This isn’t just an issue for Contexts, of course, but a fundamental question about public outreach and engagement—when do social scientists know enough to speak up?

Unlike other magazines, our features are all anonymously peer-reviewed by real experts in the subject area. That means that before you read an article in Contexts, at least three people who know what they are talking about have agreed that the content accurately characterizes the state of knowledge in a field. Although these reviewers are unpaid and unsung, they care passionately about the quality of work we publish in their fields of study.

This tends to weed out the fluff.

Any authors misled by our accessible writing style quickly learn that a casual or offhand approach to scholarship won’t fly at Contexts. When it comes to matters of substance and evidence, our authors will be pushed and pushed hard. As we move from manuscript to publication, some claims are sharpened, others are softened, some are qualified, and others are dumped completely.

In a 10,000 word research article, sociologists generally build a foundation brick-by-brick—with a voluminous review of the literature, a painstakingly detailed discussion of design and methodology, and an exhaustive reference list. Contexts can’t do this. We run 3,000 word features, assiduously avoiding the sort of jargon and technical minutiae that bog down non-experts. But while the foundation in our articles must remain invisible, it is no less real.

So although the claims and conclusions in our features might seem to float in mid-air, there are multiple points of support for the author’s statements—not just one study by the author, but an accumulation of established or emerging sociological evidence. While the editorial team has a hand in shaping each article, the claims are vetted by experts who know a lot more about the topic than the editors.

Finally, at the end of each feature, we list a handful of “key works” or touchstones for further study and reflection. While academics are trained to write in ways that isolate their own unique contributions, we ask them to harmonize or synthesize their analysis with other work in the field. We believe that this straightforward approach—to both scholarship and reading suggestions that can broaden our readers’ perspectives—is a key way in which Contexts can be field-shaping.

This is hard, but ultimately fulfilling, work. Each feature reminds us that sociology is more than a cacophony of competing and contradictory voices—we have something real and true to say about the social worlds in which we live.

There are over 30 theories of causation of crime in classics of criminology. At first I thought that I should look for the one “right” theory. But as the class progressed I found that different people arrive at deviance through a many varied paths.

Emile Durkheim explains that “crime is normal because a society exempt from it is utterly impossible. Crime… consists of an act that offends very strong collective sentiments.” From this working definition of crime/deviance we all realize that even criminology seeks to aid us to understand all people not just the “criminals” among us.

The experience of Inside-Out shows the commonality that we as people share. It blurs the line created by socialization of “us” and “them.”

This is so important because when we can identify with people, when we can stand in their shoes, we can no longer dismiss them as “the other” and go along claiming indifference.

Still, identifying with the actions of others does not mean we condone crime. What it does mean is that we can separate the person from the problem. By doing so, we realize that these are problems that we can tackle not people we need to ostracize.

The Inside-Out program is a rare opportunity to see the world in a broader perspective when in a very restrictive environment.

Knowing that there is hope, that people care and that a problem that felt yours alone is one shared by many can be comforting.

The several theories that are presented allow all of us tools with which we can better interact with the world around us. These are invaluable, as is the Inside-Out program. For while the class may last for 10 weeks, the lessons last a lifetime.

In the fall 2009 issue of Contexts, Tasha Galardi, an Oregon State University student, wrote about her experience as one of the “Outside” students participating in the Inside-Out prison exchange course in Crime, Justice, and Social Policy. The course brought together students from OSU and students who are currently incarcerated for a 10-week, college-level sociology course. Galardi wrote that one of her reasons for taking the course was to challenge her own preconceived notions of prisoners. Learning sociological theories in dialogue and collaboration with the “Inside” students she got to know over the semester transformed Galardi’s ideas about crime (and criminals).

As we learned in the essays we received from “Inside” students, becoming an example of deviance or a topic of study, rather than simply a fellow student, did worry some of the incarcerated students before they enrolled. Doug Sanders, who has participated in two Inside-Out courses in his nearly 15 year stay in the Oregon State Penitentiary, wrote, “I didn’t know exactly what to expect being in a class with college students. Was this going to be an evaluation? A study? Was I going to be put under a microscope?” Another Inside student, Benjamin Hall, echoed Sanders’ trepidation: “Going up the stairs that first night of class, I was actually afraid. I was perspiring, and I was so worried [about] what these students would think of me.”

“After years of isolation from the outside world, all of a sudden I was sitting next to students from the campus who’d never experienced prison… other than what they’d seen on the nightly news,” said James Anderson, who has now taken three Inside-Out classes. “It was a new experience for all involved.” Anderson, too, was nervous about mingling with the Outside students: “As inmates, we were worried that we wouldn’t be accepted as equals in the OSU students’ eyes. Whether that came from having to wear our standard issue prison blues or simply from the stigma that being a prisoner carries, I don’t know.”

But it didn’t take long for barriers to break down as the Inside and Outside students began working together in the classroom. Learn more about Inside-Out on the
Contexts Podcast:
Interview with Michelle Inderbitzen Anderson wrote, “So rapidly, those fears faded as our weekly classes turned into animated discussions designed around specific topics—as well as many instances of random laughter and high-fives as [all of] the students became a close-knit group, rather than two differing sides.” Sanders summed up, “We were all equals.”

The realization that they all shared a common role as students was, itself, an important lesson, David Spencer told Contexts. “The experience of Inside-Out shows the commonality that we as people share. It blurs the line created by socialization… ‘us’ and ‘them.’” As they read work by Emile Durkheim, Robert Sampson and John Laub, and Terrie Moffitt, the students talked with each other, week after week, about the sociology of crime and justice.

“There are over 30 theories of causation of crime… At first, I thought I should look for the one ‘right’ theory,” said Spencer. And Sanders wrote, “One would think that by living in prison, you would automatically know just about everything about prisons and the prison systems. I was wrong.” Working side by side with the OSU students, he described how “we were learning from each other, we were learning about prisons, the justice system, theories of crime, [and] crime prevention.”

