The male bathroom is a funny place. For those of you who’ve never been inside one, there are a set of unspoken rules that every man who enters is expected to follow. What’s strange is that despite the fact that breaking these rules can have consequences, no one ever teaches men the rules in any kind of formal way. In this post, Nathan Palmer fills this gap by teaching you the men’s room rules and exploring what these rules might be telling us about our culture.

There are rules people, RULES! That’s what I hear in my head whenever I am standing in front of a urinal and another man starts using the urinal next to me. I’m sorry, forgive me. I should have warned you that in this post we are going to talk about some real stuff. Today we are going to explore the unwritten, unspoken, but near universally known rules of using the male restroom. I am an expert in this area with a lifetime of experience. By following my simple 4 step plan I can guarantee that you will never again know the bitter sting of an “away game” bathroom snafu.

The Unspoken Mandatory Rules of the Men’s Restroom

1. No talking!
2. No eye contact.
3. Eyes on the prize. At the urinal never let your gaze drift over to your neighbor.
4. Maintain the buffer! Never use the urinal next to another man.

These are not my rules nor am I the only educator training the men of the world. For instance, the informative video below was created by my brother in the struggle Overman.

But, Seriously Though…

What are men so damn uptight about in the bathroom? Why is going pee so fraught with anxiety and danger? I’ve done some informal polling of the women in my life and it turns out there isn’t any high drama in the land without urinals. So what gives? As I’ll show you the male restroom is where the fragility of masculinity and homophobia collide.

Let’s start with the strange daintiness of being macho. As we’ve talked about before, many sociologists argue that masculinity is defined by it’s absence femininity and vulnerability. The problem is, everyone is vulnerable at times and all of us have both feminine and masculine qualities. So as Michael Kimmel argues, men live their lives hiding behind a mask (or a “Tough Guise”) of invulnerability. Many men spend a great deal of time and energy keeping up their front of invulnerability and that’s the problem. You simply can’t use the bathroom without exposing your vulnerability (ahem) and thus it is a perilous tightrope for men behind the mask to walk.

Next up, homophobia. Doesn’t a beat down for making eye contact (as the video suggests at 1:38) seem a bit insane? Except violence has long been used as a tool of gender policing. Gender policing is the idea that when males and females act in ways that aren’t masculine or feminine respectively, our peers act as cops and they punish gender norm violations. Sadly violence, ridicule, humiliation, and exclusion have been the tools of gender policing for too long. Furthermore, violence is often viewed as the most manly thing anyone can do. For men who feel their masculinity has been compromised by a violation of the “man law”, violence often seems like a means to restore their image as a macho, tough, manly man. In no way does this justify their despicable actions, but it might help us understand them better.

Also, why do we presume that if a gay man saw your exposed penis he would instantly want to have sex with you? Aren’t you confident? While I caution to speak on behalf of gay men, I think it’s safe to say that like all human beings we can see another nude body without turning into ravenous lust monsters. For those of us that aren’t sociopaths, sexual experiences with non-consenting partners is not desirable. The idea that gay men are sexual predators is arguably one of the oldest forms of homophobia.

Where Do These Rules Come From?

Like all social rules of behavior (what sociologists call norms) men’s room etiquette comes from the larger culture. That is, the culture outside the bathroom is reflected and recreated in the John. Our culture in the United States has issues with misogyny, homophobia, and male violence. By overreacting to bathroom etiquette violations we reinforce the idea that men must never show weakness and that heterosexual men must constantly be on the lookout for gay men or any male expression of femininity. I never thought I’d say this, but fellas maybe we can make the world a better place by taking it easy on one another while we are “taking a leak.”

Dig Deeper:

1. Think of some other common places that have unspoken rules that everyone knows. Describe the rules in detail. How do people learn these rules if they are unspoken?
2. Recently a teen in South Carolina was denied a driver’s license because he was wearing makeup and what the DMV deemed a feminine hairstyle. They accused the teen of wearing a disguise. After reading this article explain how this is an example of gender policing.
3. Are their rules in the women’s restroom? If you don’t have first hand experience in the women’s room, find a friend you trust and ask them. Compare the women’s rules with the men’s. What are the differences? What does this tell us about men, women, and society?
4. What other social rules govern men’s behaviors (outside the restroom)? Do these rules also reflect the fragility of masculinity, misogyny, and/or homophobia as discussed in this article?

I Believe That We Will Win! USA! USA! USA! With World Cup fever spreading across this country like wildfire and the 4th of July on Friday, it’s never been easier to feel patriotic. In this post, Nathan Palmer asks us to think about what it means to be a patriot and answers the strangely common question, “do sociologists hate America?”

Man I could watch that video all day long. The best part about watching the world cup at a bar is that (nearly) everyone is rooting for the same team. It’s us versus them and the “we’re all in this together” mindset can be intoxicating (not to mention the beers). On Friday we will celebrate the 4th of July and hopefully on Tuesday another World Cup win. If ever there was a week to feel patriotic and united, this is it.

Are Sociologists Patriots?

Having your patriotism questioned in public is one of the strangest things about being a sociology professor. I had only been teaching for a few months when I was floored by a student’s question. It was the first time I had heard the question, but it wouldn’t be the last. “You know what Professor Palmer? If you hate the United States so damn much, why don’t you just leave?” The words punched me in the gut. “What? I, um. That’s ridiculous,” I stammered.

I wanted to tell my class I love my country. I’ve never lived anywhere else. It has its problems, for sure, but this is the place where nearly all of the people I know and love live. The United States is my home and I am an American through and through. But instead of saying all of that I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and then moved on.

“Why do sociologists hate the United States?” I’ve fielded some variation of that question almost every year that I’ve taught. And now that I am experienced teacher I can understand why. Sociology as a discipline focuses a lot of attention on the inequalities and injustices of society. It’s easy to mistake being critical for hate and when we feel defensive it’s very easy to blow things out of proportion. From here it’s easy to feel that sociology as a discipline is unpatriotic, but this begs the question, what is patriotism in the first place?

A-mer-ica! Heck Yeah!

To some being a patriot means never doubting the greatness of or saying a negative word about your country. The political scientist Michael Parenti calls this superpatriotism. As Parenti summarizes on his website, “Superpatriots are those people who place national pride and American supremacy above every other public consideration, those who follow leaders uncritically, especially in their war policies abroad.”

Superpatriots have no tolerance for anyone who doesn’t believe the United States is the greatest country that has ever existed. Pointing out the social problems we face in the U.S. is a form of soft treason in their eyes. This mentality is encapsulated in the famous words of president George W. Bush, “you are either with us or against us.” I love this quote because it simultaneously illustrates the mindset behind superpatriotism and the dichotomous thinking superpatriotism is built upon.

You’re Either a Dichotomous Thinker or You’re Not

A dichotomy is an either or situation. For instance a light switch is dichotomous (lights on or lights off). Heads or tails? Up or down? Good or bad? All of these are examples of dichotomies. The problem is that for the most part life is more complex than simple either or situations. For instance, anyone you would call a “bad person” probably has redeeming qualities or has at some point done “good deeds”. In this way, dichotomies can be thought of as a mental shortcut.

The educational psychologist William G. Perry argued that viewing the world through the lens of dichotomies (what he called dualistic thinking) was the lowest form of intellectual development. Over time as we develop intellectually we recognize the diversity and complexity of the real world. We learn “the truth” is something that even experts disagree on. We step into a world of uncertainty and learn how to find evidence and evaluate it. Part of growing up is intellectually evolving out of a dualistic mindset.

Have you ever thought about why Sociology 101 is often required for students of business, medicine, the arts, etc.? One of the reasons is that to really learn sociology you have to simultaneously see the social world on multiple levels and from multiple points of view. Soc 101 is sort of an intellectual bootcamp. We make it hard (if not impossible) to remain comfortable in a dualistic mindset. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why students might think that sociologists hate the United States. To the dualistic mind you can either be an unquestioning patriot or a treasonous country hater.

Do Sociologists Hate America?

I can’t speak for everyone in the discipline, but for the most part, sociologists do not hate the United States. Sociology shines a light on the inequalities and injustices of society not out of hate, but out of a desire to make the world a better place. Personally, I think of my country like I think of my family. I love them deeply, but know that they have problems (every family/nation does). Sociologists want to work to make this country a better place and in the end what can be more patriotic than that?

Dig Deeper:

1. In your own words define what it means to be a patriot?
2. What do you think, can we be critical of our home country and still be a patriot? Explain your answer.
3. Why is being a superpatriot a thing? That is, why would being an uncritical advocate of anything be popular?
4. Why would a dualistic thinker be more likely to believe that strangers are more likely to hurt them?

Facebook is messing with your emotions! Let me explain, last week Facebook published the results of a study where they tried to manipulate peoples’ Facebook Wall in an attempt to provoke either a negative or positive emotional response. In this article, Nathan Palmer discusses this study, questions its ethical standing, and explores the fundamentals of research ethics.

Facebook is manipulating your emotions. That was the gist of the news stories that broke this week after Facebook published a study on emotional contagion. As Dr. Jenny Davis said in her excellent summary of the study,

• The data scientists at Facebook set out to learn if text-based, nonverbal/non-face-to-face interactions had similar effects. They asked: Do emotions remain contagious within digitally mediated settings? They worked to answer this question experimentally by manipulating the emotional tenor of users’ News Feeds, and recording the results.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in fact, Facebook has conducted hundreds of experiments on it’s 1.3 billion users with almost no limitations.

For a study about emotions, it sure has created firestorm of emotions itself. The fiercest outrage is coming from those who believe that the study was unethical. Let’s take a second and explore the claims that this study was unethical. To do that we will first need to review how ethical research is conducted and what the basic rules are for ethical research[1].

Rule #1: Do No Harm

Ethical research does not harm its subjects. While this obviously means you can’t physically harm your subjects, it also means that your research shouldn’t cause psychological, legal, social, or economic harm (check out this University of Virginia webpage for a detailed description of each of these). Before any ethical study can be conducted the researchers must first ensure that they have minimized any risk of harming human subjects.

Did the Facebook study harm people? Well we don’t really know the answer to that and it’s possible we never will. Does exposing people to more negative emotions constitute harm? That’s debatable, but keep in mind that we don’t know what the people who were exposed to these conditions did in the rest of their lives. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where someone who experienced these negative emotions goes on to take it out on their community. But did Facebook cause this? The answer to that question would require more evidence than we currently have to answer.

Rule #2: Informed Consent

Before you can conduct research on someone you have to tell them what you’re about to do and ask them if they want to participate. It’s as simple as that. This is often done by giving potential participants a sheet of paper that describes the study, discusses the risks they may face, and explains that they have the right to stop the study at any time.

