Everyday Sociology Blog

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This does not mean that research is necessarily outdated; sociology is about analysis and reflection, for which we need time.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.

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.

Anomie and the First Day of School

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you remember your first day starting at a new school? A new job? For some of you these memories might be as fresh as a few weeks ago. For me, it’s been a while. But no matter how long it has been since you first entered an institution with set rules, norms, and expectations, the memory of the anxiety is probably still with you.

Each year I volunteer to participate in some of my university’s orientation activities before the school year officially begins. And every year I notice students have similar questions--about the work load compared with high school, what taking exams and writing papers are like at the college level, and what happens if you come to class late. Transfer students will often ask what the differences might be between the school they came from and our university.

Basically, all of these questions boil down to one: what are the unwritten rules here? 

The incoming students know the university’s written policies (or at least are told what they are or where to find them) but tend to be curious about the informal rules. What do people wear to class? Can we eat during class? Should I have a separate notebook for my labs and lectures? How much reading will there be? Are professors friendly? Will anyone care about me?

When students ask me these questions, I try my best to answer them, although I’m sure it is frustrating when most of my answers start with “that depends, every professor and every class is different.” I assure them that within a week or two they will feel like they are veterans here.

But their anxiety is not unfounded. It is similar to what Emile Durkheim termed anomie, literally translated, a sense of normlessness. For Durkheim, societies that have competing norms or a total absence of norms experience more crime, instability, and a lack of cohesion.

Most of the students I encounter aren’t worried that a lack of knowledge of norms will lead to crime and deviance on campus. Rather, they struggle to learn exactly what the norms are so they can conform. On the first day of class, like most other professors, I hand out a syllabus and go over the rules, regulations, and expectations for the course. After a few days of attending classes and living on campus, the same students who were so nervous become confident that at the very least they are learning the norms and expectations of life as a college student.

By contrast, students who refuse to adapt to these norms tend to struggle. Maybe they find less social acceptance if they dress very differently from most other students (on our campus the dress code is casual, with a preference towards any item with the university logo). Students who refuse to do at least minimal work demanded from course syllabi will likely find themselves on academic probation at some point. And students who fail to pay their tuition on time will probably be shut out altogether, or at the very least lose their registration date until they pay up.

We might ponder whether this collective change—an influx of new students—could bring about social change. While certainly campus culture and student norms shift over time, it is remarkable how stable they have been. I have been on the same campus for fifteen years now, and have seen some positive changes in work ethic and ability as the university has become more selective. Yet incoming students first want to figure out how to fit in, not how to create change.

There is something reassuring about being in the same boat as other new students who are also unsure about what the campus norms are. Recently, the Los Angeles Times reported on a new trend of universities offering mid-year admissions. As college admissions have become more competitive, some schools have started admitting students for the winter or spring rather than the fall. 

Some are concerned that these students might miss out on the opportunity to go through the transition into college with their peers, who will be fully acclimated by the time they arrive on campus. The students who entered in the fall will have bonded with each other, leaving the newest arrivals to fend for themselves. Universities that engage in this practice (including my own) say that these students end up doing very well, having spent the fall semester taking classes elsewhere, working, traveling, or just take the opportunity to become more focused.

What do you think Durkheim would have to say about this? Are these admissions policies creating a new form of anomie?

Everyday Sociology Talk: Global Inequality and Stuff

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss where our everyday stuff comes from and what it teaches us about globalization and inequality.

Status and Sociology

By Karen Sternheimer

Sociologists study the role that social status plays in every aspect of social life. We consider how hierarchies impact opportunities and challenges, often looking critically at how people in positions of power use their status to maintain dominance over others.

Here’s one of sociology’s dirty little secrets: the field is filled with sociologists who wrestle each other for status, often uncritically accepting hierarchies and use the privileges they derive from their institutional affiliations and publications.

You would think that sociologists might refrain from establishing a social pecking order and continually enforcing it. But one thing that I have learned about people is that we are all rife with contradictions (a nice word for hypocrisy). 

