Everyday Sociology Blog

Space Cadets: Human Society and Its Discontents

By Sally Raskoff

When do humans cease to be human?

I was with some friends and astronomers looking through a telescope the other day and the conversation turned to space colonization. As the astronomers went on to talk about terraforming Mars and other fascinating topics, I wondered how life off the planet would affect humans and human society. 

We have a few examples of real humans living in closed environments for limited time-- the NASA International Space Station, Antarctic science stations, and Biosphere 2 -- and we have plenty of fictional examples of humans in such situations, like Star Trek and most science fiction writing.   

But if we create space communities where human lives are spent entirely off of this planet, we should consider how human societies may differ -– and whether or not we can consider such people still human.

Societies are based on interactions with not only each other but with our environment. When we send people to live in a closed environment, they take their culture with them, yet a new culture emerges the longer they stay in the new place. 

If you have ever gone camping or traveling, you experience a similar phenomenon. As you take your cultural expectations, you set up what feels comfortable in the new setting. You may have a new bed to sleep in and different food to eat but we often seek comfort in familiar clothing or ritualistic behaviors. 

Culture shock, which you might experience when traveling, offers some insight into how we change when immersed in new cultures. However, in a space colony, especially for the first group of inhabitants, the new culture must first be created! Thus some elements of the off-planet culture will most likely retain aspects of our earth-bound society. 

Whether human society is sustainable on another planet remains to be seen. Containing conflict and violence would be one challenge, and there are many other issues that we may not realize until we try it. This is not just a sociological question. 

Biologically, we may not be capable of reproduction in the same manner as we do here on earth. Our bodily cycles are tied to the rotation of the earth and to others. Our physical reality emerged and evolved from our experiences and resources here. If reproduction were possible on another planet, would people born there still be considered human beings? What if their births were dependent on new reproductive cycles emergent in space living and/or technological assistance that replace human gestation?

Current space programs have very specific psychological criteria for selecting space-bound participants. People must be very open, communicative, and flexible to deal with living in such confined spaces with others for any length of time. Clearly not every person is well suited to thriving or even surviving in such a situation.

Would we have a new way of stratifying humans? Instead of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and age, we could use on-planet and off-planet birth distinctions to distribute power and wealth, opportunity and education. 

Do I have a good science fiction story going here? I’m not so sure it’s only fiction, as people have been working on how to live in a closed environment for some time – we haven’t yet figured it out yet and it is dependent upon technology that has not yet been invented. However, technology isn’t the only factor for a successful off-planet venture. Nor is it even the most important.

Setting up an intentional society would prove to be difficult, especially considering the lack of success we have in existing here. Can we really engineer a self-sustaining society without creating a totalitarian culture? 

Different sociological perspectives offer very different answers. Structuralists assume the need for structure, viewing people as interdependent, yet dysfunctions threaten the balance of the system. Conflict theorists acknowledge the potential for power abuses among the different positions and relationships in sustaining their existence. Symbolic interactionists focus on how meaning varies for the human participants and how difficult and exciting such experiences would prove to be. 

How would post modernists weigh in? Since French social theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote that the (first) Gulf War didn’t happen as it played out in the media, would such lived experiences be interpreted as surreal since earthly contact would also play out via media connections? From the perspective of those in the colony, would an earth-bound existence be the unreality?

Can we effectively design a society with a minimum of social problems? Considering space colonization really focuses us on society back here on earth – if we could design such a society, why don’t we do that here on earth? If we can’t figure it out here, how on (or off) earth can we do it elsewhere?

Feeling and Display Rules of Emotion

By Bradley Wright

When most of us think of work, we think of things like trading our time for money or maybe doing something physically difficult. It turns out, according to a large body of social psychological literature, that work can also involve emotions. That’s right, what you feel, and how you show it is “work” that is just as much of your life as your job at the local fast food restaurant.

