see Daniel Kahneman’s new book for far more details about this), we often err especially in domains of logic and statistics.

Enter: choice architects and their nudging solutions.  Thaler and Sunstein argue that, however informal the policy, and at whatever level it is enacted, the individuals who design program or policies—choice architects—can exert a good deal of influence over the kinds of decisions others make through “nudges.” These nudges are supposed to a) recognize common decision making errors and b) alter the decision making context in a way that acknowledges those biases. A nudge, for Thaler and Sunstein, is any aspect of design that “alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives” (p. 6). (This caveat, that nudges to not shut off any behavioral options, allows Thaler and Sunstein to call their approach one of libertarian paternalism, whereby freedom of individual choice is preserved (the libertarian part) and  choices are influenced such that the “choosers are better off,” according to their own standards (the paternalism part). So, a woman who works in a school cafeteria who recognizes that students’ food choices are determined by the order and arrangement of the types of foods, and who changes the arrangement in a way that promotes more healthy eating behaviors is a choice architect employing a nudge toward a particular goal. And Sunstein, as the current administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, seeks to build these insights about human cognition into a variety of policies.

In a recent Sociology Compass article, Evan Selinger and Kyle Whyte, both professors of philosophy, raise a number of nudge issues. First, they suggest, many of the examples often cited as nudges do not actually meet the criteria Thaler and Sunstein set for nudges, and they call these “mistaken nudges.” One of Thaler and Sunstein’s main points is that that nudges are modifications that do not change people’s financial incentives, and do not add new costs to situations. But, Selinger and Whyte argue, many of the programs that are touted as nudging behavior fail to meet this criterion. They often change financial incentives, and expect individuals’ behavior to fall in line with those incentives (often referred to as “acting rationally”), in much the same paradigm of penalties and fines. As an example, Selinger and Whyte argue that the Toxic Release Inventory, which provides information about how much companies pollute, should not be considered a nudge, since it actually increases the costs to companies of polluting. In general, Selinger and Whyte note, there is some confusion about what constitutes a genuine nudge, as defined by Thaler and Sunstein.

In addition to issues of definition, Selinger and Whyte review the ethical concerns other scholars have raised concerning nudges. Do nudges really preserve individual choice? Might they make use morally lazy, by letting us rely on the infrastructure set up by others for our decisions? Will the widespread use of nudges lead to less practical wisdom, a devalued public sphere, and a more simplified, less rich, public life? Others make a slippery slope argument that introducing behavioral changes through interventions might lead people to accept more definitive control from government in their lives. The philosopher Thomas Nagel has argues that some biases might actually derive from something that is otherwise socially useful, so it is worth figuring out which biases should be “worked with,” and which should be challenged. Some of these concerns seem overstated, and perhaps rely on an overly abstracted concept of nudges, and an imagined future that seems unlikely to occur.

The most important and significant criticism, from my perspective, is that choice architects get to choose which values and preferences they promote with nudges. Here, it seems useful to distinguish between nudges that are intended to alter significant, lifestyle behaviors in a way that requires privileging a goal (e.g., getting people to stop smoking), and nudges that intend to make the small-scale behaviors individuals are already compelled to do more efficient (e.g., getting people to pay their fines in a more efficient manner or to complete their tax forms correctly). Some nudges change behavior in some direction or towards some end, while other nudges adjust existing policy to take into account how individuals often behave. In the latter case, few would fault the government for trying to improve compliance on tax forms, given that tax collecting is a basic task of the state. Using nudges to improve the efficiency and the rates of compliance for basic governmental tasks seems far less ethically problematic than using nudges towards ends about which people disagree.

A final concern of Selinger and Whyte is practical: they argue that Thaler and Sunstein fail to provide an adequate roadmap for implementing nudges, a process which has the potential to be very complicated. In particular, Selinger and Whyte point out that the meaning individuals attach to different nudges might vary dramatically, which has implications both for perpetuating potentially problematic associations (e.g., including a male voice in German cars to inform drivers when they are speeding, as drivers did not respond to female voices), and for the effect of nudges in different situations and populations. It is certainly important to understand variation in how individuals assign meaning to nudges; the upshot seems to be that policymakers and choice architects must fully understand the social context in which they are applying nudges, which likely requires a good deal of groundwork and pretesting before particular nudges are deployed.