“Because of the in-depth teaching, knowledge, encouragement, and hope… it has drastically changed my outlook. …Through class discussions and required reading, we’ve learned valuable insight into the causes and deep-seeded roots of our behaviors, and every inmate went through intense periods of self-examination as a result,” Anderson explained. “I can say with certainty that not one of us is proud of our criminal past.”

Inside-Out allows incarcerated men and women to share their knowledge and gives undergrads the ability to reconsider all they’ve come to learn about crime and justice. And that exchange is transformative. All four of the men who wrote to share their thoughts with Contexts (and they did write, having no access to typewriters or computers) emphasized how Inside-Out influenced their vision of the future. Hall wrote that he came away with “different perspectives that opened possibilities I never considered.”

And, Hall revealed, “I keep a piece of paper in my cell. It has 168 people on it—it’s all the people it affects when I make choices. When I struggle with bad choices, I look at or think about that list. I have added … ‘the class’ to it because I want to… honor the people who invested in my life.” While he’s thinking moment-to-moment, Inside-Out has made James Anderson think about the bigger picture: “After taking [the] initial class… I began taking courses through a local community college. I’m proud to say that I’m well on the way toward earning two separate college degrees, and it’s directly because of the amazing opportunity I had [as] part of the Inside-Out program.”

I didn’t know exactly what to expect being in a class with college students. Was this going to be an evaluation? A study? Was I going to be put under a microscope? Because it was the first of its kind offered here in prison, all I knew was that I had to be a part of it.

One would think that by living in prison you would automatically know just about everything about prisons and the prison system. I was wrong.

The great thing about this class is not only was I learning, I was also teaching. I was helping to change perceptions and stereotypes of people who are incarcerated. Do I belong in prison to pay for my actions of breaking the law? Of course I do. Am I someone who deserves to be treated anything less than human? Of course not.

I like to think that I altered the perception of someone incarcerated. Hopefully all of us “Inside” students helped the “Outside” students realize that there is still hope that people can learn and better themselves after making terrible mistakes. Hopefully we helped them to also realize that locking someone up and throwing away the key isn’t always the answer either.

The end result of this class is amazing. In the small amount of time all of us students spent together in class we formed bonds and friendships. We were all equals and that is one of the things that make this class so great. We were learning from each other, we were learning about prisons, the justice system, theories of crime, crime prevention, and one of the greatest things we were able to do is work together on a project to give back to our community.

I have done numerous programs in prison. I have attended seminars and anything else that would have a positive influence on my life. I have been incarcerated for nearly 15 years and this class is the most rewarding experience I’ve had while being locked up.

My name is James. I’ve lived behind these prison walls for nearly 14 years now and I’ve seen what happens when all hope is drained from a prisoner’s reach. I came to prison when I was 17, and during my stay there’s been countless times where hope has felt so out of reach, so distant and unobtainable, that I truly felt like giving up on many occasions. Unfortunately this is an all too familiar feeling among men and women behind bars. The neat thing about hope though is that it often appears out of nowhere, when one least expects it but needs it the most. That was the case for me.

In the winter of 2006 I met Michelle Inderbitzin, a professor of sociology from Oregon State University. She brought the Inside-Out program behind these walls and it has instilled a sense of worth and newfound hope in many inmates, myself included. Each week Prof. Inderbitzin brought 15 students from the O.S.U. campus for a 10 week course involving in-depth discussions about crime, justice, public policy, and ultimately about how the deviant elements of society are both created and dissolved. I am one of the 15 original inmates chose to be part of the first Inside-Out program, and it’s without doubt one of the defining moments in my life behind bars.

After years of isolation from the outside world all of a sudden I was sitting next to students from the campus who’d never experienced prison related issues other than what they’d seen on the nightly news or read in their morning papers. It was a new experience for all involved and we learned just as much from them as they did from us. I feel more than comfortable saying that together we were able to shatter all the preconceived notions we’d previously held about each other. As inmates, we were worried that we wouldn’t be accepted as equals in the O.S.U. students’ eyes. Whether that came from having to wear our standard issue prison blues, or simply from the stigma that being a prisoner carries, I don’t know. But so rapidly those fears faded as our weekly classes turned into animated discussions designed around specific topics, as well as many instances of random laughter and high-fives as the students became a close-knit group rather than two differing sides.

Having to say goodbye to each other at the end of each class during the 10 weeks quickly became the most difficult aspect, and it was often mentioned by both inmates and O.S.U. students that we just wished our classes could somehow. When was the last time you heard that about an educational class? Exactly.

I’ve had the privilege of being involved in 3 separate Inside-Out classes during the last 2 ½ years and I can honestly say that it has drastically changed my outlook. It’s because of the in-depth teaching, knowledge, encouragement, and hope provided by Prof. Inderbitzin and the numerous O.S.U. students that enable myself and other inmates to work towards a positive future rather than one of uncertainty. Through class discussions and required reading we’ve learned valuable insight into the causes and deep seeded roots of our behaviors, and every inmate went through intense periods of self examination as a result.

I can say with certainty that not one of us is proud of our criminal past, and nothing about the criminal lifestyle is appealing to us as we look positively toward our futures. I am very honored to know that I was part of such an inspiring program, and it has led me directly to further educational aspirations. Immediately after taking Prof. Inderbitzin’s initial class, education had taken its grip on me and I began taking courses through a local community college. I’m proud to say that I’m well on the way toward earning two separate college degrees, and it’s directly because of the amazing opportunity I had by being a part of the Inside-Out program.

I will thank everyone involved in the Inside-Out program by being a model inmate while here, and a productive member of both my family and my community once released. Describing it in 3 words would be easy: an amazing experience.