Facebook argues that it did have informed consent because every user has to accept a “data use policy” on their terms of service agreement before they can create an account. However, how many of you read all the fine print before you click accept on one of these legal documents? It’s called informed consent, so if the majority of the participants are not informed about what they are getting themselves into, can it really be considered consent?

Rule #3: Voluntary Participation

You always have the right to not participate in an ethical study. Furthermore, you always have the right to end your participation in a study at any time. You cannot force people or trick people into participating in your study. It’s as simple as that.

Technically any Facebook user can discontinue use at anytime and even go so far as to deactivate their account. But here’s the problem: if you don’t know you are participating in a study can you really participate in it voluntarily? In this way rule #3 is contingent on rule #2.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

At this point you are probably wondering, are there research referees? I mean, who throws the flag when there has been a research foul? The simple answer is yes, there are research referees, but academics renamed them the “institutional review board” IRB because we hate anything that sounds clever or easy to understand.

At every major academic institution there is an IRB that convenes to review research proposals. Before research can be done on human subjects, the IRB must ensure that the three rules above have not been broken and that the study is safe, ethical, and worth any cost the human subjects might endure. And that is the problem with the Facebook study. Despite initial claims to the opposite, it turns out that the authors of the study only sought IRB oversight AFTER the study was conducted. This fact alone makes the study unethical and had this been done at a university or any other firm that receives money from the federal government, they would have almost certainly lost all of their federal funding.

Research ethics are important. The history of science is littered with researchers willing to harm, exploit, and deceive their human subjects. Ultimately each Facebook user will have to decide if these hundreds of studies are unethical and then decide if they want to continue their relationship with the company.

Dig Deeper:

1. What’s your assessment of this research? Was it ethical or unethical? Use evidence to make your argument.
2. Imagine you want to do a survey about classroom cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty on your campus. What potential ethical issues would that bring up? What are the potential harms for a study like this?
3. Watch this short video about the Zimbardo Prison Experiment. While there were many ethical violations in this study, let’s focus on rule #1. How was this experiment violating the “do no harm” rule?
4. What do you think about the fact that Facebook is interested in how it can better manipulate your emotions? Do you feel that this is an ethical pursuit? Explain your answer.

If you graduate from college with a degree, does it matter how hard you worked or how much you learned? I mean, you have a degree, right? So, you should be able to get an entry level job with most companies, right? In this post, Nathan Palmer shares some recent research that can help us answer these questions.

“As long as you graduate you’ll find a good job.” I heard this a lot when I was an undergraduate. Usually from a friend of mine who was focused more on partying and less on his/her schoolwork. “After we graduate no one will ever care what your GPA is or how seriously you took your homework. All that matters is you graduate.”

That’s a bold hypothesis about how our social world works. But is it accurate?

One study that might help us answer this question was done by a team of researchers led by Richard Arum. They used a test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) to measure a students ability to write well, critically think, analytically reason, and problem solve. They found that students CLA scores were connected to successfully transitioning after graduation.

For instance, when we compare the top CLA performers to the bottom, we find that low performers were three times more likely to be unemployed.

Low CLA performers were also found to be nearly twice as likely to be living with mom and dad after graduation. Finally, low CLA performers were more likely to have amassed credit card debt than their higher CLA counterparts.

All of this evidence suggests that your ability to write, critically think, analytically reason, and problem solve has an impact on your ability to secure a job and be financially independent after you graduate. Or more simply put, graduates with honed skills transition into the economy easier.

Not So Fast

While this data helps us get closer to our answer, it’s not perfect. For instance, the researchers were looking at a students’ CLA score during their senior year and not at the amount of CLA growth a student experienced over the course of their college education. So it’s entirely possible, that many students came to college with a high CLA score and left with the same high CLA score. In this hypothetical case, it doesn’t matter how hard a student worked throughout college, they came in as bright freshmen and left as bright graduates. Other evidence suggests that of all high school graduates only 68% have “college ready” English skills and just over half of all graduates (53%) poses the reading skills they’ll need in college. So while it’s possible that a student could come into college with a high CLA score already, it’s not likely.

Furthermore, I’d like to see the what the median family income was for each of the five CLA groups. It’s possible that the high CLA group was full of students from wealthy backgrounds. If this is the case, then having ample family resources to tap into may explain why these students didn’t amass credit card debt. Also, wealthier parents are likely to have more business connections and a strong social network they can rely on to secure their child a job opportunity.

Every Class is an Opportunity

After you graduate you will be competing with graduates from all over for jobs. The skills you bring to the job market are one of the things that can set you apart. The CLA study suggests that the skills that are most important in predicting future success are not discipline specific, but rather they are general skills. What’s great is that every class is a chance to work on your core skills. So the next time you hear someone say, “It’s so stupid I have to take [insert class name] because I am a [insert seemingly unrelated major].” You can reply back, “No, the core skills of writing, critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and problem solving are what’s important and they can be developed in any class regardless of your major.”… or you can just smile to yourself and not be a know-it-all.

Dig Deeper:

1. This article discusses what factors make a student successful after graduation, but this begs the question, what is success? Imagine that you have recently graduated, what would your life look like if you were “successful”?
2. In the “Not So Fast” section, we critically thought about the CLA study. That is, we asked ourselves, what is this study not addressing or what possible alternative explanations could there be for the study’s findings. Why is this an important step to critical thinking?
3. Recently a senior vice president of Coca-Cola told a group of college students that liberal arts degrees are the best preparation for a career in business. Read this short article about his message and then discuss why you agree or disagree with his argument.
4. What do you plan to do after you graduate? How are you building your skills right now for that career path?

References:

• Arum, Richard, Esther Cho, Jeannie Kim, Josipa Roska. 2012. “Documenting Uncertain Times: Post-graduate Transitions of the Academically Adrift Cohort.” Retrieved July 14, 2014 (http://www.ssrc.org/workspace/images/crm/new_publication_3/%7Bfcfb0e86-b346-e111-b2a8–001cc477ec84%7D.pdf)
• Arum, Richard and Josipa Roksa. 2011. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

“It’s a small world” is something we say all the time, but is it really? In this post Nathan Palmer discusses how he lost his GoPro in a river, then against all odds got it back, and learned that it isn’t a small world, but it is a highly connected one.

My name is Nathan Palmer and I love making videos. Mostly videos of my wife and little daughter. She’s getting a lot bigger these days and so are our adventures. So I recently purchased a GoPro camera to keep up with her.

Our first big family adventure with the camera was tubing down the Chattahoochee river. I set off for a lazy day of floating with my wife and daughter. It was perfect. Well, that is until Lilly fell into the river. I dived for Lilly- catching her by the arm. After she was safe in her tube I went to sit back down in mine. My tube flipped up and hit my camera dead on, knocking it into the water. Lilly was safe and that’s all that matters, but my camera and all the memories it held were lost forever or so I thought.

My GoPro camera scratched the bottom of the river for about a week. Until it found a final resting place between some big rocks. And that’s the end of the story or at least thats where the story ends most of the time. But not this time.

The next weekend was the fourth of july. A twelve year old girl named Emily was visiting her grandparents and playing in the Chattahoochee river with her brother. She was catching fish bare handed, if you can believe it, when something in the water caught her eye. Emily plunged her hand into the water and pulled out my GoPro camera. And that’s where this story ends… most of the time, but not this time.

“Nate you’re on the internet!” my wife yelled Monday morning. She showed me her phone and there I was. Emily had given my camera to Julie Wolfe a reporter at 11Alive news in Atlanta to try and find me. Julie ran the story on the Sunday night news. People on social media shared the story over a million times all in hopes of helping Emily find me and in less than twelve hours… she did.

How did this happen? Let’s set aside the question of how do you raise a child with the moral character strong enough not to simply pull a “finders keepers” on my GoPro. That is astounding question in and of itself, but the sociologist in me wants to know how did the news story that ran in Atlanta (which is three and half hours away from where I live) reach me in less than twelve hours. It feels too easy to say, “it sure is a small world after all,” but this experience has left me wondering, “just how small is the world”? Luckily for us, I am not the first sociologist to ask this question.

In 1967 Stanley Milgram set out to test the “small world hypothesis” by recruiting people in Omaha, NE to send a letter to a stockbroker in Sharon, MA. But the catch was, they could only send it to someone they personally knew. They were instructed to send it to anyone they thought could get the letter closer to the stockbroker and likewise those recipients were instructed to do the same. Of the 296 letters sent, 64 made it to the stockbroker. Milgram counted the number of people in each of the successful letter chains and found that the average was approximately six.

Does that sound familiar? Ever heard of the “6 degrees of separation”? The term, which was coined by playwright John Guare, is an idea that posits that any one human on earth can be connected to another by just six people. But does Milgram’s study really give us enough evidence to make such a bold claim? We should keep in mind that only about 20% of the letters made it to the stockbroker.

Duncan Watts in his book Six Degrees recreated Milgram’s experiment using email and tens of thousands of participants[1]. What he found was that in massively large networks of any type an individual can be connected to another individual in just a few steps. The number of intermediating connections may be 6 or slightly higher or lower.

While it is tempting to say “it really is a small world after all”, we know that it’s not. It’s a very big world with over seven billion people in it. But the research suggests that our large world feels small to us because it is so highly connected.

But putting the science aside, I know one thing for sure. It may be a very big world, but now that I’m connected to Emily and her family, my world has certainly gotten a whole lot richer.

Dig Deeper:

1. A lot has changed since 1967. In what ways are we more connected today than we were then? What technologies make connection more prevalent today?
2. How does living in a connected society change people’s behavior? While we don’t have any scientific research in front of us to answer this question, brainstorm three possible ways living in a connected world affects us.
3. Have you ever had an experience that made you say, “it sure is a small world”? If so, describe that experience and then try and incorporate Milgram and Watt’s studies into your discussion.
4. Do a google search for “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon”. How does this game relate to Milgram and Watt’s work?

At this very minute nuclear missiles around the world are armed and ready to launch, but are you worried about it? In this post Nathan Palmer uses the threat of nuclear annihilation to discuss how we socially negotiate what is and what is not a social problem.

I’m not kidding. This is not a hoax. Nuclear bombs rained down on Goldsboro, North Carolina and because of a fluke mishap the bombs didn’t detonate. Stop for a moment and let that fully sink in. A recently declassified reviled that in 1961 a B–52 bomber broke apart in midair and two “virtually armed” multi-megaton nuclear bombs crashed down to earth. Had the bombs detonated the devastation would have been significantly bigger than that wrought by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.