Here’s how it works (pun intended). When we weren’t looking, society made up a bunch of rules about our emotions. Some of these rules, called feeling rules, govern what we’re supposed to feel in a given situation. For example, when you get married or graduate from college, you’re supposed to be happy, and people will be concerned if you’re otherwise. What if your wedding pictures all show you wide-eyed in terror? (Oh, wait, that was me). Other rules, called display rules, regard what emotions you present to others. With these rules, it doesn’t matter what you’re really feeling, you just have to show the right emotions. For example, when I teach, I don’t mind knowing that some of the students are bored out of their skulls, but I don’t want them showing it with loud yawns and constant eye-rolling.

Once you start thinking about it, it’s remarkable how many roles in society require serious emotion work. Most jobs, for example, pay you not just to do the official work, but they also pay you to do it with the right emotions. A classic example is being a physician. Part of being a doctor is poking, prodding, cutting, and doing all sorts of things to people that is very uncomfortable. In doing it, doctors have to maintain an emotionally-neutral, professional demeanor. What if the doctor is doing something that’s very uncomfortable for you, and they start laughing. Or, maybe they say “oh gross.” My guess is that doctor will start losing patients really quickly.

Likewise, in another example, a study of flight attendants found that they were explicitly trained in the emotions they are supposed to show to airline passengers. Despite being jammed in with hundreds of cranky people, packed together for hours with the same recycled air (you can tell I’m not a big fan of commercial airlines), flight attendants are supposed to be pleasant and cheerful. That’s their job, to smile with each passenger’s request, and if they can’t do the emotions well enough, they might be fired.

An event last summer illustrates the power of emotion work, as it defined an international news story. In Southern Italy, two cousins, aged 12 and 13, went for a swim. They got caught up in a dangerous riptide, and they drowned. This was a tragedy, as any death of a child is, but what made it newsworthy was the reaction of people on the beach. When the bodies were brought ashore, they covered them with a blanket, with the girls’ feet sticking out, waiting for the girls’ family and authorities. At first a crowd gathered around, but after not too long, the crowd dispersed and went back to their activities—sun bathing, talking on their cell-phones, having lunch and frolicking in the water—all this just a few meters away from the bodies. Eventually police officers carried away the girls’ bodies on stretchers, walking past sun bathers enjoying the nice day.

There are strong emotion rules in a situation like this. When young people are harmed, we are supposed to feel sadness, even grief. This is a feeling rule. At the very least, we’re to show proper respect and be solemn, a display rule. What we’re not supposed to do, however, is to just go about our business. The crowd violated these rules, and even though it caused no material or physical harm, their perceived indifference caused an international outcry. “The incident also attracted condemnation from the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe. ‘Indifference is not an emotion for human beings,’ Seppe wrote in his parish blog. ‘To turn the other way or to mind your own business can sometimes be more devastating than the events that occur.’”

To complicate matters, the girls were Roma (formerly termed “gypsies”) and the surrounding beach-goers were Italian. There is considerably tension between the Italian authorities and the Roma minority, with the authorities accusing the Roma of increasing levels of street crime, and the Roma charging discrimination. The situation of these two girls, and the crowd’s reaction, exacerbated these tensions. 

This event, and the furor it caused, illustrates the power of emotion rules. Society holds us accountable not just for what we say and do, but for how we feel as well.

What's the Difference between Sociology and Journalism?

By Karen Sternheimer

It’s not uncommon for students to ask me this question, particularly after reading a selection from ethnographic research. In my opinion, good journalism and good sociology have a lot in common, but there are important distinctions. Some excellent sociological work is actually done by journalists— Barbara Ehrenreich comes to mind—and journalists occasionally use sociologists as sources for analysis or for context for their stories.

The following points are not exhaustive, nor are they intended to be a set of rules, but they do provide a general guide to the distinctions between sociology and journalism.

1. In journalism, time is of the essence

One of the purposes of journalism is to let us know what happened that day, or increasingly what is happening right now. Sociology has the luxury of time: if you ever noticed, research published in journals was typically conducted at least a year earlier. And if a study is based on a large data set, say from the census or another government agency, it is likely to be at least two to three years old.