As hopeless as this sounds, at one point in my life I believed I would always lose and be destined to fail. As a teenager I really did believe I would end up in prison. It is where I was told I would go by my father and many juvenile counselors. When I took Michelle Inderbitzin’s Inside-Out sociology class in 2008 I did not know really what to expect. Going up the stairs that first night of class I was actually afraid I was perspiring, and I was worried of what these students would think of me. In the weeks that followed, those fears melted away as we had meaningful discussions about crime and punishment and I learned we had more in common than I ever would have thought. I learned about typology theories like Moffit who argued that there are only two types of offenders. What she calls life course persistent and adolescent limiteds. I was surprised to learn how Moffit’s theory and many other typology theories believe change for the life course persistent were not possible! The very book we were reading by Sampson Laub in many ways their theories were proven correct right there by what we were experiencing in the class. Sampson and Laub said “What was lacking in criminology was a rich detailed knowledge base about offending from those who commit crime, expressed in their own words.” Sampson and Laub believed change was possible. Our preconceived notions were being broke down and change and learning were taking place. When I entered that class I doubted my abilities to do well in college and did not really consider going back to it. During this class I was given hope and confidence in that area.

I believe most academic lessons truly become the most valuable when they are applied to life. So allow me to speak from my heart about some life lessons and experiences I took away from the class in prison or in life. It is easy to think about all the things you don’t have but it is really all about perspectives. The best time in prison is the early morning on the weekend because it is quiet for one. Also I have a window in my cell. It has bars on it. I can look out through the bars past the prison yard up over the concrete and steel and watch across the horizon as the sun lights up the sky. In those far-and-few in between moments in prison you stop to take it all in, because you know that it cannot and will not last. There looking on God’s creation your perspective is changed to something so much greater than your circumstances in this piece of real estate. Sometimes freedom truly is just another perspective away. That is something I took away from Inside-Out. Different perspectives that opened possibilities I never considered.

I am now taking my second Inside-Out class and learning about different theories of descriptions of crime, causation, and social response to crime. I learned from and identified with Syke and Matzas techniques of neutralization how I justified my crimes and deviant lifestyle with “the appeal to higher loyalties.” In Sutherland’s differential association about crime being a learned behavior, I have both experienced and see it around me every day. As much as we learn about descriptions and causes of crime the conclusion of these brings us to the social responses to crime. What do we do? How do we make dent preventing future crime? It’s my belief that Inside-Out is doing just that. In Miller’s theory lower class culture and gang delinquency he wrote about focal concerns of the lower class adolescent street corner group (something I was part of) at the top of these concerns is belonging. How “the corner group fulfills essential functions for the individual” (Miller 262). We spend most of our lives trying to belong searching for those social controls as they are called in the world of criminology. Sampson and Laub found in their research that for some offenders there has to be an accumulation of losses before one becomes sensitive to the inhibiting power of informal social controls. They also talked about human agency and turning points. Bringing about desistance in crime, through connecting or reconnecting with loved ones, faith, family, work, friends. Speaking from someone who has lost a lot as many of us have I can say these things are true. Social stimulation and learning bring about desistance from future crime especially when you have lost so much. Inside-Out is a turning point in many people’s lives. It was a turning point in mine for education. I have friendships I may never have had without Inside-Out, all because of a different perspective. I have seen racial lines broken through these classes, men getting together in prison throughout the week talking about the material learning together while at the same time developing social bonds. Many of these guys will go on to succeed, even as they are now. For the short 10-12 weeks Inside-Out comes into this prison, rehabilitation, prevention of future crime takes place and carries into a life for some. Our true character is revealed when no one sees us, but we can’t hide from each other in here and I see lasting change. When Michelle brings in Inside-Out each week, hope travels with her. A second change, a smile, compassion, these go a long way in cracking the hard exterior of a life time criminal. As we come to the end of an Inside-Out term, you feel sad saying goodbye to your new friends but the experience and the life lessons you walk away with outweigh the sadness and become a tabernacle of remembrance in your heart. I believe when you are given a second chance, an act of kindness or compassion, an opportunity, forgiveness… it carries with it a responsibility to live in such a way to honor it. I keep a piece of paper in my cell. It has 168 people on it. It is all the people it affects when I make choices. When I struggle with bad choices, I look at or think about that list. I have added Michelle Inderbitzin’s name and “the class” to it because I want to never forget the impact one choice can have on many and live in such a way to honor the people who invested in my life. I can easily say the Inside-Out program has been one of my best experiences in my 16 years of incarceration.

Thank you.

Benjamin Hall

Although few of the victimized retirees are indigent, their declining fortunes did cast the spotlight on a social issue that has been largely neglected over the past several decades: the economic well-being of older adults.

The economic standing—and poverty levels, more specifically—of Americans ages 65 and older has fallen off the national radar, replaced by widespread concerns over child poverty. A quick look at historical data might lead the casual observer to conclude that this shift in focus is justified. Elderly poverty rates declined sharply from 35 percent in 1959 to 15 percent by the 1970s. The proportion of older persons living in poverty has wavered between 10 and 12.5 percent since the 1980s. Child poverty rates, by contrast, climbed through the 1960s and 1970s, surpassed elderly poverty rates in 1974, and have fluctuated between 17 and 20 percent ever since.

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But the decline and stabilization of overall poverty rates among older adults reveals an incomplete portrait of late-life poverty. Poverty rates among older adults range from just 3.1 percent among white married men to an astounding 37.5 percent for black women who live alone and 40.5 percent for Hispanic women living alone. In other words, older women of color who live alone are more than ten times as likely as their white married male counterparts to be poor. Moreover, recent research by the National Academy of Sciences suggests that overall poverty rates among older adults may be severely underestimated because the current measure fails to consider the high (and rising) costs of medical care, which disproportionately strike older adults.

