November 5, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
A piece on Facebook and advertising this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition quoted students at Berkeley as to what’s on their Facebook pages. The first voice was that of a girl (she sounded like she couldn't have been much older than first or second year) saying, “My favorite bands, like the Beatles and the Beach Boys . . . .”
Much to be said here regarding generations (could you have found a Berkeley student of the sixties who listed Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters among her faves?). But I’ll leave it at that.
And of course, you can still go to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975) and throw rice every Saturday midnight in Berkeley and many other cities around the world.
Faux Consciousness
November 2, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
“False consciousness.” It’s the escape valve in Marxian theory that explains why the workers, the exploited, the oppressed, so often act, vote, and think against their own interests. They fail to see the reality of the system that exploits them. The Marxists try to enlighten the workers as to that realty, but too often, the Marxists’s target audience seems to be tuned into the Fox network. (Or is that the Faux network?)
Many years ago, I was riding the bus to work with my colleague Peter Freund. As we passed a Chicken Delight, he pointed out the window to its large iconic sign. “The perfect representation of false consciousness,” he said.
I haven’t seen that type of sign for a while, but I was reminded of it when I saw this French version of fausse conscience, posted by Polly in her expat blog.
“Members of a subordinate class (workers, peasants, serfs) suffer from false consciousness in that their mental representations of the social relations around them systematically conceal or obscure the realities of subordination, exploitation, and domination those relations embody.” (Daniel Little)
The chicken happily serving itself up on a platter to be devoured by its exploiters.
Posted by Jay Livingston
“False consciousness.” It’s the escape valve in Marxian theory that explains why the workers, the exploited, the oppressed, so often act, vote, and think against their own interests. They fail to see the reality of the system that exploits them. The Marxists try to enlighten the workers as to that realty, but too often, the Marxists’s target audience seems to be tuned into the Fox network. (Or is that the Faux network?)
Many years ago, I was riding the bus to work with my colleague Peter Freund. As we passed a Chicken Delight, he pointed out the window to its large iconic sign. “The perfect representation of false consciousness,” he said.
I haven’t seen that type of sign for a while, but I was reminded of it when I saw this French version of fausse conscience, posted by Polly in her expat blog.
“Members of a subordinate class (workers, peasants, serfs) suffer from false consciousness in that their mental representations of the social relations around them systematically conceal or obscure the realities of subordination, exploitation, and domination those relations embody.” (Daniel Little)
The chicken happily serving itself up on a platter to be devoured by its exploiters.
Better Off?
October 31, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” asked Ronald Reagan of Americans in a televised presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980. Many people think that this question helped win the election for Reagan. That was then.
What about now? Back in August, I cited a New York Times article by David Cay Johnston showing that average income in 2005 was still lower than it had been in 2000. But I wondered why Johnston hadn’t used median income rather than the mean since the mean is so distorted by changes among the very rich.
Mr. Johnston has e-mailed an elbow in the ribs calling my attention to a Times article he wrote two weeks ago showing income changes for different income groups. I confess I hadn’t seen it (nor had any of the economist blogs I look at made mention of it.).
The message is basically the same. For all but the top 5%, incomes were still slightly lower in 2005 than they had been in 2000. But that’s not quite the whole story. The graph in the article shows both pre-tax and post-tax income.
Although pre-tax income for most people was slightly lower, thanks to the tax cuts, post-tax income was slightly higher. For the lower half of earners, average income in 2005 was $234 higher than in 2000. The graph also shows clearly that the big winners were the top 1%, whose pre-tax incomes were higher by about $18,000 but whose after-tax incomes were higher by nearly $65,000.
Were you better off after four years of Bush? For most Americans, the answer was, “Slightly.” For those at the very top, the answer was, “Yes, quite a lot, thank you.”
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” asked Ronald Reagan of Americans in a televised presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980. Many people think that this question helped win the election for Reagan. That was then.
What about now? Back in August, I cited a New York Times article by David Cay Johnston showing that average income in 2005 was still lower than it had been in 2000. But I wondered why Johnston hadn’t used median income rather than the mean since the mean is so distorted by changes among the very rich.
Mr. Johnston has e-mailed an elbow in the ribs calling my attention to a Times article he wrote two weeks ago showing income changes for different income groups. I confess I hadn’t seen it (nor had any of the economist blogs I look at made mention of it.).
The message is basically the same. For all but the top 5%, incomes were still slightly lower in 2005 than they had been in 2000. But that’s not quite the whole story. The graph in the article shows both pre-tax and post-tax income.
Although pre-tax income for most people was slightly lower, thanks to the tax cuts, post-tax income was slightly higher. For the lower half of earners, average income in 2005 was $234 higher than in 2000. The graph also shows clearly that the big winners were the top 1%, whose pre-tax incomes were higher by about $18,000 but whose after-tax incomes were higher by nearly $65,000.
Were you better off after four years of Bush? For most Americans, the answer was, “Slightly.” For those at the very top, the answer was, “Yes, quite a lot, thank you.”
In Apprehension How Like a Guide
October 29, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
About.com is looking for a few good guides. A “guide” runs a topic area., posting news, providing links to articles and Websites, and keeping a blog. If you’re a blogger, you might already be doing much of what about.com wants. And About.com pays money.
A reader of this blog passed along the info that about.com needs a sociology guide, but I’ve turned it down and am putting it out there for you. Other guideless topics up for grabs include Race Relations, Moroccan Food, Bladder Cancer, El Paso TX, and . . . well, the list is pretty long.
It was hard to pass up all that loot. “If your page views grow you will never make less than $725 per month and it's likely you'll make much more than that over time (in some cases we have Guides who earn in excess of $100,000 per year)”.
Let’s see – 20 hours a week, $725 a month. It works out to roughly $8.50 an hour.
Posted by Jay Livingston
About.com is looking for a few good guides. A “guide” runs a topic area., posting news, providing links to articles and Websites, and keeping a blog. If you’re a blogger, you might already be doing much of what about.com wants. And About.com pays money.
A reader of this blog passed along the info that about.com needs a sociology guide, but I’ve turned it down and am putting it out there for you. Other guideless topics up for grabs include Race Relations, Moroccan Food, Bladder Cancer, El Paso TX, and . . . well, the list is pretty long.
It was hard to pass up all that loot. “If your page views grow you will never make less than $725 per month and it's likely you'll make much more than that over time (in some cases we have Guides who earn in excess of $100,000 per year)”.
Let’s see – 20 hours a week, $725 a month. It works out to roughly $8.50 an hour.
Primaries and Markets
October 27, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
My friend Marty Schram, who is a Real Journalist and not a blogger, had a column this week about what he calls “Campaign Calendar Leap-Frog.” So far, four states have rescheduled their presidential primary elections to come earlier than the traditional firsts, the Iowa caucuses and the New
Hampshire primary. Other states may join in the madness.
I see it as an example of classic laissez-faire – a negative example.
The Market is supposed to be a magical invisible hand that transforms self-interest into public good. Through each participant pursuing his own self-interest, the competition in the market generates the greatest amount of total satisfaction. Therefore, all we need to do is stop regulating and let people pursue their self-interest, and everyone will be better off.
The classic counter example is the guy who stands up at the ball game to get a better view. He’s doing what’s best for himself. But by standing, he blocks others’ view, so they in turn stand, and so on until everyone winds up standing for the entire game rather than sitting comfortably. Even if the Red Sox win, everyone winds up worse off than they were before.
The primaries are doing the same thing, though in the dimension of time rather than height. Michigan and Florida have decided that it is in their interest to have an early primary. They’re probably right. Early primaries bring lots of candidates with lots of money to spend. But then Iowa, still wanting to be first, has to leap frog its caucuses back to January 3, 2008. Maybe other states will get in the race as well. New Hampshire may hold its 2008 presidential primary in 2007.
In the free market of primary scheduling, most of the states will wind up worse off than they were before. More crucially, the system will probably not be as good at doing what the primaries are supposed to do – giving the public the candidates it wants and that can best serve their parties and the nation.
Maybe the free market doesn't always have mojo.
(Marty has a neat solution – regional primaries. But that would require a very visible hand of regulation telling each state when to hold its primary.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
My friend Marty Schram, who is a Real Journalist and not a blogger, had a column this week about what he calls “Campaign Calendar Leap-Frog.” So far, four states have rescheduled their presidential primary elections to come earlier than the traditional firsts, the Iowa caucuses and the New
Hampshire primary. Other states may join in the madness.I see it as an example of classic laissez-faire – a negative example.
The Market is supposed to be a magical invisible hand that transforms self-interest into public good. Through each participant pursuing his own self-interest, the competition in the market generates the greatest amount of total satisfaction. Therefore, all we need to do is stop regulating and let people pursue their self-interest, and everyone will be better off.
The classic counter example is the guy who stands up at the ball game to get a better view. He’s doing what’s best for himself. But by standing, he blocks others’ view, so they in turn stand, and so on until everyone winds up standing for the entire game rather than sitting comfortably. Even if the Red Sox win, everyone winds up worse off than they were before.
The primaries are doing the same thing, though in the dimension of time rather than height. Michigan and Florida have decided that it is in their interest to have an early primary. They’re probably right. Early primaries bring lots of candidates with lots of money to spend. But then Iowa, still wanting to be first, has to leap frog its caucuses back to January 3, 2008. Maybe other states will get in the race as well. New Hampshire may hold its 2008 presidential primary in 2007.
In the free market of primary scheduling, most of the states will wind up worse off than they were before. More crucially, the system will probably not be as good at doing what the primaries are supposed to do – giving the public the candidates it wants and that can best serve their parties and the nation.
Maybe the free market doesn't always have mojo.
(Marty has a neat solution – regional primaries. But that would require a very visible hand of regulation telling each state when to hold its primary.)
Search Committee
October 23, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Wicked Anomie has created search engine for searching sociology blogs. Apparently, you too can cobble together websites for a customized search engine - once you figure out how to do it in Google. But the Caped Crusader (I think that's a cape she's wearing in the picture/icon) has done it for us. You can even add it as a widget to your own blog, as Anomie has done.
If you want your blog or site included, tell Anomie, and she'll put you on the list.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Wicked Anomie has created search engine for searching sociology blogs. Apparently, you too can cobble together websites for a customized search engine - once you figure out how to do it in Google. But the Caped Crusader (I think that's a cape she's wearing in the picture/icon) has done it for us. You can even add it as a widget to your own blog, as Anomie has done.
If you want your blog or site included, tell Anomie, and she'll put you on the list.
Cyberweight - Update II
October 22, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
(Update: October 23. I ended the count of hits on this website too soon. Since yesterday, Jeremy ("The Hits Just Keep on Coming") Freese narrowed the gap and then pulled ahead. See the chart below.)
How much influence does a Website wield? My own egocentric measurement is to count referrals to this blog.
So lets compare the personal blog of a sociologist (Jeremy Freese) with an
commercial site (Inside Higher Ed). Both these sites mentioned the Montclair SocioBlog recently, and Google Analytics allowed me to count the number of times the link was clicked at each site in the two or three days following.
Las Vegas made Freese a 50 click underdog - hey, this is Internet influence, not Scrabble.