This does not mean that research is necessarily outdated; sociology is about analysis and reflection, for which we need time. Journalism often includes analysis, but rarely are stories reflected on years later unless they are major events, like the attacks of September 11^th or the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

2. In sociology, data collection is systematic and grounded in theory

Have you ever seen a news segment where they ask passersby on the street about an event of the day to try and grasp public opinion? While this might give the appearance of a random sample, it certainly is not. What street are the reporters standing on, and when? What kinds of people might be available for interviewing, and who might not ever go into that area? Who is willing to appear on camera, and who is not?

When I have taught research methods we talk about this, and there are always a few people who insist that this is as good a way as any to find out what “average” people are thinking. While such on-the-street interviews might add some color to a story, sociologists tend to employ more rigorous sampling methods. 

In one study I worked on years ago, we purchased the customer list from a utility company and selected every fourth household to participate in the study. Is this a perfect, fool-proof method? Of course not. Some people might have had their gas or electricity cut off, and as we found out, the list provided addresses that did not exist.

Conducting ethnographic research is a lot like in-depth reporting, although sociologists tend to spend much longer with a group that journalists might (although this is not always the case). Journalists spending time with a group in their everyday environment might also incorporate information about the broader context, but sometimes the purpose is just to better understand what it is like to be in their shoes. 

This is true of sociological research too, but more often than not sociologists attempt to connect their findings to a theory, or sometimes they create one of their own based on their findings. Yes, journalists might bring in theories too, but this is less common than in sociology.

3. Journalists’ work is aimed at a wide audience

Just as I often think journalists can include more contextual information in reporting, sociologists can learn a lot from how journalists present their findings. Journalists do focus on different audiences and thus go into varying levels of depth; for instance, on television the local news has a different target than Charlie Rose, and in print the Wall Street Journal’s coverage varies from USA Today’s. If you have read the two newspapers you can spot the difference right away. Even if journalists focus on a niche audience, it is almost always larger than the audience sociologists tend to write for. 

Monte Bute wrote a very provocative review in Contexts, a sociology magazine that aims to reach a larger audience than just sociologists. He describes a study that found in recent decades, articles published in major sociology journals have become more jargon-filled and less accessible to general audiences. The attempt to solidify sociology’s stature in social science has had one major downside: it makes for dry reading and therefore has a limited audience.

I know for some people, and perhaps for some research, this is just fine. But sociological thinking should not be out of reach, and should instead become more available to the public. One way to do this is to promote writing that is engaging and informative without being overly superficial. It takes years to unlearn the tendency to write in the passive voice, to remove all traces of the author’s voice and use enough jargon to prove that you know the lingo. Ethnographers tend to also write well, as if losing the pretense of total objectivity gives one license to tell a good story.

Journalists and sociologists have a lot to learn from one and other. Hopefully in the future journalists will make greater use of sociological research and thinking in their reporting and will also provide their readers with a greater understanding of the general context that informs their stories. For this to happen, sociologists have to broaden our scope and target our findings more generally, and yes, we also need to become better at communicating our ideas. Both journalists and sociologists study who, what, where, when and why; it’s the “how” where we tend to differ.

Text Messages and Privacy

By Janis Prince Inniss

About 15 years ago I probably only knew one person with a cell phone, but today I probably only know one person without one. I caved in several years ago, making my peace with a new bill by vowing to stick to the cheapest plan available. But that’s where I draw the line; I am not a texter. This is my logic: Why would I spend money to say something for even a few additional cents, if I could say it for less? 

This is the main reason that I rarely use the text messaging (short message service or sms) feature on my cell phone. I could pay 10 to 20 cents per text message which is not an enormous amount—unless I send lots of messages, or I could pay about $10 per month for unlimited text messaging. Again, not a lot of money, but I’m already paying for a plan to talk to people, so why would I pay an additional charge to send them a text message? Adding to my irritation at such consumption is the fact that I would have to type using the tiny keys on a phone–not very efficient or ergonomic. I can talk much faster than I can type, even on a full size keyboard so why try to text my thoughts, feelings, and opinions when I could just call folks?