I typically observe this status game being played out at our discipline’s annual meeting. People wear badges around their necks with their institutional affiliation listed under their names. The first thing a newcomer notes is the eye dart: the glance at the badge to see if the name rings a bell. I confess that I often do it too. Sometimes a well-known sociologist walks by, and you have the excitement of knowing that someone whose book you read is before you in the flesh.

Sociology actually has its own celebrities, celebrities who have no cache outside of a room full of sociologists. They can draw a crowd, and typically they are invited to sit on conference panels rather than submit a paper for presentation pending the approval of a session organizer. Others flock to these sessions to curry their favor, feign interest, try and network, or just to feel like they are in the presence of someone important. (Yes, some are also interested in the session itself too).

Men are the main holders of celebrity status within sociology, despite the fact that there are slightly more women than men in the discipline now. The majority of sociologists—about eighty percent—are white, as are the “stars” for the most part. But unlike the rest of society, age doesn’t minimize status for those who acquired high standing.

Sociologists don’t tend to be stars to non-sociologists, but successful non-sociologists who come to meetings are treated like celebrities. Authors, filmmakers, and journalists invited to sessions often draw standing-room-only crowds. These intellectual stars are to the NPR crowd what the High School Musical cast is to 'tweens (without the screaming, for the most part).

Sociologists also focus on their institution’s rank relative to others. Every graduate program has a rank, and many people choose a graduate program based on how high the school appears on a list (just like undergraduates often do). But it doesn’t end after grad school. Status conscious professors take jobs as stepping stones to try and climb the sociology status ladder, publish in journals based on their ranking, and for some the whole practice of sociology becomes about their personal success. This makes some journal articles unreadable, since they are only meant to impress other status seekers rather than a larger audience.

On my way to a conference years ago, I was aboard a plane and overheard the conversation of the people seated behind me. From their discussion it became clear that they were sociologists who were also headed to the conference. In those days, the preliminary program came in the mail, so I had a copy with me and apparently so did they. They looked up their sessions and noted to each other when they were scheduled to present their papers. Listening in, I looked up those sessions and saw they focused on inequalities of race and ethnicity.

Moments later, a flight attendant passed through the aisle. One of the sociologists called to her, “Excuse me, my coffee has gotten cold!” and demanded that she bring her a fresh cup. As the flight attendant walked away, the sociologist muttered to her colleague that the service was just terrible. When her fresh coffee arrived, she did not respond with gratitude, but with resentment.

I was shocked. First that anyone sitting in coach would have expected that level of attentive service, and second that someone who studies inequality for a living would treat a service worker in that manner. 

Most sociologists that I know aren’t as blind to their status or as demeaning as the lady on the plane was. Most sociologists are not cold-blooded status seekers (especially not the ones who write for this blog). But we seldom take a good look in the mirror to examine how we replicate inequality in both our personal lives and in our profession as well.

Gender, Cats, Kittens, and Cougars

By Karen Sternheimer

I am a cat person, but I am not a cat. That might seem obvious to you, since to my knowledge cats don’t blog. But some people seem to confuse women with felines. What does this tell us about gender in the twenty-first century?

Cats have traditionally been seen as feminine, referred to as “she” even though as mammals there must be male cats too. Perhaps their grace, their demure nature can be seen as a form of a compliment to female humans. But many of the connections are less than flattering.

Arguments, altercations and fights between women have a special term: catfight. This summer Indy Race car driver Danica Patrick was filmed arguing with fellow racer Milka Duno. When I Googled "Danica Patrick" and "catfight" I got thousands of hits, including forty hits from mainstream news organizations. 

Technically, the camera caught Patrick and Duno having an argument, not a fight. But days later cameras caught a physical altercation during a WNBA game, giving the sport rare news coverage. Once again media organizations used the “c” word. Fistfights happen regularly in men’s sports and are covered by the news, particularly if they are really violent, but they are just called “fights”. Maybe this is because men fight much more often than women. According to the FBI, in 2006 79 percent of aggravated assaults were committed by men, and they committed 75 percent of other assaults (like fistfights). 