As horrifying as this revelation is, it’s just the tip of the ice berg. The United States has over 5,000 nuclear weapons and many of them are armed and ready to fire from nuclear silos in the middle of the country. These silos, which were built over 50 years ago, are in varying states of disrepair. In one Wyoming silo the blast door, meant to keep out terrorists or any other intruder, can not be shut and is being propped open with a crow bar. The computer system that launches the missiles was created decades ago and is operated using a 8 inch floppy disks[1].

In May we learned that a missile silo recently failed a “hostile takeover” drill and that, “at least two launch officers from the 341st Missile Wing are currently being investigated for alleged illegal drug use/possession.” While I could go on, I’ll stop with this last story. In 2007 the air force accidentally flew a plane across the country with 6 nuclear bombs on board and then when it landed, the nukes sat on the runway unprotected for 10 hours.

Given that these are, “the deadliest objects know to mankind,” as John Oliver recently put it, why aren’t we freaking out more about this? To answer this question, we first need to talk about how we as a society socially construct social problems.

The Social Construction of Social Problems.

“We’re often afraid of the ‘wrong’ things,” that was one of the central lessons my Social Problems professor drilled into us. What he meant was, the things that pose the greatest threat to our lives and money are often not the things that receive the most news coverage, political outrage, or public concern. This is because social problems compete with one another for our attention, concern, and money.

The Social Problems Process is the term sociologist Joel Best uses to describe how a situation becomes a social problem. First, someone makes the claim that a situation is problematic or troubling (e.g. “drunk driving is wrong!”). Then these claims receive media coverage and/or they are shared by word of mouth. When enough people are sufficiently convinced that this situation is troubling, policy makers (i.e. politicians/law makers) are called on to “do something” about it. New laws, then, may be enacted to deal with the social problem. Almost always these new laws create conditions that some people dislike and they may claim that the new has created a new social problem (e.g. many claim Affirmative Action creates “reverse racism”). Even after a condition has successfully become a social problem, those concerned must continue to persuade the world that the issue is deserving of sustained public attention, concern, and money or another competing social problem may take it away from them.

In the 1950s the threat of nuclear annihilation was on the top of many people’s minds in the United States. We spent billions upon billions of dollars on creating missiles to destroy our enemies and attempt to prevent their missiles from destroying us. But after sixty years and the end of the Cold War with Russia, today people don’t really think about it that often. Today we are afraid of unconventional militaries who swear allegiance to no nation state and use military tactics that we find despicable (i.e. terrorism).

But make no mistake, nuclear missiles present a clear and present danger to your life and the life of everyone on earth. We can objectively say that the killing power of a nuclear missile is greater than any other weapon known to humanity. If we selected social problems based on the objective threat they posed to us, nuclear annihilation would constantly be at the top of our public concern meter. However, it’s not because we social problems are created through a social process.

Dig Deeper:

1. Pick any social problem that you are well informed about. Who is a claimsmaker for this social problem (i.e. a person who claims the situation is a problem) and what is their argument for it being a social problem.
2. Think back on the history of the country you live in. What social issue used to be considered a social problem, but today is no longer. What does this tell you about the social problems process?
3. This summer there has been a lot of news stories and public concern around leaving children in hot cars. It’s reported that on average 38 children die in hot cars every year. Read this short article use it’s evidence to make an argument that our concern for child automotive deaths is socially constructed.
4. Our awareness and fear of diseases is also socially constructed. For instance, take a look at the statistics comparing breast cancer to prostate cancer. Despite similar numbers of people being diagnosed with and dying from each disease, breast cancer receives far more attention and research funding. Explain in your own words how this illustrates the idea that social problems are socially constructed.

Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18 year old child, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, MO. Nearly everyday since, protestors have filled the streets of Ferguson demanding information and an investigation of the officer’s actions. In this post, Nathan Palmer argues that to truly understand the events of that day we must consider both the social and historical contexts that surrounded them.

“You will find that the people doing the oppressing often want to start the narrative at a convenient point, [they] always want to start the point in the middle.” Actor and civil rights activist Jesse Williams said that on CNN while talking about the killing of Michael Brown an unarmed 18 year-old and the protests that followed in Ferguson, Missouri. Mr. Williams sounds like a sociologist.

Sociology at it’s core is the scientific study of how the individual is shaped by society and how society is shaped by the individual. Sociologists believe that to truly understand an event like the killing of Michael Brown and the civil unrest that followed, you first have to place it within it’s social and historical context. Or put more simply, you can’t truly understand Michael Brown’s death if your analysis starts in 2014. Ferguson is bigger than one killing and bigger than a single town in Missouri.

If you’re not up on the news out of Ferguson, check out this helpful timeline of events and watch the video below to get caught up quickly.

The Social Context Surrounding Ferguson

Ferguson is a 21,000 person suburb of St. Louis that is predominantly Black (60%), highly segregated, and poor with one in four residents living below the poverty line as of 2012. The economic downturn of 2008 hit Ferguson particularly hard. The unemployment rate before the recession was less than 5%, but in the 2010–2012 time period it jumped to over 13%. For young African American men in the area, the economic situation was worse. As local columnist David Nicklaus reported, “47 percent of the metro area’s African-American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed. The comparable figure for young white men is 16 percent.”

Despite the fact that the majority of the residents of Ferguson are black, only 3 African Americans serve on the police force. This fact is more stark when we consider that African Americans account for 86% of all police stops and 92% of all arrests. Beyond law enforcement, the law makers are also predominantly white. The mayor, chief of police, and 5 of the 6 city council members are white.

The Historical Context Surrounding Ferguson

Your grand children are likely to ask you, “what was it like living through the prison years?” Right now, we are living through a policing and imprisonment explosion like we’ve never seen in the United States. No country in the world imprisons as many people or as high of a percentage of it’s citizens as we do. Nearly 7 million people are either in prison, on parole/probation, or otherwise under the control of the penal system. Of those affected by mass incarceration, they are overwhelmingly poor black and Hispanic men (for more see Alexander 2012).

The rise in mass incarceration is due in large part to the War on Drugs. We use that term to refer to sweeping changes in state and federal laws designed to “crack down” on drug use and sales. For instance, before the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act the maximum sentence for possession of any narcotic had been one year
imprisonment. After that law was passed, the death penalty was authorized for drug related offenses. The federal government injected millions of dollars into local police departments to increase drug arrests and created grant programs that offered big money to units that were able to secure the greatest number of arrests. These policy changes and thousands of others at the local, state, and federal level created the incarceration boom we are living through today.

To understand Ferguson we also need to keep in mind the historical legacy of racial housing segregation. “Until the late 1940s, blacks weren’t allowed to live in most suburban St. Louis County towns, kept out by restrictive covenants that the Supreme Court prohibited in 1948.” When African Americans were allowed to move into the suburbs, whites began to move farther and farther out from the city center in phenomenon known as “white flight”. As they left, they took with them their tax dollars and the resources needed for a community to thrive.

Today the city of St. Louis is the 9th most segregated city in the U.S. White flight continues to this day in Ferguson. As Philip Bump of the Washington Post reports, “In each of the census tracts that overlap Ferguson, the white population dropped, by a total of more than 5,000 people since 2000. And in each, the black population increased, by more than 3,000.”

Pulling Ferguson Into Focus

This article barely scratches the surface of the sociological analysis that could be done and is being done by sociologists and journalists. Many scholars dedicate their entire careers to understanding the social and historical contexts surrounding race, poverty, segregation, and law enforcement. But the take away point is this, every decision an individual makes is influenced by the laws, public policies, and institutions that surround her or him. Furthermore, what we do today is often the result of a chain reaction sent into motion decades or centuries earlier.

When we talk about Michael Brown’s death as an isolated case we ignore the social context that surrounded his life. When we talk about Ferguson as if it all started this year, we ignore a long history of inequality and injustice. We can’t pretend we don’t see the social and historical context and we should question the motives of anyone who would recommend we do.

Dig Deeper:

1. How does reading about the social and historical context surrounding Ferguson affect your thinking about Michael Brown’s death and the protests that followed? Explain your answer.
2. This article just scratches the surface of the social and historical contexts surrounding Ferguson, what are some of the aspects of our history not discussed in this article that could help us better understand Brown’s killing?
3. Take a second and reflect on how who you are affects how you think about Ferguson. If you were a different race, economic class, age, and/or gender do you think that would affect how you reacted to the news of Michael Brown’s killing?
4. Now check out this Pew study that looks at how age, race, and other social demographics affect perception of the news out of Ferguson. What do you think this evidence suggests (i.e. what’s it telling us)?

Why is Labor Day a national holiday? If you’re stumped, you’re not alone. In this post, Nathan Palmer argues that our awareness of the U.S. labor movement is connected to how textbooks and curriculum are created through a process of cultural production.

“What are we celebrating on Labor Day?” There is always a long silence after I ask my intro to sociology class this question. My students look to their left and right waiting for a classmate to generate the answer. “It’s a day off because we labor so hard, right?” I shake my head no. In eight years of teaching only one class got it right and I think they googled the answer on their information phones.

Labor Day celebrates the victories of the labor movement. Whether you know it or not, people fought and died protesting for the right to unionize, for weekends off, child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, and many other things that most workers today could not imagine living without.

So why are so few of us aware of the history of the labor movement? The answer to this question lies, at least partially, in James Loewen’s (1995) work Lies My Teacher Told Me.

The History of History Textbooks

Loewen analyzed the high school social studies and history textbooks to see what was and was not talked about it. Loewen found that half of the 18 American history textbooks he reviewed contained no index listing at all for the terms social class, social stratification, class structure, income distribution, inequality, or any conceivably related topic. Furthermore, very few of the books discussed labor union strikes and absolutely none discussed recent strikes and the strong government opposition to labor unions starting with the Reagan administration. Loewen (1995: 205) concluded that, “With such omissions, textbook authors construe labor history as something that happened long ago, like slavery, and that, like slavery, was corrected long ago.”

It’s easy to think that history is history (i.e. that history is the collection of facts about what happened before now), but that would be wrong. There is only so much time and historians and history educators have to make choices. What historians leave out and what they focus extra attention on affects how we come to understand the world. But this isn’t the real reason that we don’t talk about the labor movement in history textbooks.

Textbooks and curriculum are both battlegrounds. Parents, school boards, and politicians have fought hard to keep certain topics out of textbooks. In 1974 protests erupted when the school board in Kanawha County, West Virginia attempted to change the curriculum to include concepts like multiculturalism and egalitarianism. Parents boycotted the schools, schools were bombed with dynamite, and school buses were shot up.