What the critics of policies that are designed to address the cognitive underpinnings of decision making might overlook is that most policies currently “nudge” us in some direction simply by virtue of building in default choices (e.g., in the case of organ donation), and assuming particular models of decision making and decision makers in policies. If our behavior is currently being shaped by policies and programs, independent of the intentional designs of others but just based on long-existing structures, is that a violation of democratic principles? We might ask what features of organizational structures and arrangements act as nudges for behavior, independent of the intentions of others to guide our behaviors in such ways.

 ”Is there a Right Way to Nudge? The Practice and Ethics of Choice Architecture.” Evan Selinger and Kyle Whyte. Sociology Compass, 2011.

“There are no classes in America. We’re a country that don’t allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. Maybe middle income people.”

Once again, it’s tempting to dismiss these statements as bizarre gaffes perhaps brought on by a grueling campaign season.  However, I have convinced myself that there are no “bad” political soundbytes.  Partly because shouting “what are you insane?!?!?” at my computer is apparently frowned upon at my local Starbucks, but also because such comments often provide a useful starting point to discuss a complex phenomenon like class.

As I and most professors tell our students, “there are no stupid questions.”   Since there is little benefit in simply telling students they are wrong, we look first at what is accurate or least important about even the most seemingly disconnected question or inaccurate representation of society.  I have adopted the same attitude toward “talking points” and “gaffes.”  Of course, students are often seeking further explanation, while politicians are not exactly asking for my input.  But, my treatment of these statements, rather than their intent, is what I can control.  So I will answer Rick Santorum in this fashion.

So, yes, Mr. Santorum, you are correct that if we use something like income quintiles, the people that fall within those boundaries are not exactly in a class as we usually conceptualize it – a group of people with some shared economic situations and corresponding economic interests.  Falling within the boundaries of the 2^nd and 4^th income quintile does not mean that one has the same interests as everyone else within those borders and different or conflicting interests with those in the 1^st or 5^th quintile.  For example, if someone moves from one quintile to the one directly above it their economic interests are unlikely to change.  Furthermore, economic interests are not discernible from income only.

First, the kind of income matters.  As you may know, the tax rate on unearned income (like capital gains or dividends) is much lower than on earned income from wages.  While those with more income likely have a larger share of their income coming from things like capital gains, the correlation is, of course, not perfect.  Which leads to a second point: economic interests have a lot to do with economic capital (or wealth accumulated overtime).

When we avoid assigning fixed “titles” like class based solely on one measure we can address the role of wealth and, for example, consider the enormous racial wealth gap.  The median wealth of white households is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households.  In other words, middle-income whites and middle-income blacks are not similarly situated in our class structure.

We should also keep in mind, as you imply, that social class is not an individual attribute.  Instead, as Karl Marx pointed out each economic order creates a class structure.  In other words, the meaning and effect of class as well as the very existence of some classes is a result of a social order.  Since we don’t assign titles in this country, and since we are a democracy, we have the freedom to alter the class structure and even tinker with the effects of social class without overturning an entire economic order.

For example, the rising costs of college and the corresponding cuts to education and/or abandonment of students to scam (or to be politically correct: “for-profit”) colleges disproportionately impacts the asset poor, who could be middle-income people.  However, as racial minorities are disproportionately represented among the asset poor such policies will have a more negative impact on blacks than whites.   If, on the other hand, college were fully publically-funded, the wealth gap would be less consequential in terms of educational opportunity.  As Mr. Santorum has helpfully pointed out, moving beyond income, we can see that class is complex, but we must be careful not to ignore class simply because we cannot reduce it to a single measure nor employ class to explain all social outcomes.

Further Reading:

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Class Identification in Review: Past Perspectives and Future Directions by Patrick Archer and Ryan Orr

Class Identification in Review: Past Perspectives and Future Directions by Patrick Archer and Ryan Orr

Conflating Apples and Oranges: Understanding Modern Forms of Racism by W. Carson Byrd

The proposed bill also requires that schools estimate the effect of educating students who are not citizens of the United States on the quality of education received by students who are citizens. Additionally, a provision of the bill permits law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of persons at a stop without probable cause and provides permission to the state to create a misdemeanor classification for immigrants who are unable to produce identification at the time of a stop.

