With a candidacy that has provoked much deliberation over race relations, social movements, and the nature of political campaigns, prominent sociologists discuss the social significance of Barack Obama and what it might mean, sociologically speaking, were he to win the office.
You can read full coverage for free online at contexts.org/obama.
Welfare critics have argued that reliance on government assistance instead of “legitimate” work has created a class of people so dependent on help that they lack the ability to care for themselves.
These are the people, the party line goes, who failed to evacuate prior to Hurricane Katrina.
To test this “welfare dependency” theory, Timothy Brezina (Social Problems, February 2008) used data from the Survey of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees to examine the characteristics of the New Orleanians hit hardest by the storm.
His findings indicate, contrary to the claims of welfare dependency theorists, that more than half of these New Orleanians were employed full time before Katrina and many showed great initiative after the storm. Upwards of 60 percent, for example, were already seeking new jobs just two weeks after the evacuation.
Brezina found the best predictor of pre-storm evacuation was awareness of the evacuation order, not employment or welfare status, a result consistent with previous research on evacuation. J.W.
Ebonya Washington (American Economic Review, March 2008) found legislators—especially dads—with more daughters voted more liberally than their colleagues with more sons, particularly on reproductive rights issues:
Voting also shifted to the left for issues like the environment, foreign policy, and health. The chart depicts the average voting score given by the National Organization for Women for U.S. Representatives in the 105th Congress with only two children.W.L.
Surrogate pregnancy and egg donation are often viewed as altruistic actions or opportunities for profit.
In interviews with a large number of women in New Zealand who have donated eggs or been surrogates, Rhonda Shaw (Sociology, February 2008) found women also give these reproductive gifts for personal reasons, rather than motivations of either profit or altruism.
New Zealand highly regulates surrogate pregnancy and egg donation, and actually makes it illegal for a woman to profit from them. These restrictions have limited surrogate pregnancies to a few a year and egg donations to just 20 or 30 a year.
The restriction on profit has created a social and institutional structure that reinforces the altruistic nature of reproductive gifts. But according to Shaw, this isn’t why women give.
Some women gave as a way to move past painful memories such as abortions and relationship break-ups. Others gave as a way to mourn the death of loved ones. Still others indicated they wanted to experience something they had yet to experience.
Though on the surface these responses appear quite different, Shaw argues they all represent the idea that women have highly personal reasons for their reproductive gifts. K.C.
Studies of shy young adults born in the 1920s and 1950s indicated men felt more stress and anxiety than women as they moved into adulthood. That’s because shy women were more likely to settle quickly into isolating roles as housewives, which allowed them to avoid the many difficult transitions young men experienced in their greater contact with society.
Looking to update this research, Larry J. Nelson and colleagues (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, May 2008) explored how shy young adults today make the adjustment from adolescence to adulthood.
They found shy young women now have the same problems transitioning to adulthood as young men did in the ’20s and ’50s. Today, both shy young women and men are likely to have low self-worth and report low levels of relationship quality with friends, parents, and romantic partners.
The authors speculate the change in shy women’s experiences is related to broader changes in American society for women that promote a culture of personal exploration, developing relationships, paid work, financial independence, and delays family life. K.C.
Many rehabilitation programs center on the healing and reformative power of spirituality. Yet sociologists studying delinquency usually emphasize the impact of non-spiritual factors like marriage, job stability, and the criminal behaviors of friends and close relatives.
To see which factors had the most impact on leaving or staying in a life of crime, Peggy C. Giordano and colleagues (Criminology, February 2008) followed 152 serious offenders from 1982 to 2003.
They found that while many participants spoke of the importance of spirituality, neither perceived closeness to God nor church attendance had any effect in helping people stop criminal behavior.
Instead, the researchers’ findings were more in line with previous sociological research on the subject. It’s the much harder-to-obtain positive catalysts for change—steady employment and housing, non-criminal social networks—that truly made the difference between successful rehabilitation and a relapse into crime. J.W.