In 2010 the Texas Board of Education created controversy when it created standards for social studies curriculum that put a “conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light” We should note that this board was made up of elected officials and not experts in the field of curriculum, education, and pedagogy. Because Texas is the single largest purchaser of textbooks and most textbook companies want to ensure their books can be sold within the state , the standards this board sets become the unofficial standards for the country.

History as a Cultural Production

History is what ever we make it. Or to put it in sociological terms, history textbooks are cultural productions. That is, textbooks as a piece of culture are produced through a social process. Groups with different ways of thinking and different goals fight against one another to ensure that their interests are reflected in the textbooks. Put simply, history is negotiated.

We cannot understand the modern economy without understanding the labor movement. In the last year we’ve seen nation wide protests to raise the minimum wage, football players at a major university attempt to unionize, and watched as employers shift full time workers to part timers in response to the Affordable Care Cat (a.k.a. Obama Care). If your education didn’t include a thorough discussion of the U.S. labor movement, then I would encourage you to take part of this holiday to learn and remember the sacrifices labor activists made to ensure the rights and protections that we enjoy today.

Dig Deeper:

1. What did you learn about the labor movement in your K–12 education?
2. Do a quick google search for U.S. labor movement and find 2–3 facts or historical events from the movement that you were unaware of. List them with a brief description.
3. Last year the Pew Research Center found that the public opinion of Unions was up, but membership was down. How might public opinion of unions and organized labor be shaped by the education system?
4. In Arizona they have recently passed a law banning curriculum that focuses on Mexican-American studies. Read a brief excerpt of the law here. In your own words explain how this law affects curriculum and is an example of cultural production?

Last week approximately 100 celebrities had their phones hacked and nude photos of them stolen and posted online. The reactions by some were, “what are these celebrities doing taking nude pics in the first place?” In this post Nathan Palmer argues that we can better understand reactions like these by understanding the Just World Hypothesis and the phenomenon called victim blaming.

People are saying the craziest things about the nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and dozens of other celebrities posted online last week. If you somehow missed it, last week approximately 100 celebrities had their phones hacked and stolen sexual images of them were posted online. And let’s just be clear from the jump, this was a crime not a scandal or a leak. The celebrities are well within their rights to take any photos of themselves and share them with anyone they choose. So now to the shockingly unintelligent things people were saying.

Comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted just after the news broke, “Celebrities make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from the computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer.” The New York Times tech columnist Nick Bilton echoed this sentiment when he tweeted, “Put together a list of tips for celebs after latest leaks: 1. Don’t take nude selfies 2. Don’t take nude selfies 3. Don’t take nude selfies” These two were not alone. Just go back and read the comments section under any of the news stories about the hack; every third comment chastises the celebrities for being foolish enough to take a nude picture of themselves in the first place. Now I’m willing to bet that some of you who are reading this right now are thinking these comments make sense, but let’s take a second and really think about what they are saying.

Comments like these are implying that the celebrities are to blame for having their phones hacked because they took photos of themselves that would be attractive to hackers. By that logic, celebrities should never do anything that they don’t want the public to see. Or as Jay Smooth put it, “is the rule that if you want a right to privacy, just don’t have a private life?” What’s going on here? The answer can be found in two sociological concepts: The Just World Hypothesis and victim blaming.

The Just World Hypothesis

The Just World Hypothesis is the idea that humans want the world to be an orderly place that makes sense. When people subscribe to this hypothesis, it is easy to believe that if something happens to you, it is because you did something to deserve it. Did you win an award? You must be an awesome person. Did you get mugged on the street? Well, you should have known better than to have cash on you in that unsafe neighborhood.

None of us wants to believe that we could be victimized. We want to feel as if we can do things to keep ourselves safe and while there are often preventative measures you can take to reduce your chances of being victimized, ultimately if someone really wants to do you harm, they will probably find a way. To protect our conception of the world as a just and orderly place, it’s not uncommon for people to blame the victim for their victimization.[1]

Blaming the Victim

The "don't take naked pics if you don't want them online" argument is the "she was wearing a short skirt" of the web. Ugh.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) September 1, 2014

The celebrities who were victimized by hackers are not to blame for their victimization. When we stop and think about it, this fact is patently obvious. But in our society victim blaming is not uncommon. When women are sexually assaulted it’s not uncommon for defense attorney’s to bring into question what they were wearing, how many sexual partners they’ve had, or who they were behaving before the assault. When news broke that NFL running back Ray Rice had punched his then fiancé unconscious on camera in an elevator, ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith said on air that he advised the women in his life to, “make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions”.

A crime is a crime and no one deserves to be victimized. Any argument to the contrary is nonsensical. But we can better understand why people say crazy things and blame the victim when we factor in the Just World Hypothesis.

Dig Deeper:

1. This article argues that everyone is affected by the Just World Hypothesis (sociologists, students, professors, everyone). How do you think you personally are affected by it?
2. Think of another example from the news or from your life of the just world hypothesis and/or victim blaming.
3. Last week journal Stephen Sotloff was beheaded by the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). His family felt compelled to come out and say that Sotloff “was not a war junkie”. Despite saying this, the comment section underneath this report had multiple people arguing that Sotloff was a war junkie. How would framing Sotloff as a war junkie potentially be an example of victim blaming.
4. The Just World Hypothesis argues that if something good or bad happens to you, you did something to deserve it. This article argued that this is not true when something bad happens to you. But can something good happen to you that you didn’t actually deserve? Give a hypothetical scenario that would illustrate such a situation.

Suggested Reading:

• “Don’t Take Nude Selfies,” Shrug It Off, and Other Gross Advice for Hacked Celebs by Amanda Hess

A group of people online are sharing videos and images of their giant trucks billowing thick black smoke into the atmosphere; online this is called “rolling coal”. These scenes are often the backdrop for macho anti-environmentalist messages. In this piece Nathan Palmer uses the concept of environmental power to show us how rolling coal is a social display of status and often masculinity.

There are many ways to be manly. For some super macho dudes, they get their manly on by modifying their truck so that its black filthy exhaust blows out directly into the atmosphere. Maximizing your pollution is just one way to communicate to the world your machismo. If that doesn’t sufficiently communicate your supreme dudeness, then you can always adorn the hitch of your truck with a giant plastic scrotum (or as the kids call them “Truck Nutz”).

This phenomenon is know as “Rolling Coal”. There are hundreds of videos of souped up trucks spewing smoke into the air on YouTube. To those rolling coal, it’s extra cool to eject “Prius repellent” on unsuspecting hybrid drivers, bicyclists, or pedestrians. Other videos bait “hot babes” into a conversation only to eject sooty pollution into their face. An entire online sub-culture exists where people upload pictures of their trucks with messages written on them like, “you can keep your fuel milage, I’ll keep my manhood!” Grace Wyler, who defends the practice says that coal rollers’, “motivations aren’t complicated: It looks cool, and it’s funny to roll coal on babes.”

To an environmental sociologist, rolling coal isn’t all that new or surprising. Showing how powerful you are by dominating the environment is one of the cornerstones of civilization. Humans are selfish with the environment. We come into an ecological community and say, “this land is mine and if any of you other species are fool enough to wander onto my patch, prepare to die.” Farmers do this with pesticides, fungicides, electric fences, traps, rifles, and shotguns. Home owners do it with exterminators, fences, and if needed a quick call to animal control. In the U.S. we live in climate controlled bubbles (only stepping outside when we walk to and from our cars). To be a “modern human” is to control the environment and keep it away from you until you want to go camping or on a hike (but then we soak our bodies in ~~pesticides~~ -er bug spray).

By controlling nature we communicate to the world that we have social status. This is what sociologists call environmental power. With this concept in hand we can easily see that rolling coal sits at the intersection of environmental power and masculinity.

Stereotypical masculinity is narrowly defined. You have to be powerful, tough, fearless, and more than anything else you have to dominate other people, especially women. Environmental power is one way for men to communicate their dominance. Rolling coal demonstrates that you aren’t afraid of any “sissy” environmental crisis. The trail of smoke behind your truck says, this is my atmosphere and I’ll do anything I damn well please to it. Framing women as “hot babes” flattens their humanity and turns them into sex objects who exist for the pleasure of men. Blasting these women with soot against their will is a way of invading their personal space and announcing your dominance over them. Similarly, when rollers spray “Prius repellent” on hybrid car drivers they are enforcing the norms of their narrowly defined masculinity.

Environmental power and misogynistic masculinity can only explain a portion of the rolling coal phenomenon. Some rollers report that they modified their trucks to maximize fuel efficiency (oh the irony). Other critiques have argued that rolling coal is a political statement against an ever controlling federal government.

Regardless of their motivations, rolling coal makes it clear that the domination of the natural environment is a part of our culture, a way that some “do gender” and claim their social status.

Dig Deeper:

1. What other ways do people show that they have environmental power? That is, how do people control the environment as a means to display their social power?
2. Symbolic interactionists argue that we create every moment of every day by using symbols to communicate meaning. What are the meanings that those who roll coal are trying to communicate to the world?
3. Is dominating the environment solely a masculine thing? Can you think of any examples of environmental power displays that are connected to stereotypical femininity?
4. Clearly for some, a big truck is a part of how they “do” their masculinity. That is, their truck is a prop for the masculinity they are trying to perform. Think of at least 5 other physical objects that we associate with masculinity and are often used by individuals who want to project their masculinity. Explain each object in your list.

You read that title right. U.S. teen pot smoking is correlated with the number of honey producing bee colonies. In this piece Nathan Palmer uses this strange statistical fact to help us better understand correlations and causal relationships.

Did you know that the rate of divorce Maine correlates nearly perfectly with margarine consumption in the U. S.? It’s true. Furthermore, the more teens arrested for marijuana possession every year in the U.S., the fewer honey producing bee colonies we have. That’s a fact! Most important to us here at SociologyInFocus, research indicates that the rate of sociology PhD’s awarded each year is correlated with the number of rocket ships we send into space each year (but only the noncommercial ones, I mean why would rocket launches designed for commercial purposes have any affect on sociology, ammirite?).[1]

Wait, none of this makes any sense. Fake butter has nothing to do with divorce, pot smoking teens aren’t killing honey bees, and sociology departments aren’t waiting for a space shuttle launch to award a PhD. I can explain everything, but first we need to talk about correlation and causation.