The proposal of the bill is an invidious attempt at encroaching on the rights of immigrant children in public schools, and in a parallel vein, has deleterious significances for immigrant families. The implication of this bill is clear; it will result in the unnecessary harassment of immigrant children, subjecting them to unequal treatment and creating a classification doctrine that would lead to discrimination and fear amongst this population. The bill proposal also has the potential to subject documented students to arbitrary searches, investigations, and harassment by school officials. This is a plausible prediction, being that there is not an ideal avenue of determining a student’s immigration status whereby only illegal immigrant students are quarantined for document verification. Additionally, the same logic is applied to stop searches; even though law enforcement officers have a wide discretion while conducting stops and investigations, one cannot evade the inevitable occurrence of racial profiling as a result of an officer capriciously requesting persons to produce their immigration documents. I infer the possibility of racial profiling, as the determination of an officer to check a person’s immigration documents has to be based on a rationale—and that rationale will more than likely rest on the outward characteristics of that individual.

The only means of circumventing racial profiling would be for officers to request document verification of all persons they stop, and such an assumptions lies on tenuous reasoning and preposterousness. Hence, the Missouri bill proposal signifies that an officer may stop and search an individual based on his or her observed race and ethnicity— and the primary target of this profiling would be Hispanics; as of 2009, over 200,000 Hispanics reside in Missouri (PEW Hispanic Center, 2009). It is here that the 14th Amendment becomes crucial, as if this bill succeeds, this group and other immigrant populations will encounter discriminatory treatment by law enforcement officials. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law for all persons within their jurisdiction. Therefore, discriminatory targeting of undocumented students and/or immigrant persons would infringe on an individual’s 14th Amendment rights to equality.

There have been other similar bill proposals that have been raised in other states, particularly Arizona, Texas, and Alabama, and the US Department of Justice has already challenged some of these bills’ constitutionality. The most prominent example of an overturn of a similar bill is in the case of Plyer v Doe (1982), in which the majority opinion ruled that undocumented immigrant students must be allowed a public education (from kindergarten through 12th grades) equal to US citizens and permanent residents. This issue was brought to court when the state of Texas required local school districts to prohibit access to education to undocumented children and to withhold state funding to children not legally admitted in the United States. This landmark case remains precedent and has vital significance for the assurance of equal rights to immigrant children by prohibiting certain school practices that would engender discrimination.
Being that any decisions made by the SCOTUS become the supreme law of the land, the Missouri bill proposal, if it comes to fruition, cannot bar access of education to illegal children. However, the state can inject despondency and discomfort in the lives of these children through certain legislations that would weaken their rights without blatantly violating the Plyer decision. If the Missouri bill proposal takes effect, undocumented students and their parents would encounter fear. Being that at least one of these children’s parents may be undocumented, lack of knowledge of U.S. laws would possibly cause parents to suspend their children’s education (pulling them out of school), out of fear of these parents being prosecuted due to their status.

The effect of this is consequential, as education plays a vital role in human capital and largely determines one’s career attainment and earning potential. According to Passel and Cohn (2009), Senior Demographers at the PEW Hispanic Center, out of the 11.9 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, 76% are of Hispanic origin, and roughly 6.8 million documented and undocumented immigrant students are enrolled in elementary and high schools. Being that such a sizeable portion of immigrant children are in the nation’s school system, care should be taken in ensuring equal access of education to these children without creating any situation that would infringe on their rights, single them out, or make it unbearable for any child to remain in school. It is clear by statistical evidence that immigrant children have a higher rate of ending high school prematurely than native born children. For example, immigrant Latinos are more likely to drop out of school than native born Latinos 52% in comparison to 25% respectively (PEW Hispanic Center, 2010). Because these immigrant children are already at a high risk of prematurely ending their school career; it is nonsensical to create any further constitutional restraints that would impede or affect their educational success, as the effects of doing has dire consequences for employment prospects and criminal engagement. For example, studies, including Lochner and Moretti (2001) have repeatedly demonstrated the effect of education on crime. From their study of prison inmates, arrest data, and self-reports, the authors have asserted that high school graduation and arrest rates are negatively correlated; likewise, participation in criminal activity is positively correlated with high school dropout rates.

Therefore, being that education has an impact on future engagement in crime and employment opportunities, the possible effects of the Missouri bill proposal would serve to injure undocumented students’ educational attainments and future prospects of social mobility. If the Missouri bill proposal (if enacted) causes even one child to be removed from the school setting, the suspension of that child’s education is “one child too much”. Senator Kraus needs to refocus his energy on ways to improve the education of children in the Missouri school districts instead of lobbying for a proposal that would achieve the opposite of what the SCOTUS intended and the Constitution guaranteed.

