Sociological Images

Emily D. sent us a link to a post by Flowing Data linking to multiple efforts to visualize crime data. One of them featured an illustration (I split it into four parts for easy viewing).  I’m sure the graphic elides details in the data, but I still think it’s interesting.  I challenged some of my preconceived notions about who dies by gun, and you may find it surprising too.

The data is from 2004.  That year, an average of 81 people died from a gunshot wound each day.  In the figures below, each bullet represents 81 deaths; grey bullets are homicides, pink suicides, and yellow accidents or being killed by a police officer.

(Methodological note: Differences in gun deaths by age group could be a matter of lifecycle or it could be a cohort effect.  Since this data is a snapshot and not longitudinal, it’s hard to tell.  Also, when you’re comparing age groups, it’s important to remember that people in these four age groups are not evenly distributed across the population.)

Five percent of the people who died due to guns was age 17 or younger (I say “only” advisedly).  People under 18 make up about 24% of the population.  Black men and white men are murdered at about the same rate (one a day, or one every 30 hours, respectively) which means that blacks are disproportionately victims of murder because they make up 12-13 percent of the population as opposed to the 80 percent of the population that is white.  Men are four times as likely as women to be killed. There were about half as many suicides as there were murders, and half as many accidents/police killings as well.

About 21 percent of all gun deaths were among people ages 18 to 25.  About 90 percent of all murder victims are men, and about half of those are black men.  Accidents/police action are occurring at about the same rate, but suicides have skyrocketed.  There are five times more suicides among people 18 to 25 than there were among those 17 and under.  Four-fifths of the people who choose to take their own life are white men (who make up less than 40% of the population).

People 26 to 39 years old accounted for 26 percent of gun deaths.  The murder rate has a similar racial distribution.  Like before, the rate of accidents/police killings have stayed the same.  But suicide rates have continued to climb.  There are nearly twice as many suicides among this age group as there were in the previous one.  The majority of these are white men.  One in nine was a woman.

Among those 40 and over (48 percent of all gun deaths occur to someone over 40), there is a stark increase in the number of suicides.  There were 2,430 suicides, compared to 1,215 suicides among all other age groups combined.   Eighty-three percent of these suicides are committed by white men.  Murder has finally decreased and the racial and gender distribution is less uneven than before.  There are twice as many accidents/police killings among this cohort.

Media portrayals of gun violence tends to highlight women who are murdered (especially if you watch crime and law TV shows), black on white violent crime (if you watch the news), youth violence (take your pick), and murder over suicide.   I think this graphic challenges all of those notions.

This site lets you parse out data for homicides in Philadelphia by gender, age, time of day, and weapon, and this site lets you parse out similar data for homicide in Los Angeles county.

Ryan G. alerted us to a commercial for First Response pregnancy fertility tests. He noticed that the commercial cuts off the pregnant mother’s head, turning her into a faceless baby incubator (like in these editorial cartoons and not unrelated to this photography).  Ryan writes: “It’s clear what’s most important in this picture.”

While Ryan couldn’t find the commercial to embed, he did take down the narration and sent in some screen shots.  Here is the text of the voiceover:

The moment we pass from womanhood to motherhood, we cross a threshold. For many of us, that step is filled with wish and worry, hope and how, wonder and when. Fertility is a woman’s most sacred birthright. For over twenty years, First Response has been there, helping women answer the most important questions of their lives. Now we bring you new help: the First Response fertility test for women.

Ryan offered commentary, so I’ll rely on him.  He writes:

…”womanhood” and “motherhood” are presented as two separate things, with motherhood trumping womanhood. I’m assuming this is partly because a woman is not allowed to have a sex drive after she becomes a mother, and we all know that a woman without a sex drive is the higher form of woman.

He continues:

“Fertility is a woman’s most sacred birthright.” God knows the most important thing any woman can contribute to society is being a baby farm. Strangely, I never see Viagra commercials arguing that knocking people up is a man’s most sacred birthright.

“[H]elping women answer the most important questions of their lives.” The most important question in a woman’s life doesn’t involve her own personal needs, but the needs of her children and soon-to-be children.

Finally, Ryan writes:

And of course, there’s no father pictured here, or even a passing mention of one. Why would there be?  Conceiving, planning for, and raising a child is exclusively the job–ahem, the “sacred birthright”–of the mother.

Thanks for the excellent and provocative analysis, Ryan!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGES!

Sociological Images is two years old this month.  In July of 2007, we had a whopping total of three (3) posts.

We have great fun with the blog and feel very lucky to have such passionate and intelligent readers.  Thank you all for reading, commenting, and submitting images!