Women who fight challenge assumptions about female passivity, but the “c” word tends to make female fighting more of an amusement than a serious issue. Have you ever seen the “reality” show Bad Girls' Club? I’ve only seen one episode, but it seems like they choose fight-prone women to live in a house together, encourage them to drink and watch the fight that inevitably comes next.

A 2007 reality show, Age of Love, pitted “kittens” (women in their twenties) against “cougars” (women in their forties) to compete for the affection of a man in his thirties.  (I’m not sure what happened to women in their thirties, but that’s another issue). At a time when women are increasingly likely to be unmarried, this show hit a particular nerve, framing the older women as conniving, desperate vixens and the younger ones as hot “sex kittens,” perhaps less intelligent or accomplished than the older women, but, well, hot.

I’m not sure where this new term for women who date younger men came from, but it is interesting on many levels. First, men who date younger women are not usually described as predators unless the woman is under eighteen. (They might be called dirty old men, but typically that’s only if their advances are unwanted.) Demi Moore marries a man fifteen years her junior, and voila, she is a cougar. George Clooney dates a woman seventeen years younger, and he is just George Clooney. George follows a long line of Hollywood stars that date and/or marry much younger women. Cary Grant, Clooney’s predecessor in many ways, appeared as the male lead opposite Grace Kelley (25 years younger), Audrey Hepburn (25 years younger), and Eva Marie Saint (twenty years younger) to name a few. 

One of my all-time favorite movies, North by Northwest, starred Saint and Grant as romantic leads despite their twenty-year age gap. Jessie Royce Landis played Grant’s mother in the movie—and she was less than eight years older than her movie “son” Grant.

Older men might be called a "sugar daddy", but most of the pejorative terms are reserved for the women they are involved with (gold digger, husband stealer, whore, and so forth). 

The cougar moniker also implies that older women are predatory, stalking their victims before pouncing on them, rendering them helpless. Older men with younger partners are just thought of as lucky or entitled, especially if they have wealth and power. Calling women cougars also implies that at their age they need to pursue men, that they have less value and therefore will not be pursued by men.

Finally, cougars, cats, and kittens are not people. Using these terms dehumanizes women, even if it does so unintentionally. What’s fascinating is that women use these terms as much, if not more than men. As author Leora Tanenbaum recounts in her book Slut! Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation, women have historically sought to minimize the status of others in order to bolster their own within a narrow framework of female opportunity. She interviewed women of all ages who were labeled “sluts” at some point (although many actually had no sexual experience despite the label), and found that labeling is both the result of gender inequality and a means to reproduce it. Women have traditionally been valued based on their sexual appeal to men, and a multitude of words exist to keep women within these boundaries.

Yes, I know most people don’t mean any harm when they talk of catfights or cougars. But even when used in fun, these terms reaffirm that women’s worth is linked to the men they are with and how well they conform to gendered expectations.

Is Marriage Under Siege?

By Karen Sternheimer

You know it’s summer when celebrity divorces become the biggest news stories of the day…they are easy to digest, gossip about, and there is always at least one happening at any given time. You can probably name at least two couples who have been in the news lately. Are they symbolic of the declining state of marriage?

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). From the name of the legislation, it sounds like it might support marriage counseling, provide encouragement for staying together, or even make it harder for couples to divorce. Instead, this bill ensures that no state need recognize same-sex marriage, not exactly something that will “save” individual marriages. But its name, and those of many laws passed by states in recent years with similar intent, suggests that marriage needs defending.

The idea of “marriage in decline” has become a cliché. Let’s see what the data tell us about marriage in the United States, past and present.

 

As you can see from the data collected by Administration of Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), divorce rates jumped significantly between 1960 and 1980. Also notice that divorce rates spiked in the 1940s before falling after 1945. What’s likely behind these changes?