References
Hancock, J. (2012, January 12). Proposal would require missouri schools to verify
students’ immigration status. The Kansas City Star. Retrived from http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/12/3366206/proposal-would-require-missouri.html

Plyer v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982).

Passel, J.S., & Cohn, D. (2009). A portrait of unauthorized immigrants in the united states. PEW Hispanic Center.

Fry, R. (2010). Hispanics, high school drop outs and the GED. PEW Hispanic Center.

Lochner, L., & Moretti E. (2001). The effect of education on crime: Evidence from prison inmates, arrests, and self-reports. [No. 8605]. NBER Working Paper Series

I ended up calling the police. Within minutes an officer responded to the scene and issued a citation to the couple that had left their dog in the car. Having two older sisters that are veterinarians, I realized that the animal, while not locked in the automobile for too long, may have suffered from minor heat stroke and should probably have been taken to the vet as a precautionary measure. The dog’s owners, however, merely cracked open the window and went back into the gym to resume their exercise routines.

Such treatment of pets, and animals more generally, seems far too common; and most likely, this dog’s owners probably did not think their actions equated to animal abuse any more than Archie Bunker thought that his routine slurs were racist. In many ways, this entire situation speaks to the larger question of whether animals actually have rights. Lyle Munro’s recent examination of the animal rights movement “in theory and practice” speaks to the fact that our understanding of the issue is empirically poor. In the article, he recommends a greater working partnership between research scholars and animal activists.

As social scientists, we would undoubtedly benefit from a greater empirical understanding of the animal rights movement, although the underlying theoretical conundrum will persist: Do animals actually have rights? Perhaps Joel Best put it best when he once told me that the animal rights movement will never truly succeed because too many people like hamburgers. We do, after all, slaughter a wide variety of animals for a whole host of reasons: consumption, material goods, overpopulation, and the list could go on. Presumably if given their choice, these animals would have passed on their contributions to human survival and happiness. On a smaller scale, many pet owners like myself effectively keep their animals as captives of sorts, even if mine seem content with their full bellies and excessive sleeping. In my own research on zoophilia online communities (see Maratea and Kavanaugh for how this relates to new directives in deviance research), I found that many zoophiles posted statements that mainstream animal lovers like myself actually violate animals’ rights if we support the “Bob Barker approach” to spaying and neutering, and, more importantly, if we refuse to satisfy the sexual needs of our beloved animal partners. Like you (presumably), I scoff at such a ridiculous notion. Yet, this example, however distasteful, speaks to the difficulty in uniformly defining whether animals have rights (which they cannot possibly comprehend).

Most animal lovers will probably agree – to varying degrees – that we should protect animal welfare. Rights, however, are a tricky concept; they are purely human constructs that are applied in an entirely subjective manner. For example, the idea of universal human rights might exist on paper, but has certainly never been achieved in practice. How then, does a species that cannot objectively respect the rights of other human beings reconcile whether life forms that are largely considered inferior are endowed with similar innate rights?

Additional Readings:

The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature by Lyle Munro

Screwing the Pooch: Legitimizing Accounts in a Zoophilia Online Community by R.J .Maratea

Deviant Identity in Online Contexts: New Directives in the Study of a Classic Concept by R.J. Maratea and Philip R. Kavanaugh

Photo courtesy The Fairfield Bay Animal Protection League (www.ffbanimalshelter.org)

found at http://www.impactlab.net/2011/09/08/many-americans-falling-out-of-the-middle-class/

“Somebody who’s fallen from the middle class to poverty, in my opinion is still middle class.”  Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate, made this statement on a talk show a few weeks ago.   Bloggers ridiculed the comment as nonsensical.  I admit I too was tempted to just call Romney an idiot (again) and move on.  But, as I’ve been watching politicians in a society of growing inequality and high unemployment struggle with the concept of class while desperately trying not to alienate any potential voters, I’ve begun to see these comments as teachable moments regarding class.  Here I will offer some possibilities of Romney’s meaning and more importantly employ this statement to discuss the concept of class.

A generous reading of Romney’s quote is that people whose incomes recently fell below the poverty line, still retained middle-class knowledge and credentials (i.e. cultural capital) and social connections (i.e. social capital) even though their economic capital likely declined.  The durability of class status remains an important feature of America’s class structure.  Capital (or resources we can employ to cushion hard times and gain advantages and opportunities) often goes unmentioned when poverty is calculated solely by income.  Long ago, Max Weber highlighted these aspects of social class to broaden the concept beyond what he viewed as a limited materialist perspective.

