Nobody Knows You When You're Downwardly Mobile

March 2, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

Mark Kleiman notes a line from a New York Times story about downward mobility. The line concerns Ame Arlt, age 53, who had been making $165,000 a year as vice president at a media company. Now she makes $10-15 an hour doing mostly data entry.

Saddest line in the story: “Even though she has parted ways with some friends because she is no longer in their social stratum . . . “ I’ll have to get a new dictionary. The one I have seems to have an obsolete definition of the word “friend.”

Did Mark think that her former friends had abandoned her? That was my first thought. In my mind’s ear, I heard Billie Holiday singing the bridge to God Bless the Child:

Money – you’ve got lots of friends
Waitin’ round your door
When it’s gone and spending ends
They don’t come no more.


These lines are at 1:16 into this clip.

But on reading the sentence a second time, I got the impression that Ms. Arlt was the one who had decided to let the friendships drop. It’s not about their snobbery, it’s about her sense of self.

That interpretation may be more accurate, but it’s certainly not the more popular one. In fact, as I was trying to think up a title for this post, I ran through the lyrics of all the “friend” songs I could think of, and they all said the same thing: “I’ll be your friend even when things go bad for you.” None of them looked at it from the position Ms. Alt is now in. None of them said, “When I’m down and out and you’re still in good shape, I won’t be self-conscious or ashamed about still being friends with you.”

Can anyone think of a song, or anything else, that expresses that idea?

Careers Night

February 28, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

The sociology department held its first annual Careers Night on Tuesday. Or maybe semi-annual. Or every month. It depends on student response. Prof. Yasemin Besen organized the evening, which feature two recent MSU grads – Drew Jorgensen and Alis Drumgo. Drew went into the job market after getting her BA; Alis went to graduate school.

It was obvious that they both love what they’re doing. They also had a lot of good advice.



Drew spoke first. Here’s my summary: a BA in sociology doesn’t really prepare you for anything specific, but it’s a great start on many different kinds of jobs.
Sociology gives you two things that are particularly valuable:

• Knowledge of basic research design and statistics. (It’s surprising how few people out there can do this sort of thing well)
• A sociological framework for understanding work settings and institutions and the broader forces that shape what’s going on.

Drew works for new private school in New York’s financial district. She started as a kindergarten teacher, but now, she’s in their admissions department. She was able to move up thanks to sociology. The school needed research and data on the kids who were applying and their families. Drew stepped up because she had more experience than anyone there with getting data, organizing it, and analyzing it.

What else is important? Networking and enthusiasm. Employers are looking a person who is passionate about what she does. Tailor your resume to the job. Make it look as though what that employer does is what you are passionate about. Drew has at least two different resumes.

Alis is in graduate school. He’ll get his MA from the Urban and Regional Planning program at the Bloustein School (part of Rutgers). He also works for Catholic Charities as a Housing Resource Coordinator, working on issues related to foreclosure, affordable home ownership, and rent control.

Here are some of his suggestions about grad school.

• Apply to lots of schools, even ones you don’t think you can get into.
• Take the GREs. If you don’t do well, take a Kaplan course, and take them again.
• E-mail faculty at a school you are interested in. Explain to them how you are interested in their research and how your research ideas relate to theirs. This might help get you an advocate who can help you during the admissions process.
• Take the papers you write seriously. You may well have to submit them in a graduate school application. If your professors gave yousuggestions on how to improve your papers, make those changes even if the course is over. A good piece of written work can really help your chances of getting into graduate school.
• If you’re accepted, negotiate with the school over financial aid. If you’re accepted at more than one school, play them off against each other.

Drew and Alis spoke with students informally after their presentations, and they’ll be glad to answer further questions if you e-mail them.

The Association

February 26, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

researchers found that teenagers who preferred popular songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities.

That’s from the lead of an article passed around on a campus list here. America’s teens are having sex, and music is taking the rap.

I don’t know how far back in history this idea goes – blaming sex on music – maybe to the ancient Athenians. In the past century in the US, we’ve gone from ragtime to rap, each generation worried that the raunchiness of the music and lyrics their kids were listening to was leading those kids to sinful pleasures.