Evidently, I am in the minority on this though because texting is big business. About 116 million or 52 percent of American subscribers are active texters. And as I mentioned in a previous post, teens text at a rate of about 50-70 per day. Amazingly, not only are people texting a lot, but the kinds of things they ”say” in texts is mind-boggling. For example, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff Christine Beatty denied that they were having an affair (both were married to other people), but their lie was brought to light by text messages detailing an intimate relationship. In case you’re not familiar with the case, Kilpatrick denied have the extra-marital affair with Beatty in a costly police whistle-blower case. Yet, steamy text messages were found rehashing their sexual encounters and their plans for additional romps. Here are two of the less explicit text messages that leave no doubt about the nature of their relationship:

Beatty: I still want to be in your arms, kiss you, hug you, love you. Listening to you speak and wishing you were my husband.

Kilpatrick: You were my girl for as long as I can remember. I was too young and stupid to know. I promise for the rest of my life you will be my girl.

Further, the text messages indicate that Kilpatrick and Beatty had fired a deputy police chief, which means that they both lied under oath that the intent was to remove the deputy police chief from that particular assignment and that he was not fired. However an email from Beatty to Kilpatrick states: "I'm sorry that we are going through this mess because of a decision that we made to fire Gary Brown. I will make sure that the next decision is much more thought out. Not regretting what was done at all. But thinking about how we can do things smarter." To this, Kilpatrick replied: "It had to happen though. I'm all the way with that!"

In another case of a female teacher and student engaged in a sexual relationship, Stephanie Ragusa, a Tampa middle school teacher is accused of having sex with at least four underage victims. Ragusa and a sixteen-year old she’s accused of having sex with exchanged hundreds of text messages of a steamy nature: 

Ragusa: Do u have a movie u want to watch at ur house? U know. In addition to… Wink wink.
Victim: No…
R: So no “date” … Which is what we really need. Bedroom girlfriend?! Baby. Lets try to do something romantic, different.
V: Like wat?
R: Idk. Can you think of anything. Maybe…giving each other massages.? Candle light. Music. Or pleasant/romantic movie”
V: Then come over
R: With massage oil? Candles? Towels? Movie?
V: Idk whatever u want?
R: Tell me what u want.

Another time Ragusa sent the student a note which read:

I loved today. The sex was amazing.

Ragusa even sent a text to the teen with the knowledge that the police were on the way to her home to investigate vandalism of her (adult) boyfriend’s truck, saying: “There are major problems here now. Tony and the police r on the way. They want to fingerprint the truck and take me down to the station.”

Why do people send such incriminating text messages? What are your thoughts? Here are some possibilities. With the distance that technology can provide, people may be emboldened to say things they would not in person—which can lead to even more incriminating texts being sent. And people can text while doing almost anything and from most places. I imagine that Kilpatrick was both serving as mayor and texting. Ragusa was texting as she awaited the police. And we don’t think of text messages as the written documents that they are. People are probably more careful about what they say in a personal letter, given its material existence. But a text just disappears and is gone. Where does it go? It disappears from your screen and that’s that, or so we think. Apparently that’s not the end of them as these cases indicate.

Unfortunately for Kilpatrick and Beatty, SkyTel, the provider for government and corporations stores all text messages for legal purposes. What about your carrier? Do you have any idea what their sms storage policy is? Is your carrier storing every text you ever sent? Might that cause you embarrassment or even jail time? Aspects of our lives in this technological age are being recorded without our knowledge; do you behave differently with that knowledge in mind?

Statistics and Myths about Immigrants

By Sally Raskoff

A friend sent me an e-mail that I found very alarming. Although I consider this person a friend, we have never really talked about politics. But I was still surprised when the missive below came from her.

Her email was obviously a chain letter expressing frustration about California’s problems, allegedly due to illegal immigrants. The  content of the “evidence” is supposed to be from the Los Angeles Times and lists many statistics that lay blame for scary and negative situations squarely upon illegal immigrants.

As a sociologist who teaches statistics, I could not let this go without a response. While I included in my email response a tactful discussion of the reasons why these statistics are problematic, I’d like to invite you to help identify what the problems are with this message.

I’ll start with the source – stating that these came from the Times isn’t sufficient to give them credibility. No date, page, research source or author is mentioned. These could have come from an advertisement in that newspaper or, more likely, never appeared there to begin with. Searching the LA Times online, even with quotes from the text, no connections appear.