Of course, anyone watching the Republican primary might view the above reading as absurdly generous.  Instead, the more likely underlying concept is the time-honored tradition of separating the deserving poor from the undeserving poor.  Casting “the poor” as deviant serves to legitimize a system of inequality wherein most politicians find themselves concentrated at the top.  As Karl Marx once noted, every economic order produces legitimizing ideologies.  Meritocracy, a key aspect of capitalist ideology, equates a structural position, like class, with individual morality.  In this way, Romney’s statement posits that middle-class is an individual moral attribute and not a feature of a social system.

As the Republican debates demonstrate, politicians struggle when addressing class beyond vague allusions to the great middle-class.  However, casting the poor as undeserving is an increasingly risk-free strategy for politicians as few self-identified poor people vote and the poor are by no means organized.  On the other hand, the possibility of offending people – some of who are poor or were poor or know someone who is poor or liked a fictional movie character whom was poor and/or could imagine a poor person they might not despise – provokes caution among politicians.  As a result, politicians are careful to point to a category of deserving poor.  Providing a loop hole for some people in poverty adds to the durability of the “undeserving poor.”

Class analysis is crucial to understanding the economy and the role of politics in conditioning economic outcomes from differently situated persons.  Politicians do our nation a service when they remind Americans that income is not the sole measure of social class and may do a poor job of predicting the relative benefit/cost of a specific tax measure, spending proposal, or shift in regulations.  At the same time, class is not an individual attribute, it is not freely chosen by sheer will power and cannot be altered by an improved attitude.

In a recent article, Archer and Orr (2011) note, “…class and collective identification should be treated as separate theoretical concepts.”  Such a theoretical separation allows us to understand how subjective class identification and an academic analysis of class (i.e. one based on empirical data and tested causal models) may explain different kinds of outcomes – like the effect of a political campaign message on the one hand, and the effect of a tax cut on the other.  Furthermore, this separation allows us to consider how different correlations between the two lead to different political environments.  For example, if anyone can claim middle-class status is the society more likely to expect and demand a middle-class lifestyle?  Would our politics benefit from an acknowledgement that the formerly middle-class or those with middle-class cultural and social capital have different interests than the poor?  For example, debt forgiveness of student loans might benefit large portions of the recently “fallen into poverty” class while having little effect on those who have lived in poverty their entire lives.  Finally, we might consider how changing the importance of family wealth, by eliminated college tuition for example, might not simply alter the class structure and class interests but change the importance of social class and self-identifications.

Class Identification in Review: Past Perspectives and Future Directions by Patrick Archer and Ryan Orr

Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension

The course was an introduction to Public Health. Public Health is the work of protecting and improving the health of communities through education, research, and communication. Sociologists, demographers, and legal scholars, as well as public health scholars and clinical care providers, have documented myriad ways in which race and ethnicity shape communities and their health – influencing at the very least where people live and thus the schools and jobs they have access to, the distances they have to travel to get to their jobs and schools, and the means by which they travel there. Race and ethnicity are fundamental to the study of the health of communities. But somehow Allie didn’t see the connection.

Allie had the transcript of a superstar. She’d aced every course she’d taken in college and most every course prior to it. And many of those courses explicitly stated as a primary course objective that students would improve their critical thinking capacities. Allie’s grades would suggest that she’d unequivocally excelled at this; her comments indicate something more ambiguous about her success. They indicate to me that the “critical thinking” valued by the institutions in which a White, privileged student like Allie had excelled might be leaving students to flounder when it comes to thinking critically about race, ethnicity, and the ways in which privileges and oppressions have been – and continue to be – systematically linked to race and ethnicity. For Allie, this lack of support led to a vicious loop: she saw race and ethnicity as having nothing to do with her (Whiteness apparently did not count as race or ethnicity); as mattering only when fulfilling some institutional requirement; and as unworthy of her learning energies unless she was fulfilling such requirements, upon completion of which, she could return to not thinking of race and ethnicity at all.