Turns out it’s not so much faith and prayer that keeps the religious from coveting their neighbors’ wives. Rather, it’s merely religious attendance that predicts marital fidelity, according to David Atkins and Deborah Kessel (Journal of Marriage and Family, May 2008).
Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, the authors constructed nine different ways of measuring religiousness. Among indicators such as nearness to God, attendance, prayer, and taking a punitive view of God, religious attendance was the only measure that significantly predicted infidelity.
Individuals who rarely, if ever, attended services were roughly four times more likely to have an affair than those who attended services with great frequency. (Higher education, extreme high or low income, previous divorce, and marital unhappiness were also predictors.)
The authors argue religious attendance helps prevent infidelity because it’s often a shared activity among spouses, implying shared values, and opens up cheaters to shame and embarrassment from a community if revealed.
Apparently, dragging our spouses to church on Sunday morning does more than restore their faith in God. H.M.
Praying may have its benefits, but it won’t necessarily bring you wealth—especially if you’re a conservative Protestant.
According to Lisa Keister (American Journal of Sociology, 2008), conservative Protestants maintain specific cultural values that limit asset accumulation over their lives. Lower educational achievement expectations, having children early, larger families, and limited labor force participation are all partially responsible for curbing a family’s long-term income. Religious beliefs may also be part of the problem. Because adherents believe money belongs to God, they seek divine guidance in managing their wealth and avoid amassing more than they need. Doing so reduces accumulation over time because they don’t reap the benefits of compounding interest, which in turn reduces money inherited by the next generation.
Along with beliefs, Keister found that more exposure to the conservative protestant values often left members with fewer resources. Those who were raised in and maintained the faith had the lowest wealth, those raised in and who subsequently left the church had the second lowest wealth, and those who only joined the faith as an adult were the least disadvantaged.
Known for its high levels of inequality and religiosity, the United States offers an important case study in understanding how religion, in contrast to The Protestant Ethic, may inadvertently cause poverty. R.A.
In this age of mass media and corporate news giants, many hope blogs will revolutionize a stagnant news industry.
Ray Maratea (Social Problems, February 2008) examined the role of blogs in today’s news culture and found they do, in fact, offer many advantages over traditional media.
Thanks to the speed at which blogs can be updated and posts quickly spreading through the Internet via hyperlinking, blogs can be an effective means of drawing public attention to issues.
However, in other respects blogs aren’t as revolutionary as they may seem. The blogosphere is very hierarchical, for example, with a small number drawing most of the traffic. Moreover, blogs tend to use the same criteria as traditional media when deciding what deserves attention, such as drama and novelty. J.S.
Like analog communities, digital communities often consist of like-minded individuals and discourage dissent and diversity. But does the Internet’s promise of being “just one click away” from anything diminish the echo chamber effect of social groups, or simply amplify it?
Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo, and Matthew Kane (Public Choice, January 2008) studied the most popular political blogs and found some evidence for both.
On the one hand, conservative blogs were more likely to link to conservative blogs and liberal blogs were more likely to link to liberal blogs. Moreover, when cross-ideological links did occur, the most common treatment of these links was a “straw man” approach that simply dismissed the other sides’ views.
However, they also found that conservative bloggers were more likely to link to liberal bloggers. Conservative bloggers were also more likely to agree (if only 14 percent of the time) with liberal blogs they link to, while liberal bloggers agreed with conservatives only 5 percent of the time. J.S.
Internet surfers of the world, stop feeling guilty. Some skills and behaviors developed while using the Internet may help you on the job market.
Paul DiMaggio and Bart Bonikowski (American Sociological Review, April 2008) found evidence to suggest that Internet users benefit from access to better job information and from the signaling effects of using fashionable technology. The evidence? Between 2000 and 2001, U.S. workers using the Internet increased their earnings at a faster rate than those stuck offline.
Most existing studies attribute increased earnings to increased productivity at work. But DiMaggio and Bonikowski found at-home Internet users also see an earnings boost, suggesting other factors than just productivity are at play.