The obvious answer to the 1940s increase is World War II—separation, coupled with women’s increased participation in the labor force meant that more couples were no longer financially interdependent. Women’s earnings gave them greater ability to financially survive outside of marriage. Prior to the 1940s, it was common for couples to live separately but not divorce due to the costs going to court (there was no such thing as no-fault divorce yet) and have a judge grant the divorce. 

California became the first state to offer no-fault divorce in 1970, and other states followed suit. This meant that couples did not need to sue the other for divorce or prove any reason to a judge; if one spouse wanted out, that was enough. And clearly many did; rates tripled between 1960 and 1980, peaking in 1979 with nearly 23 divorces per thousand married women.

According to the U.S. Census, 5.3 per thousand Americans eighteen and over were divorced in 1979, roughly double the 1950 rate. But since that time, the rate has been declining: to 4.7 per thousand in 1990, 4.1 per thousand in 2000, and 3.6 per thousand in 2005, a rate similar to early 1970s levels.

Let’s also be clear on another point: the lack of divorce does not mean that a marriage was happy or even functional. My grandmother once told me a story of a friend of hers from early adulthood. The woman was married to a man who threatened to break her hands if she ever touched his money, which he kept in a box in their home. Apparently this was just one example of his cruelty and controlling personality, and she tried to obtain a divorce. But the judge ruled that this did not meet the legal definition of cruelty since she had no evidence he actually had struck her. So many marriages that ended by death instead of divorce were not necessarily success stories.

There are also several important predictors of divorce. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a comprehensive report in 2002 that examines who is more likely to get married and divorced. 

One key factor is age. Teens who marry are most likely to divorce within ten years (48 percent of those who marry before eighteen, and 40 percent of those who marry at eighteen or nineteen divorce) compared with 29 percent of those 20 to 24 and just 24 percent of those who marry after the age of 25. If couples grew up with parents who remained married, the likelihood of divorce is also lower (29 percent versus 43 percent). Also, the timing of children matters. Couples who have a child before they are married or within seven months of marriage are less likely to remain married after ten years than those who have children at least seven months after their wedding. 

One of the report’s findings is that race is also a significant factor. As the graph on the left details, African Americans are the most likely to divorce, and Asian Americans are the least likely to divorce after fifteen years. 

It’s hard to know exactly why this is the case, but it might have something to do with the fact that on average, Asian Americans have higher incomes and perhaps less money-related stress than other groups. While the graph below excludes Asian Americans, we can see that income level is related to divorce, and divorce levels are particularly high for African Americans. 

These racial disparities are very visible if we look at long-term trends, where African Americans were much more likely to experience divorce within ten years than whites.

So why the major disparity between African Americans and other groups? The authors of the report draw a very important conclusion—it is likely not race alone that matters. They note that “these differences may be related to higher rates of unemployment, incarceration, and mortality among the black population, their lower levels of educational attainment and earnings.” In other words, marriage may not bring 

economic stability to many African American women. 

This finding suggests that the federal government’s Healthy Marriage Initiative might be missing some of the key reasons marriages end. It’s not that people don’t value marriage, but the factors that contribute to stable family life are harder to come by in persistently poor communities. The biggest threat to marriage is probably unemployment or underemployment, experiences felt disproportionately by African Americans.

The prevalence of celebrity divorces may make it seem like every marriage is at risk for divorce, that marriage is just a fifty-fifty crapshoot. But as a 2005 New York Times article detailed, the percentage of marriages that end in divorce is actually lower than we have been told. The fifty percent divorce rate is based on a faulty calculation: there are about twice as many marriages in the U.S. as divorces each year, and that number was misinterpreted to mean that half of all marriages end in divorce. Most people don’t divorce in the same year as their marriage though. It’s like comparing births to deaths in any given year and presuming those that die are the same ones just born. The reality is, as usual, far more complex than we are often led to believe.

Sociology: It's What's For Dinner

By Karen Sternheimer

What did you have for dinner last night? Was it sociologically meaningful? 