Sociologists like Eduardo Bonilla Silva see students like Allie the norm among college students who are White and economically well-off: they’ve learned, even been encouraged, to minimize – and deny – the ways in which race shapes social relationships, and the ways in which the blatant racism of the past relates to deeply embedded and ongoing injustices in the present. Such dangerous misunderstandings are evident now in Tucson, Arizona, where the Tucson Unified School District has moved to eliminate its Mexican American studies curriculum and to ban books the discuss the history of the Americas from the perspective of the peoples who have lived on the land prior to European and European-American conquests. Arizona School Superintendent John Huppenthal argues that this ban was a necessary move because the program “promotes resentment.” But what about the resentment of White, privileged students like Allie – the resentment of having to think about, talk about, reflect on systemic inequities by which they have benefited? Allie’s “mainstream” course of study promoted her resentment of her public health course. So do we ban Allie’s honors program, then? Do we ban the high-level honors curricula she followed in high school?

Education scholar and educator Ernest Morrell has described critical thinking as thought and/or inquiry that fosters individual or social transformation (2009:29). A ban transforms nothing, relying instead on binary oppositional terms and explanations. Dangerous and unjust as a ban may be, however, it makes the binary oppositional logic on which it operates apparent. In Allie’s case, her mainstream curriculum allowed that thinking to operate silently. So if institutions like Allie’s really want to “honor” students, shouldn’t they support – actively and explicitly and thoroughly – the voices and perspectives that students need to engage them in the conversations that foster critical thinking?

In 2010, MSNBC published an article written by Alex Johnson entitled “Some schools rethink bans on cell phones: Bans don’t work, so administrators explore using mobile devices”. In the report, Johnson notes that 100 plus students were suspended – not for cheating, smoking, or bullying – but for having cell phones. While presented here as merely an anecdote, there can little doubt that the use of cell phones, and mobile technology more generally, is an issue that has caught the attention of school administrators across the nation. Within the article, Brian Begley, principal of Millard North High School, illustratively notes: “Cell phones aren’t going away.” As mobile devices become increasingly marketed to today’s youth and as their functionality blurs with that of computers, the issue of wireless, new media technology within high schools will reshape school operations.

The article cites that although 69 percent of American high schools have placed a ban on cell phones, 63% of student respondents nonetheless reported using them on campus. Recognizing that simply banning the devices does little to discourage their usage, Johnson notes that “a growing number of school districts are exploring other ways to shut them down.” Rather than employing suspension as a punishment, certain schools have resulted to more invasive forms of social control,  including “confiscating phones…keeping them for 30 days and searching them for evidence of cheating, pornography or other ‘illicit activities.’ If such evidence is found, it’s turned over to the sheriff’s office”.

Whilst illustrating both the complications for banning cell phones and their potential applicability within schools, the issue of cell phones points to a larger development.  Scholars have recently begun to document how two large-scale trends are transforming the socialization of youth within school settings. The first stems from a late-modern preoccupation with safety and security (see Garland, 1996, 2000; Simon, 2007; Foucault, 1977). Whether accelerated by internal events such as school shootings, or external factors like reported rates of youth violence, it is clear that crime has now become a chief organizing principle shaping school discipline. Consequently, issues such as cell phone use are caught in the proverbial cross-hairs and mobilized against in the name of promoting school safety.

Today, the distinction between school discipline and criminal punishment has become less clear given the influx of criminal justice practices within schools (Kupchik, 2010). This is evidenced, within this article, by schools incorporating more invasive forms of monitoring that sometimes include the use of law enforcement. Although zero tolerance policies, metal detectors, police officers, surveillance cameras, drug dogs, and high-tech security systems signify measures of formal social control generally associated with the criminal justice system, they have increasingly become part of the school’s natural environment. The widespread adoption of rigid crime control practices and policies illustrates the growing legitimacy of criminal justice to manage and control youth in school settings.

The other trend highlights the celebratory nature of late-capitalism. A growing number of scholars have argued that the power of the commercial market to reconfigure the social world can no longer be ignored (see Hayward, 2004; Baudrillard, 1998; Campbell; 2005; Featherstone, 2007). Hayward (2004) for instance, notes that it is crucial to realize the role of consumer culture to fully understand contemporary society (see also Lury, 1996; Slater, 1997; Miles, 1998). Given the markets increased societal prominence within late-modern society, its capacity to influence youth behavior has become too great to dismiss.