Correlations are a shared relationship between two variables. This is a lot easier to remember when we break the word down: co (meaning shared) and relation (meaning relationship). So for instance, there is likely a correlation between the number of hours you study each day and your GPA. As the number of hours per day you study (variable A) increases so too does your GPA (variable B). You should be able to think of dozens of correlations (e.g. the more money one has correlates with the size of their home).

There are two types of correlations: positive and negative. When variable A and variable B both go in the same direction they are said to be positive. Given that as the number of hours studying per day increases so too does a student’s GPA, this is a positive correlation. It’s likely that the number of absences a student has negatively correlates with that students grade in the class. That is, an increase in class absences correlates with a decrease in class grade. Therefore, class absences negatively correlates with class grade.[2]

There is an old saying in the sciences, “correlation does not equal causation.” The fact that two variables have a shared relationship does not mean that variable A caused variable B to happen (in science we call this a causal relationship). For a something to be defined as a causal relationship it must first pass a three step test.

1. Variable A and variable B must correlate with one another
2. Variable A must happen before variable B.
3. We must find evidence to rule out possible alternative explanations.

If the first two criteria are met and we can’t think of any possible alternative explanation, then we can consider variable A to have caused variable B. To be clear, the 3 step test quickly rules out pairs of variables that can’t be in a causal relationship, but the process of “proving” that variable A caused variable B is a much more complex and involved process.

What Does It Mean That Fake Butter Is Correlated With Divorce?

Margarine has nothing to do with divorce in Maine. This is an example of how completely unrelated things can correlate with each other. When this happens it’s often just a mathematical coincidence. But sometimes we find that two seemingly unrelated things are correlated and that leads us to new scientific discoveries. For instance, the correlation between energy consumption and the average global temperature must have seemed wholly unrelated at first. Today we know that the carbon dioxide released from burning coal/gas leads to the greenhouse effect and causes climate change. When we discover that two variables are correlated we have to use our rational scientific minds to evaluate them with an open, but critical mind.

Dig Deeper:

• Think of a causal relationship that was not discussed in this article. Describe both thing A and thing B and then run them through the three step test described in this article.
• It’s not uncommon for people to argue that something is causal when it couldn’t possibly pass the three step test. For instance, it’s not uncommon for people to say when discussing race, “did you ever think that talking about racial inequality creates racism and racial inequality?” Run this idea through the three step test and demonstrate how this isn’t a causal relationship.
• If you eat 5,000 calories a day and then gain weight, can we say for certain that your high-calorie diet caused your weight gain? Think of at least one possible alternative explanation. That is, one factor that could explain a person gaining weight that is separate from their diet.
• Think of 3 examples of negative correlations. Explain them. Remember that a negative correlation has variables that go in opposite directions.

As the saying goes, time is money, so let’s get to it. In this piece Nathan Palmer introduces us to a magical genie with something to offer you.

Walking along the beach one bright morning you trip over a hidden piece of driftwood. On all fours, a bright metallic spark of light escapes from the sand below searing your eyes. Like a blinded archeologist you clench your eyelids together while sweeping away the warm sticky yellow grains until your hand settles on something hot and smooth.
         ”Are you done rubbing my lamp or should I come back later?” You whip your head around. A lumpy blue cloud with arms and a smiling face stands above you.
         ”My god you’re… you’re a…”
         ”I’m a genie, yes. Now how about you stand up and let’s talk about what I can do for you.”
         ”Do I get three wishes?”
         ”Nope. Not that kind of genie. Get up. Brush yourself off and get ready to listen carefully.” Rising to your feet you subtly grab a a piece of you hip and pinch down hard. You don’t wake up. This is happening.
         ”As the saying goes kid, time is money.” Genie says arms folded. He starts in while you brush yourself clean. “I have been to the future and I know how you will live your life and how it will come to an end- well for our purposes here, the more important point is that I know *when* it will end.”
         ”Wait, how I die?” Genie raises his hand.
         ”Can’t give you that. Plus, knowing your fate only imprisons the rest of your life; just ask Oedipus and Cronus. What I offer you is the opposite of that. I want to give you… freedom.”
         ”I am prepared to give you all of the money you will earn over the rest of your life. Take this offer and you’ll never have to sell another hour of your life to your employer. I will return ten more times over the remainder of your life each time with 1/10 of the money you are set to earn over the remainder of your career.”
         ”Accept my offer and you are free to do anything you like with your time on Earth. Keep working if you like. Volunteer, travel, paint, or binge watch Netflix, it’s up to you. You would finally be truly free to do what you want. However in return, every time you see me, before I give you your money, I’m going to painlessly remove one of your fingers.”
         ”So, do we have a deal?”

Would You Take The Deal?

What would you do? Think deeply about why you chose your answer. Write on a piece of paper or say aloud the reasoning behind your choice.

I have asked nearly 2,000 students to consider this offer and almost all of them have said they’d turn it down. The most common theme running through all the reasons they give me for saying no can roughly be summarized as, “I need my fingers to live a quality life and I once they’re gone they can’t be replaced.”

But couldn’t we say the exact same thing for your time and many of you sell that for almost nothing.[1]

Thinking About How We Think About Work

An ideology is a way of thinking. We use our ideologies every second of the day to make decisions and understand why things are the way they are. However, despite how often we rely on them, seeing your own ideologies can be very hard.

We aren’t born with ideologies. We learn them from our community and the institutions that surround us. Karl Marx argued that the economy determines our ideologies and every other aspect of society (Marx 1978). In a society with a capitalist economy, Marx argues, that each member will be given a set of ideologies needed to make sense of capitalism. A group of sociologists called Critical Theorists agreed with Marx and added that we learn capitalist ideologies from messages embedded in the goods we purchase, the media we consume, and the symbols that are at the heart of culture (e.g. Marcuse 1964).

As a capitalist society, how do we think about selling our time? Do we think about it like we think about selling our bodies? No. We hold an ideology that selling your body, as a sex worker for instance, is shameful (Scambler and Paoli 2008). Selling our time, on the other hand, is thought of as a respectable thing to do. Max Weber (1958) takes this a step further and argues that in capitalist societies we view hard work as a holy and moral act.

My point here is that selling your time, especially for a small amount, could be thought of as a shameful thing to do. We could hold interventions for workaholics and demand that they wake up and realize that they are supposed to “work to live” and not “live to work”. CNN could run a news exposé about the horror of career-centered Americans. Instead we champion their efforts and hold them up as role models.

A capitalist economy can only work if there are enough people willing to sell their labor. Our economy needs workers willing to give their employer the majority of the profits their labor creates. This need is met when we take on the ideology that selling our labor is normal and a thing to be proud of.

Dig Deeper:

1. Would you accept the Genie’s offer? Explain the reasons and thinking that went into the answer you chose.
2. In the U.S. we collectively work more hours than any other country and take fewer vacations (Schor 1991; 2010). How might we explain this using the ideologies discussed in this essay?
3. Research shows that we often complain to those around us about being “so busy” as a way to subtlety brag about how important we are (DeGreeff, Burnett, and Cooley 2010). Because only an important person would be busy. Imagine you live in a culture where being busy is seen in a negative light. How would this change the behavior of individuals and how we reacted to people who claim to be “so busy”?
4. Watch this short clip about ideology and the 1980s movie They Live. Describe in your own words how Slavoj Žižek argues that ideology is hidden in advertisements and consumer goods.

REFERENCES:

• DeGreeff, Becky L., Ann Burnett, and Dennis Cooley. 2010. “Communicating and Philosophizing About Authenticity or Inauthenticity in a Fast-Paced World” Journal of Happiness Studies 11(4): 395–408
• Scambler, Graham and Frederique Paoli. 2008. “Health Work, Female Sex Workers and HIV/AIDS: Global and Local Dimensions of Stigma and Deviance As Barriers to Effective Interventions” Social Science & Medicine. 66: 1848–1862
• Schor, Juliet. 1991. The overworked American: the unexpected decline of leisure. [New York, N.Y.]: Basic Books.
• Schor, Juliet. 2010. Plenitude: the new economics of true wealth. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press.
• Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. 1978. The Marx-Engels reader. New York: Norton.
• Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Scribner.

What does it mean to “get ahead” economically? In this piece Nathan Palmer tries to answer this question by using the concepts of absolute and relative economic mobility.

“Congratulations!” Your boss says to you as he makes his way toward you. He snaps a envelope in front of you before continuing, “You my friend, just got a raise!” You don’t even try to hide your sense of surprise. Snatching the envelope from his hands you tare into the letter like an animal. “A dollar an hour raise? Wow! Thank you so much,” you tell him.

Elated, you head straight to your co-worker BFF to share the good news. Before you can even open your mouth, she rushes to you grabbing your shoulders, “Did you get a raise too?” You frantically nod yes and then a tandem jumping/squealing momentary freakout ensues. “I can’t believe these tightwads gave us all a three dollar an hour raise,” you hear her say. Emotional whiplash. She senses your change in demeanor. “Wait, you got a three dollar an hour raise like the rest of us, right?” White hot rage engulfs what was profound joy.

Economic Mobility and You

What does it mean to “get ahead” economically? As the scenario above illustrates, the answer to that question can be complicated. You earned a $1 an hour raise, so in one sense you got ahead, but if all of your co-workers got a $3 an hour raise, you also got left behind. What you’ve just experienced is the difference between absolute and relative economic mobility.

Economic mobility is a fancy way of describing how individuals increase or decrease their net worth. When an individual receives a raise or takes on a new higher paying job, this is an increase in absolute economic mobility. That is, absolute economic mobility measures an individual’s financial gains or losses. Relative economic mobility does the same thing, but it also compares an individual’s financial gains or losses to everyone else in that individual’s community.

So you experienced upward absolute economic mobility (with your $1 raise) and downward relative economic mobility (relative to all of your coworkers who received a $3 pay hike).

Economic Mobility at The National Level

Can people “get ahead” economically? How likely are you to die in the same economic class that you were born into? Do we see the same families in poverty/wealth for generation after generation? These are the questions sociologists like you and I should be asking about economic inequality. To answer these questions, we need to look at the rates of absolute and relative economic mobility for the United States.

In the U.S. we are experiencing a moderate amount of upward absolute mobility. For instance, 84% of people in 2012 reported incomes greater than their parents (Pew 2012). At the same time, we see downward relative mobility. That is, on the whole Americans are earning more money, but a select few are earning money at a much faster rate than the rest of us. For instance, take a look at the chart below. When comparing income distribution from 1979 to 2007 we see that only the top 20% of all income earners saw growth and almost all of that growth was only experienced by the top 1% (CBO 2011).