Actually, all food is sociologically relevant in some way. It is a part of culture, tied to customs, religion, and ethnicity. What we eat, how we eat, and when we eat are intertwined with sociological issues like these.

Here are a few specific examples: what we eat may reflect our status, where we eat our income, and with whom we eat our family situation.

We have social rituals surrounding our meals too. Typically at a restaurant we use silverware when appropriate (I learned how embarrassing violating this could be when I first tried eating deep-dish pizza with my hands).

Eating off our own plates is another such ritual usually followed, and we usually avoid eating from strangers’ plates. Believe it or not, I saw this rule breached several years ago when having brunch. I was with a large group of mostly family members and of few of their friends whom I had never met. I hadn’t finished my toast because it was a little burnt and left the mostly-eaten crusts on the plate. 

The man next to me was a significantly older friend of a cousin, and I couldn’t believe it when he asked if I was finished and ate my scraps! It’s not as if this man couldn’t afford a meal himself; although we barely spoke, I knew he was a high-profile attorney, famous for multi-million dollar settlements. Perhaps his status—older, male, wealthy— made him feel like he was entitled. I don’t really know why he did it, but I still think it was sort of gross.

Eating also can stratify us; eating at a five-star restaurant is out of reach for most of us, but many people regardless of income might enjoy going to a diner now and then. The affluent thus have more dining choices and can much more easily “invade” some working class spaces than the other way around.

Material culture accompanies eating and has sociological importance as well. “Picking out China patterns” is a well-worn phrase indicating that people are planning to get married. Wedding registry lists are mostly filled with eating accoutrements: in addition to fine China, silver and everyday tableware, candle holders, crystal glasses, and serving platters are all pricey gifts to set the table for meals on special occasions.

When my grandmother passed away last year, family members sorted through her everyday items, the things too mundane to be listed in her will or given away before she died. My sisters each got a serving platter, my mother her crystal highball glasses. I wanted just one thing: her Black & Decker Handy Chopper. 

You are probably wondering why I would want this when a brand new one is less than fifteen dollars. And as a proud hostess for decades, my grandmother had lots of crystal serving bowls, silver platters, and other objects d’art, but still I wanted the chopper. 

My grandma used to make her famous tuna salad in that chopper. It was one of her many specialties that would often be our first meal at her home when we arrived from out of town. She would have it laid out perfectly on a bed of lettuce with sliced tomatoes making for a colorful garnish. On hot summer days when we would swim in her building’s pool she would wave us in from her seventh floor balcony, the signal that lunch was ready. We’d eat cold tuna sandwiches outside on the patio in our wet bathing suits, waiting until we could go back down to the pool.

I had tried on many occasions to replicate her recipe. Tuna never tasted as good when I made it myself at home. “You have to have a good chopper,” she would tell me, and ask what sort of chopper I used. I would show her my hands, since I manually chopped the ingredients. “You have to have a good chopper,” she repeated, shaking her head.

Now I do have a good chopper. It arrived in its original box, yellowed and taped together with disintegrating scotch tape. It needed a good cleaning, as my grandma’s eyesight had failed in the last of her 96 years. I knew all of the ingredients by heart: chopped sweet onion, white albacore tuna, hard boiled egg, and a spoonful of mayonnaise. When the chopper blended them all together I heard that familiar grinding sound, one I usually heard from a distance because until the end she made the tuna salad by herself without assistance. As if by magic, it tasted exactly as if my grandma was in my kitchen that day.

Sometimes a meal is more than a meal. It can evoke family traditions, reflect our ethnic heritage, or reveal our economic circumstances. Our family always had plenty to eat, but for families that don’t, food takes on different meanings.

For others, like my grandmother who emigrated from another country as a child, it can be a way to maintain a family’s traditions and culture in a new place. But the foods that I remember most--the tuna, her delicious Jell-O molds, fresh cornbread with actual pieces of corn, reflect her desire to be fully American. Above all, she loved apple pie. “It’s fruit, it’s good for you,” she would say with a wink.

