December 20, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
The Republicans tried to run on symbolic issues – Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers. The Republicans cried “country first” and whined that Obama “pals around with terrorists.” You’d have thought that once elected Obama was going to make Al Qaeda his chief of staff.
It didn’t work. People voted for Democrats mostly because the Republicans had done so disastrously on real issues – the war and the economy.
Now it’s the left’s turn. Obama chooses Rick Warren to give the Inauguration invocation, and people on the left are up in arms, as though a 30-second prayer were the equivalent of a cabinet appointment.
Symbolic gestures like this appeal to our emotions; they make a difference in how we feel. Symbols are easy to respond to, and the response is often binary. Us vs. them, good vs. evil. Rev. Warren opposes gay marriage, therefore he’s a bad guy.
Policy is different. It’s about what actually happens on the ground, and it’s far more complex. It doesn’t lend itself to Manichaeanism (that’s one of the reasons the Bushies messed up so badly). It doesn’t require emotion, it requires thought . . . and data.
Still, the moralists must insist that symbolic issues are real. They must also claim not just that evildoers are evil, but that “if we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight them here.” Iraq was no threat to the US, but the invasion would “send a message” to the terroists. War as candy-gram.
Similarly, the anti-Warrenists insist that his half-minute as invocator-in-chief, will “send a message” that anti-gay bigotry is all right. As Andrew Perrin over at Scatterplot puts it, “That message will be heard, loud and clear, and it’s quite reasonable to expect that real people’s real lives will really be affected by it.”
Now, I’ve always thought that when someone says, “It is reasonable to expect,” what they really mean is “I have absolutely no evidence to support this.” But Andrew is an honorable man, and presumably he does know of evidence. Still, I’ve been skeptical about send-a-message arguments ever since my days in the crim biz.
Back then, send-a-message was usually a call for harsh sentences in celebrated cases. The death penalty would “send a message” to potential murderers. Long and mandatory sentences would “send a message” to drug dealers, robbers, Enronistas, or whatever evildoer was currently in the headlines. Whatever this week’s crime of the century was, an acquittal or a sentence less than the maximum would send a message that this crime was O.K., a message which would be heard loud and clear, and nobody would be safe.
The trouble was that evidence of actual deterrence was hard to find, and to the extent that punishment does deter, it’s more a matter of increasing the certainty of arrest, not the severity of sentences.
The symbolic messages of celebrated cases make for good TV – the sorts of things Bill O’Reilly types get all riled up about – and they may be morally satisfying. But they have no impact on what people actually do.
If I were concerned about gay marriage, I’d be much more worried about who’s getting out the vote and who’s getting appointed to the judiciary than about who’s praying at the Inauguration.
Deflationary Psycholoogy
December 19, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
Are lower prices bad? In Monday’s Times, David Leonhardt explains the dangers of consumer thinking.
With all the doubt cast recently on economic rationality, it would be nice to have some evidence on what really happens during deflation. Do economists have such evidence, and if so, where did they get that evidence? How many deflationary periods are there for us to sample?
Does consumer spending rise in tandem with inflation? And even if it does, there are two possible explanations. One is the flip side of the deflation mentality Leonhardt mentions: buy it now before the price goes up. The other is that inflation means higher wages, and people with increased incomes feel they have more money to spend.
I should know this, but I don't. Economic sociologists, please speak up.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Are lower prices bad? In Monday’s Times, David Leonhardt explains the dangers of consumer thinking.
There is good reason to fear deflation. Once prices start to fall, many consumers may decide to reduce their spending even more than they already have. Why buy a minivan today, after all, if it’s going to be cheaper in a few months? Multiplied by millions, such decisions weaken the economy further, forcing companies to reduce prices even more.”This seemed reasonable to me. Then I thought about all those digital cameras and flat-screen TVs and computers and flash drives and all other electronic gadgetry. People buy this stuff even though they know that in a few months they’ll be able to get either the same thing for less money or a better version for the same money.
With all the doubt cast recently on economic rationality, it would be nice to have some evidence on what really happens during deflation. Do economists have such evidence, and if so, where did they get that evidence? How many deflationary periods are there for us to sample?
Does consumer spending rise in tandem with inflation? And even if it does, there are two possible explanations. One is the flip side of the deflation mentality Leonhardt mentions: buy it now before the price goes up. The other is that inflation means higher wages, and people with increased incomes feel they have more money to spend.
I should know this, but I don't. Economic sociologists, please speak up.
Fifties Food
December 17, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
Jenn Lena has a link to the Gallery of Regrettable Food, a site which looks back at US food a half century ago and asks, “What were they thinking?”
At Sociological Images, eallen has a more thoughtful take. She looks at the ads with recipes for baked bean pizza or broiled spam on canned peaches and chalks up the reliance on canned or prepared food to “the Atomic Age’s fascination with technologically advanced cookery.”
We look back, and we laugh – “Spiffy Then, Hilarious Now” is the title of eallen’s post. Ah yes, we are so superior in what we eat today.