Here are the results.
The late surge of Jeremy's readers put him ahead by only 3 clicks , 89-86. Not bad for a single blogger up against a team of at least eighteen on staff at IHE.
Posted by Jay Livingston
(Update: October 23. I ended the count of hits on this website too soon. Since yesterday, Jeremy ("The Hits Just Keep on Coming") Freese narrowed the gap and then pulled ahead. See the chart below.)
How much influence does a Website wield? My own egocentric measurement is to count referrals to this blog.
So lets compare the personal blog of a sociologist (Jeremy Freese) with an
commercial site (Inside Higher Ed). Both these sites mentioned the Montclair SocioBlog recently, and Google Analytics allowed me to count the number of times the link was clicked at each site in the two or three days following.Las Vegas made Freese a 50 click underdog - hey, this is Internet influence, not Scrabble.
Here are the results.
The late surge of Jeremy's readers put him ahead by only 3 clicks , 89-86. Not bad for a single blogger up against a team of at least eighteen on staff at IHE.
Take This Job And . . .
October 20, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Both New York City tabloids had the same front page yesterday – a photo of Joe Torre and the headline SHOVE IT.
The Torre story is big news in New York. Even the Times had it on the front page, and all the TV networks pre-empted their afternoon soaps (or Judge Alex on Fox) to carry Torre’s press conference live.
Torre – does anyone not know this?– has been the manager of the Yankees for the last twelve years. In that period, the team made the playoffs every year, the ALCS seven years, the World Series six years, and won the Series four of those six times.
After the Yanks lost in the division series this year, the management, disappointed, offered Torre a one-year, $5 million contract – not as much as his current salary but higher than any other manager in baseball.
So it’s interesting that the tabloids and probably most of the fans approve of Torre’s decision to quit. They see the Yankees’ offer as an insult, one that well merits the Johnny Paycheck response. Maybe it’s because of the Boss he worked for.
George Steinbrenner, prior to the Torre era, used to fire and hire managers – usually Billy Martin – more often than most of us get an oil change. But the pace of change – different in degree, not in kind from other teams – represents a general tendency in sports. When the team does badly, change managers. But why?
Here's one idea: In an environment dominated by uncertainty, people attribute greater power to leaders. Charismatic leaders don’t arise in times of certainty but in times of crises. If things turn out well, we glorify the leader (or in cases like Rudy Giuliani, the leaders glorify themselves). Institutions that operate in a climate of uncertainty (e.g., a baseball organization) follow a similar logic. If things turn out badly, fire the manager.
But how much difference does a manager make? Managers don’t pitch down the middle, they don’t boot ground balls, they don’t pop up with men on base. More important for social scientists, how could we get any evidence that would allow us to measure that difference? I can’t think of anything. You’d have to have some way of controlling for the quality of the players on the team.
Either that or something like a duplicate bridge tournament. As football coach Bum Phillips said when asked how good a coach Don Shula was, “He can take his’n and beat your’n, and he can your’n and beat his’n.” But in the real world, no such switcheroo experiment is possible.
I did a quick search at the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (statisticians love sports, or at least those who like sports love to analyze them statistically), but I struck out swinging.
Hat tip to my brother for the JQAS lead and for reminding me of the Phillips quote.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Both New York City tabloids had the same front page yesterday – a photo of Joe Torre and the headline SHOVE IT.
The Torre story is big news in New York. Even the Times had it on the front page, and all the TV networks pre-empted their afternoon soaps (or Judge Alex on Fox) to carry Torre’s press conference live.
Torre – does anyone not know this?– has been the manager of the Yankees for the last twelve years. In that period, the team made the playoffs every year, the ALCS seven years, the World Series six years, and won the Series four of those six times.
After the Yanks lost in the division series this year, the management, disappointed, offered Torre a one-year, $5 million contract – not as much as his current salary but higher than any other manager in baseball.
So it’s interesting that the tabloids and probably most of the fans approve of Torre’s decision to quit. They see the Yankees’ offer as an insult, one that well merits the Johnny Paycheck response. Maybe it’s because of the Boss he worked for.
George Steinbrenner, prior to the Torre era, used to fire and hire managers – usually Billy Martin – more often than most of us get an oil change. But the pace of change – different in degree, not in kind from other teams – represents a general tendency in sports. When the team does badly, change managers. But why?
Here's one idea: In an environment dominated by uncertainty, people attribute greater power to leaders. Charismatic leaders don’t arise in times of certainty but in times of crises. If things turn out well, we glorify the leader (or in cases like Rudy Giuliani, the leaders glorify themselves). Institutions that operate in a climate of uncertainty (e.g., a baseball organization) follow a similar logic. If things turn out badly, fire the manager.
But how much difference does a manager make? Managers don’t pitch down the middle, they don’t boot ground balls, they don’t pop up with men on base. More important for social scientists, how could we get any evidence that would allow us to measure that difference? I can’t think of anything. You’d have to have some way of controlling for the quality of the players on the team.
Either that or something like a duplicate bridge tournament. As football coach Bum Phillips said when asked how good a coach Don Shula was, “He can take his’n and beat your’n, and he can your’n and beat his’n.” But in the real world, no such switcheroo experiment is possible.
I did a quick search at the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (statisticians love sports, or at least those who like sports love to analyze them statistically), but I struck out swinging.
Hat tip to my brother for the JQAS lead and for reminding me of the Phillips quote.
Attributions and Contributions - Radiohead Edition
October 18, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
In class the other day, I was trying to come up with examples of personal and situational attributions, when I remembered the Radiohead ploy: offer your new album as a download and let people pay whatever they want, from nothing on up. What kind of person would take something and not pay for it?
Conveniently, economist Tyler Cowen asked people to post to his blog saying what they paid. Most people gave not just the amount but also a comment.
None of the people who paid nothing attributed their decision to their own character traits. Nobody said, “I guess I’m just a cheap bastard.” Instead, they attributed their actions to external factors. (Deviance people take note: many of these resemble “neutralizations”)
It was the band’s faultOr there was something wrong with the music or the website
But, as attribution theory predicts, the people who shelled out money for something they could have had free also refused to see their behavior as a sign of some internal trait like generosity. Instead, they saw it more as a strategy to achieve a goal.
Posted by Jay Livingston
In class the other day, I was trying to come up with examples of personal and situational attributions, when I remembered the Radiohead ploy: offer your new album as a download and let people pay whatever they want, from nothing on up. What kind of person would take something and not pay for it?
Conveniently, economist Tyler Cowen asked people to post to his blog saying what they paid. Most people gave not just the amount but also a comment.
None of the people who paid nothing attributed their decision to their own character traits. Nobody said, “I guess I’m just a cheap bastard.” Instead, they attributed their actions to external factors. (Deviance people take note: many of these resemble “neutralizations”)
It was the band’s fault
- If they wanted to offer that option I was going to take it. If I had to pay a minimum of five pounds, or ten pounds, I would have.
- I did not pay anything for it. That was their risk.
- I have not been satisfied with Radiohead's recent work and didn't think I would like this one (after two listens I think it's mediocre)
- They have an ugly website that doesn't work very well, so I bummed it from a friend.
- because they charge so much for their damn t-shirts. I feel like it evens out now.
But, as attribution theory predicts, the people who shelled out money for something they could have had free also refused to see their behavior as a sign of some internal trait like generosity. Instead, they saw it more as a strategy to achieve a goal.
- I paid 10 bucks. But in reality, part of what I was paying for was the beauty of the idea. Probably would have paid between $5 and $7 if this was already commonplace.
- £5 plus the service charge. I thought it was a fair price and a concept that needed supporting.
- 10 pounds. That's the going rate for a cd download, right? I thought it was brave of them to leave it up to the buyer
Outside Higher Ed
October 16, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Here's what happens if your blog gets a mention in the “Around the Web” section of the Inside Higher Ed website: fifty-five people linking in. At least that's what happened with this blog yesterday. I would have thought it would be more since IHE picks only two websites each day. And the effect fades quickly. Today, there were only five referrals.
The strange thing was the post they chose to link to –“Scholarship as an Avocation” rather than the following post, “What Can I Do With an MA?”
Of course, your mileage may vary. If IHE had mentioned bloggers like Dan Myers or Jeremy Freese, people would have been clicking in by the hundreds.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Here's what happens if your blog gets a mention in the “Around the Web” section of the Inside Higher Ed website: fifty-five people linking in. At least that's what happened with this blog yesterday. I would have thought it would be more since IHE picks only two websites each day. And the effect fades quickly. Today, there were only five referrals.
The strange thing was the post they chose to link to –“Scholarship as an Avocation” rather than the following post, “What Can I Do With an MA?”
Of course, your mileage may vary. If IHE had mentioned bloggers like Dan Myers or Jeremy Freese, people would have been clicking in by the hundreds.
The New York Walk - Homecoming Edition
October 15, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
The New York Walk planners hadn’t checked their calendar. They scheduled it for the same day as the Montclair Homecoming Game, so we had fewer students than usual on the walk. (And as we walked around Manhattan, Montclair State was defeating Kean, 27-12.)
So we were a small group of tourists, something like these.
(These bronzes are at the clock at the Hilton Hotel just across from Port Authority - public art by Tom Otterness.)
It was a beautiful autumn day, and Bryant Park behind the Library was just beginning to fill up. The Library puts out books for people to read while the sit in the park. (The red shelf has books for kids.)
I suppose there's something to be said sociologically about the trust and public spaces. Anybody could walk away with a book or two. Or a chair or table, for that matter. But I suspect that the attrition rate is low.
Bryant Park also has the cleanest pubic restrooms you can imagine. Laura Kramer, as she was leaving the women's room, complimented the custodian and asked a brief question (sorry, Laura, but I can't remember what it was), and the woman beamed and gladly answered. As Laura reminded us, though it shouldn't have been necessary, "People love to talk about their work."
Two of us were from Germany – Agnes, who was born in Poland, and Miriam – and they wanted East European food for lunch, so we stopped here.
(Agnes and Miriam are on the left of the photo. The others, though it's hard to distinguish them in this photo, include George Martin, Laura Kramer, and Peter Freund.)
And speaking of work, you may be familiar with this famous photo by George Ebbets of construction workers having lunch, sitting on a girder high above the city. (I think they were working on the Chrysler Building in the early 1930s).
A sculptor has transformed the picture into metal, and he displays his work on a truck he parks on the street in Greenwich Village.
Here are Peter, Miriam, and Agnes getting a closer look.
There was much more. Not just the usual New York sights, but quirky stuff you don't expect to find but aren't all that surprised by either, at least not in New York. Like the Dachshund rally in Washington Square.
I'm looking forward to the Spring edition of the walk. Join us.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The New York Walk planners hadn’t checked their calendar. They scheduled it for the same day as the Montclair Homecoming Game, so we had fewer students than usual on the walk. (And as we walked around Manhattan, Montclair State was defeating Kean, 27-12.)
So we were a small group of tourists, something like these.
(These bronzes are at the clock at the Hilton Hotel just across from Port Authority - public art by Tom Otterness.)
