July 24, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Jury nullification” – the term wafted out of the radio a few times this morning. A law professor and after him, a federal judge were on the local NPR broadcast. The topic was guns and gun laws. Both men, separately, said that if the defendant in a gun possession trial has the gun for protection, juries are often sympathetic. It’s hard to get a conviction. Even in New York.
They were talking about me. I was a juror on a New York gun possession case many years ago. The prosecutor allowed that the defendant was probably carrying it for protection. He had been badly mugged just a few months earlier. On the night of the incident, he was riding in a gypsy cab with two friends, going to Harlem to play pool. He was in the front passenger seat. The cops stopped the car and found the pistol under his seat. The defense claimed that it was not his gun. Someone else must have put it under the seat.
We found the defendant not guilty.
But the verdict was not “jury nullification,” at least not in any overt way. In all our deliberations, which didn’t take very long (the original vote was ten for acquittal),and nobody said anything about self-defense. Nobody even hinted that even if it was his gun, he had a legitimate reason to be carrying.
Instead, doubts focused on the chief prosecution witness, the gypsy cab driver, who testified that when the cops’ flashing light went on and he pulled his car over to the curb, the defendant, sitting beside him, said, “Oh, shit,” and slid something under the seat.
The jurors didn’t believe the driver. Maybe that was because he did not testify in English, so his answers may have seemed evasive. They were in fact less direct since they had to go through an interpreter. He spoke Wolof, and you know what that’s like. In any case, the nuances of his discourse were lost on us jurors. Several thought he was dissembling or outright lying.
“He’s a foreigner, he might not have understood,” said one juror, trying to counter the anti-cabbie sentiment.
“Oh these foreigners,” said one woman immediately, “they might pretend not to understand, but they know what’s going on. They know how to work things.”
She had a Greek surname though she looked quite Anglo. I asked her later if that was her married name. Yes, she said, and added that she was no longer married. I didn’t ask for details.
So the fate of a defendant turned in part on the bitterness of a divorcee towards her immigrant ex. Other jurors too may have been affected by similar feelings of no legal or factual relevance, like a general resentment towards the prosecution (“Why are they wasting our time with this case?” )
Suddenly, Lee J. Cobb in “12 Angry Men” no longer seemed so fictional and far-fetched.
Master Status
July 23, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Disability is often a “master status.”* The term was coined by Everett Hughes seventy years ago to indicate a characteristic that, from the perspective of other people, floods out other aspects of a person’s identity.
Last week’s “This American Life” provided an excellent example. The story was about an actress and dancer – Mary Archbold - whose left arm ends at the elbow. She was born that way. Outside the house, she wears a prosthesis, and though it is hard plastic and cannot do anywhere near what a real arm can do, she is able to keep other people from realizing that she does not have two normal arms.
And that’s the way she likes it – mostly because she is acutely aware of the master-status problem. Here is the audio clip (it runs less than two minutes), followed by the transcript.
The entire episode of TAL illustrates other sociological and psychological principles as well. The Mary Archbold segments (one with the title “There’s Something About Mary”) take up only 13 minutes, and they could easily be used as a companion piece if you’re teaching Goffman (especially Stigma).
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*Hughes was using the old status/role distinction. Look in almost any introductory sociology text, and you will read that “status” refers to the position in a social system while “role” refers to the expected behaviors of someone in that position. “Brother” and “sister” are statuses; the behaviors we expect (sharing certain chores, giving Christmas gifts, etc.) are part of the role.
However, if you listen to sociologists any time except when they are delivering the intro lecture on role, they use role to refer to both the position and the behaviors. Just as we say that someone is in the role of Lady Macbeth, referring both to her position in the play and the things she will do and say, we refer to “the role of sister,” not the “status” of sister.
As for “status,” except for the intro lecture and surviving coinages like “master status,” sociologists speak of “status” almost exclusively to refer to hierarchical position, usually socio-economic status.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Disability is often a “master status.”* The term was coined by Everett Hughes seventy years ago to indicate a characteristic that, from the perspective of other people, floods out other aspects of a person’s identity.
Last week’s “This American Life” provided an excellent example. The story was about an actress and dancer – Mary Archbold - whose left arm ends at the elbow. She was born that way. Outside the house, she wears a prosthesis, and though it is hard plastic and cannot do anywhere near what a real arm can do, she is able to keep other people from realizing that she does not have two normal arms.