How can we make sense of the fact that overall elderly poverty levels have dropped precipitously over the past four decades, while some subgroups of older adults remain at great risk of impoverishment? The overall declines in elderly poverty rates are due to Social Security benefits, which remain the nation’s largest social welfare program. The Social Security Act was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 as part of the New Deal. The intention was to provide “social insurance,” or income protection, for older adults. During the program’s first three decades, though, its benefits barely provided a minimum standard of living because monthly payments were not adjusted annually to offset inflation.

The first-ever beneficiary of Social Security, retired legal secretary Ida May Fuller, received a benefit of $22.54 in January 1940, and her monthly checks remained at that amount for more than a decade. In 1950, benefits were raised for the first time. In 1972, Congress enacted a law that allowed for annual and automatic Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs). The current average monthly payment is $1,094. Economists estimate that without Social Security, the 2008 elderly poverty rate would be 40—rather than 9.4—percent.

Given these advances, why do poverty levels remain higher among women, especially unmarried women and persons of color? Experts point to three main explanations. First, most women have had lower paying jobs, more sporadic employment, and more part-time work over the life course than their male counterparts. Because of stark gender differences in life-time earnings (on which Social Security benefits are based), women’s own benefits are lower than those of their male peers. (Housework and childcare are unpaid activities and thus are not directly calculated into benefits levels.) Given the “double jeopardy” of being a woman and an ethnic minority in the labor market, benefits are typically lower for blacks and Latinos than for whites, thus the particularly disadvantaged state of older women of color.

Second, women (and especially women of color) are less likely than men to receive private pensions. This is due to women’s more discontinuous work histories and their tendency to work part-time or in occupations providing few benefits. This pattern contributes to late life poverty because private pension benefits are an important supplement to monthly Social Security benefits. While roughly one-third of older men receive a private pension, only 18 percent of women do so. Among those who receive a pension, men’s pensions are nearly twice the size of women’s. In 2000, the median private pension or annuity income for older women was $4,100 compared to men’s $7,800.

Finally, women who have lost a husband to death forsake his employment income if he is working at the time of death or his pension income if he is retired at the time of death. Widows also must pay high end-of-life medical expenses and funeral bills that can overwhelm their already low income and savings. Further, married couples tend to underestimate the number of years that a widow will outlive her husband, so they may not plan their savings and investments accordingly. As a result, older widowed women, especially those who faced economic disadvantages earlier in life, are at an elevated risk of late-life poverty relative to their married male counterparts.

Despite tremendous improvements in overall economic well-being among older adults during the past half-century, the future looks bleak—at least for some elders. Some experts argue that the current government indicator of poverty does not adequately capture the economic realities of late life. The National Academy of Sciences has proposed a new calculation that takes into account rising health care costs. Under this new formula, the proportion of older adults living in poverty would double from just over 9 percent to 18.6 percent. (By contrast, the overall U.S. poverty rate would increase only slightly from 12.5 to 15.3 percent).

To compound matters, for the first time since 1975, Social Security recipients won’t get an automatic cost of living increase in their benefits in 2010. Increases are tied to inflation, and inflation was negative in 2009. To offset the flat payments, President Barack Obama vowed to send all seniors a one-time $250 payment. However, this payment may be little consolation to those older adults with declining assets and investment income due to the collapse of the housing bubble, failed investments, and falling stock prices. Fortunate older adults may find their retirement years to be “golden,” while others may need to continue working far past age 65 just to maintain a minimum standard of living.

Contexts: What were your initial goals with the Reader?

Eric Utne: When I was starting the magazine, I thought it was going to be a little newsletter that I could do at my kitchen table. It was going to be a monthly. I had tested the idea with a direct mail package describing a kind of Reader’s Digest for the next generation, and I had written over 2,000 magazines asking them for a free subscription, basically in exchange for the possibility of me excerpting or reviewing articles that they had published. All but a half dozen or so gave them to me, so suddenly I had 2,000 magazines coming to my door. After four issues of a 12 or 16 page newsletter, people were taking us up on our free subscription offer, but when it came time to pay, they weren’t paying. So I suspended publishing, and the choice was either to quit altogether or to redesign it. So I took the summer… and gave them a 128 page bound magazine, which is its current format. And we haven’t suspended that ever since. We just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The favorite compliment I’ve heard about the magazine over the years is… “It’s so tuned into what’s going on in my life that I look forward to the magazine to find out what’s going on in my life.” So, how did we sort of anticipate the zeitgeist or these sorts of cultural currents? The way we did it was not by our broad reading, that was a part of it, but where the liveliest stuff came from… was when we asked ourselves, what are we interested in? What are we thinking and obsessing about that we haven’t read somewhere but is sort of percolating at the ends of our awareness, kind of right there when we wake up in the morning and are brushing our teeth? Then we’d start looking to see: is there anyone writing about this?

C: You wrote in the Utne Reader that you had left the magazine in order to follow your own advice about achieving personal growth through new experiences. Tell us a little bit about that.

EU: Well, I had published and edited the magazine for 15 years or so. I’d been publishing articles about meditation and other kind of personal growth stuff, as well as various forms of activism, and yet I was basically just at the magazine. I think I may have put it, “I needed to find and feel and follow my heart.” … I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew I needed to do it. That led to studying a Tibetan form of heart meditation, and that led to studying something called heart math and that led to reading writings by Rudolf Steiner who talks a lot about what he calls heart thinking, and that led to teaching at my kids’ Waldorf school. I thought I was going to find out more about Steiner’s ideas, but you know, I was up until 2:00 in the morning once or twice a week desperately trying to stay a half step ahead of the students and I didn’t have time to philosophize with other teachers! But, that was my burnout, and I’m very grateful to have been able to do those sorts of investigations and see where they’ve led me.