When we look at national economic mobility we see “stickiness at the ends”. That is, people born into the top or bottom fifths of the economic ladder are likely to die in the same economic bracket. Pew compared the incomes of fathers and sons and found that 31% of sons raised in the poorest fifth remained in the poorest economic bracket as adults (Pew 2012). On the flip side, 43% of sons raised in the richest fifth remained in this affluent bracket as adults. On an interesting side note, this research found that earning a four-year degree promoted upward mobility for those in the poorest fifth and prevented downward mobility for those in the richest fifth.

Dig Deeper:

1. Reflect on the chart above. How does that make you feel? Do you think it’s fair? Do you think it suggests we should change our economic policy to address income inequality? Explain your answers.
2. Explain, in your own words, the escalator metaphor used in the video above to illustrate absolute and relative upward mobility.
3. Think of another situation where a person could experience upward absolute economic mobility while simultaneously experiencing downward relative economic mobility.
4. In the U.S. people often say, “anyone can become successful as long as they are willing to work hard.” Do the research findings discussed in this article challenge this idea and if so how?

We are approximately at the midpoint of the semester. Which means that everything is in full swing and your to-do list is almost certainly bulging. In this article Nathan Palmer introduces us to the concept of contaminated time and explains how it contributes to our sense of feeling overwhelmed.

“‘Blorft’ is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”

– Tina Fey

So who’s feeling blorft right now? It’s the middle of the semester, so I’m betting a lot of you reading this are totally blorft. Tests to prepare for, papers to write, online quizzes to tend to, meetings, practice, family functions, and then you’ve got to clock into a shift at work. Oh, and I didn’t even mention your social obligations. It’s easy to get overwhelmed as a student. But have no fear, Sociology is here. You can do a lot to lower your sense of overwhelm by working to reduce “contaminated time.”

Contaminated Time

To be a college student today is to be a person who wears many hats. At any moment there are dozens if not hundreds of things you could be doing. Should you check your email, texts, twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, or return your mom’s call from earlier? Should you do homework? If so, which of your five classes should you start with? Should you go out with your friends? Should you workout? Are you hungry? Oh and your friend is starring in the play on campus, should you go to that? It’s easy to feel like you’re being pulled in every direction.

If you’re like me, you try to handle this by multitasking. I do email while I watch TV. I check social media while I eat meals. I listen to audio-books while I workout. Furthermore, even when I try to uni-task (i.e. do just one thing at a time) during my leisure time, all I can think about is all of the other things I “should be doing.”

When the rest of your life intrudes on your leisure activities this is what sociologists call contaminated time. Pure leisure time should be unconstrained by your other responsibilities, this is why we call it “free time” (Henderson 1991).

What Should You Do?

In the book Overwhelmed the journalist Brigid Schulte interviewed many of the leading sociologists who do time use research and she came away with some helpful suggestions. First, firewall off some genuine free time. That is, don’t multitask and try your hardest not to dwell on your to-do list during your leisure time. Second, don’t mix business with pleasure. Set aside time to focus on your work and then… just focus on your work. Lastly, stop trying to be perfect. It’s not possible to be outstanding at everything. Pick some areas of your life where you’ll be “good enough.” You’ll save time and perhaps your sanity.

Dig Deeper:

1. Do you experience contaminated time in your life? Explain your answer.
2. Think like a sociologist. Say you want to study how people use their time day to day. How could you design a study to get this information from your research participants?
3. Describe in detail what it looks like when you are studying. Where are you? What is around you? What are you physically doing? What technology surrounds you? Describe any interruptions you experience. Now, reflect on this. Do you see evidence of contaminated time?
4. At Stanford they are doing research on multitasking. Check out this interview with the head researcher Clifford Nass. What did this research discover about multitasking?

References:

• Henderson, Karla A. 1991. “The Contribution of Feminism to an Understanding of Leisure Constraints.” Journal of Leisure Research 23:363–377

Can the richness of your life be boiled down into statistics? In this post, Nathan Palmer explores the challenges of using surveys and quantitative methods to understand the human experience.

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”

In this quote that is often attributed to him, Albert Einstein sounds like a qualitative researcher (a term I’ll explain in a second). The truth is, Einstein was a theoretical physicist and it looks like that quotation actually came from the sociologist William Bruce Cameron. Regardless of who gave us this turn of phrase, the reason it is so often quoted is that it hits at one of the fundamental questions that social scientists often disagree on; can the human experience be measured in numbers?

A Tale of Two Methodologies: Qualitative and Quantitative

All social science research can be broken up into two camps based on the type of scientific method they use to analyze the social world. Quantitative research studies use statistics to measure the human experience. Most often quantitative research collects their data through surveys (e.g. the Census) or they use data collected by institutions (e.g. police arrest records). Qualitative methods most commonly use in-depth interviews and prolonged observations to better understand the motivations and ways of thinking that govern human behavior. Think of it like this: quantitative methods primarily focus on the what, when, and where questions of human behavior, while qualitative methods focus on the how and the why.

To demonstrate the “everything that counts cannot be counted” dilemma, let’s try our hand at using quantitative methods to measure something.

Are You Happy in Your Love Life? Prove It.

Let’s say we are social scientists looking to research how happy people are with their romantic partners (i.e. their spouses, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc.). How could we measure or observe this?

“On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most happy, how happy would you say you are in your relationship?”

This is a bad survey question. We can’t just come right out and ask people questions like this, because people will might be dishonest. For many people “being successful” means finding a loving partner. So if we just asked, “are you happy in your romantic relationship?” many people might say yes to protect their self-image. When people answer questions falsely on a survey to protect themselves from social shame, social scientists call this the social desirability bias. Instead of coming through the front door with questions like the one above, we should try a side-door approach to minimize the effects of social desirability.

“Over the last seven days, how many days did you and your romantic partner have an argument?”

If a respondent answers seven, does that really mean they have low romantic happiness? Or if a respondent answers zero, does that mean they have high romantic happiness? Can you think of romantic couples who argue all the time, but seem to be very happy despite all the fighting? Some of the older couples in my family are always chirping at one another, but they fight as a way of communicating with one another. They fight because they care. On the flip side, most of us have known a romantic couple that never fight because they have checked out of the relationship. They don’t fight because they don’t care enough about the other person to get angry.

In the real world, sociologists would probably not use just one question to assess romantic happiness. But the point here is that regardless of how many questions you use the vastness of the human experience resists being quantified.

We can see the limitations of quantitative research in the expression “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” Instead of measuring the human experience by collecting the datapoints that best reflect reality, quantitative methods often collects the datapoints that are most easily quantified. In our example, the number of arguments is easily quantified, but not necessarily the best representation of romantic happiness.

Qualitative researchers have long argued that to truly understand the human experience, researchers must use more in depth methods. And while it’s true that there has been a long cold war raging between quantitative and qualitative researchers with each side thinking they have the better approach to exploring the social world “accurately”, we should remember that these two approaches are often complementary. Qualitative measures often explore the areas of life that aren’t easily quantified or easily measured and then quantitative researchers use the findings of these qualitative explorations to better quantify their measurements of the humane experience. Mixed Method studies (i.e. studies that use both qualitative and quantitative) are on the rise as scientists embrace their complementary powers. In the end, both approaches help us better understand the world we live in.

Dig Deeper:

1. Create a list of 5 sociological topics that would be hard to quantify into survey questions. Explain why each would be challenging.
2. Quantitative survey questions are often “closed-ended” (i.e. you are forced to pick one answer from a list of provided response options). How could forcing a survey respondent to pick from a list of choices be seen as limiting their ability to share their experience with the researchers?
3. Write a closed-ended quantitative survey question that could measure college student’s procrastination.
4. Let’s say you wanted to quantitatively research how often college students illegally downloaded music, movies, and media files. How might the social desirability bias impact how your respondents would answer your questions? How could you write a survey question to minimize the effects of social desirability?

Billions of dollars are spent each year on advertising in an effort to shape the way you think. In this post Nathan Palmer asks us to take another look at the advertisements that are all around us and the messages they communicate.

Want to see something cool? Turn on your TV or load up an internet video and instead of fast forwarding or clicking “Skip Ad”, stop and watch the commercial closely. Pay attention to what they are talking about and more importantly, what they are not talking about.

Commercials for diamond rings focus on how happy your romantic partner will be when they receive your gift. Commercials for minivans focus on how cool you will look in your “swagger wagon.” Coffee commercials focus on loved ones returning home to share a pot of coffee.

Isn’t it strange that commercials don’t focus on the qualities of the product they are trying to sell?

There are of course, exceptions to this rule. Most notably “infomercials” for products like OxiClean, Xhose, or Might Putty. But the fact that we call them infomercials suggests that “regular commercials” are largely absent of info about the products they are selling.

Selling What Cannot Be Sold

Modern commercial advertisements don’t sell the product, they sell a lifestyle image. Ads show happy people, friendship, companionship, love, affection, people working together, people expressing themselves, and people accomplishing their dreams. Advertisements are selling us products by promising us that they will satisfy our social needs (e.g. human connection, the respect and admiration of those around you, etc.). But these are all things that you can’t buy.

Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely use physical goods in the process of satisfying our social needs. For instance, think about how the giving of gifts is used to establish human connection and create a sense of community. Furthermore, communities can form around products (e.g. motorcycle clubs) and then those communities can satisfy social needs. My point here is, while we use physical goods in the process of satisfying our social needs, physical goods themselves cannot satisfy our social needs.

The Magic of Advertising

If an alien from another galaxy watched our commercials, they would conclude that we believe in magic (Jhally 1997). Over and over again in commercials we see people solving their problems with consumer products and a little bit of magic. In this way, commercials are using magical realism (i.e. introducing some magical elements into an otherwise realistic depiction of the world). This classic Mentos commercial is a great example of what I’m talking about.

Did a jerky guy just box you in? Pop a Mentos and viola four burley dudes will magically appear to pick up your tiny car.

It’s not uncommon to see advertisements combine magical realism with promises that their product will satisfy social needs. The quintessential modern example of this are the Axe Body Spray commercials.

What is Axe body spray in this ad if not a magical potion? The “Axe Effect” advertised is one that transforms women into feminine beasts that will do anything to gratify male sexual desires. In ad after ad we are shown Axe Body Spray to be a magical potion that satisfies the sexual social needs of men. At the risk of stating the obvious, we should also acknowledge that these ads objectify women’s bodies and reinforce misogynistic ideas about women and heterosexual relationships.

Manufacturing Needs for Manufactured Goods.

We live in a consumer society. Our capitalist economy relies on us buying things that we want, but don’t actually need. From this point of view advertisements are designed to manufacture desire for frivolous manufactured goods (Baudrillard 1998). One way to do this is to promise that consumer goods (most often something you don’t need) can satisfy your social needs (e.g. human connection, love, admiration, etc.).