Her definition of good might not match the FDA Pyramid, but food obviously does more than provide our bodies nutrients. It is, literally, who we are.

Everyday Sociology Talk: Sociology and the Environment

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss sociology's connection with the environment

Sociology Selects a Presidential Running Mate

By Karen Sternheimer

Suppose you were in the unlikely position of choosing a running mate for your presidential bid. The right choice could help you become the most powerful person on earth. Make the wrong one and you risk becoming the pariah of your party. Can sociology help you make your decision?

Social psychologists have long studied how we make important choices like this one, and what factors make for best leaders. Here are a few simple rules based on their research:

1. Don’t Choose One of Your Friends

It seems counterintuitive, but your friends should be the last pool you draw your running mate from. Here’s why: they tend to think like you and have similar backgrounds, lifestyles, tastes, and beliefs. They even tend to be morning people if you’re a morning person, or night people if you like to stay out late. According to the Matching Hypothesis, they even tend to match our levels of attractiveness. We are also more likely to hang out with people who share similar religious beliefs, emotional style, and sense of humor. 

While all these similarities might make for a good friend, a presidential candidate benefits from a running mate who is different. Typically, a running mate will possess a quality, background, or social network that the candidate themselves lack. They might be from a different part of the country, have different constituents, and therefore can bring in different voters.

Aside from the problem of similarities, people tend to be more competitive with their friends than they are with others. Social psychologist Abraham Tesser conducted experiments where pairs of friends played Password (an old game show; a new version is now hosted by Regis Philbin), and had the chance to give their friends clues to help them answer the questions. When subjects were told that doing well was a sign of excellent verbal skills and leadership, friends were actually less helpful than strangers were! How come? Tesser’s Self-evaluation Maintenance Theory suggests that on issues highly relevant to our sense of self, we strive to perform well and save face even more with people who are in our social networks. Our identity is not bound up as much in what strangers think of us, so we are more likely to help them. 

For instance, I might feel less comfortable if friends or family scored higher on a sociology test than I did—that’s supposed to be my thing—compared with trivial pursuit questions about sports (not my thing). But with strangers I might not feel as deflated since they are not regularly in my life to remind me of my shortcomings.

And finally, if you have ever hired one of your friends before, trust me, there is no better way to damage a friendship than to become your friend’s boss. So save your friendship and your candidacy.

2. Choose Someone You Dislike

I know what you’re thinking: why would anyone want to bestow a great opportunity upon someone that they don’t like? If you have ever worked with someone you didn’t much care for, you know that spending time with someone you don’t like is stressful.

But following the saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” might make a lot of sense. Keep in mind rule #1: your friends often have a similar ways of thinking and the same social networks as you do. A person you dislike frequently has a different perspective on many issues that will add valuable insight to your decision making process. They probably have completely different friends (who you will likely need favors from at some point) and different strengths to draw from.

Oh, and you will probably end up liking them too. Proximity theory suggests that we feel internal pressure to like those we spend time with out of necessity. Another way of thinking about this is what is sometimes called the Ben Franklin Effect. Franklin wrote of his decision to win over a political opponent by asking  him to borrow a valued book. The rival subsequently agreed to his request--when people ask us for favors we often feel social pressure to say yes. After Franklin returned the book with gratitude, the former rival became a lifelong friend.

Why would this happen? Social psychologists explain it this way: it makes little sense to lend a valued possession to someone you dislike, so to reconcile this cognitive dissonance (or internal contradiction) we shift our beliefs to fit our choices. 

You probably do this without realizing it. I had a coworker once who bought a new car. I suspect it was out of his price range, and he continually touted the great value and performance of that automaker, even insisting that his car would appreciate in value over time. 

I seriously doubt that it appreciated in price, but I wasn’t the person he was trying to convince: he was trying to convince himself he had made the right decision. Likewise, choosing someone to be a vice presidential candidate is a big deal, and you might settle any cognitive dissonance by deciding that they’re really not that bad after all. 