While safety and security lie at the heart of societal needs, there are also transgressive behaviors backed by the expanding marketplace – including cell phones and their continued use. Those actions deemed transgressive by school policies are now commodified and marketed within the consumer culture to grip the subjective and emotional widespread appeal of youth (see Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2008; Presdee, 2000). Marginal behavior – now a commodity – is tirelessly marketed to school youth as they engage those behaviors that are often barred by school/state control.

While the tendency of punishment and control seem to contradict the leanings of the late-capital market (as noted above), perhaps it is worth exploring the nexus between the two. Specifically, begging an examination of how the goals of the state and the market – while apparently contradictory – combine to reproduce behaviors which conform to the social conditions of late-modernity.

Read: “Beyond Fear: Sociological Perspectives on the Criminalization of School Discipline“, in The Sociological Forum.

Read: “Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear“. By Aaron Kupchik, published by NYU Press (2010).

In my last post I reviewed some of these types of images of anarchism, and suggested that anarchism actually provides an interesting opportunity for analysis in terms of its history as a social movement, its trajectory as a political philosophy, and its alternative approach to social order. I use social order to mean the system that governs relations between people and their actions in groups, including how economic exchange takes place, how norms develop, and how conflicts are resolved. The elements of the system may be formal—for example, specific organizations or law— or informal—like patterns of interaction and expectation for interaction. For many anarchists (though again, there is enormous diversity in the philosophy and tactics behind protests labeled as anarchist), anarchism is not about the absence of social order, but about establishing social order that is not founded on coercion and hierarchy; anarchists’ opposition to an authoritative state derives from this principle. An alternative is a social order based on “customs, habits and usages” among all members.

Anarchist protesters have been a part of many of the major social movements in modern European history, from the 1848 French Revolution to the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War. Organizations based on anarcho-syndicalism, which proposes an economic and social system democratically governed by workers, proved influential in Central and South America in the early 20th century. The history of anarchist thought, as distinguished from social movements based on anarchist principles and tactics, is also rich and varied. For example, some have argued that the ancient Chinese school of thought of Taoism is anarchist in nature, in that it argues that there should be no lords or subjects; others saw Greek philosopher Zeno’s work to be anarchist, as he argued that there was no need for states.

In The Sociology of Philosophies (a shorter version of the tome is here), which surveys the social conditions around many of the worlds’ great philosophical traditions, Randall Collins makes a number of points about the when and where schools of philosophy emerge, and the form in which philosophical thought takes. Far from being the product of brilliant, isolated, individual efforts, major philosophical works were clustered in the same time period, within a small number of physical spaces, and around social ties, often arranged as chains of teachers and students. Indeed, Collins argues, the social relations between schools of thought—how contentious or harmonious relations were—influenced the degree to which the philosophy produced was abstract or concrete. Schools of thought relied on the organizational structure—for example, the strength of patronage ties—supporting the people carrying out philosophical work. The history of anarchist thought might be read in light of Collins’ observations as well; a cursory review suggests a great degree of temporal and spatial clustering; from the emergence of Christian anarchism through Europe during the Middle Ages to Enlightenment versions of anarchism as proposed by William Godwin to French anarchist thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and others who were involved in the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune. (Of course, actually examining whether the schools and strands of anarchist thought developed as Collins’ describes philosophies in general would require a much more in-depth knowledge of the history of anarchism than I have, but Collins’ provides an entry point for thinking about anarchist thought.)

A major criticism of anarchism is that it seems totally unserviceable in light of what we know about how humans create groups and maintain order. Rosabeth Moss Kanter describes one possible result that “Though communes may remove the repressive control of distant, impersonal institutions, they replace it with the control of the intimate, face-to-face group of peers, which is perhaps a more benign kind of coercion, but coercion nonetheless.” However, she argues, though some social order is required, these types of groups attempt to carry out creating and enforcing order in as equitable way as possible.

A number of researchers have pursued studies of social order within anarchists communities—how social order actually occurs. Randall Amster uses examples from utopian experiments, indigenous cultures, and the group, Rainbow Family of the Living Light, and finds evidence that anarchist communities punish members, but are more likely to do so using restorative or restitutive justice. The bottom line seems to be that doing anarchism right is very difficult, and requires a lot of effort and energy from all participants, but there are historical and current examples where it succeeded, including the community in Madagascar that David Graeber, who has been closely involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests, studied for his doctoral dissertation.

For more resources on the history of anarchist social movements and philosophical thought, see Anarchy Archives, which also includes a number of critiques of anarchism, and comparisons between anarchism with socialism.