It seems Internet use not only gives people access to information, but it broadens social networks and functions as a cultural signal of competence and intelligence. C.S.
With the transition from state socialism to liberal democracy, countries in Central and Eastern Europe also experienced a precipitous and unexpected decline in the number of women in government.
Although this fact is old news to those who study the region, scholars still disagree over why this gap persists. Yvonne Galligan and Sara Clavero (Gender and Society, April 2008) interviewed 71 female politicians in seven of these countries to better understand the situation from the women’s points of view.
The authors found that while these political women feel the lack of women in politics is a problem, they don’t think they can do much about it.
Whether conservative or liberal, the female politicians unanimously named family responsibilities as an important reason why so few women are in politics. A strong majority also thought it was important for more women to be in the political arena.
Unlike their counterparts in established democracies, however, these politicians didn’t see themselves as acting on behalf of their countrywomen. In fact, the authors found even as the interviewees saw politics as a male world that could benefit from the influence of more women, these elite women didn’t place the responsibility for the lack of women on party gatekeepers or a masculine political system, but rather on individual women themselves.
The authors noted the female politicians all believed vehemently in the fairness of democratic electoral rules, suggesting that faith in the power of democracy may itself be part of the problem with gender inequality in politics. M.K.
Because 32 percent of low-income young adults live in households with only a wireless phone, traditional telephone surveys may be misjudging important health behaviors.
According to Stephen J. Blumberg and Julian V. Luke (Public Opinion Quarterly, Special Issue 2007), low-income and young adults smoke and binge drink more than previously measured, but they’re also more physically active, less obese, and more likely to have been tested for HIV than previously thought.
There’s good reason to think telephone survey validity is the culprit. Blumberg and Luke found that even when limiting the population they analyzed to low-income and young adults, there were small but significant differences between those with landlines and cell-phone only households. Perhaps more importantly, the authors found that standard techniques for adjusting the bias of landline-only surveys work only when applied very carefully.
The spread of cell phones may mean survey researchers need new techniques for gathering crucial information about the public. M.K.
Stringent U.S. immigration laws and the deportation of non-citizens can have consequences Americans fail to realize.
Jacqueline Hagan, Karl Eschbach, and Nestor Rodriguez (International Migration Review, Spring 2008) drew on a random sample of 300 Salvadoran deportees in their home communities and found that when non-citizens are deported, it actually puts families in two countries in jeopardy.
Deportees are likely to have families and dependents in the United States. Because 95 percent of deportees are male, sending them back home removes the family’s breadwinner and may lead to a greater reliance on the state.
As well, 72 percent of deportees remit to extended family (especially parents) in El Salvador. These remittances actually surpass national exports as a source of foreign exchange, and many families rely on the cash flow for survival. R.A.
Jailhouse graffiti reveals interesting differences in how men and women cope with their time in short-term jails as they await trial and transfer to prison.
Focusing on gender, Jacqueline Wilson (Ethnography, March 2008) examined the pencil markings, scratches in paintwork, and carvings in wooden fittings of the decommissioned Melbourne City Watch House in Australia.
While male inmates were primarily interested in asserting themselves by simply “tagging” their names, women were more social in their statements overall, Wilson found.
Specifically, graffiti in the women’s section showed more emphasis on networking and relationships between female inmates. Because Melbourne had only one facility for women with a small inmate population, the women’s graffiti demonstrated a pervasive concern with establishing alliances before arrival in the prison. They demonstrated their connections by writing “Mandy L’s Wendy,” by which the writer meant “Wendy has Mandy’s back, and vice versa.” M.K./E.B.
Despite the fact that the United States became a less hospitable place for them in the aftermath of 9/11, more Arab Americans than ever are declaring their racial identity as white.
Seeking an explanation for why, Kristine Ajrouch and Amaney Jamal (International Migration Review, Winter 2007) turned to the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS)—the first-ever representative sample of Americans with Arab ancestry living in the Detroit metro area. (Unbeknownst to many, Detroit has one of the largest densities of Arab Americans in the United States.)