And that’s the way she likes it – mostly because she is acutely aware of the master-status problem. Here is the audio clip (it runs less than two minutes), followed by the transcript.
| IRA GLASS: Is that moment [when you reveal to others] a moment of horror or a moment of pride?
MARY ARCHBOLD: Half and half. There’s the horror of: What reaction is it going to be? And then there’s the quiet pride that maybe you saw me as me before you saw me as an actor with a disability. IRA: You feel like those two things are contradictory? MARY: [Immediately] Yes. IRA: I’m not sure I understand that. It’s like you’re saying you want them to see you. But you includes the fact that you have only one full arm. MARY: True. But it’s not my leading characteristic. And often times when people find it out first, that’s sort of how they describe me. I’m like categorized “one-arm Mary.” IRA: But everyone when you see them, you see some superficial thing – their hair or the way they’re dressed or their age whatever it is, their race whatever it is, and they get classified . . . MARY: And I’d be happy to be classified among any other things. You can call me “the short girl,” you can call me “the brunette girl,” you can call me “the blue-eyed girl” – whatever you want to say. Just not “the disabled girl.” . . . . . And because I am a performer, it’s sort of a professional necessity, ’cause otherwise the only role I’ll be called in for is “wounded vet who just came home from Afghanistan.” And this way, I get called in for “housewife,” I get called in for “mom.” |
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*Hughes was using the old status/role distinction. Look in almost any introductory sociology text, and you will read that “status” refers to the position in a social system while “role” refers to the expected behaviors of someone in that position. “Brother” and “sister” are statuses; the behaviors we expect (sharing certain chores, giving Christmas gifts, etc.) are part of the role.
However, if you listen to sociologists any time except when they are delivering the intro lecture on role, they use role to refer to both the position and the behaviors. Just as we say that someone is in the role of Lady Macbeth, referring both to her position in the play and the things she will do and say, we refer to “the role of sister,” not the “status” of sister.
As for “status,” except for the intro lecture and surviving coinages like “master status,” sociologists speak of “status” almost exclusively to refer to hierarchical position, usually socio-economic status.
More Auroras?
July 21, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Will Wilkinson blogs (here) “Why Aren’t There More Auroras?” Why don’t we see mass killings every week? The Aurora slaughter, he says, was not “senseless.” Just the opposite.
My second reaction is that the question, stated that way, doesn’t easily direct us towards empirical data. It does not imply variables – things that can be different in a way that allows comparison. Instead, the question should be, “Why are there more Auroras at some times and places than at others?” Why, for instance, does the US have many more Auroras than do other countries? I doubt that human nature in the UK or Poland or Japan is any different than in the US. I doubt that we have more people of “uncommon estrangement” and “implausibly free will.”
But what we do have is guns – lots of them. And really good ones too. As in other countries, the uncommonly estranged here are very rare, as Wilkinson says. But in the US, an uncommonly estranged nutjob can walk into a friendly gun shop and walk out with an 100-round AR-15.
It’s much easier to be a mass murderer if you can get weapons of mass killing, much harder if you can’t.
In many countries, that AR-15 would be considered an unusual weapon and subject to greater restrictions than other guns. But here in the US, it’s as normal as blueberry pie. The Times (here) quotes Eugene Volokh, who is most definitely not a nutjob; he’s a law professor at UCLA, an expert on Constitutional law:
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(Note to commenters: please keep your remarks civil and relevant. This post is not about freedom or self-defense or the Constitution. However, actual evidence on mass shootings, access to weaponry, uncommon estrangement, etc., in the US and elsewhere would be welcome.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
Will Wilkinson blogs (here) “Why Aren’t There More Auroras?” Why don’t we see mass killings every week? The Aurora slaughter, he says, was not “senseless.” Just the opposite.