It was a beautiful autumn day, and Bryant Park behind the Library was just beginning to fill up. The Library puts out books for people to read while the sit in the park. (The red shelf has books for kids.)
I suppose there's something to be said sociologically about the trust and public spaces. Anybody could walk away with a book or two. Or a chair or table, for that matter. But I suspect that the attrition rate is low.Bryant Park also has the cleanest pubic restrooms you can imagine. Laura Kramer, as she was leaving the women's room, complimented the custodian and asked a brief question (sorry, Laura, but I can't remember what it was), and the woman beamed and gladly answered. As Laura reminded us, though it shouldn't have been necessary, "People love to talk about their work."
Two of us were from Germany – Agnes, who was born in Poland, and Miriam – and they wanted East European food for lunch, so we stopped here.
(Agnes and Miriam are on the left of the photo. The others, though it's hard to distinguish them in this photo, include George Martin, Laura Kramer, and Peter Freund.)And speaking of work, you may be familiar with this famous photo by George Ebbets of construction workers having lunch, sitting on a girder high above the city. (I think they were working on the Chrysler Building in the early 1930s).
A sculptor has transformed the picture into metal, and he displays his work on a truck he parks on the street in Greenwich Village.
Here are Peter, Miriam, and Agnes getting a closer look.
There was much more. Not just the usual New York sights, but quirky stuff you don't expect to find but aren't all that surprised by either, at least not in New York. Like the Dachshund rally in Washington Square.
I'm looking forward to the Spring edition of the walk. Join us.
What Can I Do With an MA?
October 12, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Undergraduates often ask what they can do with a degree. Students who go into graduate programs presumably have resolved that question. So without further comment, here's a sign I saw posted at a bookstore in New Haven last month. I've blacked out the phone number, though I'm not sure why.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Undergraduates often ask what they can do with a degree. Students who go into graduate programs presumably have resolved that question. So without further comment, here's a sign I saw posted at a bookstore in New Haven last month. I've blacked out the phone number, though I'm not sure why.
Scholarship as an Avocation
October 10, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Max Weber wrote an essay about “Scholarship as a Vocation” (the more commonly used translation is “Science as a Vocation”). It’s a classic, but Weber, in focusing on the professionals, forgot about the hobbyists tinkering in their garages. Sometimes, they do it better.
When I was an undergraduate, there was a lab technician who worked for the biochemistry department – I don’t think he had a college degree, he may even have been a high school droupout – who knew more than most of the doctoral students and probably some of the faculty. He was also the quarterback on the biochem intramural football team, which is why they usually won.
I was reminded of this by two things this week: my sister-in-law’s birthday dinner and Andrew Gelman’s Social Science Statistic Blog.
Gelman prints a rant (his word, not mine) that someone sent him about a wrongheaded statistical analysis done by some consultant for a local government project.
Gelman agrees and adds:
Take Howie, a guy you would never mistake as an academic. He’s an old friend of my brother- and sister-in-law, and Sunday we were celebrating her birthday somewhere out in Queens at an unpretentious Italian restaurant (decent food, reasonable prices, no tablecloths, Yankees on a couple of TVs in the bar). I was seated down at the end of the table with my brother-in-law and Howie. Talk turned to politics – Hillary, Obama, Rudy – and what about Gore? That got us to Gore 2000 and the electoral college, then to Kerry and the Ohio vote in 2004. Were the elections stolen?
It became clear that Howie knew a lot about voting and irregularities and how you might audit results to detect vote-count tampering. He knew about sample sizes and statistical errors. He knew that no single sample size or percentage was perfect and that you optimize sample size by taking account of of electoral shifts and winning margins. He knew all the ways that a House bill on election audits was flawed. He also knew about hacking electronic voting machines, but he thought the computer scientists were focused on the wrong part of the problem. If you wanted to ensure voting integrity, you had to go for statistical audits. (“The computer science guys, they’re not interested in this stuff.”)
But as far as I knew, this was purely a hobby for him. It certainly wasn’t his job. (The last job he had was for an airline.) He had learned the statistics on his own – books, the Internet – after he’d gotten interested in the problem of election integrity. Now he’s publishing papers with academic co-authors and offering expert testimony on proposed federal legislation.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Max Weber wrote an essay about “Scholarship as a Vocation” (the more commonly used translation is “Science as a Vocation”). It’s a classic, but Weber, in focusing on the professionals, forgot about the hobbyists tinkering in their garages. Sometimes, they do it better.
When I was an undergraduate, there was a lab technician who worked for the biochemistry department – I don’t think he had a college degree, he may even have been a high school droupout – who knew more than most of the doctoral students and probably some of the faculty. He was also the quarterback on the biochem intramural football team, which is why they usually won.
I was reminded of this by two things this week: my sister-in-law’s birthday dinner and Andrew Gelman’s Social Science Statistic Blog.
Gelman prints a rant (his word, not mine) that someone sent him about a wrongheaded statistical analysis done by some consultant for a local government project.
Gelman agrees and adds:
This certainly doesn't surprise me: I've seen worse from paid statistical consultants on court cases, including one from a consultant . . . who reportedly was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his services.The people with credentials can be wrong. And sometimes the uncredentialed guys – like the lab technician – surprise you.
The key problems seem to be:
1. Statistics is hard, and not many people know how to do it.
2. The people who need statistical analysis don't always know where to look.
Take Howie, a guy you would never mistake as an academic. He’s an old friend of my brother- and sister-in-law, and Sunday we were celebrating her birthday somewhere out in Queens at an unpretentious Italian restaurant (decent food, reasonable prices, no tablecloths, Yankees on a couple of TVs in the bar). I was seated down at the end of the table with my brother-in-law and Howie. Talk turned to politics – Hillary, Obama, Rudy – and what about Gore? That got us to Gore 2000 and the electoral college, then to Kerry and the Ohio vote in 2004. Were the elections stolen?
It became clear that Howie knew a lot about voting and irregularities and how you might audit results to detect vote-count tampering. He knew about sample sizes and statistical errors. He knew that no single sample size or percentage was perfect and that you optimize sample size by taking account of of electoral shifts and winning margins. He knew all the ways that a House bill on election audits was flawed. He also knew about hacking electronic voting machines, but he thought the computer scientists were focused on the wrong part of the problem. If you wanted to ensure voting integrity, you had to go for statistical audits. (“The computer science guys, they’re not interested in this stuff.”)
But as far as I knew, this was purely a hobby for him. It certainly wasn’t his job. (The last job he had was for an airline.) He had learned the statistics on his own – books, the Internet – after he’d gotten interested in the problem of election integrity. Now he’s publishing papers with academic co-authors and offering expert testimony on proposed federal legislation.
Moral Wars
October 6, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
The mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, came out against the War on Drugs.
Why do we find war such an attractive idea? The appeal of war and its metaphors seems to clash with the American pragmatism. We supposedly prefer looking for practical solutions to problems. Yet we also seem to gravitate naturally towards moralistic views of the world. If there’s something we don’t like, we prefer to think of it as an evil. The next logical step is to ban it and then to declare war on it. Prohibition wasn’t the first such effort, and it wasn’t the last. It’s just the only one that’s written into the Constitution. Later wars, on terror or on drugs, are written in legislation and in judicial decisions. And in our consciousness.
We are, of course, a peaceful nation; we never start a fight. We’re Gary Cooper in High Noon. We react to a threat from the bad guys. When that threat is so evil as to require a war, the obvious corollary is that if we don’t fight this war and achieve victory, our very existence will be undermined. That’s the logic behind the idea that if we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight them here. It’s the logic of moral absolutes rather than the logic of geography, politics, and strategy.
Framing something as war has some important consequences. First, even to question the usefulness or effectiveness of the war becomes tantamount to treason. There’s a war on drugs, and Mayor Newsom wasn’t supporting the troops. He was practically on the side of the enemy.
Second, since the enemy is evil incarnate and threatens our existence, and since we must defend ourselves against this aggression, anything we do is justified. If we’re fighting for our life, anything goes. The war on terror has given us a running tab of $10 billion a month, Abu Ghraib, Guantànamo, torture, and the Patriot Act. The war on drugs has had similar consequences (see “This is Your Bill of Rights on Drugs”). It has cost an enormous amount of money, giving rise to the incarceration-industrial complex, and it has needlessly and wastefully locked up tens of thousands of people. All with meager results.
It turns out there has been some progress in the war on drugs. In the past few months, cocaine prices are up and purity is down. The cause, however, is all on the supply side of the equation and the Mexican side of the border. The Mexican government is cracking down on the cartels, trying to win back cities controlled by the them. Perhaps more important, the cartels are in the midst of a serious war with one another for control of border crossings. Neither of those factors has anything to do with the long sentences we are still handing out to US buyers and sellers.
Other countries, at least their governments, prefer to approach drugs and terror as problems to be mitigated or even solved. Last month, in a lighter post on men’s room carelessness, I contrasted the Dutch solution (a trompe l’oeil fly in the urinal for guys to shoot at) with an imagined American approach – a War on Splashing with severe penalties for bad aim.
Punitive solutions are morally satisfying – I’d really like to stick it corporate polluters rather than let them trade emissions allowances; it’s just that non-moralistic approaches often work better and at less cost to our finances and our freedoms.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, came out against the War on Drugs.
“You want to get serious? Reduce crime in this country by 70-percent overnight? End this war on drugs.”The mayor’s comment was all the more surprising for coming in response to news that San Francisco’s murder rate is up sharply this year. Instead of saying the war on drugs is a failure, an American leader should be calling for a surge. At least that’s what we would expect.
The mayor calls the national drug policy an abject failure, especially crack cocaine sentencing.
Why do we find war such an attractive idea? The appeal of war and its metaphors seems to clash with the American pragmatism. We supposedly prefer looking for practical solutions to problems. Yet we also seem to gravitate naturally towards moralistic views of the world. If there’s something we don’t like, we prefer to think of it as an evil. The next logical step is to ban it and then to declare war on it. Prohibition wasn’t the first such effort, and it wasn’t the last. It’s just the only one that’s written into the Constitution. Later wars, on terror or on drugs, are written in legislation and in judicial decisions. And in our consciousness.
We are, of course, a peaceful nation; we never start a fight. We’re Gary Cooper in High Noon. We react to a threat from the bad guys. When that threat is so evil as to require a war, the obvious corollary is that if we don’t fight this war and achieve victory, our very existence will be undermined. That’s the logic behind the idea that if we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight them here. It’s the logic of moral absolutes rather than the logic of geography, politics, and strategy.
Framing something as war has some important consequences. First, even to question the usefulness or effectiveness of the war becomes tantamount to treason. There’s a war on drugs, and Mayor Newsom wasn’t supporting the troops. He was practically on the side of the enemy.
Second, since the enemy is evil incarnate and threatens our existence, and since we must defend ourselves against this aggression, anything we do is justified. If we’re fighting for our life, anything goes. The war on terror has given us a running tab of $10 billion a month, Abu Ghraib, Guantànamo, torture, and the Patriot Act. The war on drugs has had similar consequences (see “This is Your Bill of Rights on Drugs”). It has cost an enormous amount of money, giving rise to the incarceration-industrial complex, and it has needlessly and wastefully locked up tens of thousands of people. All with meager results.