3. Agree to Disagree

Finally, pick someone who sometimes—even often—disagrees with you and is not afraid to speak up about it. If the VP can disagree with you, your other aides are more likely to be honest if they have misgivings about any of your plans. Dissenters make you develop stronger, more reasoned positions. In situations where conformity is encouraged or even demanded, decisions are more likely to be riddled with errors. 

The classic studies by Solomon Asch demonstrate this point. In his conformity experiments he asked subjects to compare lines on cards and tell him which was longer; a very simple task. Unbeknownst to the subjects, Asch instructed some participants to choose a line that was clearly shorter. While not everyone chose the wrong line, a surprisingly large percentage of subjects picked the shorter one. When there was no pressure to conform, nearly everyone made the correct choice.

The combination of conformity and power can have catastrophic effects, when agreeing with the group trumps one’s own intellectual and ethical judgment. Avoiding groupthink-the process of becoming so insulated in the group’s belief system that individual and critical thought virtually disappears--is the best way to make good decisions for the country. Besides, allowing dissent is the hallmark of a strong leader—and a free society.

The Gloucester Pregnancy "Pact": When Gossip Goes Global

By Karen Sternheimer

Once upon a time, in a land not too far away, when teenagers gossiped about one and other the rumors stayed between teens. Not so today.

Combine a lull in a year of presidential election politics, the start of summer, and a principal’s comment to Time magazine, and voila, a rumor that seventeen pregnant girls from Gloucester, Massachusetts all made a pact to get pregnant and raise their children together spreads under the “breaking news” banner. 

I first heard about this when local radio hosts who usually focus on Hollywood gossip talked about the story, how naïve these girls must have been, and how they probably saw the movie Juno and thought it would be cool to get pregnant. (Of course if you saw the movie it would be hard not to notice how painful and isolating it was to be pregnant in high school, even if Juno did have a sharp wit). No no no, a co-host offered, it’s Jamie Lynn Spears’ fault: she got pregnant at seventeen and because she is famous she made it cool. 

The Gloucester story became a staple on the major networks and cable news outlets, complete with commentators offering their explanations: celebrity culture that gushes over any pregnancy, naïve teens who can’t understand the consequences of their actions, and whether or not there is too much/not enough birth control available for teens.

Left out of the story…the teens' thoughts. That is, until one pregnant girl appeared on Good Morning America with the baby’s father. She said she had been taking birth control pills and had not intentionally gotten pregnant, and there was no pact to get pregnant. Instead she told of a pact to help each other out to deal with the challenges that lie ahead—something that indicates an awareness that having a baby was more than just about buying cute little outfits and having baby shower parties.

The principal later stood by his statement to Time, asserting that there really was a pact to get pregnant. I have no inside information on what the pregnant girls may or may not have said to each other. But I have my doubts that the school principal would have been in on this sort of info either.

Pre-pregnancy pact or not, the reality is that many girls did get pregnant. While blaming Juno and Jamie Lynn make for interesting radio talk, sociologists have studied why teens get pregnant, and there are several more compelling explanations. Let’s consider some of them.

1. Real or perceived lack of opportunity

Yes, it seems counterintuitive, but the less economic opportunity the greater likelihood of early pregnancy. It may appear like an irrational decision, especially since having a child is a pretty expensive endeavor. 

But here’s why lack of opportunity and poverty predicts higher fertility rates in people of all ages (in the U.S. and globally): when people feel as though bearing a child will not jeopardize a clear, concrete, goal they are less likely to take steps to prevent pregnancy from happening. By contrast, when the prospect of attending college seems very likely and a fulfilling, lucrative career will follow, people are more likely to protect those opportunities.

When I was in high school, we had counselors cheering us through PSATs, SATs, walking us through the college application process and peers that we saw enter into the nation’s top universities. Most of our parents and other family members went to college and often graduate school in order to become professionals and top earners. Having a baby then would have been a devastating detour away from a path of near-certain upper-middle class status.