Different experiences with assimilation appear to be crucial. Being Lebanese/Syrian or Christian, for example, made a respondent more likely to identify as white. Being older was also linked with a higher likelihood of identifying with the white majority, as was having strongly held feelings about being Arab American (the pan-ethnic category, as opposed to smaller, more localized national or religion affiliations). Indeed, while some Arab Americans reported only a strong white identity, many expressed a strong pan-ethnic attachment as well.
Like many other immigrant groups, Americans of Arab descent don’t necessarily see a conflict between their ethnic and racial identities in the United States. Being ethnic and white seems to be a way to claim a distinctive identity and place in the mosaic that is contemporary America. M.K./E.B.
Doug Hartmann is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. His research interests focus on race and ethnicity, multiculturalism, popular culture (including sports and religion), and contemporary American society.
Chris Uggen is Distinguished McKnight Professor and chair of the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. He studies crime, law, and deviance, especially how former prisoners manage to put their lives back together.
With 2008 being an election year, we weren’t surprised to receive a number of wonderful contributions on politics.
Several of those were exceptional, and you’ll read them here, but writing about politics remains a challenge for a publication like Contexts, not to mention for the discipline of sociology in general.
Part of the problem has to do with the constraints of time. As a quarterly, we obviously can’t be as limber as newspapers, magazines, and online media. But even if we published every week, sociological analysis doesn’t always come quickly or easily. By the time we’ve properly formulated our questions, gathered our data, come to our conclusions, and assessed their public significance, the political process has sometimes moved on. There are some exceptions, to be sure: spot commentaries delivered by informed sociological bloggers, expert opinion pieces by sociologists in The New York Times or The Nation, and, we would add, interactive features at contexts.org, such as our roundtable on the social significance of Barack Obama’s candidacy.
Sociological content itself presents other difficulties. What we have to say often doesn’t lend itself to a 10-second soundbite or one-page press release. Our critical perspectives and insights into the complexity of the world can also be tough to translate into action or concrete policy. Sometimes, in other words, politicians, pundits, or ordinary citizens just aren’t ready to deal with the sociological take.
Other issues are also in play, issues that force us to confront some of the deepest fault lines in the discipline. For example, many get into this field because they see profound public and political value in the systematic study of social life. Yet there are many different visions of how sociologists and sociology properly engage and impact the world. On one extreme are those who believe sociologists must actively engage the social world with their research and commentary. On the other are those convinced the most appropriate sociological contributions must be made above the political fray, offering more detached and objective analysis. Suffice it to say, these different orientations—both of which, in our view, have their time and place—yield very different approaches to politics.
And then there’s the political orientation of sociologists themselves. Many people these days (some sociologists foremost among them) assume we’re a uniformly liberal or progressive lot, and that politics and political analyses are, therefore, as biased as they are predictable and uninteresting. We refuse to concede these assumptions. Not only do we know more than a few conservative sociologists (we’ve been trying to get more of them to write for us, by the way), we also believe that in certain respects—its skepticism about radical social change, for example, or its understanding of the limits of human consciousness and comprehension—sociology is profoundly conservative. All of which helps to explain why some of the best sociology can’t be shoehorned into conventional left/right boxes.
You may not agree with us on all these points, of course, and Contexts won’t adopt an editorial stance on any of these debates. We see sociology as a big disciplinary tent marked by its unique ability to both contain and engage these different perspectives. If that lack of a singular perspective makes it difficult for us to comment decisively on politics, so be it. But there is a unifying force that connects disparate sociological approaches to politics: the recognition that all politics is social.
The social dimensions of political life color debates, shape legislation and policy, and call forth the very issues framed as “political.” Our job is to analyze and dissect these aspects of the political process as issues are debated and decisions are made—and to do all we can to inject these analyses into the public agenda.
Marta Tienda is in the sociology department at Princeton University. She studies race and ethnic stratification and international migration.
One thing I know is that race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action have not diversified college campuses.