It turns out there has been some progress in the war on drugs. In the past few months, cocaine prices are up and purity is down. The cause, however, is all on the supply side of the equation and the Mexican side of the border. The Mexican government is cracking down on the cartels, trying to win back cities controlled by the them. Perhaps more important, the cartels are in the midst of a serious war with one another for control of border crossings. Neither of those factors has anything to do with the long sentences we are still handing out to US buyers and sellers.
Other countries, at least their governments, prefer to approach drugs and terror as problems to be mitigated or even solved. Last month, in a lighter post on men’s room carelessness, I contrasted the Dutch solution (a trompe l’oeil fly in the urinal for guys to shoot at) with an imagined American approach – a War on Splashing with severe penalties for bad aim.
Punitive solutions are morally satisfying – I’d really like to stick it corporate polluters rather than let them trade emissions allowances; it’s just that non-moralistic approaches often work better and at less cost to our finances and our freedoms.
Survey This
October 4, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Often in class when I ask students how they might find out about some variable, their response is, “Do a survey.” It’s almost as though a survey were a magical rite with mystical powers able to reveal the unknowable. Maybe some of them are, but the reality – the way many surveys are actually done – has made me a bit skeptical.
I was polled twice yesterday. My phone number must be on a “do-call” list for pollsters. I don’t mind. In fact, I find it interesting to be on the other side of the questionnaire. When the interviewer asks if I’d be willing to participate, I say, “Yes, if you’d be willing to answer some of my questions when we’re done.”
I usually ask the same questions. Last night for example, I discovered that my interviewer was in New Mexico, though he was asking me about a court case – a complicated civil suit – in New York. He was getting $6 an hour, which is maybe why the polling company hires people in Las Cruces rather than in Las Bronx. In three nights of calling, he’d completed five interviews and had a lot of refusals. So we respondents were not exactly a random sample. He didn’t know whether it was the defendant or one of the plaintiffs who was footing the bill for this research, which we agreed was probably good methodology.
The case was complex – it involved at least four “parties,” verbal agreements vs. written ones, and multiple deals that were contingent on other deals. I’d tell you more but I promised I’d keep mum till after the trial. Besides, I’m still not sure I understand it. The questions setting up the case were long and involved, and my interviewer (a college kid studying athletic management) read through them at verbal warp speed. I was surprised that anyone would respond. Or if they did respond, whether they knew what they were responding to. It wasn’t until he’d gone through three or four questions that I was able to form even a murky picture of the case. I'm still not sure I have the names straight.
On the basis of this, I thought, they’re going to decide who to select for the jury and how to present the case. And then I wondered: if they lose, are they going to sue the company that sold them on this survey?
Posted by Jay Livingston
Often in class when I ask students how they might find out about some variable, their response is, “Do a survey.” It’s almost as though a survey were a magical rite with mystical powers able to reveal the unknowable. Maybe some of them are, but the reality – the way many surveys are actually done – has made me a bit skeptical.
I was polled twice yesterday. My phone number must be on a “do-call” list for pollsters. I don’t mind. In fact, I find it interesting to be on the other side of the questionnaire. When the interviewer asks if I’d be willing to participate, I say, “Yes, if you’d be willing to answer some of my questions when we’re done.”
I usually ask the same questions. Last night for example, I discovered that my interviewer was in New Mexico, though he was asking me about a court case – a complicated civil suit – in New York. He was getting $6 an hour, which is maybe why the polling company hires people in Las Cruces rather than in Las Bronx. In three nights of calling, he’d completed five interviews and had a lot of refusals. So we respondents were not exactly a random sample. He didn’t know whether it was the defendant or one of the plaintiffs who was footing the bill for this research, which we agreed was probably good methodology.
The case was complex – it involved at least four “parties,” verbal agreements vs. written ones, and multiple deals that were contingent on other deals. I’d tell you more but I promised I’d keep mum till after the trial. Besides, I’m still not sure I understand it. The questions setting up the case were long and involved, and my interviewer (a college kid studying athletic management) read through them at verbal warp speed. I was surprised that anyone would respond. Or if they did respond, whether they knew what they were responding to. It wasn’t until he’d gone through three or four questions that I was able to form even a murky picture of the case. I'm still not sure I have the names straight.
On the basis of this, I thought, they’re going to decide who to select for the jury and how to present the case. And then I wondered: if they lose, are they going to sue the company that sold them on this survey?
Steeler Nation
September 30, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
It’s nice to have your ideas confirmed in the newspaper of record.
Last November, after the Democratic win in the election, I blogged to the effect that the Steelers had replaced the Cowboys as America’s team. I had thought of doing a follow-up post on the same topic, but I’ve been scooped. On Saturday, the central piece on the New York Times op-ed page was an essay about Steeler Nation.
The author, fashion writer Holly Brubach, writes about finding Steeler fans at bars in
Rochester, MN, San Francisco, Toronto, and other cities. “Steeler nation seems to outnumber the fans of every other franchise.”
“Seems.” As a social scientist, I know not “seems,” lady. I was waiting till I found some data. And when I do, I’ll blog the Steelers again.
But I admit what inspired me was something like Brubach’s personal experience. A couple of weeks ago, my son, who has become something of a Steelers fan, was prodding me to find a sports bar where we might watch the game. I Googled local sports bars and called the closest one.
Yes, said the woman who answered the phone, they have football games that the regular channels don’t.
“Will you have the Steelers game?” I asked.
“This is a Steeler bar,” she said, surprised, almost offended, as though I’d asked whether they served beer. She added, however, that all the tables had been reserved long ago, though if I showed up early enough, I might be able to squeeze in at the bar.
On Sunday, we walked past that bar. It was about 15 minutes till gametime, and outside on the sidewalk, where smokers are now exiled in New York City, a woman in a Jerome Bettis jersey was talking with a Mean Joe Greene. Through the large front window I could see that the bar area was packed with people in Steeler regalia.
(On days when the Steelers play the 4:15 game, Steeler Nation waits on the
sidewalk for the one-o’clock game fans to clear out of the bar, as in these pictures.)
We went to a less crowded bar three blocks further on. Only two people were in black-and-gold jerseys. But even there, pride of place (i.e., the large projection screen and the audio) was given to the Steelers. They crushed the Bills, 26-3.
Posted by Jay Livingston
It’s nice to have your ideas confirmed in the newspaper of record.
Last November, after the Democratic win in the election, I blogged to the effect that the Steelers had replaced the Cowboys as America’s team. I had thought of doing a follow-up post on the same topic, but I’ve been scooped. On Saturday, the central piece on the New York Times op-ed page was an essay about Steeler Nation.
The author, fashion writer Holly Brubach, writes about finding Steeler fans at bars in
Rochester, MN, San Francisco, Toronto, and other cities. “Steeler nation seems to outnumber the fans of every other franchise.”“Seems.” As a social scientist, I know not “seems,” lady. I was waiting till I found some data. And when I do, I’ll blog the Steelers again.
But I admit what inspired me was something like Brubach’s personal experience. A couple of weeks ago, my son, who has become something of a Steelers fan, was prodding me to find a sports bar where we might watch the game. I Googled local sports bars and called the closest one.
Yes, said the woman who answered the phone, they have football games that the regular channels don’t.
“Will you have the Steelers game?” I asked.
“This is a Steeler bar,” she said, surprised, almost offended, as though I’d asked whether they served beer. She added, however, that all the tables had been reserved long ago, though if I showed up early enough, I might be able to squeeze in at the bar.
On Sunday, we walked past that bar. It was about 15 minutes till gametime, and outside on the sidewalk, where smokers are now exiled in New York City, a woman in a Jerome Bettis jersey was talking with a Mean Joe Greene. Through the large front window I could see that the bar area was packed with people in Steeler regalia.
(On days when the Steelers play the 4:15 game, Steeler Nation waits on the
sidewalk for the one-o’clock game fans to clear out of the bar, as in these pictures.)We went to a less crowded bar three blocks further on. Only two people were in black-and-gold jerseys. But even there, pride of place (i.e., the large projection screen and the audio) was given to the Steelers. They crushed the Bills, 26-3.
The Institutionalization of Hysteria
September 28, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
At the Republican debate Thursday Ron Paul called for an end to the war on drugs. OK, Ron Paul isn’t a very prominent candidate. The leading Republican candidates didn’t show up – after all, the debate was to focus on racial issues, and the audience was predominantly black. Still, Paul’s statement is noteworthy.
Back in the late 1980s I was visiting in Washington, DC. I don’t remember the circumstances, but some people I didn’t know were giving me a ride, and somehow the topic of drugs came up. These people, husband and wife, were lawyers – maybe they worked for the government – and one of them started to say something about the current atmosphere surrounding the topic. He stopped in mid-sentence, searching for the right word, as though a misstatement might be very costly.
“Hysteria?” I offered.
Well, they wouldn’t put it quite like that, they said. But two things were clear to me. One, they agreed that policy and public opinion on drugs had gone way past being rational. And two, they were afraid to let others know their views. It would have been like someone in Salem in 1692 saying that maybe we’ve gone a little overboard on this witch thing.
Here we are two decades later, and at least in the public mind, drugs have been replaced by other fears, notably terrorism. It’s hard to keep two moral panics going simultaneously. (See last December’s entry “The War on Drugs.” )
But we are still living with the consequences of that hysteria. Emotions come and go. Institutions and laws are much more durable. And the fears and moral panic of decades past has become institutionalized. The sentences written into law are the most egregious consequence. Judicial precedents and rulings are usually less glaring, but they are part of the same process.
A couple of days before Ron Paul made that statement, an appeals court upheld the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona schoolgirl. School authorities suspected her of carrying drugs – prescription-strength ibuprofen. Basically, a double dose of Advil. The strip search was perfectly legal, said two of three judges interpreting the law.
Once the hysteria gets written into law, the original emotion becomes irrelevant. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is about the least emotional person you could imagine. Yet when he was an appeals court judge, he wrote a strictly legal and technical opinion that would have allowed the strip search of a 10-year-old girl.
For what it’s worth, in neither strip search did the authorities find drugs.
Posted by Jay Livingston
At the Republican debate Thursday Ron Paul called for an end to the war on drugs. OK, Ron Paul isn’t a very prominent candidate. The leading Republican candidates didn’t show up – after all, the debate was to focus on racial issues, and the audience was predominantly black. Still, Paul’s statement is noteworthy.
Back in the late 1980s I was visiting in Washington, DC. I don’t remember the circumstances, but some people I didn’t know were giving me a ride, and somehow the topic of drugs came up. These people, husband and wife, were lawyers – maybe they worked for the government – and one of them started to say something about the current atmosphere surrounding the topic. He stopped in mid-sentence, searching for the right word, as though a misstatement might be very costly.
“Hysteria?” I offered.
Well, they wouldn’t put it quite like that, they said. But two things were clear to me. One, they agreed that policy and public opinion on drugs had gone way past being rational. And two, they were afraid to let others know their views. It would have been like someone in Salem in 1692 saying that maybe we’ve gone a little overboard on this witch thing.