Photo by Joseph Morris

Congratulations! You did it. You got into college! Maybe you’re going to Princeton, Michigan, Duke, Berkeley, Stanford, or another of the best research universities in the world. Or perhaps you’re bound for a great liberal arts college like Swarthmore, Davidson, Pomona, or Kenyon Maybe it’s a private college in New England or the flagship campus of your state university system. That is wonderful, and I’m sure, well deserved. You’ve worked hard the past few years, building an amazing record of academic achievements, community service, and activities that have kept you busy and challenged. You sweated through exams like the SAT, filled out countless applications and forms, and waited in agony to get word from your dream schools. And now you’re in. (p. 1)

Indeed these lines indicate how Bader envisions his readers: traditional college-aged students who will be residing on campus, and who have the resources to ensure that no matter what happens, “[they] will be fine” (p.137).
Bader breaks down the eleven habits he recommends, devoting a chapter for each. Six of the eleven habits –1, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9—deal with courses of study and careers, generally encouraging students to decouple the former from the latter. Habit One, “Focus on Learning, Not on Grades,” urges students to place their GPA concerns on the backburner and strive instead to become a “learned person.” Bader cautions students that although their colleges have already taken steps to define what it means to be a “learned person” for them through core requirements, students must work to craft their own definitions (p. 26) and that in doing so, grades will become the “byproduct of their passion for learning” (p. 30). Habit Four, “Approach the Curriculum Like a Great Feast,” advises students to “sampl[e] [their] way to success” (p. 79), but pays little attention to dissonance this suggestion may bring to the many students who feel pressure to preserve tuition dollars for courses that will cultivate skills that translate into incomes for themselves and their families. In place of such discussion, Bader offers Habit Five, “Understand that Majors and Careers are not the Same Thing.” College students and their parents are prone to “invent the connection to better justify the expense and effort of going to college at all” (p. 97).
Habit Six proposes a distinction between working hard and working smart. Working smart, Bader suggests, entails understanding how teaching and learning are structured in college: lectures provide efficient delivery of material, and if students are to avoid being “court reporters” then they will need to take an active role in the lecture, putting the lecturer’s content into a conversation with their own thoughts (p. 125). Such private conversations will serve students well when they apply for admission to graduate or professional schools, as laid out in Habit Seven. Honesty and individuality, Bader argues, are the traits that facilitate the subject mastery and sense of self that graduate schools desire in their students (p. 140). Bader sticks to this idea of individualism in Habit Nine, “When You Are Failing, Understand Why.” He examines “four broad reasons for academic struggles”: lack of motivation, poor time management, weak study skills and talent, poor mental and physical health (p. 177). What Bader does not examine is a key commonality among these four reasons – that they are all problems attributable to individuals rather than issues stemming from systemic problems that students might experience as members of social groups (e.g. as first-generation college students, as children of working class parents, as students of color, etc.).
Habit Two, “Build an Adult Relationship with Your Parents,” makes evident many of the assumptions that are just as present, but perhaps not as explicit, through the rest of the book. Bader recounts difficulties students with “helicopter parents” – for instance, the parents who flew in from Hawaii to speak with him about their son’s progress twice in two weeks – but he does not recognize that many parents do not feel entitled to make such demands on faculty and administration, and that consequently their students might be less likely to have close contact with faculty and administrators. Furthermore, Bader does not consider the possibility that many students may already have “adult” relationships with their parents, having contributed to the family income and household management throughout their middle and high school years.
Much of Dean’s List presents college success from the perspective of privilege-as-norm. As few as one in four college students live on campus and study full time (Abramson 2011). When Bader advises students to “learn from diversity at home and abroad” (Habit 8), he does not consider the difficulties of studying abroad for students who have jobs outside of school. Indeed study abroad programs struggle to engage students of color, first generation college students, and students who have to work to pay their own tuition (e.g. Stuber 2011).While Bader and his colleagues offer important and helpful recommendations to students, they put the onus on students to conform to norms of privilege rather than opening up a conversation about success that really recognizes and appreciates where students are coming from.

References
Abramson, Larry. (2011). “In Tenn., A Possible Model for Higher Education.” National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2011/11/27/142759691/in-tenn-a-possible-model-for-higher-education
Moffatt, Michael. (1989). Coming of Age in New Jersey. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Nathan, Rebekah. (2005). My Freshman Year. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Stuber, Jenny. (2011). Inside the College Gates. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.