It is so easy to imagine from the perspective both of the murdered and the murderer . . . that I cannot quite fathom why it doesn't happen all the time. It is our safety that’s mysterious.His answer is basically human nature. His view is comfortingly anti-Hobbesian:
We are more thoroughly controlled by our society's norms than we tend to imagine. In a setting of peace, outside the context of war, to perpetrate an act like the Aurora massacre requires an almost superhuman feat of volition. There aren't more Aurora's because we are sociable robots, programmed for peace. To override that programming and act really monstrously requires both an uncommon estrangement and an implausibly free will.My first reaction when I read Wilkinson’s question was that his starting assumption was wrong: in fact there are more Auroras – disgruntled or unstable people who walk into an office or public space and start shooting. There are so many in fact – twenty a year on average (USA Today) – that to be national news, the incident has to be unusual in some way. Just three days before Aurora, a man in Tuscaloosa who had recently been sacked from his job got his AK-47, stood outside a crowded bar, and opened fire. Nobody was killed, so the story didn’t get much coverage.
My second reaction is that the question, stated that way, doesn’t easily direct us towards empirical data. It does not imply variables – things that can be different in a way that allows comparison. Instead, the question should be, “Why are there more Auroras at some times and places than at others?” Why, for instance, does the US have many more Auroras than do other countries? I doubt that human nature in the UK or Poland or Japan is any different than in the US. I doubt that we have more people of “uncommon estrangement” and “implausibly free will.”
But what we do have is guns – lots of them. And really good ones too. As in other countries, the uncommonly estranged here are very rare, as Wilkinson says. But in the US, an uncommonly estranged nutjob can walk into a friendly gun shop and walk out with an 100-round AR-15.
It’s much easier to be a mass murderer if you can get weapons of mass killing, much harder if you can’t.
In many countries, that AR-15 would be considered an unusual weapon and subject to greater restrictions than other guns. But here in the US, it’s as normal as blueberry pie. The Times (here) quotes Eugene Volokh, who is most definitely not a nutjob; he’s a law professor at UCLA, an expert on Constitutional law:
The guy basically had normal guns.Maybe the Times quoted Volokh out of context. I hope so, but I fear not. I would like to think that a military assault rifle with a 100-round clip is not a normal weapon. But apparently I am out of touch with the realities of American life.
* * * * *
(Note to commenters: please keep your remarks civil and relevant. This post is not about freedom or self-defense or the Constitution. However, actual evidence on mass shootings, access to weaponry, uncommon estrangement, etc., in the US and elsewhere would be welcome.)
A Book by Its Cover – Children’s Version
July 19, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
What’s this book about?” asks the little girl as her parent browses in the Classics section of the bookstore. Maybe she’s pointing to Middlemarch. Or Ulysses. What do you say?
Sunnychanel, who blogs at Babble.com, turned her slight frustration at trying to answer that question into a research opportunity. If life hands you an inquisitive six year old, do research on book covers and youthful ideation. Sunnychanel turned the question back on the daughter and asked her what she thought the book was about.Here are the book covers and just below them, the daughter’s synopsis.
Sometimes the kid came close to the mark. For example, she totally nailed the “magical realism” of Garcia Marquez.
On The Great Gatsby she wasn’t very close, but I’d have to blame that one on the graphic designer.
And there are some, like Lord of the Flies, where she hears the basic tune, but the minor sonorities of the original become a bright major upbeat melody, the sort of thing you might skip along to.
And then there’s Jane Eyre, the gold digger.
“Reader, I could really dig him.”
I guess you could turn this exercise into a projective diagnostic instrument – the Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test, but more fun.
The full post is here. An earlier SocioBlog post on book covers is here. And if you haven’t seen BetterBookTitles, browse here.
HT: Shamus Khan
Posted by Jay Livingston
What’s this book about?” asks the little girl as her parent browses in the Classics section of the bookstore. Maybe she’s pointing to Middlemarch. Or Ulysses. What do you say?
Sunnychanel, who blogs at Babble.com, turned her slight frustration at trying to answer that question into a research opportunity. If life hands you an inquisitive six year old, do research on book covers and youthful ideation. Sunnychanel turned the question back on the daughter and asked her what she thought the book was about.Here are the book covers and just below them, the daughter’s synopsis.
Sometimes the kid came close to the mark. For example, she totally nailed the “magical realism” of Garcia Marquez.
(Click on the image for a larger view that will allow you
to read the synopsis beneath the book cover.)
On The Great Gatsby she wasn’t very close, but I’d have to blame that one on the graphic designer.
And then there’s Jane Eyre, the gold digger.
I guess you could turn this exercise into a projective diagnostic instrument – the Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test, but more fun.
The full post is here. An earlier SocioBlog post on book covers is here. And if you haven’t seen BetterBookTitles, browse here.
HT: Shamus Khan
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