Here we are two decades later, and at least in the public mind, drugs have been replaced by other fears, notably terrorism. It’s hard to keep two moral panics going simultaneously. (See last December’s entry “The War on Drugs.” )
But we are still living with the consequences of that hysteria. Emotions come and go. Institutions and laws are much more durable. And the fears and moral panic of decades past has become institutionalized. The sentences written into law are the most egregious consequence. Judicial precedents and rulings are usually less glaring, but they are part of the same process.
A couple of days before Ron Paul made that statement, an appeals court upheld the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona schoolgirl. School authorities suspected her of carrying drugs – prescription-strength ibuprofen. Basically, a double dose of Advil. The strip search was perfectly legal, said two of three judges interpreting the law.
Once the hysteria gets written into law, the original emotion becomes irrelevant. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is about the least emotional person you could imagine. Yet when he was an appeals court judge, he wrote a strictly legal and technical opinion that would have allowed the strip search of a 10-year-old girl.
For what it’s worth, in neither strip search did the authorities find drugs.
The Greatest Drummer in the World
September 26, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Students are so young now. I remember when they were only a few years younger than I was, and we knew the same movies and music. We could talk.
That was then.
Now on the first day of class, I pass out index cards for students to put their vital information – names, e-mail, phone numbers. I ask them to put down the name of their favorite movie, book, and album.
I’m hoping that knowing a bit about such preferences might help me learn their names more quickly. But it’s also my desperate attempt to keep up in some small way with pop culture, which slips further and further away from me each year. Especially music. It’s not just that I don’t know the songs or what these singers sound like; I often don’t even recognize the names of the performers. I’ve made my peace with it; I’m resigned to the fate of never again being cool.
But this semester provided an opening I couldn’t resist. As I went through the cards calling
names, talking briefly with each student, I came upon one that listed “Journey.”
“The group?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “anything by them.”
Now in one of those strange accidents of proximity that can happen when you live in New York, I recently got to know the guy who played drums with Journey back in the day. So I asked, “Do you happen to know who the drummer with Journey was?”
No, she said, she just liked their music.
I was standing there debating whether to play my trump card right then – maybe it would appear too desperate – when another student called out, “It’s Steve Smith.” Then he added definitively, “the greatest drummer in the world.” After a pause he elaborated further, “Not so much his rock drumming, but the later stuff.”
“You mean the jazz fusion stuff with Vital Information?” I asked, not so much looking for agreement as just displaying this one slender wisp of cool.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Students are so young now. I remember when they were only a few years younger than I was, and we knew the same movies and music. We could talk.
That was then.
Now on the first day of class, I pass out index cards for students to put their vital information – names, e-mail, phone numbers. I ask them to put down the name of their favorite movie, book, and album.
I’m hoping that knowing a bit about such preferences might help me learn their names more quickly. But it’s also my desperate attempt to keep up in some small way with pop culture, which slips further and further away from me each year. Especially music. It’s not just that I don’t know the songs or what these singers sound like; I often don’t even recognize the names of the performers. I’ve made my peace with it; I’m resigned to the fate of never again being cool.
But this semester provided an opening I couldn’t resist. As I went through the cards calling
names, talking briefly with each student, I came upon one that listed “Journey.”“The group?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “anything by them.”
Now in one of those strange accidents of proximity that can happen when you live in New York, I recently got to know the guy who played drums with Journey back in the day. So I asked, “Do you happen to know who the drummer with Journey was?”
No, she said, she just liked their music.
I was standing there debating whether to play my trump card right then – maybe it would appear too desperate – when another student called out, “It’s Steve Smith.” Then he added definitively, “the greatest drummer in the world.” After a pause he elaborated further, “Not so much his rock drumming, but the later stuff.”
“You mean the jazz fusion stuff with Vital Information?” I asked, not so much looking for agreement as just displaying this one slender wisp of cool.
By the Numbers
September 23, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Does Montclair Socioblog have a reader at CBS TV?
Two weeks ago, I blogged about all those numbers on the covers of women’s magazines.
Today, CBS Sunday Morning led off with a piece about the same thing.
It turns out I wasn’t quite right. The numbers are everywhere, not just on women’s magazines. Twelve steps, seven habits, a thousand places to see before you die. And that’s not counting all those ten-best list. Men’s magazines too find numbers irresistible. The CBS piece showed the
guys at Men’s Health kicking around ideas. “'Ten or 15 signs she's cheating' is always a great one.” And the editor tells CBS, “When we put lists or numbers on the cover, our newsstand sales go up.”
Sure enough, at the Men’s Health website today you can find
As for rationalization, it seems there is nothing so personal and ineffable that we can’t try to reduce it to a prescribed number of steps, Power Point list of bullet points. Like workers on a Taylorized assembly line, we can all follow the same routinized procedure to find success, raise happy children, be physically fit, have mindblowing orgasms, overcome our fears, or find the perfect hair style for this fall.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Does Montclair Socioblog have a reader at CBS TV?
Two weeks ago, I blogged about all those numbers on the covers of women’s magazines.
Today, CBS Sunday Morning led off with a piece about the same thing.
It turns out I wasn’t quite right. The numbers are everywhere, not just on women’s magazines. Twelve steps, seven habits, a thousand places to see before you die. And that’s not counting all those ten-best list. Men’s magazines too find numbers irresistible. The CBS piece showed the
guys at Men’s Health kicking around ideas. “'Ten or 15 signs she's cheating' is always a great one.” And the editor tells CBS, “When we put lists or numbers on the cover, our newsstand sales go up.”Sure enough, at the Men’s Health website today you can find
- 5 ways to get her into your bed
- 10 foods you should eat every day
- 10 muscles she wants to see
As for rationalization, it seems there is nothing so personal and ineffable that we can’t try to reduce it to a prescribed number of steps, Power Point list of bullet points. Like workers on a Taylorized assembly line, we can all follow the same routinized procedure to find success, raise happy children, be physically fit, have mindblowing orgasms, overcome our fears, or find the perfect hair style for this fall.
Kids and Danger - II
September 19, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
That’s the opening of “Playdate,” a story by Kate Walbert published in The New Yorker several months ago. It fits with my previous post about parents and children, control and protection.
Is this the way we live now, I wondered as I read these paragraphs – six-year-olds with planner appointment books, mothers scheduling playdates because a child had “a cancellation”? A nurse for the kids even when mom is at home? (The twins, we learn later in the story, were conceived in vitro with another woman’s eggs.)
Sometimes fiction captures the culture and social structure well before the sociologists move in. For freshman English long ago, I had to read J.D. Salinger’s much anthologized story, “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.” At the time, I didn’t appreciate its sociological imagination, its showing the connections between private troubles and social structures. Nor did I appreciate how ahead of its time it was in applying this sociological imagination to women. (If you have a copy of the story, take it off the shelf and read it now. It won’t take long.)
The postwar years in the US seemed prosperous and problem-free. The principle criticism of the period at the time was that it was dull, dominated by conformity. But Salinger’s story gave us the underside of middle-class prosperity – the frustrations of the bright, educated woman
trapped as a housewife in suburbia. That suburban context makes us understand and sympathize with her cynicism, her drinking, her anger at her husband, and even her anger at her child.
Salinger’s story was published in 1948. Sociologists and psychologists began exploring this territory in the fifties and didn’t begin thinking seriously about women until at least a decade later.
“Playdate” is obviously based on “Uncle Wiggly.” (I suppose there are fine lines between being inspired by, writing in homage to, and just plain ripping off another author.) The New Yorker blurb puts it this way: “Short story about two Manhattan mothers getting drunk and confiding in each other while their daughters are on a playdate.” Which would work for “Uncle Wiggly,” except that there’s only one daughter, and the setting is a Connecticut suburb rather than Manhattan. The rhythm of the events in the stories is the same, some of the images are identical (a woman lying on the floor balancing her drink on her chest), even the flow of the final sentence.
In both stories, the women sense that something is missing from their lives, something they can’t quite identify. In the 2007 story, that sense is symbolized in the pet cat’s “hot spot”: “Their cat . . . recently contracted a hot spot. A hot spot, she tells Liz, is an itch that can’t be scratched.” A problem you literally cannot put your finger on.
But while the mood of Salinger’s postwar story is isolation and anger, the tone of “Playdate” is not as bleak, and its central feelings are anxiety and uncertainty. The mothers have attended a talk at school: “Raising a Calm Child in the Age of Anxiety; or, How to Let Go and Lighten Up!” Walbert is spoofing pop psych here, but the “anxiety journal” the professor tells the parents to keep becomes a significant item in the story.
“We are living in the Age of Anxiety,”says the professor. But several eras in the last century have been the age of anxiety – the phrase itself originates (I think) in a 1948 poem by Auden, and an Internet history guide applies the phrase to the 1920s. What’s different from one era to another are the causes of the anxiety. This is the post-9/11 era. “Helicopters,” the mother lists in her anxiety journal along with Thieves, Crowds, and Playdates. Twice in the story we hear the subway warning announcement: “Protect yourself. If you see a suspicious package or activity . . . .”
There may also be differences in how we react. Salinger’s suburban postwar mother chose sarcasm and alcohol. The Manhattan mothers in 2007 deal with anxiety by trying to schedule uncertainty out of their children’s lives. They hover like helicopters.
Posted by Jay Livingston
| Matilda’s mother apologizes for calling so late, but she wonders whether Caroline might be free for a playdate? Like, tomorrow? “Matilda’s had a cancellation,” she says. Liz searches the kitchen drawer for Caroline’s Week-at-a-Glance. It’s ten already and she’s had her wine; down the hall the baby nurse, Lorna, is asleep with the twins and Caroline; Ted’s out of town. What the hell is Matilda’s mother’s name, anyway? Faith, Frankie, Fern— “We could do an hour,” Liz says. “We have piano at four-thirty.” |
That’s the opening of “Playdate,” a story by Kate Walbert published in The New Yorker several months ago. It fits with my previous post about parents and children, control and protection.
Is this the way we live now, I wondered as I read these paragraphs – six-year-olds with planner appointment books, mothers scheduling playdates because a child had “a cancellation”? A nurse for the kids even when mom is at home? (The twins, we learn later in the story, were conceived in vitro with another woman’s eggs.)
Sometimes fiction captures the culture and social structure well before the sociologists move in. For freshman English long ago, I had to read J.D. Salinger’s much anthologized story, “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.” At the time, I didn’t appreciate its sociological imagination, its showing the connections between private troubles and social structures. Nor did I appreciate how ahead of its time it was in applying this sociological imagination to women. (If you have a copy of the story, take it off the shelf and read it now. It won’t take long.)
The postwar years in the US seemed prosperous and problem-free. The principle criticism of the period at the time was that it was dull, dominated by conformity. But Salinger’s story gave us the underside of middle-class prosperity – the frustrations of the bright, educated woman
trapped as a housewife in suburbia. That suburban context makes us understand and sympathize with her cynicism, her drinking, her anger at her husband, and even her anger at her child.Salinger’s story was published in 1948. Sociologists and psychologists began exploring this territory in the fifties and didn’t begin thinking seriously about women until at least a decade later.
