Comments for Contexts Crawler

Comment on Elijah Anderson comments on ‘The Wire’ by Elijah.anderson

Elijah.anderson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:45:25 +0000

Almost everyone residing in poor inner-city neighborhoods is struggling financially and therefore feels a certain distance from the rest of America, but there are degrees of alienation, captured by the terms “decent” and “street” or “ghetto,” suggesting social types. The decent family and the street family in a real sense represent two poles of value orientation, two contrasting conceptual categories. The labels “decent” and “street,” which the residents themselves use, amount to evaluative judgments that confer status on local residents. The labeling is often the result of a social contest among individuals and families of the neighborhood. Individuals of either orientation may coexist in the same extended family. Moreover, decent residents may judge themselves to be so while judging others to be of the street, and street individuals often present themselves as decent, while drawing distinctions between themselves and still other people. There is also quite a bit of circumstantial behavior—that is, one person may at different times exhibit both decent and street orientations, depending on the circumstances. Although these designations result from much social jockeying, there do exist concrete features that define each conceptual category, forming a social typology.

The resulting labels are used by residents of inner-city communities to characterize themselves and one another, and understanding them is part of understanding life in the inner-city neighborhood. Most residents are decent or are trying to be. The same family is likely to have members who are strongly oriented toward decency and civility, whereas other members are oriented toward the street—and to all that it implies. There is also a great deal of “code-switching”: a person may behave according to either set of rules, depending on the situation. Decent people, especially young people, often put a premium on the ability to code-switch. They share many of the middle-class values of the wider white society but know that the open display of such values carries little weight on the street: it doesn’t provide the emblems that say, “I can take care of myself.” Hence such people develop a repertoire of behaviors that do provide that security. Those strongly associated with the street, who have less exposure to the wider society, may have difficulty code-switching; imbued with the code of the street, they either don’t know the rules for decent behavior or may see little value in displaying such knowledge.

– Elijah Anderson, author, Code of the Street

Comment on sex for the elderly by Monte Bute

Monte Bute — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:16:20 +0000

Amelia, Sweet Amelia,
Thank you, thank you, thank you. All us old geezers at the nursing home for fired and retired sociologists are simply thrilled by your latest Crawler. Given the empirical data that you have made available, we’ve made a pact to quit smoking and go off our meds–except, of course, for weed and Viagra.
Best,
The Grateful Half-Dead

Comment on ‘you don’t need a wife to lead a healthy life’ by Sociology in the News - Wife Not Needed for Healthy Life | The Global Sociology Blog

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:29:29 +0000

[...] 14th, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Gender, Health, Social Stigma, Social Theory, Sociology Via Context Crawler comes this story reported in the Detroit Free Press [...]

Comment on ‘you don’t need a wife to lead a healthy life’ by amy

amy — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:10:11 +0000

I think it’s because married men end up relying on their wives for all sorts of things and then they’re helpless when their wives die (Gals, ever leave your husbands home for an extended period of time? Ever come home to anything but empty potato chip bags in the fridge, which he’s been eating for dinner since the food you left him ran out?), whereas never-marrieds always have to fend for themselves.

Comment on the 1968 olympics: smith & carlos by 2008 Olympics Results

2008 Olympics Results — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:26:56 +0000

2008 Olympics Results…

The summer games are finally underway and I am soo excited. I am an olympics junkie…

Comment on the truth behind the opt-out revolution… from Congress by Philip Cohen

Philip Cohen — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:22:34 +0000

Warner overstates the case that the Congressional case itself overstates. The opt-out phenomenon is real - plenty of women embrace the idea for themselves, as a new way of accounting for the long-standing tendency of some professional women to drop out of the workforce and raise children. But those women are not numerous enough to account for declining women’s employment rates. On the other hand, the recession can’t explain it either, because women’s employment stalled long before the recession - in tandem with stalled integration and shifts away from egalitarian gender attitudes. We need to drop the idea that there is one explanation for the shifting trend. Despite both “opting out” and the recession, of course, the great majority of women are still employed. I posted links and comments on this in the last few days (see link).

Comment on the reality of a tight job market for new grads by amy

amy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:11:36 +0000

I wonder what a college graduate’s idea of a livable wage is these days. I graduated college and lived in Boston on a (pre-tax) salary of $20,000 per year in 1996. It was tight, and I misused credit, but I also had a shoe habit that wasn’t really appropriate given my low wage. So about 6 months out I also got a waitressing job and worked a lot and that made ends meet and allowed me to pay down debt, put money away, and create a stronger financial foundation for myself. You just have to make sacrifices.

Comment on obama and the persistence of racial inequality by amy

amy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:05:30 +0000

You want “the history of miscegenation to be part of the discussion”? Try using terminology that people outside the ivory tower actually use in conversations. And post-racial society? What does that even mean?

Social scientists often lament that their opinions aren’t often sought by mainstream media. Is it any wonder why? You don’t make yourselves clear. No one understands what you’re trying to say.

Comment on a sociologist on the death penalty by Dudley Sharp

Dudley Sharp — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:10:07 +0000

I can believe this quote came from Radelet.

Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty.

Comment on The “opting out” revolution is a myth! by Sociology in the News - Debunking The Opt-Out Myth | The Global Sociology Blog

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:08:43 +0000

[...] Context Crawler , thanks to a new article in the American Sociological Review , we should revisit the zombie meme [...]