The latter half of the 1990s witnessed a spate of court decisions and public referenda outlawing the use of affirmative action in college admissions decisions. In response to a judicial ban on affirmative action imposed by the 5th Circuit Court, for example, the Texas Legislature passed a law guaranteeing admission to any state public university to all seniors who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.
In force since 1998, the top 10 percent law disregards standardized test scores for students eligible for automatic admission. When the outcome of the 2003 Supreme Court decisions involving the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policies was uncertain, supporters touted the Texas law as a race-neutral strategy to increase campus diversity because it applies a uniform merit criterion to all high schools, whether rich or poor, large or small.
Although diversity of the freshman class plummeted the year affirmative action was banned and diversity rebounded after the uniform admission law was implemented, it doesn’t follow that the percent plan is race-neutral or that it is responsible for the rebound.
The percent plan capitalizes on Texas’s highly segregated high schools to boost minority representation at the state’s public flagships—University of Texas at Austin (UT) and Texas A&M University (TAMU). What’s more, both institutions began an aggressive outreach campaign that targeted poor high schools with low college-going traditions, offering scholarships to rank-eligible students. In Texas, high schools that fit this description tend to be predominantly black or Hispanic. On average, minority students are less likely to qualify for automatic admission if they attend integrated schools, but their chances are much higher if they graduate from predominately minority schools.
The uniform admission law didn’t have uniform impacts at both public flagships. Representation of minority students rose at both premier campuses, but not equally. In fact, African-Americans and Hispanics were better represented at TAMU under affirmative action than the top 10 percent regime. Black and Hispanic enrollment at UT has returned to levels achieved before affirmative action was outlawed, but this is mainly because these minorities represent a much larger percentage of the college-eligible population and not because of the admission guarantee. Today, less than half of Texas high school graduates are white, and despite their elevated high school drop-out rates, Hispanics are currently more than one in three Texas high school graduates.
Although many minority students qualify for admission to selective institutions under the percent plan because standardized test scores aren’t considered for top-ranked graduates, an admission guarantee doesn’t guarantee enrollment. This is particularly important in the quest to diversify campuses because minority students are more likely than their white counterparts to attend resource-poor high schools with low college-going traditions. Simply put, not enough minority students are taking advantage of the plan.
Finally, the top 10 percent law did broaden access to the public flagships, as intended by the legislation’s architects. Today, a larger number of high schools send students to UT and TAMU than before the admission guarantee was in force. In fact, application rates of top-ranked graduates from affluent high schools rose, while application rates from top 10 percent graduates from poor schools remained constant (at UT) or fell (at TAMU). Apparently the playing field is more uneven than advocates of the law admit.
At its 10th anniversary, the top 10 percent law has become as controversial as the race-sensitive admission regime it replaced. Critics from affluent districts claim the uniform admission law gives unfair advantage to highly ranked students from low-performing schools who are presumed less well prepared for high level college work compared with lower ranked students from competitive high schools. Support for the percent plan also has eroded among UT administrators, who complain that diversity in a broad sense is compromised when more than 80 percent of students are admitted using a single metric—top 10 percent high school class rank.
There are many different arguments for (and against) programs designed to foster diversity in our nation’s colleges and universities. The major lesson for the country is that even in a majority minority state like Texas, no viable race-neutral alternatives currently exist. States like Michigan that are considering a percent plan after a decisive ballot initiative outlawed affirmative action should understand that the unintended consequences of a percent plan will likely outweigh the benefits. Fortunately, the 2003 Supreme Court Grutter decision upheld narrowly tailored consideration of race in college admissions, which is the most efficient and effective strategy to diversify college campuses.
Ziad Munson is in the sociology and anthropology department at Lehigh University. He studies the mobilization of social movements.
People today are well aware that we live in a world in which terrorism is an ever-present threat. But we are less aware that this world didn’t begin on September 11, 2001. The threat of terrorism has been with us for many decades and will continue into the future. Understanding the basic definition of terrorism and its social constructions can help us put the threat in proper perspective.