“Playdate” is obviously based on “Uncle Wiggly.” (I suppose there are fine lines between being inspired by, writing in homage to, and just plain ripping off another author.) The New Yorker blurb puts it this way: “Short story about two Manhattan mothers getting drunk and confiding in each other while their daughters are on a playdate.” Which would work for “Uncle Wiggly,” except that there’s only one daughter, and the setting is a Connecticut suburb rather than Manhattan. The rhythm of the events in the stories is the same, some of the images are identical (a woman lying on the floor balancing her drink on her chest), even the flow of the final sentence.
In both stories, the women sense that something is missing from their lives, something they can’t quite identify. In the 2007 story, that sense is symbolized in the pet cat’s “hot spot”: “Their cat . . . recently contracted a hot spot. A hot spot, she tells Liz, is an itch that can’t be scratched.” A problem you literally cannot put your finger on.
But while the mood of Salinger’s postwar story is isolation and anger, the tone of “Playdate” is not as bleak, and its central feelings are anxiety and uncertainty. The mothers have attended a talk at school: “Raising a Calm Child in the Age of Anxiety; or, How to Let Go and Lighten Up!” Walbert is spoofing pop psych here, but the “anxiety journal” the professor tells the parents to keep becomes a significant item in the story.
“We are living in the Age of Anxiety,”says the professor. But several eras in the last century have been the age of anxiety – the phrase itself originates (I think) in a 1948 poem by Auden, and an Internet history guide applies the phrase to the 1920s. What’s different from one era to another are the causes of the anxiety. This is the post-9/11 era. “Helicopters,” the mother lists in her anxiety journal along with Thieves, Crowds, and Playdates. Twice in the story we hear the subway warning announcement: “Protect yourself. If you see a suspicious package or activity . . . .”
There may also be differences in how we react. Salinger’s suburban postwar mother chose sarcasm and alcohol. The Manhattan mothers in 2007 deal with anxiety by trying to schedule uncertainty out of their children’s lives. They hover like helicopters.
Too Safe for Children?
September 16, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
“The city went about its business, and in many ways the place was heady and wide open in ways that just aren’t possible now.”
The New York Times devotes its entire City section to the idea of being seventeen in the city. This sentence is from a nostaligic piece on being seventeen in 1980. The author, Christopher Sorrentino, has the uneasy sense that kids today are more sheltered. “Apron strings were untied a lot younger then,” he says. “Parents didn’t hover so much,” says the Times blurb.
Sorrentino adds, “I should confess that I can’t imagine making a similar arrangement with my own kids . . . Are you kidding? The kid’s going to be 12, and my heart’s in my mouth if I send her out for a quart of milk.”
This dilemma isn’t confined to New York, this nagging thought that in giving kids more safety we've also deprived them of something important. Alongside all the news stories about the dangers of toys and priests and candy and everything else, there has been a small but noticeable backlash. Sorrentino’s article is part of this ambivalence – the sense that protection is becoming overprotection. The Dangerous Book for Boys has been a best seller, largely because its title and publicity promise a more rugged, less cautious ideal of childhood. Elsewhere, Jeff Zaslow in a Wall Street Journal article – linked to by a couple of sociology bloggers (Ezster, Anomie) – complains that the concern about child sexual abuse has poisoned the atmosphere. Children are taught to fear men, and men are afraid to go near children other than their own. Last Halloween, I contrasted today’s trick-or-treating with that of my youth, when kids would range far from home unaccompanied by parents.
Apparently, it’s not just in the US that childhood has become more circumscribed.. The London Daily Mail posted a map showing the roaming area of children over four generations in the same family in roughly the same part of Sheffield. Back in 1919, Great-grandfather at age eight had a range of six miles. Today, the eight-year-old in the family is allowed to walk 1/6 mile – to the end of the street.
Posted by Jay Livingston
“The city went about its business, and in many ways the place was heady and wide open in ways that just aren’t possible now.”
The New York Times devotes its entire City section to the idea of being seventeen in the city. This sentence is from a nostaligic piece on being seventeen in 1980. The author, Christopher Sorrentino, has the uneasy sense that kids today are more sheltered. “Apron strings were untied a lot younger then,” he says. “Parents didn’t hover so much,” says the Times blurb.
Sorrentino adds, “I should confess that I can’t imagine making a similar arrangement with my own kids . . . Are you kidding? The kid’s going to be 12, and my heart’s in my mouth if I send her out for a quart of milk.”
This dilemma isn’t confined to New York, this nagging thought that in giving kids more safety we've also deprived them of something important. Alongside all the news stories about the dangers of toys and priests and candy and everything else, there has been a small but noticeable backlash. Sorrentino’s article is part of this ambivalence – the sense that protection is becoming overprotection. The Dangerous Book for Boys has been a best seller, largely because its title and publicity promise a more rugged, less cautious ideal of childhood. Elsewhere, Jeff Zaslow in a Wall Street Journal article – linked to by a couple of sociology bloggers (Ezster, Anomie) – complains that the concern about child sexual abuse has poisoned the atmosphere. Children are taught to fear men, and men are afraid to go near children other than their own. Last Halloween, I contrasted today’s trick-or-treating with that of my youth, when kids would range far from home unaccompanied by parents.
Apparently, it’s not just in the US that childhood has become more circumscribed.. The London Daily Mail posted a map showing the roaming area of children over four generations in the same family in roughly the same part of Sheffield. Back in 1919, Great-grandfather at age eight had a range of six miles. Today, the eight-year-old in the family is allowed to walk 1/6 mile – to the end of the street.
Ready, Aim . . .
September 13, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
I should really have passed this one off to Dan Myers, who is developing urinal blogging into something of an art form or at least he was until he ascended into the lofty area of peace studies. Or maybe I should have passed it to Chris Uggen, who has blogged about the American tendency to deal with problems by criminalizing them. But I’ll do the reporting myself, even though the story is old news. I discovered it only recently on, of all places, a food blog.
Ten years ago, the powers that be at JFK airport signed a Dutch company, Schiphol, to run the International Arrivals Building, probably because the Amsterdam airport, run by Schiphol, is one of the world’s finest. JFK was one of the worst.
In Amsterdam, they had a clever solution to a men’s room problem. No, not the Larry Craig kind of problem; the Dutch are very open-minded about sex. The Dutch are also very clean. And the problem was that jet lagged travelers, men at least, tended to be, how shall we put it, careless? aimless?
I imagined what the American solution might be. Signs posted on the walls: “No Spillage or Spraying. Penalty $500 fine.” But where Americans tend to frame problems in moral terms, the Dutch have a more practical approach, focused on solving a problem rather than on punishing evil. At the Amsterdam airport that meant improving aim by providing a target.
If you go to the men’s room in the Amsterdam airport, you’ll see a fly in the urinal.
If you’d look closely, which you probably wouldn’t, you’d see that it wasn’t a real fly but a trompe l’oeil black outline. The idea was that men would aim for the fly - the stream would go from one fly to another (I’m sure this pun doesn’t work in Dutch) – and the men’s room would stay cleaner.
It worked. A study by Schilpol’s social science team found that fly urinals had an 80% reduction in spillage.
Posted by Jay Livingston
I should really have passed this one off to Dan Myers, who is developing urinal blogging into something of an art form or at least he was until he ascended into the lofty area of peace studies. Or maybe I should have passed it to Chris Uggen, who has blogged about the American tendency to deal with problems by criminalizing them. But I’ll do the reporting myself, even though the story is old news. I discovered it only recently on, of all places, a food blog.
Ten years ago, the powers that be at JFK airport signed a Dutch company, Schiphol, to run the International Arrivals Building, probably because the Amsterdam airport, run by Schiphol, is one of the world’s finest. JFK was one of the worst.
In Amsterdam, they had a clever solution to a men’s room problem. No, not the Larry Craig kind of problem; the Dutch are very open-minded about sex. The Dutch are also very clean. And the problem was that jet lagged travelers, men at least, tended to be, how shall we put it, careless? aimless?
I imagined what the American solution might be. Signs posted on the walls: “No Spillage or Spraying. Penalty $500 fine.” But where Americans tend to frame problems in moral terms, the Dutch have a more practical approach, focused on solving a problem rather than on punishing evil. At the Amsterdam airport that meant improving aim by providing a target.
If you go to the men’s room in the Amsterdam airport, you’ll see a fly in the urinal.
If you’d look closely, which you probably wouldn’t, you’d see that it wasn’t a real fly but a trompe l’oeil black outline. The idea was that men would aim for the fly - the stream would go from one fly to another (I’m sure this pun doesn’t work in Dutch) – and the men’s room would stay cleaner.
It worked. A study by Schilpol’s social science team found that fly urinals had an 80% reduction in spillage.
Road Rage
September 11, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Over at Blue Monster, Dan Myers is trying to rein in his road rage. Now that he’s doing a course in peace*, he’s trying to practice what he teaches. Dan, if we believe his self-report, is apparently the kind of driver who not only drives fast but curses out the other drivers on the road whose driving isn’t up to his standards.
He’s not the only one. I’ve ridden with people who on foot were eminently reasonable and polite but on the road became ogres. What is it about driving that makes us forget ourselves? My friend Gail, for example, forgot she had her young nieces in the car with her and slipped into
her usual driver monologue, a running dramatic commentary on the inadequacies of other drivers. “Oh Auntie, you said the A-word,” came the voice from the back seat. The A-word and probably worse. But why?
Goffman has the answer. Because we’re locked in our steel-and-glass isolation tanks, we can’t engage in the little interaction rituals that validate and uphold the self of each person in the situation. When we can’t perform those rituals of repair, things can spiral further towards anger. Neither driver can hear the other, so we think we’re invulnerable to any reaction from the other guy. That may account for this anecdote told me by a state trooper (also an adjunct professor in sociology at the time): In one of these highway ego-contests – dangerous enough when you’re going 70 mph – one of the disputants pulled alongside the other and brandished a pistol. In his anger and isolation, he’d forgotten that the other driver might have a cell phone and that he might use it to call the troopers.
My son has the solution. The next generation of cars should come equipped with a menu of messages that you can flash on your rear window. With the touch of a button, you can say, “Sorry for cutting you off there. Won’t happen again.” Or “My mistake, I should have signaled earlier.” And so on.
-------------------------
* I highly recommend the student entries in the Peace Blog for the course.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Over at Blue Monster, Dan Myers is trying to rein in his road rage. Now that he’s doing a course in peace*, he’s trying to practice what he teaches. Dan, if we believe his self-report, is apparently the kind of driver who not only drives fast but curses out the other drivers on the road whose driving isn’t up to his standards.
He’s not the only one. I’ve ridden with people who on foot were eminently reasonable and polite but on the road became ogres. What is it about driving that makes us forget ourselves? My friend Gail, for example, forgot she had her young nieces in the car with her and slipped into
her usual driver monologue, a running dramatic commentary on the inadequacies of other drivers. “Oh Auntie, you said the A-word,” came the voice from the back seat. The A-word and probably worse. But why?Goffman has the answer. Because we’re locked in our steel-and-glass isolation tanks, we can’t engage in the little interaction rituals that validate and uphold the self of each person in the situation. When we can’t perform those rituals of repair, things can spiral further towards anger. Neither driver can hear the other, so we think we’re invulnerable to any reaction from the other guy. That may account for this anecdote told me by a state trooper (also an adjunct professor in sociology at the time): In one of these highway ego-contests – dangerous enough when you’re going 70 mph – one of the disputants pulled alongside the other and brandished a pistol. In his anger and isolation, he’d forgotten that the other driver might have a cell phone and that he might use it to call the troopers.