C: This issue of Contexts is focused on issues related to aging. What are you seeing as some of the real challenges for our society when it comes to aging?
 
EU: I think there is this desire to serve and to make a difference, but I wouldn’t characterize it necessarily as only in boomers. I think there are a lot of boomers who are not looking to retirement as a time to go play golf and hang out with their grandkids. They want to make a difference, but they want to do it in a way that’s really engaged and that uses them well, so that it’s not just stuffing envelopes, it’s bringing in some of the skills and experience that they’ve developed professionally into their volunteer work, and they’d like some sort of a quid pro quo. They want to have some acknowledgment for that other than just a thanks. I think that’s going to be challenging in a very tight job market.

My big interest for many, many years has been community. How do we really connect with other human beings? My son and his wife and baby are living in a co-housing project on Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle that is the oldest co-housing project in North America, and it’s much more like the way humans have lived for most of the time we’ve been on the planet. I met Margaret Mead years ago, and she said to me, “99.9% of the time that humans have lived on the planet we’ve lived in tribes, groups of 12-36 people. It’s only during times of war or what we have now [that we haven’t].” She called modern life the psychological equivalent of war, that the nuclear family prevails because it’s the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. She said… the full flowering of the human spirit, that happens in groups, that happens in tribes, that happens in community. 

More recently I’ve been bringing groups of elders, people 50 and over, together with youngers, who are 16-28, to have conversations. The idea was that they would do some project, either social or environmental, for the greater good. But what we’re finding is that people are so busy that the space they create together, this sort of an oasis of non-busyness, of just human connection, is precious to them. So, we set up 20 of these groups in the Twin Cities and then have been running an ad in the Utne Reader with the headline, “Millenials and Boomers Unite.“ I think that the generations have a lot to give to each other, it’s not just about the so-called elders downloading their infinite wisdom, it’s learning how to participate on the web or sharing experiences from a whole different point of view.

C: So why the boomers and the millennials? Is there any particular reason why you focus on those two groups?

EU: It seems like there’s an archetypal potential relationship between them. But any sort of inter-generational conversation is interesting—and I think important—these days, because so often we spend most of our time with people our own age. Basically, we go around in ghettos of like-minded people, people with similar education and income. And we increasingly… all this networking, we call it “community.” But, we haven’t learned how to deal with the other. I think these community conversations are just one step toward that. Often our neighbors are very similar to us in terms of education and income and so on, but at least they can reach across the generations. [Now it seems] we put our old people in nursing homes, our young in daycare centers, our law breakers behind bars, and our people who are thought to be mentally ill or handicapped are otherwise excluded. That’s only in the last few generations. For most of human history we’ve had to deal with people who are different from us—the town hunchback, you know. We’re not so good at dealing with the other anymore; we don’t have that many opportunities.

Most of us have no idea that we’re even missing because we haven’t had an experience of what it’s like to live in community. And that’s living with all the generations where elders have a role. In every other culture, elders help youngers identify their gifts and their role in the community, and that’s just not happening here. So many boomers, I use the word “elder,” and they cringe. They don’t like thinking of themselves as growing older, whereas in every other culture it’s something that’s honored and even revered. And that’s because the elders haven’t abdicated their role of helping the young people identify what their gifts are and their learning tasks and their role in the community. That’s what initiation is and it doesn’t happen in this culture anymore. The young people self-initiate with adrenaline sports and alcohol and drugs and military service or whatever. But it’s not conscious and it’s not institutionalized. And of course there’s lots of things about traditional cultures that are constricting. So how do we learn from cultures that know about community without taking on all the bad stuff? I hope you sociologists will figure that one out!

But everything we think we know about retirement is wrong. Indeed, one thing I know is that retirement as we know it is unraveling.

Not so very long ago, retirement was regarded as the capstone to a successfully built career. It was the endpoint in a rigid, prescripted life (and work) course—a linear progression from education to employment to the “golden years” of retirement.

This lockstep model, though, really only reflected the experiences of some white, middle-class, and unionized blue-collar men in the 1960s and 70s. Even so, 20th century public policies such as Unemployment Insurance, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Medicare, and Social Security were all based on a standardized model of full-time, continuous employment followed by continuous retirement. And they, too, served to institutionalize the taken-for-granted, lockstep model of retirement.

By the 1980s, most American men and a growing number of women aspired to the mystique of a rewarding career followed by a fulfilling retirement—the “good life” in return for hard work, long hours, and continuous employment. Retirement, a time of uninterrupted leisure, was seen as a well-deserved “prize” for playing by the rules. In fact, better health, larger pensions, and the allure of the golden years led to earlier and earlier retirements, with many leaving the workforce at or before age 62. Language and aged-based cultural expectations divided the adult population into “workers,” “home makers,” and “retirees.”

The early 21st century presents a very different picture. The vast cohort of older boomers, and those just preceding them (the war cohort), are confronting shifting policies and challenges to job and economic security, even as they enjoy unprecedented levels of health, longevity, and education. For the first time in history, large numbers of women hold jobs from which they expect to retire. And, for younger workers, the notion of a “career” has been supplanted by a series of jobs, sometimes arranged into a “career path,” but often experienced as discrete—and disparate—periods of employment.

Further, people around the conventional retirement age are no longer considered “old.” As the transition to adulthood is postponed and longevity increases, Americans in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s find themselves in the middle, rather than at the end, of the contemporary adult life course.

Today, then, retirement is no longer an “event,” but a project. No longer a one-way, one-time, age-graded event, retirement may come unexpectedly as part of a forced buyout or layoff (followed by job searches thwarted by age discrimination). It may become impossible at any age because of a worker’s economic situation. Or, it may be eagerly undertaken as a chance to take up a second or third career, casual employment, or unpaid but rewarding civic engagement.