Deborah Carr is Contexts' Trends editor. She teachers sociology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the sociology of the life course, aging, social psychology, and gender.
Despite the female candidates involved in the historic 2008 election, women trail men in all types of elected offices in the United States. The fascinating statistics and cogent analysis presented here show that, although it may take decades until a woman is elected president of the United States, this possibility is becoming increasingly likely.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union offers data on the number of women in national parliaments around the world. Check out the comparative chart by country. Scroll down–far down–to find out how the United States ranks.
The Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership provides an overview of the history of women in executive, ministerial, and royal positions around the world. See which countries have and have not elected women as heads of state, and find out about women like Sirivamo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, the first elected prime minister in 1960.
According to a story in the Hindustan Times, India has the most female elected representatives in the world.
Karen Sternheimer is in the sociology department at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility and blogs at Everyday Sociology.
Politicians have long played on the apparent disconnect between Hollywood celebrities and mainstream “family values.” While Hollywood may provide multiple examples of people who have children outside marriage or seem to be less-than-committed spouses, the real causes of these changes are far less glamorous. Rather than the decline of “family values,” cultural norms have changed to adapt to a host of economic, political, and social changes in American society.
Saundra D. Westervelt is in the sociology department at University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is the author of Shifting the Blame: How Victimization Became a Criminal Defense.
Kimberly J. Cook is in the sociology and criminology department at University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the author of Divided Passions: Public Opinions on Abortion and the Death Penalty.
The ranks of those exonerated of crimes they didn’t commit increases every year, raising questions central to society’s ideas about fairness, justice, and responsibility. Sociological research can help us understand exonerees in ways that go beyond basic descriptive and journalistic accounts. If incarceration of an innocent person can be considered a sustained catastrophe, like a flood, earthquake, or other disaster with long-term consequences, we can understand the human suffering experienced by exonerees just as we do other trauma survivors.
Listen to an interview with Saundra D. Westervelt and Kimberly J. Cook on the Contexts Podcast.
In the article, Westervelt and Cook discuss The Innocence Project. At innocenceproject.org, you can view an interactive map of exonerations by state.
Watch this video about how lawyers at The Innocence Project helped exonerate Herman Atkins after 12 years in prison:
Watch the trailer for the documentary, "After Innocence":
Francesca Polletta is in the sociology department at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of It Was Like A Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics.
Conservative storytellers are known for their ability to “produce a narrative” while progressives have been criticized for their inability to do so. Telling progressive stories, according to Democratic party strategists, would do more than win elections—strong, compelling narratives would open the door to enacting a progressive agenda in the United States. This article explores how stories work and the challenges facing progressive storytelling today. It demonstrates why some political narratives persuade while others don’t. It ultimately suggests that progressives must pay attention to the cultural norms that make some people’s stories more believable than others.
Listen to an interview with Francesca Polletta on the Contexts Podcast.
Andrew J. Perrin is in the sociology department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Citizen Speak: The Democratic Imagination in American Life.
On November 4, 2008, probably 140 million Americans cast votes in the election for President of the United States. Nearly as many citizens, although eligible, chose not to. Voting is never just the educated, emotion-free weighing of issues and the subsequent casting of a ballot. Indeed, it is a ritual in which lone citizens express personal beliefs that reflect the core of who they are and what they want for their countrymen, balancing strategic behavior with the opportunity to express their inner selves to the world. In other words, voting in America has two faces: the first, a ritualistic expression of personal belief without regard to strategy; the second, a cold, calculating form of citizenship where what anthropologist Julia Paley calls the “choice-making citizen” weighs the costs and benefits of particular policies and votes accordingly. We can’t understand who votes, and how, without understanding the two faces of voting that come together in citizens’ minds and activities.
Contexts is a quarterly magazine that makes sociology interesting and relevant to anyone interested in how society operates.
It is a publication of the American Sociological Association, edited by Jodi O’Brien (Seattle University) and Arlene Stein (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey).
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