If each generation was right about the increase over the previous generation in a continually upward curve, kids today would have run out of hours in the day to have sex or “pre-coital activities” (just which base are they talking about anyway, and why didn’t we ever have an equivalent of shortstop?).

Now we have Research and Science to justify the fears about music. Note the clear cause-effect relation implied in that first sentence. Kids who listened to nasty music were more likely.

Here’s what the article* actually said

high exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex in popular music was independently associated with higher levels of sexual behavior. In fact, exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex was one of the strongest associations with sexual activity

The emphasis is my own addition because somebody here is missing a point that any intro sociology student should have learned: correlation is not cause.

Back in the 60s there was a rock group called The Association. (Anybody else remember “Along Comes Mary”?) I think they chose that name to distinguish themselves from another group, The Causation.

With Association, you don’t know what’s causing what. The message of that first sentence is that listening to those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad lyrics makes kids go out and have sex. But an equally plausible explanation is that kids who like sex in real life also like it in their music.

Even if there were a time factor with exposure to the nasty music coming first, you still couldn't conclude causation. All you could say is that kids who like to listen to dirty lyrics when they're young grow up to like doing dirty things when they get a little older.

And oh, don't bother Googling for The Causation or their greatest hits. I just made that part up.


* “Exposure to Sexual Lyrics and Sexual Experience Among Urban Adolescents,” by Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Erika L. Douglas, MS, Michael J. Fine, MD, MSc, and Madeline A. Dalton, PhD. It appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 36, Issue 4 (April 2009).

Desperately Seeking Sought-After

February 24, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

What does he want in this relationship, and what does she want?

A week ago, Gwen at Sociological Images posted this photo of an ad for a dating service that she found in an in-flight magazine.

Click on the image to see it in readable size.

The ad doesn’t give any prices, nor does their Website, but presumably, this is an expensive service, at least for men (“Women join for free”). But it’s the male/female differences that have nothing to do with cost that are more interesting. For example, the ad thinks its important to tell women that the service’s male clients are

• selective
• eligible
• highly educated
• commitment-minded

“Eligible” and “commitment-minded” don’t appear on the men’s side of the ad. My guess is that these are code words to tell women that the guys are not married and not out just for sex. Apparently that’s a concern for women (but not men), perhaps a concern born out of experience.

The ad for men lists in parentheses the criteria the guys might use – her religion, her age, etc., and the one I find most puzzling as a variable, her level of emotional stability. (“I’m looking for someone who’s 26-32, really pretty, college grad, and mildly neurotic.”)

The ad assures men that the women on the service are

• highly attractive
• intelligent
• sought-after

One of the commenters on Gwen’s post, someone with inside knowledge about the dating service industry, said that in fact the top criteria for nearly all men are simply a woman’s looks and weight, and for nearly all women, a man’s education and income.

Probably so. But what about “sought-after”? It’s one of only three things listed as making a woman desirable. But why? “Sought-after” implies that in deciding who they find attractive, men submit their feelings to a majority vote. For them, love is based not on the special chemistry between two particular people but on the consensus of what others think or on universalistic criteria. If lots of other guys want a woman, she must be the right woman for you. You choose a woman the same way you choose a car (“Car & Driver’s Top Rated” “America’s #1 Selling Luxury Model”).

In a similar vein, the Website for men equates finding love with career achievement. At the top of the men’s page is this headline

A BEST IN CLASS ADVISOR
While You Drive Companies Forward, We Help You Succeed In Your Personal Life

It’s all about success. The women’s page has nothing like that. For women, the top headline is

MEET AN INCREDIBLE MAN
Isn't It Time You Met The Real Love Of Your Life?

That love-of-your-life line appears on the men’s page as well, but at the bottom. As in the magazine ad, the Web page also tells women, but not men, that “you have nothing to lose and a wonderful man to gain.” I can see why men have something to lose – they’re the ones putting up money for this service – but why do only women have a wonderful someone to gain?