Whatever it looks like, though, Americans have not established a language or system to address the older workforce and growing retired force of the 21st century. The customs, rules, and laws dividing retirement from work all require reexamination as growing numbers of retirees expect to work (part-time, part-year, or as a volunteer) in retirement. As old norms break down, so, too, must our rigid expectations and definitions of contemporary retirement.

Real places seldom stand up to such idealizations, of course. This short visual conversation takes place between two photographers, one Swiss and the other American. Having worked together on visual projects for more than twenty years, we finally took on the interesting challenge of interpreting one of our two cultures.

Click the thumbnails for a slideshow

For Ricabeth Steiger, the curator of historical photography at the Swiss National Museum, visual representation of Swiss society is a professional preoccupation. The most ambitious photo exhibitions organized by her museum interpret Swiss landscape past and present and deconstruct the omnipresent myths. The ethnographic history of Switzerland must represent both what has taken place in the past and how the Swiss construct that history.

Speaking from the American side of this conversation, I can attest to the allure of the Swiss myths and the more interesting sociological reality that has gradually revealed itself. For example, the myth of landscape presents mountains extending as a blanket of purity from one’s imagination to faraway borders. But the Swiss landscape is actually quite small, crisscrossed with electrical lines, and etched with startling towers. A tiny percentage of the Swiss actually live in the mountains, but the second homes of wealthy Germans are increasingly common in that landscape. Fertile valleys near the major cities have been transformed to suburban sprawl that makes even Americans wince. And even the chocolate, as good as legend has it, is made largely from milk from outside Swiss borders.

Like many northern European countries, Switzerland struggles with issues of inclusion and exclusion. Switzerland was an emigrant country in the 19th century, due to land scarcity, famine, and religious persecution. Now Switzerland attracts immigrants from Germany, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Italy, Turkey, Africa, and Asia, and struggles to integrate new voices, cultures, and politics into a very strong traditional definition. In this way, Switzerland is a fully European social landscape, sharing these challenges with its neighbors.

What strikes me as an American sociologist and photographer, is the endearing visual quirkiness of Switzerland, the oddly tuned reality behind the myths and the social success represented in the efficiency, order, and quality one finds everywhere. Most interesting are the tensions between landscape and development; between order and disorder, between straight lines and curves. Our photographs collectively explore some of these tensions, as reflected by the lenses of a cultural insider and a sociological visitor. 

The conventional wisdom is that world hunger exists primarily because of natural disasters, population pressure, and shortfalls in food production. These problems are compounded, it is believed, by ecological crises and global warming, which together result in further food scarcity. Ergo, hunger exists simply because there isn’t enough food to go around. Increase the food supply, and we will solve the problem of hunger on a global scale.

Scarcity is a compelling, common-sense perspective that dominates both popular perceptions and public policy. But, while food concerns may start with limited supply, there’s much more to world hunger than that.

A good deal of thinking and research in sociology, building off the ideas of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, suggests that world hunger has less to do with the shortage of food than with a shortage of affordable or accessible food.

The (Recycled) Rhetoric of Scarcity

The idea that hunger is due to scarcity has roots in Thomas Malthus’s classic 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus predicted widespread suffering and death from famine would result from the planet’s inability to feed itself, stemming from its failure to cope with exponential population growth. Malthus turned out to be wrong—food production grew much faster than population—but his arguments have been recycled over generations, and today, especially with ongoing threats to Earth’s carrying capacity, they have come to define conventional wisdom on hunger in the mainstream media and general public as well as for policymakers.

Fighting hunger from this approach means the top priority is reducing scarcity. This is most often addressed by increasing food yields with new technologies and by shipping food to more places more efficiently. The underlying goal in this approach is to facilitate what has been called the “supermarket revolution”—a term used by the World Bank to describe the growing reliance of global citizens on large-scale agricultural industries and commodity chains to obtain their food.

This supermarket model has created steady growth in the global import and export of food. But it can also produce its own problems and be counter-productive. What’s worse is that the increased prices that often accompany market-based production make food less affordable for those in need. Furthermore, increased production may do nothing at all to guarantee more food. For example, the market model has increased use of crops for biofuel, which shifts agriculture away from producing food. In an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, Earth Policy Institute president Lester R. Brown noted that the same amount of grain needed to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon gas tank with ethanol could feed a single person for a whole year.

The bigger problem with emphasizing food supply as the problem, however, is that scarcity is largely a myth. On a per capita basis, food is more plentiful today than any other time in human history. Figures on the next pages reveal that over the last several decades food production (represented here in a common staple, cereals) and the average daily food availability per capita have grown, outpacing what has been the most rapid expansion of human population ever. Data such as these from the FAO reveal that even in times of localized production shortfalls or regional famines there has long been a global food surplus.

The problem is ensuring access to this food and distributing it more equitably. A 2002 New York Times headline proclaiming “India’s Poor Starve as Wheat Rots” dramatically, if tragically, illustrates this point. Starvation amidst plenty has occurred in many a famine, as in Bangladesh in 1974 or Ethiopia in the 1980s.
Even Ireland during the Great Famine exported vast quantities of food. Hunger in contemporary world societies is often no different. Markets are overflowing and even when shortfalls occur in emergencies, the global surplus is more than adequate to address such concerns.

Crop science can produce more food, and transportation and storage improvements can distribute greater amounts of it, but these don’t guarantee access for all—a scenario that became quite evident with the 2007 global food crisis and spikes in food prices. Indeed, the global supermarket revolution can actually be devastating and counterproductive on the local level when prices increase and make food unaffordable for hundreds of millions of people.