Dig Deeper:

1. How does consumption (i.e. the buying and consuming of products) bring people together or otherwise contribute to the satisfying of social needs?
2. Can consumption get in the way of satisfying social needs or split people apart? Explain your answer with examples.
3. Find an advertisement online that implies that it’s product can satisfy a social need. Describe the advertisement briefly and then explain how you see it promising to satisfy a social need.
4. Find an advertisement online that uses magical realism. Describe the advertisement briefly and then explain what magical elements it uses.

References:

• Baudrillard, Jean. 1998. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
• Jhally, Sut. 1997. Advertising and The End of The World.

Why are men far more likely to be in positions of leadership than women are? In this post, Nathan Palmer partially answers this question using the concept of the Glass Cliff.

What does it mean to have social power? That’s a tricky question to answer, so maybe we could make it easier by focusing on just one particular group and just one particular type of social power. Let’s talk about men and their current strangle hold on economic social power.

Every year Fortune magazine publishes a list of the 500 publicly traded U.S. companies with the largest gross revenues. The Fortune 500, as it’s called, can serve as a good representative sample of the largest and most influential firms within the U.S. economy. The people running these companies are behind the wheel of the U.S. economy.

Of the all the CEOs in charge of the Fortune 500 companies, 95.2% are men. Despite representing 51% of the U.S. population, only 24 women (or 4.8%) of the largest revenue generating firms in the states are ran by women. That’s what social power (i.e. collective power between people of a similar social location) looks like.

But, to be fair, we should note that the proportion of Fortune 500 companies led by women is growing. In 2011, just 12 women (or 2.4% of the whole) served as CEO of one of these companies. So perhaps there is reason for a tiny bit of optimism. Expanding our focus to the Fortune 1000 (which includes the Fortune 500 in addition to the next 500 largest revenue generating U.S. publicly traded firms) only 27 women CEOs are added to the total. Which means of these 1000 highly influential economic firms, only 5.1% are led by women.

I could spend an entire semester unpacking the reasons why we see so few women CEOs. There are so many cultural and structural barriers that keep women from turning the tide of economic patriarchy (i.e. a male dominated economic system). Instead of telling you the whole story of gender inequality, I want to tell you about just one piece of the puzzle. That piece is called the Glass Cliff and it shows us how sometimes we create more inequality in the process of trying to reduce inequality.

Set Up For Failure: The Glass Cliff

As a sociologist our job is to observe the social world, identify patterns within our observations, and then use those patterns to draw conclusions. When we observe how applicants are chosen for leadership positions within society we see that when women and people of color are tapped to lead, the positions they step into have similar qualities[1].

In particular, in the relatively rare cases when women and people of color secure leadership opportunities, they are often taking the helm for a company, agency, or group that has been in decline, is currently in crisis, or is at a high risk of failing (Ashby, Ryan and Haslam 2007; Haslam and Ryan 2008; Ryan and Haslam 2005).

This observed phenomenon is what the researchers call the Glass Cliff. Let’s unpack this metaphor to learn more about it. Glass is a nearly invisible barrier. Similarly, the discrimination female applicants and applicants of color face is largely hidden in plain sight.

Research on the people charged with hiring a new leader has shown that they hold a bias against “non-traditional leaders” (aka not-white-men) and a preference for “traditional leaders” (Cook and Glass 2013). Decisions makers are more likely to give attractive and less risky opportunities to “in group members” (i.e. applicants that are the same race and gender as they are) (Powell and Butterfield 2002). The same study found that when a hiring committee is all male and all white they are less likely to hire a woman or person of color. This may be because the decisions makers want to horde the best opportunities for people like themselves or because they feel that women and people of color lack the required skills (Eagly and Karau 2002; Heilman, Block, and Martell 1995; Schein 2001).

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of The Glass Cliff

When decisions makers (who are most often white men) believe that women and people of color are inferior leaders, they are less likely to give them the reigns of a successful company, agency, or group. Which means that women and people of color are socially funneled to lead high risk or already failing firms. Then if they are unable to turn around these troubled firms, the same bigoted decision makers can say, “see I told you that white men are just better leaders.” This is what sociologists call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Glass Cliff phenomenon shows us that sometimes in the pursuit of equality we create new forms of inequality. It also shows us that often discrimination justifies itself through self-fulfilling prophecies. Systems of social discrimination are nefarious and even when social minorities make it past the barriers designed to keep them out, they still must overcome the social barriers designed to keep them down.

Dig Deeper:

1. Go back to the question at the opening of this essay, “what is social power?” Using the evidence discussed in this essay, answer this question. That is, tell us in your own words what evidence there is that males hold economic social power.
2. What do you think could be done to reduce the Glass Cliff effect? How could we change hiring committees or otherwise influence decision makers?
3. Describe some of the potential stereotypes about women and people of color that could be keeping them from positions of leadership.
4. We have to assume that of the Fortune 1000 companies, some proportion of them have to be struggling right now or in crisis. Of those struggling firms, not all of them can be run by women and people of color. So why isn’t there a cultural stereotype about white men being bad leaders? Put another way, why does a failing female CEO or CEO of color tell us something about all women and people of color, but a failing white male CEO doesn’t tell us something about all white male CEOs? What’s the difference?

References:

• Ashby, Julie, Michelle Ryan, and S. Alexander Haslam. 2007. “Legal Work and the Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Preferentially Selected to Lead Problematic Cases.” William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law 13:775.
• Eagly, Alice H. and Steven J. Karau. 2002. “Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice toward Female Leaders.” Psychological Review 109:573–98.
• Haslam, S. Alexander and Michelle Ryan. 2008. “The Road to the Glass Cliff: Differences in the Perceived Suit- ability of Men and Women for Leadership Positions in Succeeding and Failing Organizations.” The Leadership Quarterly 19:530–46.
• Heilman, Madeline E., Caryn J. Block, and Richard F. Martell. 1995. “Sex Stereotypes: Do they Influence Perceptions of Managers?” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 10:237–52.
• Powell, Gary N. and D. Anthony Butterfield. 2002. “Exploring the Influence of Decision Makers’ Race and Gender on Actual Promotions to Top Management.” Personnel Psychology 55:397–428.
• Ryan, Michelle K. and S. Alexander Haslam. 2005. “The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over- Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions.” British Journal of Management 16:81–90.
• Schein, Virginia E. 2001. “A Global Look at Psychological Barriers to Women’s Progress in Management.” Journal of Social Issues 57:675–88.

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What is the true meaning of Thanksgiving? In this essay, Nathan Palmer tries to answer this question by exploring how symbols are used within a society to communicate meaning.

What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Does the word conjure up thoughts of turkey, pumpkin pie, family, football, shopping, Christmas or something else?

I have celebrated Thanksgiving my entire life. Every year I look forward to cooking a feast for my family and friends. To me, Thanksgiving is a chance to take a break from the chaos that is my life, surround myself with my loved ones, and tell them how thankful I am to have them in my life. That’s what Thanksgiving means to me.

At the same time, I know that Thanksgiving means something very different to other people. To some Thanksgiving holds religious significance. To others Thanksgiving is a day for Americans to puff out our chests and celebrate the greatness of our nation. To others Thanksgiving is a painful reminder of the genocide of Native Americans at the hands of European colonists. To others still Thanksgiving is just another Thursday[1].

If Thanksgiving can mean so many things, does it really mean anything? Does it have a true meaning? Before we can answer this question we have to talk about how social symbols like holidays get their meanings in the first place.

Symbols: The Basic Element of Culture

To be a human is to make and understand meaning. To the anthropologist Leslie A. White that is our defining feature (White 1949/2005). Other animals can respond to stimuli, but they can’t understand the meaning the symbols are intended to communicate. Put simply, dogs don’t understand sarcasm or jest or things said in a tongue and cheek manner. For other animals everything is taken at face value, but for humans symbols can have deeper meanings.

By symbol I mean anything that is used to communicate a shared meaning. Language in this sense is a set of symbols that we draw and utter to communicate meanings to one another. Language is arguably the most common set of symbols used in a society, but it is not the only set of symbols we use to communicate meaning. We contort our faces and our bodies to communicate meaning. We use colors, shapes, images and every other aspect of design to communicate meaning. Nearly everything that is around you at this moment has been designed to communicate meaning. For instance, think about how an airport is designed to communicate to travelers where to go even if they cannot read the signs or find anyone who speaks their language.

But here is the most important part of all of this, the symbols themselves are meaningless. That is, a symbol does not have inherent meaning. When something is inherent that means it is permanently linked together with something else and they are impossible to separate. If symbols had inherent meaning, then we could never separate the meaning from the symbol and the symbol would always be interpreted to have the same meaning regardless of how it was used or who was interpreting it.

You already know this to be true. If Thanksgiving had an inherent meaning, then it would mean the same thing to all people everywhere, but it doesn’t. If words had inherent meaning, then we couldn’t use the word bad to both describe something as being below our expectations and something as being above our expectations. “That Transformers movie was bad,” means something entirely different than saying, “Muhammad Ali was a bad man in the boxing ring.”

Or think about the supposed inherent meanings in colors. Today we associate blue with boys and masculinity and pink with girls and femininity, but it wasn’t always so. Previous to the 1940s, the color assignments were flipped. For instance, In 1918 a trade magazine for Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally
accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl” (Paloletti 2012; Maglaty 2011). To Westerners purple is a regal color and associated with royalty, but in other parts of the world, yellow is most associated with royalty (White 1949/2005).

The point here is that words, colors, and other symbols do not have an inherent meaning. They mean what we are socialized to believe they mean. Symbols are empty until we fill them with meaning.

Is There a True Meaning of Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving, like every other symbol, does not have an inherent meaning. Therefore, it cannot have a true meaning.

To some Thanksgiving is a perverse celebration of genocide and the European take over of this country. To others, Thanksgiving is a day to get together as a family, eat good food, and give thanks for all the good things in our life. To the majority of the people on earth outside the States, Thanksgiving is just another unremarkable day.

The meaning of Thanksgiving is what we make it. If you plan on celebrating this Thanksgiving, then I hope you make the most of it.

Dig Deeper:

1. What does Thanksgiving mean to you? How did you learn to give it that meaning?
2. If symbols only mean what we collectively agree they mean, does that mean they aren’t real? If so, then what makes something real?
3. Think of another symbol in our culture that has multiple meanings. How did this symbol come to have multiple meanings? You may need to do a little Googling to find the answer to this question.
4. Currently a debate is raging over the name of the football team in Washington D.C. Describe the different sides of the debate and each of their positions (if you’re not up on the debate, then do a quick Google search). How does this debate illustrate the concepts discussed in this article?