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

While in Oklahoma this summer, Gwen and I saw a swastika design built into a brick chimney.  It reminded us of Wendy’s fascinating post on the history of the swastika symbol from June 2008.  Before WWII, it didn’t signify oppressive racist ideology at all.  The post features pictures of swastika jewelry, a swastika quilt, and more.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW!):

Race and Inequality

We updated our post about race and toxic release facilities by adding some maps showing high-poverty areas and air pollution in Toronto.

Racialicious had an interesting post about Microsoft’s Natal game initially having trouble recognizing people with “dark skin,” which we added to our post about Nikon’s blink-recognition software problems.

Sex and Sexual Orientation

Another zoo reports a pair of gay penguins raising a chick.  We added it to our post on gay animals.

A poster affixed to a tree outside my house was another excellent example of heteronormativity and the social construction of the family.  I added it to a previous example (featuring elephants!).

Christine B. sent us some images of sexualized animals used in Orangina ads, which we added to our earlier post about their insane commercial.

Joyous A. sent us a link to a photograph that we just had to add to our post on ejaculation imagery.

Doin’ Good

Also in boobs,we added another example of breast cancer marketing, this time a breast cancer-themed limousine sent in by Steve W., to our post on the topic.

We also added an anti-smoking advertisement threatening women with unattractiveness to a similar anti-drinking advertisement.

Hot Stuff

We added another example of the objectification of men to our post on the topic (NSFW). In this example a mascara wand involves a man who loses his clothes. Thanks to Jennifer C. for sending us the link!

Fiona D. sent in a Belfast Telegraph story on the Lingerie Football League that apparently warranted a slide show with fifty-nine (59) photos. We added some to our post asking “What warrants a slide show?” (scroll down).

Tiffani sent us an ad in which a woman with her head in a clothes washer is used to advertise a credit union in Georgia. See it here.

We also added a billboard, sent in by Sharon G., using sex with women to sell kitchen remodeling.  See it here, among our other examples of sex being used to sell homes and house stuff.

And Sarah N. sent us another example of women’s “curves” being used to sell products. We added it to our post on the topic here.

Taylor S. sent us another example of a boob-themed product and we added it to our products-shaped-like-boobs post.

The two maps below are part of a series of maps that warp the size and shape of countries according to various international disproportions (see lots more here).

These two warp countries according to how much they are contributing to global warming and how much they are likely to suffer from global warming respectively.

Ezra Klein interprets:

The first shows the world in terms of carbon emissions. America, for instance, is huge. So is China. And Europe. Africa is hardly visible. The second map shows the world in terms of increased mortality — that is to say, deaths — from climate change. Suddenly, America virtually disappears. So does Europe. Africa, however, is grotesquely distended. South Asia inflates.

Kevin Drum summarizes:

Long story short, we spit out the carbon, but it’s people in Africa and South Asia who are mostly going to die because of it.

Thanks to T.B. who linked to these maps in a comments thread.

Toban B. (a prolific SocImages contributor, by the way) sent us a set of photographs illustrating resistance to the objectification of women. They show how little things, like adding commentary to the ubiquitous images that surround could potentially cause us to notice, even if just temporarily, that our environment is toxic to our ability to think of all people as full and complete humans.

These were snapped in Seattle, Washington by Jonathan McIntosh:

This one was written on by a teenage girl in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.  It reads:  “I’m sick of sexually tinted images.”

This one, snapped in Paris, France, reads “women or object?”

For a classic example of a similar kind of public resistance, see this post.  For an example of backlash to public anti-sexist messages, see here.

(The pictures are from here, here, and here.)

Sociologist Yen Le Espiritu popularized the idea of a pan-ethnic identity.  “Asian American” is a pan-ethnic identity. It is an invented label applied to dozens of different groups with wildly different cultural traditions and languages. Most Americans (Asian and not), over time, came to accept the term as meaningful. American Indian is also a pan-ethnic term, as is African American and most other such labels.

On the one hand, pan-ethnic labels can be empowering. There is power in numbers. A large community identified across ethnic and national identities by race (however fake that racial designation is) can, for example, become a powerful voting bloc to which politicians must attend, or be mobilized to work together to fight for a common cause.

On the other hand, pan-ethnic labels can be disempowering. They tend to ignore the distinctions that make ethnic and national identities meaningful, and the rough categories erase differences among groups, thus making it more difficult to see and, thus, problematize disadvantage.

This latter problem motivated the Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) of the University of California campuses to run its “Count Me In” campaign. They notice that, though “Asian Americans” were well represented on University of California campuses (they make up 43% of incoming frosh in 2006), certain groups deemed “Asian” remain underrepresented. These include students of Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian descent, among others.

The campaign asked the University of California system to disaggregate their “Asian” category.

In response the University of California added 23 new categories to their application.

For a much more extensive discussion of this issue, see Fatemeh Fakhraie’s post at Racialicious (where I stole this video clip).