Many of the statistics are illogical: “95% of murder warrants … are for illegal ‘aliens’”? The 95% is a big red flag. Few human patterns, especially crime patterns, are so simple that there can be an easy explanation.

Other statistics mentioned are more about prejudice than serious social problems, like this one: “21 radio stations in LA are Spanish speaking”. 

Since these statistics are all about Los Angeles and California, the research reported by the Public Policy Institute of California provides a good contrast to these figures. In their June 2008 “Just the Facts” report on “Immigrants in California,” they state that “Immigration has directly accounted for 40% of the state’s population growth since 2000,” which is a figure much less than the e-mail’s purported 90%. 

Finally, checking the text of the email on snopes.com (a site devoted to investigating hoaxes) this message has quite a history as it has been circulating since 2006. 

Questioning those email forwards and considering the accuracy and source of information that comes our way are crucial steps in critical thinking and forging a pathway based on accuracy rather than ignorance. Do you see any other problems in this email snippet? How would you go about finding unbiased and accurate sources to check this information?

 

(Photo courtesy of the National Archives www.nara.gov)

Conspicuous consumption and your iPhone

By Bradley Wright

Conspicuous consumption is one of the classic concepts in sociology. It was developed by Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. I know, it’s hard to believe that people were actually alive back then, let alone creating ideas that we still find useful, but it’s true.

This concept describes how wealthy people spend large amounts of money on goods and services as a way of showing their status. It doesn’t refer to all large expenses—sometimes you get a lot more things when you spend more; instead, it refers to spending as a way of showing off who you are. In fact, sometimes what you end up with is no better, or sometimes worse, than what you can get for less money.

A classic example of conspicuous consumption is using silver utensils and fine china for meals, especially when guests are over. Bringing out the good stuff does show that you’ve attained a certain level of material comfort, but it’s also not very practical. Silver has to be polished, china breaks easily, and neither can go into the dishwasher. Their main purpose, then, is one of status display.

There’s no reason to limit the concept of conspicuous consumption to just the well-to-do. Even college students engage in it. I don’t know about where you go to school, but here at the University of Connecticut the fashion among students is to wear jackets and pullovers (preferably black) by Northface and, for women, boots made by Ugg. Now, Northface’s slogan is “never stop exploring”, and its website has pictures of people doing all sorts of brave, active things, like rock climbing and canoeing. My guess, however, is that most college students don’t need that high level of performance. Why spend the big money on name-brands when generic wear is also available? One could make the case that it’s an issue of style and cultural taste, and that makes sense. The main reason for their appeal could be that name brand clothes show statues. They show that you have the money and prestige to wear the coolest things.

I’m writing about this concept now, even though it has been around for literally a hundred years, because I read about the perfect illustration of conspicuous consumption. As everyone under 40 knows (and some of us over 40 have heard about), Apple makes a wicked-cool cell phone it calls the iPhone. You can load little software programs on it, called “apps”, that do various functions.

One of these apps is called the “I am rich” application. It costs $1,000 and serves absolutely no purpose other than to shine a red ruby on your iPhone that lets others know that you could afford to buy this app. That’s it. It shows that you’re rich and doesn’t do anything else. Apparently Apple no longer carries it at its stores because it was getting bad publicity (again, making decisions on how people perceive something).

In thinking about how this concept plays out today, I suppose there is something that we could call “inconspicuous” consumption. Here you consume goods and services, and present them to others, as a way of hiding status. Perhaps back in Veblen’s time, when I think dinosaurs still roamed the world, all status was seen as good, so if you got it, you flaunt it. Now, however, we’re sufficiently suspicious and cynical about wealth that some people may make choices to hide status. Here are some examples that might illustrate this idea.

My wife went to a fancy, well-known liberal arts college, and when people ask her where she went to school, she’ll usually answer “in the Boston area.” Now, this conflicts with other people I know who went to Ivy league schools. You can be pretty sure that within five minutes of meeting someone, these people will let drop that they went to an Ivy.