Scarcity, in short, isn’t the problem, and giving it undue attention reinforces many of the myths that get in the way of understanding hunger. In World Hunger: Twelve Myths, food scholars Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset have elaborated on this, addressing the problems of misplaced focus. Blaming population growth, food shortages, or natural disasters sidetracks attention from the challenges of the global food distribution system, the authors argue. They warn that free markets, free trade, food aid, or even green revolution technologies, for example, can all be barriers to obtaining food when inequalities are deeply ingrained. Rather than food scarcity, then, we should focus our attention on the persistent inequalities that often accompany the growth in food supply.

Beyond Scarcity

The basic statistics about world hunger are staggering—and revealing. Some 96 percent of hungry people live in developing countries and according to Unicef nearly a quarter of them are children. The U.N. World Food Programme notes that in developing countries, the poorest citizens spend upwards of 60 percent of their income on food. By way of contrast, according to a New York Times editorial the poorest Americans only spend between 15 percent and 20 percent on food. With declining disposable income, those who already may eat only two very simple meals each day now may have to cut back to one.

These statistics reveal a clear link between poverty and hunger. Two-thirds of the countries in the world with the most severe extreme poverty—rates greater than 35 percent—also have child hunger rates of 35 percent or more. As evidenced by the prevalence of hunger in the world’s 77 low-income food deficit countries (LIFDCs) as designated by the FAO, poverty is inseparable from hunger and should thus be considered its primary root cause. No wonder the 2000 U.N. Millennium Summit concluded that the most serious problem confronting the world is persistent poverty and its connection to hunger. The prevalence of hunger in LIFDCs is particularly important because these countries are not only among the world’s poorest by World Bank classification standards but are also net importers of basic foodstuffs because they are unable to produce amounts to meet their own needs. This makes them more at risk in that they lack sufficient foreign exchange in the international marketplace, something further exacerbated by global price spikes like those experienced in 2007. As evidence of the prevalence of food insecurity in LIFDCs, 23 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of child hunger in the world are also designated as LIFDCs (the exceptions being Burma and Maldives) and they continue to be predominant well down this list. Without guaranteed entitlements or other assistance, hunger is certain to persist among these most vulnerable nations, where addressing it is least affordable.

Moreover, most of the LIFDCs are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where very little progress on hunger has been made over the last couple of decades—children, for example, fare only slightly better now than in 1990, child hunger having declined only 0.5 percent. In contrast, the remaining regions of the world have made much larger gains; East Asia and the Pacific, for example, have reduced child hunger 16 percent. Stagnation in the African subcontinent can be attributed directly to its persistent and pervasive poverty and underdevelopment, which creates further problems with conflict, health crises, and political instability, among other problems that contribute to hunger.

The developing world isn’t alone in its hunger and poverty, though. Demand on food pantries in the United States is increasing according to a 2009 survey of food banks by the organization Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest). Evidence of poverty and loss of employment income as a primary cause of food insecurity can be even more evident in stark contrast to the relative well-being of U.S. citizens or elsewhere in the industrialized world. Here, food scarcity isn’t even (or shouldn’t be) a consideration. In difficult times and tight budgets, as freelance journalist and senior fellow at the policy and advocacy organization Demos, Sasha Abramsky, found in Breadline U.S.A., families keep gas in the car to get to work, prescriptions filled, and the heat and lights turned on but often cut their food budgets, with the hope public or private assistance will help put dinner on the table.

Poverty, though, is only one form of inequality. Gender, ethnic, and other types of stratification have contributed considerably to hunger as well. Women are disproportionately likely to suffer from hunger, and in fact constitute approximately 60 percent of the world’s hungry. This is particularly troubling given that women do as much as 80 percent of the world’s agricultural labor, working land that in more than a few places they may not be legally entitled to own.

As we have found in our own work, countries with more gender inequality (especially in education) have the greatest degree of child hunger. Gender inequality also influences women’s health and access to contraception as well as limits their opportunities in society, potentially condemning them to lives where childrearing is their only opportunity for social status. In this context, large numbers of children may not be a cause of scarcity so much as a consequence of poverty and powerlessness.

Ethnic inequality can also contribute significantly to world hunger, especially in countries with marginalized minorities and a history or present situation of ethnic violence. Such “minorities at risk,” as social movements scholar Ted Gurr calls them in People versus States, have long been threatened with hunger. Eritrea, Indonesia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and the Sudan are among many such places. While contributing to rampant militarism and armed conflicts, ethnic discrimination also silently marginalizes minorities to less desirable lands and occupations. The effects of ethnic discrimination then go beyond immediate violence, creating market disruptions, dispersed labor, and land degradation that destroys what for many is their only chance to produce or earn money for food.

Further exacerbating the effects of these social inequalities, international food aid—initiated by the US government in the 1960s to remove surplus grain from domestic markets and assist military allies—has long been ineffective and misdirected. According to Public Law 480, U.S. aid must travel in U.S.-flagged vessels and depends on market surpluses. The results, critics contend, is that the major beneficiaries are not those in need of food but U.S. shipping companies, agri-business, and countries with geopolitical value for the United States.

Studies of who gets food aid partially support this criticism. In an article in Food Policy aid specialists Daniel C. Clay, Daniel Molla, and Debebe Habtewold, for example, found no relationship between need and food aid in Ethiopia. Food aid was instead allocated to areas where organizations had stable operations, to favored ethnicities, and to female and aged heads of households regardless of need. Tina Kassebaum, a senior research scientist at Strategic Research Group, has found that program aid (bilateral U.S. donations) is unrelated to a country’s share of child hunger, while emergency/project aid (multilateral World Food Programme donations) is targeted at needy countries.