My son has the solution. The next generation of cars should come equipped with a menu of messages that you can flash on your rear window. With the touch of a button, you can say, “Sorry for cutting you off there. Won’t happen again.” Or “My mistake, I should have signaled earlier.” And so on.
-------------------------
* I highly recommend the student entries in the Peace Blog for the course.
Hey, Larry Summers - Read These
September 7, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Why do men’s shirts have the buttons on the left side, but women’s blouses have the buttons the right? Someone posted this question at the Teaching Sociology listserv/GoogleGroup. Robert H. Frank’s poses this same question in his book The Economic Naturalist, and I blogged about it not long ago. I thought again of converting Frank’s economics assignment into a sociological one: find something curious or paradoxical in everyday life, something you’ve seen with your own eyes. Todd Bern at Broward Community College calls this assignment “The Inner Sociologist,” and requires students to peg their questions to the topics in the readings for the current segment of the course.
I haven’t assigned this yet. But in keeping with my principle of not asking students to do something I hadn’t done first, I tried coming up with some questions. Turns out, it’s not all that easy. But here are a few.
Why do college/university courses meet two or only one time a week but high school courses meet five days a week?
Why do baseball players throw the ball around the infield after they make an out?
Then I went to the newsstand this morning, and this is what I saw.
Men’s magazine covers have pictures of attractive women, but women’s magazine covers have pictures of . . . attractive women. Why not attractive men?
And what’s with the numbers? (Larry Summers, BTW, is the former president of Harvard. He was forced out for several reasons, but one of those was a talk he gave suggesting that compared with men, women were by nature less inclined towards math.)
Cosmo is the piker here with only 4 and 5. Glamour raises with 12, 39, and 101. Vogue outbids them with 840, but Lucky comes in with 863 and looks like it’s going to win.
But then Bazaar leaves them all in the dust with a bid of 1,015 New Looks. Beat that.
But why? You don’t see numbers like these on other kinds of magazines.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Why do men’s shirts have the buttons on the left side, but women’s blouses have the buttons the right? Someone posted this question at the Teaching Sociology listserv/GoogleGroup. Robert H. Frank’s poses this same question in his book The Economic Naturalist, and I blogged about it not long ago. I thought again of converting Frank’s economics assignment into a sociological one: find something curious or paradoxical in everyday life, something you’ve seen with your own eyes. Todd Bern at Broward Community College calls this assignment “The Inner Sociologist,” and requires students to peg their questions to the topics in the readings for the current segment of the course.
I haven’t assigned this yet. But in keeping with my principle of not asking students to do something I hadn’t done first, I tried coming up with some questions. Turns out, it’s not all that easy. But here are a few.
Why do college/university courses meet two or only one time a week but high school courses meet five days a week?
Why do baseball players throw the ball around the infield after they make an out?
Then I went to the newsstand this morning, and this is what I saw.
Men’s magazine covers have pictures of attractive women, but women’s magazine covers have pictures of . . . attractive women. Why not attractive men?
And what’s with the numbers? (Larry Summers, BTW, is the former president of Harvard. He was forced out for several reasons, but one of those was a talk he gave suggesting that compared with men, women were by nature less inclined towards math.)
Cosmo is the piker here with only 4 and 5. Glamour raises with 12, 39, and 101. Vogue outbids them with 840, but Lucky comes in with 863 and looks like it’s going to win.
But then Bazaar leaves them all in the dust with a bid of 1,015 New Looks. Beat that.
But why? You don’t see numbers like these on other kinds of magazines.
Good Neighbors
September 4, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Where can we put this terrific little toxic waste dump?
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a short article reminding us that poisonous facilities --power plants, waste-transfer stations, truck fleets, refineries – usually get put in poor neighborhoods. Poor people pay the price with their health.
Conservative, individual-based explanations of poverty often blame the poor for their condition. Those people don’t work hard enough, don’t get enough education, aren’t smart enough, spend their money foolishly, have too many kids, don’t stay married, and so on. Some explanations blame the victims for their poor health as well. If only they’d practice good health habits, eat the right foods, etc.
It’s hard to see how conservatives can apply this logic to environmentally caused diseases like lead poisoning. But they try.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Where can we put this terrific little toxic waste dump?
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a short article reminding us that poisonous facilities --power plants, waste-transfer stations, truck fleets, refineries – usually get put in poor neighborhoods. Poor people pay the price with their health.
Conservative, individual-based explanations of poverty often blame the poor for their condition. Those people don’t work hard enough, don’t get enough education, aren’t smart enough, spend their money foolishly, have too many kids, don’t stay married, and so on. Some explanations blame the victims for their poor health as well. If only they’d practice good health habits, eat the right foods, etc.
It’s hard to see how conservatives can apply this logic to environmentally caused diseases like lead poisoning. But they try.
“It’s neither possible nor desirable in a free society to have all groups living equally close to everything — be it libraries or landfills,” argues Michael Steinberg, a Washington lawyer with clients in the chemical industry.” The mere fact of disparate impact, he says, is not evidence of intentional discrimination in the placement of polluting facilities — it’s just economics.See, it’s economics. Polluters choose the cheapest locations. So if a polluter puts a waste dump next door, don’t blame the polluter; blame yourself for not having the money to move to a better neighborhood.
Social Organization of Newsgathering - Larry Craig Department
September 2, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Larry Craig was arrested in June, but the story didn’t hit the news until late August. A US Senator arrested for soliciting homosexual acts in a public restroom – not the sort of thing that would normally go unnoticed.
Mark Kleiman has a link to the Minnesota newspaper that should have caught this one. The Star Tribune ran an article explaining how it missed the arrest. The story, worth reading in its entirety, gives an idea of how crime news is normally reported and why normal procedures didn't work this time. The important factors were:
Posted by Jay Livingston
Larry Craig was arrested in June, but the story didn’t hit the news until late August. A US Senator arrested for soliciting homosexual acts in a public restroom – not the sort of thing that would normally go unnoticed.
Mark Kleiman has a link to the Minnesota newspaper that should have caught this one. The Star Tribune ran an article explaining how it missed the arrest. The story, worth reading in its entirety, gives an idea of how crime news is normally reported and why normal procedures didn't work this time. The important factors were:
- the place – the crime desk doesn’t expect much to happen at the airport
- the commonplace – the name Larry Craig is so ordinary that it didn’t ring a bell with the people who monitor the police blotter
- structure of police reports – the arrestee’s occupation doesn’t appear until page 3
- other news – Craig’s guilty plea occurred just after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, which still commanded most of the media’s attention.
Fashion Police (literally) - A Tale of Two (or more) Cities
August 31, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
Speaking of victimless crimes* (as I was in the last post), the New York Times yesterday reported on baggy pants laws that have been passed in some towns. In Mansfield, LA, wear
your jeans so low that they expose your boxers, and you can wind up with a $500 fine or even jail time.
Other towns have passed similar laws; state legislatures have come close. The laws are couched as “indecency” laws. But that seems pretty lame since the law is about cloth, not skin. It’s not about showing your butt, it’s about what you use to cover your butt: jeans, good; jeans with boxers, bad. Presumably, if the offender stripped off his jeans entirely and walked around in basketball shorts – maybe even plaid ones – there’d be no problem.
The real issue, as the Times points out, is hip-hop and all its impli
ed attitudes and ideas. (I’m surprised that Rachel hasn’t blogged this one.)
People have often reacted to outward appearance in this way. We all judge others on their appearance, and sometimes the judgments become extreme. Violent fashionistas beat up zoot suiters in the 1940s, longhairs in the 60s and 70s. Institutions, notably schools, are similarly sensitive to seemingly small matters of style. At my school, leaving your shirttail out or turning your collar up in back were punishable offenses. The NBA has regulations limiting the length of basketball shorts. It’s not that the players are showing too much leg but too little.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale and the other end of the Eastern time zone, Brattleboro, VT, has just overturned its ban on public nudity. (Sorry, no pictures, but here’s a link to the story.) If you want to walk around downtown letting it all hang out, Brattleboro’s the place to be, at least for the next few weeks before the weather starts to turn.
(* I realize that we are now supposed to refer to these as “public-order offenses” or “non-predatory crimes,” but I think Schur’s original term, if less strictly accurate, better conveys the moral idea.)
(Hat tip on the Brattleboro story to my friend Alice, whose young grandchildren live there.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
Speaking of victimless crimes* (as I was in the last post), the New York Times yesterday reported on baggy pants laws that have been passed in some towns. In Mansfield, LA, wear
your jeans so low that they expose your boxers, and you can wind up with a $500 fine or even jail time.Other towns have passed similar laws; state legislatures have come close. The laws are couched as “indecency” laws. But that seems pretty lame since the law is about cloth, not skin. It’s not about showing your butt, it’s about what you use to cover your butt: jeans, good; jeans with boxers, bad. Presumably, if the offender stripped off his jeans entirely and walked around in basketball shorts – maybe even plaid ones – there’d be no problem.
The real issue, as the Times points out, is hip-hop and all its impli
ed attitudes and ideas. (I’m surprised that Rachel hasn’t blogged this one.)People have often reacted to outward appearance in this way. We all judge others on their appearance, and sometimes the judgments become extreme. Violent fashionistas beat up zoot suiters in the 1940s, longhairs in the 60s and 70s. Institutions, notably schools, are similarly sensitive to seemingly small matters of style. At my school, leaving your shirttail out or turning your collar up in back were punishable offenses. The NBA has regulations limiting the length of basketball shorts. It’s not that the players are showing too much leg but too little.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale and the other end of the Eastern time zone, Brattleboro, VT, has just overturned its ban on public nudity. (Sorry, no pictures, but here’s a link to the story.) If you want to walk around downtown letting it all hang out, Brattleboro’s the place to be, at least for the next few weeks before the weather starts to turn.
(* I realize that we are now supposed to refer to these as “public-order offenses” or “non-predatory crimes,” but I think Schur’s original term, if less strictly accurate, better conveys the moral idea.)
(Hat tip on the Brattleboro story to my friend Alice, whose young grandchildren live there.)
Who's a Criminal?
August 29, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
When I look at the news these days, I sometimes think that labeling theorists have been running the show.
If you’ve taken even one sociology course, you probably know that labeling theory revolutionized the study of deviance starting about fifty years ago by expanding that topic to include social control. Most approaches to deviance and crime start from two basic questions: Why do those weird (or evil) people do those weird (or evil) things? And how can we get them to stop?
Labeling theory, by contrast, focuses less on the rule breakers and more on the people who make and enforce those rules.
So here we have Republican Senator Larry Craig, a family values kind of guy from Idaho, who got busted for soliciting homosexual sex in the men’s room of the Minneapolis airport. Several things are worth noting from the labeling perspective.