Last year a family member gave us a used car that he didn’t need anymore. It’s about seven years old, doesn’t have too much mileage, and runs reasonably well. The big downside: It’s a Mercedes. Besides paying extra for mechanic bills, I have to put up with my friends ribbing me about thinking I’m high status because I drive a Mercedes. I’ve even thought of yanking off the hood ornament to disguise the manufacturer of the car. From a straight conspicuous consumption approach, I should seek to display status with this car, but in reality, I want to avoid what I perceive as negative stereotypes associated with it. I suppose, then, that I really am looking for status with my car choices, it’s just that I see “wealthy-display” as undesirable and maybe I’m looking for a status I value more, maybe “broke intellectual”?

If nothing else, the discussion above points out that conspicuous (or inconspicuous) consumption involves more than simply what we buy and hire, for it also includes how we make it known to others. To make a status display, you need not only to have the goods, but you need for other people to know.

The Sociological Meaning of Rumors

By Karen Sternheimer

Recently my father told me about a conversation he had at a local sporting event. It was during the height of the coverage of the political conventions, and so the small talk he had with a woman seated next to him turned to politics. She told him with great authority that she had inside information that one of the candidates was in fact not an American citizen. “Where did you get your facts?” my dad asked, but the woman didn’t respond. That was the end of their conversation.

Presidential election years are ripe for rumors, and they are spread particularly easily through e-mail and the Internet. I have decided not to attach any names to the rumors I will discuss in this post for that reason; it is too easy for even discussion of rumors to seem like verification for those who want to believe them. So why do people believe them anyway?

To answer this, let’s consider some of the rumors that have been spread in recent years. One candidate was alleged to have fathered a child outside of his marriage during a prior campaign. Besides suggestions of adultery, the child has a darker complexion than the candidate, thus rumors hinted that he had an affair with an African-American woman. In reality, the child is the adopted daughter of the candidate and his wife, not the product of a secret affair.

It is not an accident that someone spread this rumor during the primary in a southern state, next door to one that elected a senator who ran by using images of African Americans in his ads to imply that less qualified blacks were taking white peoples’ jobs. Less than four decades before that election, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal in many states in the south, and racial tensions have lingered. While these tactics would certainly not appeal to all southern voters, for some older white voters who may be uncomfortable with many social changes that have taken place, they might be effective.

Hints of interracial relationships may strike a chord in a primary election in some regions but not others. But other rumors touch on national anxieties. Another rumor has persisted during this campaign that one of the candidates is Muslim, and that the candidate was sworn in using the Koran rather than the New or Old Testament.

Neither of these rumors is true, but they are also not surprising given the trauma following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Since that time, people of Middle Eastern decent and Muslim Americans have faced discrimination and suspicion. Because the plotters and attackers were Middle Eastern and claimed their actions were in the name of Islam, it is easy to see how people might fear both. Trying to attach this fear to the candidate is a way to deride him as a potential enemy.

This rumor also reflects the fear some have that Christianity is under siege in the United States, allegedly by those who support strict separation between church and state. A few years ago I saw bumper stickers that said “It’s Okay to Say Merry Christmas” in response to some stores that said “Happy Holidays” in their ads. One acquaintance of mine had trouble understanding why anyone wouldn’t like to be told “Merry Christmas” regardless of their religious affiliation. Over the past few years many stores and cities have shown greater sensitivity to non-Christians during holidays, sometimes removing overtly Christian imagery from public property and show windows. Public service announcements now wish celebrants “Happy Ramadan” in the fall, in addition to “Happy Kwanzaa” and “Happy Hanukkah” and “Merry Christmas” at the end of the year.

While these gestures may make minority groups feel more included, for others the change might feel like a strange and unwelcome distraction from traditions of the past, when Christian prayers were regularly included in public schools. 

Sociologists study rumors as a form of collective behavior. They are similar to urban legends, modern-day folklore which can persist for years even without solid evidence. In fact, several websites like snopes.com exist to debunk rumors and urban legends. Campaigns now have staff members whose job consists entirely of challenging rumors on the Internet. And yet they persist.

Simply put, rumors continue because people spread them, knowing that at least some people will believe them; there is nothing surprising about that. It is the content of the rumor that is important, as it touches on anxieties about a broader social issue that makes the listener ripe for believing that it might be true.