The trouble with this sort of smugness is that its ethnocentrism stops any further sociological thinking. Fifties food was laughably bad. The end. It’s like watching Mad Men and chuckling at the hair styles and habits (smoking, drinking) and boat-like automobiles, and not looking for the less visible structures that shaped work, family, gender, and consumer choices.
A little cultural relativism and conflict theory might be more helpful. Food is fashion, just like clothing. What tastes good, like what looks good, is what’s in fashion. In a few decades, we may look back at Ugg boots and chicken Caesar wraps the way we now look back on poodle skirts and Jello everything.
Also, like fashions in clothing, fashions in food don’t just happen. They are part of history, and they have an industry behind them. The fifties were the post-War era. The Spam and canned peaches were leftovers, left over from the War. More importantly, so was the industrial set-up producing them. These ads are part of the food industry’s effort to create “a peacetime market for wartime foods. . . . factories were ready to keep right on canning, freezing, and dehydrating food as if the nation’s life still depended on it.”
“What the industry had to do was persuade millions of Americans to develop a lasting taste for meals that were a lot like field rations.”
Both quotes are from Something From the Oven, by Laura Shapiro, who also has more than a few words to say about how these food fashions relate to the social constraints on the role of women. It’s kind of embarrassing when the best sociology on a topic is done by a dance critic.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Jenn Lena has a link to the Gallery of Regrettable Food, a site which looks back at US food a half century ago and asks, “What were they thinking?”
At Sociological Images, eallen has a more thoughtful take. She looks at the ads with recipes for baked bean pizza or broiled spam on canned peaches and chalks up the reliance on canned or prepared food to “the Atomic Age’s fascination with technologically advanced cookery.”
We look back, and we laugh – “Spiffy Then, Hilarious Now” is the title of eallen’s post. Ah yes, we are so superior in what we eat today.
The trouble with this sort of smugness is that its ethnocentrism stops any further sociological thinking. Fifties food was laughably bad. The end. It’s like watching Mad Men and chuckling at the hair styles and habits (smoking, drinking) and boat-like automobiles, and not looking for the less visible structures that shaped work, family, gender, and consumer choices.
A little cultural relativism and conflict theory might be more helpful. Food is fashion, just like clothing. What tastes good, like what looks good, is what’s in fashion. In a few decades, we may look back at Ugg boots and chicken Caesar wraps the way we now look back on poodle skirts and Jello everything.
Also, like fashions in clothing, fashions in food don’t just happen. They are part of history, and they have an industry behind them. The fifties were the post-War era. The Spam and canned peaches were leftovers, left over from the War. More importantly, so was the industrial set-up producing them. These ads are part of the food industry’s effort to create “a peacetime market for wartime foods. . . . factories were ready to keep right on canning, freezing, and dehydrating food as if the nation’s life still depended on it.”
“What the industry had to do was persuade millions of Americans to develop a lasting taste for meals that were a lot like field rations.”
Both quotes are from Something From the Oven, by Laura Shapiro, who also has more than a few words to say about how these food fashions relate to the social constraints on the role of women. It’s kind of embarrassing when the best sociology on a topic is done by a dance critic.
Music and Violence
December 15, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. Or enrage it.
At Gitmo, “harsh interrogations” include Heavy Metal. We’ve known that for a while. Here’s the latest twist:
In the US the music-and-violence flap has been mostly about rap. But in some places, even easy listening isn’t so easy.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. Or enrage it.
At Gitmo, “harsh interrogations” include Heavy Metal. We’ve known that for a while. Here’s the latest twist:
Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons. . . . groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.Music as torture –good ideas like this are hard to stop from spreading.
For many Afghan detainees - where music was prohibited under Taliban rule - interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to the rhythms, played at top volume. (New York Newsday, Dec. 10)
A Colorado judge who noticed that many of the people who showed up in his courtroom for violating noise ordinances were repeat offenders has decided to quit fooling around: new offenders may find themselves sentenced to an hour of listening to Barry Manilow or the theme tune from the children's TV show ''Barney and Friends.'' (New York Times, Nov. 28)(The judge’s cruel and unusual list also included The Platters and The Carpenters.)
In the US the music-and-violence flap has been mostly about rap. But in some places, even easy listening isn’t so easy.
International: Karaoke singer killed after hogging micA Malaysian karaoke enthusiast hogged the microphone for so long that he was set upon and stabbed to death.
Karaoke rage is not uncommon, especially in Asia. There have been several reported instances of singers being assaulted, shot or stabbed mid-performance, usually over how songs are sung.
In Seattle last year, a woman with an apparent aversion for Coldplay attacked a singer who had just embarked on a rendition of Yellow.
Frank Sinatra's My Way has reportedly generated such outbursts of hostility that some bars in the Philippines now no longer serve it up on the karaoke menu.
In Thailand this year, a gunman killed eight people after tiring of endless renditions of a John Denver tune. (The Guardian)
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