1. First, none of the accounts in the media are asking why Craig was doing what he did. Instead, the questions are about the law and its enforcement.
2. The cop who arrested him was sitting on the toilet in a stall for one and only one purpose – to get solicited for sex. It’s not technically entrapment in the legal sense, but clearly rule enforcement had a lot to do with what happened. If the decoy cop hadn't been there, it's quite possible Craig wouldn't have violated the law.
3. Craig tried to use his high status to avoid labeling. The arresting officer reported “Craig handed me a card that identified himself as a United States Senator as he stated 'What do you think about that?'”
4. No sex occurred, only “signals” like foot tapping. So Craig might have beaten the charges had he contested them. Instead he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge. Now he says he regrets that plea, and he insists that he’s not gay. His major battle is not about what he did and whether it was illegal; it’s about avoiding the label “gay.”
5. Others people are trying very hard to label Craig, whether as gay, hypocrite, criminal, etc. The incident happened in June, but it got press coverage only in the last week or so. Whether something is covered up or disclosed is not automatic. It’s the result of enterprise and work on the part of people with an interest in the outcome.
Meanwhile, the New York Times today reports that police are cracking down on people who sell tickets at the US Tennis Open. Here too, the police take an active role in soliciting the crime, approaching people as they go to the Tennis Center and asking them to sell their extra tickets. It is a crime to sell a ticket, even at less than face value, within 1500 feet of the event. Still, the people busted are outraged, and they deny the label of criminal:
Of course, the police claim that they are just enforcing the law: “A New York City Police Department official said . . . that the number [of undercover cops] was determined by the department and not influenced by event coordinators or box offices.” Yeah, right.
I’m going to the Open tomorrow. But I’m not selling my extra ticket – at least not without a 1500-foot tape measure. And I’m not tapping my foot in the men’s room either.
Posted by Jay Livingston
When I look at the news these days, I sometimes think that labeling theorists have been running the show.
If you’ve taken even one sociology course, you probably know that labeling theory revolutionized the study of deviance starting about fifty years ago by expanding that topic to include social control. Most approaches to deviance and crime start from two basic questions: Why do those weird (or evil) people do those weird (or evil) things? And how can we get them to stop?
Labeling theory, by contrast, focuses less on the rule breakers and more on the people who make and enforce those rules.
So here we have Republican Senator Larry Craig, a family values kind of guy from Idaho, who got busted for soliciting homosexual sex in the men’s room of the Minneapolis airport. Several things are worth noting from the labeling perspective.
1. First, none of the accounts in the media are asking why Craig was doing what he did. Instead, the questions are about the law and its enforcement.
2. The cop who arrested him was sitting on the toilet in a stall for one and only one purpose – to get solicited for sex. It’s not technically entrapment in the legal sense, but clearly rule enforcement had a lot to do with what happened. If the decoy cop hadn't been there, it's quite possible Craig wouldn't have violated the law.
3. Craig tried to use his high status to avoid labeling. The arresting officer reported “Craig handed me a card that identified himself as a United States Senator as he stated 'What do you think about that?'”
4. No sex occurred, only “signals” like foot tapping. So Craig might have beaten the charges had he contested them. Instead he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge. Now he says he regrets that plea, and he insists that he’s not gay. His major battle is not about what he did and whether it was illegal; it’s about avoiding the label “gay.”
5. Others people are trying very hard to label Craig, whether as gay, hypocrite, criminal, etc. The incident happened in June, but it got press coverage only in the last week or so. Whether something is covered up or disclosed is not automatic. It’s the result of enterprise and work on the part of people with an interest in the outcome.
Meanwhile, the New York Times today reports that police are cracking down on people who sell tickets at the US Tennis Open. Here too, the police take an active role in soliciting the crime, approaching people as they go to the Tennis Center and asking them to sell their extra tickets. It is a crime to sell a ticket, even at less than face value, within 1500 feet of the event. Still, the people busted are outraged, and they deny the label of criminal:
“We weren’t trying to make a profit, but it didn’t matter.”The Times takes a labeling theory approach. The cops are enforcing the law not against real scalpers but against ordinary citizens. Who, the Times asks, benefits from this moral entrepreneurship? Answer: Ticketmaster.
The Levines were trying to sell the tickets to help friends, two couples who were unable to attend the Open because their homes were damaged by Hurricane Dean. The four tickets cost $55 each.
“I’m in shock,” said Sharon Levine, a 50-year-old lawyer whose eyes were wet with frustration. “We were just trying to help out our friends whose homes were hit by the hurricane. We’re not criminals.”
Of course, the police claim that they are just enforcing the law: “A New York City Police Department official said . . . that the number [of undercover cops] was determined by the department and not influenced by event coordinators or box offices.” Yeah, right.
I’m going to the Open tomorrow. But I’m not selling my extra ticket – at least not without a 1500-foot tape measure. And I’m not tapping my foot in the men’s room either.
Hey Dude, Where's MY Internet Bubble?
August 26, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
One final thought on fortunes and the dot.com bubble – along the lines of “private troubles” and “public issues,” biography and history. In putting together those graphs on income a couple of days ago, I realized something weird: I felt the effects of the Internet boom and bust, felt them deeply – the giddiness of sudden riches, the despair of getting wiped out. But my biographical changes are not in any of those historical graphs.
I made a lot of money in the late 1990s. Oh, not a lot of money by the standards of the people in those graphs. But a lot for me. The value of my stock portfolio nearly doubled. I constantly watched my stocks on Yahoo in those days. It was great fun. One day when I noticed that one of my stocks had just gone up, I started to type an e-mail about it to a friend who also owned it. By the time I finished the message, the stock had jumped another 25%. (By contrast, Dan Myers, in these calmer times, is justifiably impressed that his son’s imaginary portfolio has gone up 3.3% in a week.)
If I’d closed out all my positions at the start of the 2000 baseball season, I’d have fewer financial worries today. It’s called “realizing” a profit – i.e, making it real. But instead, I watched as all those on-paper profits slipped away.
As a result, none of that money shows up in the data. My private troubles and triumphs would have become part of the public-issue statistics on income only if I had cashed in my profits in the 90s and then cashed out my losses in later years. But I didn't, and so I remain the invisible investor.
Posted by Jay Livingston
One final thought on fortunes and the dot.com bubble – along the lines of “private troubles” and “public issues,” biography and history. In putting together those graphs on income a couple of days ago, I realized something weird: I felt the effects of the Internet boom and bust, felt them deeply – the giddiness of sudden riches, the despair of getting wiped out. But my biographical changes are not in any of those historical graphs.
I made a lot of money in the late 1990s. Oh, not a lot of money by the standards of the people in those graphs. But a lot for me. The value of my stock portfolio nearly doubled. I constantly watched my stocks on Yahoo in those days. It was great fun. One day when I noticed that one of my stocks had just gone up, I started to type an e-mail about it to a friend who also owned it. By the time I finished the message, the stock had jumped another 25%. (By contrast, Dan Myers, in these calmer times, is justifiably impressed that his son’s imaginary portfolio has gone up 3.3% in a week.)
If I’d closed out all my positions at the start of the 2000 baseball season, I’d have fewer financial worries today. It’s called “realizing” a profit – i.e, making it real. But instead, I watched as all those on-paper profits slipped away.
As a result, none of that money shows up in the data. My private troubles and triumphs would have become part of the public-issue statistics on income only if I had cashed in my profits in the 90s and then cashed out my losses in later years. But I didn't, and so I remain the invisible investor.
Income and the Internet Bubble
August 23, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the previous post, I suggested that much of the fluctuation in mean income (but not median income) in this century was accounted for by the changing fortunes of the very rich. Here are some relevant graphs showing the share of income going sectors among the top 10% of families. The first one shows the share of total income going to the all but the top 1% – the 90th to 95th percentiles and the 95th to 99th.
These folks are not poor – the lower group averaged $110,000, the upper group $177,000 – and their incomes have increased faster than those of those below them. That’s why their share of all income increased from about 24% in 1973 to 27% in 2005. But the changes are not dramatic. The difference in the lower group, the 90th to 95th percentiles, is essentially unchanged. The upper group increased its share by a factor of 18%.
Now here is the top 1%, all except the tenth of one percent of the population, the top 145,000 families. Here too, I’ve divided them into two.
The “poorer” half of this 1% (average income $370,000) increased its share from 2.7% to 4%. The share of the upper half (average income $696,000) went from 3.2% to nearly 6%. As in the first graph, the richer half got even richer than did the lower half – an 87% increase compared with a 47% increase.
But what about the truyly rich, he top tenth of 1% of families – with incomes well over $2 million? Their considerable incomes show much larger fluctuations.
The overall trend is a big increase. Their share of total income doubled. It is also in this group that we see the effects of the dot-com boom (1995-2000) and bust (2000-2003). In 2004 and 2005, they seem to have gotten their groove back.
(Note: these graphs are based on data published by Piketty and Saez based on tax returns. The figures for income do not include capital gains. If capital gains were included, the differences between the very rich and the rest would be even larger.)
Here’s one final picture showing that the largest effects of the Internet bubble occurred at the top. It shows the ratio of CEO income (including bonuses and stock options) relative to that of the average worker.
The billowing and bursting of the Internet bubble is obvious. But smoothing out the curve also shows the general trend towards increasing inequality.
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the previous post, I suggested that much of the fluctuation in mean income (but not median income) in this century was accounted for by the changing fortunes of the very rich. Here are some relevant graphs showing the share of income going sectors among the top 10% of families. The first one shows the share of total income going to the all but the top 1% – the 90th to 95th percentiles and the 95th to 99th.
These folks are not poor – the lower group averaged $110,000, the upper group $177,000 – and their incomes have increased faster than those of those below them. That’s why their share of all income increased from about 24% in 1973 to 27% in 2005. But the changes are not dramatic. The difference in the lower group, the 90th to 95th percentiles, is essentially unchanged. The upper group increased its share by a factor of 18%.
Now here is the top 1%, all except the tenth of one percent of the population, the top 145,000 families. Here too, I’ve divided them into two.
The “poorer” half of this 1% (average income $370,000) increased its share from 2.7% to 4%. The share of the upper half (average income $696,000) went from 3.2% to nearly 6%. As in the first graph, the richer half got even richer than did the lower half – an 87% increase compared with a 47% increase.
But what about the truyly rich, he top tenth of 1% of families – with incomes well over $2 million? Their considerable incomes show much larger fluctuations.
The overall trend is a big increase. Their share of total income doubled. It is also in this group that we see the effects of the dot-com boom (1995-2000) and bust (2000-2003). In 2004 and 2005, they seem to have gotten their groove back.
(Note: these graphs are based on data published by Piketty and Saez based on tax returns. The figures for income do not include capital gains. If capital gains were included, the differences between the very rich and the rest would be even larger.)
Here’s one final picture showing that the largest effects of the Internet bubble occurred at the top. It shows the ratio of CEO income (including bonuses and stock options) relative to that of the average worker.
The billowing and bursting of the Internet bubble is obvious. But smoothing out the curve also shows the general trend towards increasing inequality.
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