AKD

April 24, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Last night, we held our annual induction ceremony for AKD, the sociology honor society. Sixteen students joined – that’s a pretty good number for us.

Brian Brenner
Courtney Burbridge
Natalie Cancio
Angelica Carrion
Sabia Choudhury
Suresh Dhanraj
Sabrina DeStefanis
Christina Drugac
Randi Fejnas
Patrice Fuschin
Hannah Gibello
Jennifer Hernandez
Agnes Kucsora
Michelle Newton
Elizabeth Quijano
Megan Snow

Our speaker was Gilda Zwerman (shown here talking with Peter Freund), who took us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the Weathermen and Black Liberation Army were taking radical and violent acts that seem almost incomprehensible now and which got them locked up in prison for a long time. Gilda has been trying to understand the process of this kind of radicalization particularly with regard to the broader social context of the late 1970s and early 1980s – the decline of the Left, the turning of government towards the right and towards repression.

I’m not sure that kids born in mid-1980s could get a sense of that context. I myself found it amazing that I and my peers didn’t just dismiss Weather ideas out of hand. Instead, even though we might not have agreed with them, we took them seriously enough to debate them long into the night.

Holiday Entrepreneurs?

April 22, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

A writer for a local newspaper sent me an e-mail asking about the mainstreaming of Cinco de Mayo. She seems to think that it has become an American holiday.

I had no information for her, but I’m curious about how holidays get assimilated into the dominant culture and how they are transformed in the process. Christmas is making its way into Japan, at least the non-religious aspects of the holiday like lights and decorations. Valentine's Day is now big in Turkey.

My first thought was that the acceptance of a holiday depends on its attractiveness to the culture. But on second thought, I began to wonder about the role of “holiday entrepreneurs” (something akin to Becker’s moral entrepreneurs). Who are they? Ethnic leaders, probably. Promoting the holiday Especially in the current climate of concern, fear, or resentment about Mexican immigration, might be politically helpful.

One hundred fifty years ago in this country, the Irish supposedly needed not apply, and even in the 1880s they were the target of the Lou Dobbs types of the time campaigning against “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” (Maybe there were Harvard scholars, the counterparts of Samuel P. Huntington, warning that the growing Irish presence was undermining the true and good American culture and identity.) Today there are St. Patrick’s Day parades in most US cities, and everyone wears green. But the assimilation of the Irish and the parade didn’t “just happen.” It took work, it took entrepreneurship.

Who knows, maybe the folks at Hallmark are already at work on a line of cards.

I know I’m just a gringo
In Shaker Heights, Ohio
But best wishes, mi amigo,
For a great Cinco de Mayo

Flatbush?

April 19, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Brooklyn. The name evokes images of working-class New York. When Hollywood wants a no-nonsense, urban guy, they give us a cab driver with a “Brooklyn accent.” (Oddly, this is true even of movies set in Chicago or Los Angeles.) Brooklyn is the Dodgers, dem Bums.

Why then are people naming their daughters Brooklyn?

In Utah of all places, it has become one of the top ten names for girls, passing Ashley and Alyssa, and separated from Madison by only 17 little Utahennes. Nationwide Brooklyn was last seen in 67th place. That’s far behind Emily, of course, but until 1990 Brooklyn wasn’t even in the top 1000.

I have no explanation. Did some celebrities name their kid Brooklyn while I was out of the room? Well, yes, it turns out – a footballer and a Spice Girl. But that was in 1999, when the name had already climbed into the top 200.

Was Brooklyn a character in a movie? (The best explanation for the Madison boom is Splash. The movie came out in 1984; the name started taking off in the early 90s, when girls who had seen it as teenagers started having babies.)

There certainly seems to be something geographic going on. The places where Brooklyn has become popular – states like Utah and Idaho – are far from New York. As for parents in Canarsie, or Flatbush, or even within a few hours drive of the real Brooklyn, naming their kid Brooklyn, well, as the sign says . . . .

Science and Power

April 17, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Statistician Miron Straf on the difference between statisticians who work in academia and those who work in Washington for the government.

Academic statisticians convince others of their conclusions by proof. Government statisticians convince others by power. That is one reason meetings are so different to them. Academic statisticians don’t need meetings to develop proofs. . . . Government statisticians need meetings so they can control the agenda or write up the report of conclusions.

“Mr. Statistician Schleps to Washington,” Chance, vol. 20, no. 4, 2007 ( no online version, at least none that I could find)

Government scientists relying on power rather than evidence – I wonder if this tendency holds not just in the social sciences but even in the hard sciences. And I wonder if it has become even more true during the Bush years. I suspect, of course, that the answer to both questions is Yes.

Hat tip to my brother Skip for sending me this article.