Making matters worse, emergency food delivery, which has become one of the most visible forms of assistance to those in need of food, has been corrupt on many fronts in recent years. According to Michael Slackman at the New York Times, in Egypt, the government subsidizes flour so that it can be baked into bread and sold cheaply to the population. However, the aid is routinely diverted into the black market and sold at a much greater profit while corrupt inspectors are bribed to certify that it has gone to assist the hungry. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a 15-year civil war has been fought between the remnants of the Hutu guerrilla force that perpetrated the 1994 Rwandan genocide and other parties. In refugee camps, food is often used as a weapon—camp guards allocate it to those who will keep order, not to those most in need, while also having connections to widespread use of rape. Grim reports such as these have appeared in media outlets such as The Guardian, The Gazette (Montreal), and the New York Times who further note a key tactic in this battle has been attacking food aid and relief convoys, leading to threat and withdrawal of relief agencies, thus further compounding hunger as refugees and internally-displaced persons flee for safety, left to fend for themselves. Similar patterns have occurred in Darfur and other conflict-ridden zones.

Some argue that corruption is a product of scarcity, and that if food did not have to be delivered to areas where it was in short supply such fraud would not exist. This argument is true to a point, but such disruptions in the food distribution chain are much more attributable to conflict and inequality, with power and powerlessness at the core of the problem. Corruption is simply another barrier to access—especially in times of acute conflict. Indeed, the poor and powerless are ultimately those most affected by these failures in the systems designed to help them.

Poverty, inequality, conflict, and corruption are all crucial contributors to world hunger, then. But what may be even more important and difficult to understand is how these can all fit together, reinforce one another, and even intensify the impacts of more basic food crises or the limits of various natural resources—that is, of scarcity itself. Environmental scarcity can, for example, be both a cause and a consequence of the inequalities associated with hunger. Entrenched poverty can contribute to further conflict and environmental destruction. This limits food access and reinforces a feedback cycle causing more conflict, which in turn creates more scarcity, and so on. As we’ve learned from Oxford economist Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion, hunger can be a product of a vicious cycle in which violent conflicts borne of corrupt and repressive government, poverty, and ethnic marginalization reinforce one another.

Addressing Hunger

Addressing world hunger is difficult and complex. To do it properly, we must get beyond the limited rhetoric of scarcity and instead focus on the inequalities, social conflicts, and organizational deficiencies at its roots.

Upholding this principle would also protect vulnerable citizens in industrialized countries who are finding it increasingly difficult to afford food as prices increase, real wages decline, and unemployment grows. Moreover, plans emphasizing nutrition and health, such as school feeding programs or those that target women, infants, and children, could be justified on the grounds of human rights and equal protection for the deserving poor entitled to assistance.

A second focus should be ensuring that international food aid actually gets to those in need, overcoming the problems of inefficiency and corruption that have long plagued such efforts. Fortunately, the news here is not all negative. Over the last decade international aid has moved toward less politicized emergency/project aid. Studies of the impact of this kind of food aid have revealed a relatively favorable picture, Still, this kind of aid, at best a temporary corrective, can be improved by attending more directly to the underlying conditions of poverty and inequality.

There is, for example, a longstanding debate over in-kind aid versus cash assistance. Oxfam International argues that the developed world should not dump cheap, subsidized food aid that undermines local food production and markets in the developing economies it purports to help. A better solution would be to provide direct cash assistance to promote food purchases in local or regional economies. Recognizing that many poor depend on land for their income, such an approach would channel money to those who need it most, rather than to global agri-business and shipping companies profiting from food aid politics (this is a more ecologically sound practice as well). If reformed and effectively managed with minimal corruption, this approach could have a huge impact at minimal cost.

Leading up to the 2009 G-20 meetings in London, World Bank president Robert Zoellick noted that it would cost less than one percent of the current U.S. stimulus package to save a generation around the world from poverty and its consequences, including hunger. An influx of money could stabilize hundreds of countries throughout the world, not just with regard to hunger but politics and social conditions as well.

Fiscal challenges are further complicated by the fact that they are intricately connected with the global political economy, a third focus area. A number of ideas exist for making the globalized world more equitable so that ending hunger is a significant positive outcome. Strategies should empower societies and individuals to become more food-sovereign (able to exercise power over their food decisions).

Promoting sustainable agriculture with an emphasis on local food systems and empowering farmers to compete in their own markets is one such dimension. It will reduce ecological scarcity and go far toward ensuring food security, and ultimately food sovereignty, while having the added benefit of injecting additional money into local communities.

Effective long-term solutions through development of production capabilities, however, won’t succeed unless ethnic and gender inequality are reduced or better yet, eliminated. Freeing ethnic minorities from the fear they will face violence if they come to aid distribution stations or, better yet, providing them with the tools to produce their own food and economic sustenance, will contribute greatly to reducing hunger. Too, providing women with control over childbearing, giving them access to education, allowing them the right to own land and businesses, and facilitating their economic activities with micro-credit and other innovations will significantly reduce hunger. Investing in the well-being of women and reducing gender inequality not only can improve their lives but benefit entire countries.

The challenge, in short, is to create a more equitable and just society in which food access is ensured for all. Food scarcity matters. However, it is rooted in social conditions and institutional dynamics that must be the focus of any policy innovations that might make a real difference.

Recommended Resources

Laurie DeRose, Ellen Messer, and Sara Millman, eds. Who’s Hungry? And How Do We Know? (United Nations University, 1998). A social scientific treatment of the causes and conceptualization of hunger as well as appropriate responses to it.

Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. The State of Food Insecurity in the World (FAO, various years). An annual assessment of world hunger, including the latest figures and most recent policy discussions.

Amartya Senn. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford University Press, 1981). A presentation of “entitlement failure,” the seminal theory for understanding global hunger as connected problems of distribution, access, and the human causes of famine.

James Vernon. Hunger: A Modern History (Belknap Press, 2007). A useful historical account of evolving conceptions of world hunger.