References:

• Maglaty, Jeanee. 2011. “When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?” Retrieved Nov. 24, 2014 (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink–1370097/)
• Paloletti, Jo B. 2012. Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
• White, Leslie A. 2005. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. Clifton Corners, NY: Percheron Press/Eliot Werner Publications.

In this piece Nathan Palmer suggests that the grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown illustrates how reality is socially negotiated.

“The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact and fiction,” St. Louis County prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch said last night in a statement. “No probable cause exists to file any charges against Darren Wilson.”

What does it mean to separate fact from fiction? At first, this question might seem ridiculously simple. It means you have to decide who is lying and who is telling the truth. It means that you have to decide if the available scientific evidence supports or challenges competing accounts of what happened that day. Any reasonable person should be able to do that, right? In the abstract this seems really easy, but in reality it is anything but.

What Happened on August 9th?

Ninety seconds. In the Ferguson case, that is the primary thing that is in dispute. Only 90 seconds passed between the moment Officer Wilson confronted Mr. Brown and the moment that back up arrived.

Wilson’s account is that he approached Mr. Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson to ask them to stop walking in the middle of the street. Wilson told the grand jury that he noticed cigarillos in Brown’s hand which potentially tied Brown to a recent report of a convenience store robbery in the area. Officer Wilson testified that he then ordered Mr. Brown to get back as he tried to get out of his police SUV. Before he could exit the vehicle Wilson says Mr. Brown pushed his door closed and started assaulting him through the window. Wilson says he then puled out his firearm and while he and Brown wrestled for control of the gun it went off injuring Mr. Brown’s hand.

Wilson says that Brown backed away from the vehicle, raised his hands in the air in what he perceived to be a menacing posture. Officer Wilson said he thought Mr. Brown, “looked like a demon.” He reports that Mr. Brown hit him again before Officer Wilson could fire two more shots at Mr. Brown. Then Mr. Brown ran and Officer Wilson pursued him on foot. Once he caught up with Mr. Brown, Officer Wilson testified that Mr. Brown turned around and charged at him. Officer Wilson then fatally shot Mr. Brown.

That is Officer Wilson’s account of what transpired, but it is not the only account of what happened. Dorian Johnson, the friend Mr. Brown was with at the time of the shooting, testified that Officer Wilson was the aggressor. Mr. Johnson says that Officer Wilson drove by and told them to get out of the street and move to the sidewalk. Wilson drove off, but quickly turned around when the two did not comply with his orders. Wilson confronted the two again and Mr. Johnson says that Wilson grabbed Brown by the neck and as Brown tried to pull away he threatened to shoot. Shots were fired and Mr. Johnson says Brown fled. Mr. Johnson testified that Brown raised his hands in what he thought was an attempt to surrender before Wilson shot and killed him.

In addition to these two accounts, the grand jury heard from nearly 60 witnesses over three months of testimony. These witnesses recounted the events of August 9th differently. Some eye witnesses say that Officer Wilson ran after Mr. Brown, others are adamant that he didn’t. Others said under oath that Wilson started firing the moment he got out of the car. Some said Mr. Brown was on his knees, while others say he was standing. Some say Mr. Brown had his hands in the air, others say he didn’t. Multiple witnesses gave testimony that supports aspects of Wilson’s account while at the same time contradicting other aspects of Wilson’s testimony.

Keep in mind that each of these witnesses were testifying under oath. If they were caught in a lie, they could be charged with perjury and face up to five years in prison. What then are we to make of the differences in these accounts? Is someone lying? If so, who and why?

But What About The Evidence?

Maybe we can’t trust witnesses. Maybe the answer is to rely on scientific evidence. That can’t lie, right?

Gun powder residue, D.N.A., autopsy results, blood splatter analysis, and the distribution of shell casings were all introduced as evidence in this grand jury hearing. All of this evidence suggests that the broad strokes of the case are accurate. Officer Wilson shot Mr. Brown at close range. Mr. Brown was facing Officer Wilson at the time he was shot. Blood stains on the ground suggest that Mr. Brown was moving forward when he was fatally shot.

But there are still many questions that the physical evidence can’t answer. Was Mr. Brown surrendering? Was Mr. Brown charging Officer Wilson or was he falling limp? Was Officer Wilson the aggressor in the altercation?

Reality is Socially Negotiated

If sociology has any core lesson to teach us, it is that reality is socially constructed. Individuals can experience the exact same event differently. Or to use prosecutor McCulloch’s language, what is “fact” to one person, is “fiction” to another. The fact that one witness can be certain something happened that another witness is certain didn’t happen, should make you question if it’s possible to be certain of anything witnesses observe.

Within the legal system, in the absence of certainty, the state “makes a case” as the saying goes. Investigators ask some questions and not others. They highlight some facts and downplay others. Some witnesses are taken at their word while other witnesses are heavily scrutinized. Some leads are followed, some are dismissed out of hand.

The state made their case and the grand jury chose to believe Darren Wilson’s version of the events. But this does not mean that Wilson was telling the objective truth.

The justice system is made up of human beings who suffer from biases and make mistakes. Justice, truth, and reality are socially negotiated and like all negotiations, those with the most power often get their way.

Dig Deeper:

1. What are your thoughts and reactions to the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown?
2. What do you think of the fact that many of the witnesses gave conflicting testimony?
3. How do you think that race influenced this court case? Explain your answer in detail.
4. After reading this essay, do you think it’s possible to “separate fact from fiction” and if so, how do you do it? If not, then what should we expect of our legal justice system?

At the end of your sociology class, what should you take with you? In this post Nathan Palmer suggest four key sociological questions that you can use over the course of the rest of your life.

As your sociology class draws closer to it’s conclusion, you are probably wondering, “what was the point of all of this?” As a professor I think about this question a little differently, I think, “what do I want my sociology students to leave my class with?” As you must know by now, sociology is great at questioning society, but not so great at finding definitive answers. There are no laws of sociology to leave you with like there are laws of physics.

Instead of answers, I hope my students leave with a short list of simple questions that they can use to see the sociology all around them for the rest of their lives. But how can an entire discipline be boiled down to just a few questions?

Sociologists disagree about almost everything, but they especially disagree about what sociology is and is not. So it’s pretty scary for me to boldly say, “these are the questions sociologists ask.” However, most sociologists would agree that to be a sociologist you have to develop what C. Wright Mills called a, “sociological imagination.” Most likely you learned about this at the start of the semester, but now that you have a much better understanding of sociology, let’s go back to where you started.

A sociological imagination allows us to connect an individual’s personal troubles to the public issues of our society. For example, to understand why you lost your factory job (a personal trouble) you have to understand how the U.S. economy is shifting away from a manufacturing jobs to high-tech information based jobs (a public issue). To Mills, a sociological imagination connects an individual’s biography to the social history they lived through. But this is an abstract concept and what you need are concrete questions to take with you.

Lucky for us, multiple sociologists have attempted to convert the sociological imagination into concrete questions (Berger 1963; Giddens 1983; Ruggiero 1996; Willis 2004). I used all of these sources (but none more than Willis 2004) to create four simple questions that are both easy to remember and applicable to a wide variety of situations.

Sociology’s Questions

1. How is this situation affected by how society is structured?
2. How is what’s happening today a result of what happened in the past?
3. What categories of people dominate in society and how is this changing?
4. How could things be different?

1. How is this situation affected by how society is structured?

Societies have structure. Individuals often do not behave randomly, but instead they behave in reaction to the structures that govern their day to day lives. The legal justice system, the education system, the economic system, and so on create rules and expectations that guide individual choices and behaviors.

To fully understand any individual person or situation, you have to consider how social structure affected the person/situation. When we don’t consider the social structure that surround others, we are prone to think they behave the way they do because they are irrational or crazy or evil. “The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.” To be a sociologist is to search for the reasons of others.

2. How is what’s happening today a result of what happened in the past?

Humans are both affected by yesterday’s history and the creators of tomorrow’s history (Giddens 1983). In many ways what we each of us does today is heavily influenced by what has happened in the past. To fully understand any individual person or situation, you have to consider what led either to this point. We have to understand their personal history, the history of their family, their community, their society, and even the history of the world. At the same time, we must remember that we are not at the mercy of history. Humans have the ability to make new choices, divert from the path, and decide to do something new today.

Here again, when we ignore the history surrounding an individual or situation, either can look irrational or like it came “out of nowhere.” In the search for the reasons of others, the answers are often found in the history that surrounds them.

3. What categories of people dominate in society and how is this changing?

Societies create categories of people. People are divided up into groups based on race, gender, class, sexual orientation, nationality, and so on. Often both the similarities of people within the category and the differences between people across categories is exaggerated.

All societies have some form of hierarchy (i.e. a system to decide who has power over whom). Social categories are often used to place people within a hierarchy and thus some categories are privileged and others are oppressed. Simply put, some categories of people dominate other categories of people. Life chances are not evenly distributed.

To fully understand any individual or situation, you have to understand how either is socially categorized and where this places them within social hierarchies. To be a sociologist is to ask, who has social power here?

4. How could things be different?

To fully understand any individual or situation, you have to understand how things could be different. It’s a lot easier to see how things got this way, when we consider how things could’ve been different. Furthermore, once the people of a society know how things got this way, they can make changes to improve their future.

To be a sociologist is to be critical of the way things are. Sociologists ask “why” and perhaps more importantly, they ask “why not?”

Stay curious.

Dig Deeper:

1. I would like to invite you to scrutinize my four questions with your sociological imagination. How did social structure, history, and social power affect me as I constructed these questions? Could they be different? Just a little about me: I am a 34 year old white, middle-class, educated, heterosexual man who teaches sociology at Georgia Southern University.
2. Pick any social issue. Describe how you could better understand your selection by considering, “how this situation was affected by how society is structured?” Explain your answer.
3. Pick any social issue happening today. Describe how what we see happening today is the result of what has happened in the past?. Explain your answer.
4. In your own words, what does it mean to have social power? What evidence could we look for to decide which categories of people are dominating a society?

References:

• Berger, Peter. 1963. An Invitation to Sociology. New York, NY: Penguin.
• Giddens, Anthony. 1983. Sociology: A Brief but Critical Introduction. London: MacMillan.
• Ruggiero, Vincent R. 1996. A Guide to Sociological Thinking. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Willis, Evan. 2004. The Sociological Quest. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.