By contrast, in some communities counselors are few in number and perhaps only focus on a handful of the top students. I have had my own students tell me of high school counselors that actually dissuaded them from applying to college, suggesting it “wasn’t for them.” Pair that with little information about the all-important tests, how or when to fill out a college application, and not having a family member who ever attended college. Now higher education seems more like a fantasy than reality, especially in communities where they see few upper-middle class professionals in their daily lives. Yes, many people from working-class and low-income communities do go on to college and most do not get pregnant, but the stakes seem lower for them to begin with. Gloucester has traditionally been a working-class fishing community, and it has been struggling economically in recent years. While again this may seem counterintuitive, higher teen pregnancy rates are more likely in a community like this than they are in more affluent areas. 

2. Overall teen birth rates have been falling

You might have heard about the rise in teen birth rates in 2006. This was a shift from fourteen straight years of decline, but as the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) press release notes, “It’s way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend,” but it of course important to take a look at. 

According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, between 1990 and 2004 the percentage of birth to women fifteen to nineteen dropped from thirty percent of all births to unmarried women to about 23 percent. In 2004 girls under fifteen accounted for .4 percent of all births to unmarried women, down from .9 percent in

1990. By contrast, births to unmarried women in their twenties increased slightly. Between 1990 and 2005 birth rates had fallen by fifty percent for those under fifteen, and by 34 percent for teens fifteen to nineteen. 

The 2006 data tell us that birth rates for those under fifteen continued to decline, and the biggest increase was in births to teens eighteen and nineteen. For fifteen to nineteen-year-olds, the rate rose from 40.5 live births per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006.

As the CDC notes, “The birth rate for older teens aged 18-19 is 73 births per 1,000 population –- more than three times higher than the rate for teens aged 15-17 (22 per 1,000).” As we can see from the table on the right from the CDC, the fifteen- to seventeen-year-old rate was 77 in 1990, and the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old rate was 168, still substantially higher than in 2006. Abortion rates also fell substantially since the late 1980s. The CDC also found that fewer high school students are sexually active now than in the early 1990s: down from 54 percent in 1991 to just under 48 percent in 2007, and that condom use is way up (from 46 to 62 percent). So despite this high-profile case, the news is mostly good.

As you can see, teen pregnancy is a bit more complicated than a funny movie about it or a profile of a young celebrity would suggest. In addition to socio-economic status, dramatic racial/ethnic differences still persist: African American and Latina fertility rates are higher than that of whites, regardless of age. The reasons for this are complex, and probably related to higher poverty rates of African Americans and Latinos in the population.

And finally, what about the boys (and men) involved? When we talk about teen pregnancy, we often leave them out of the discussion. Despite the reports that practically ignored males, the girls did not get themselves pregnant. But girls are still the ones we gossip about.

Global Poverty for Sale

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you ever get unsolicited catalogs in the mail? I occasionally get them from “upscale” stores featuring high-priced designer brands.  This makes me laugh because I am an outlet mall shopper at heart, and the thought of spending thousands for a dress or a pair of shoes or a handbag never crosses my mind. I suspect that since many affluent people live in my zip code I am mistaken for one of “them.” 

 

These catalogs usually go right into the recycling bin, but occasionally I give them a look for a good mock now and then. A recent catalog seemed ripe for a laugh, with its extra-thick paper attempting to lure me to shop at South Coast Plaza, the largest mall in Orange County, California, which according to Mapquest is exactly 53.15 miles from my home (for point of reference, Rodeo Drive is less than ten miles away, so if I wanted to spend ridiculous amounts of money I could do so much closer to home). 

 

But leafing through the catalog was not so funny. The high-fashion shots featured models in their over-priced designer clothes against the backdrop of global poverty. The motorcycle pictured on the left features a license plate that reveals that the shoot took place in the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island where approximately thirty percent of the population lives in poverty. In 2000, their per capita income was about $2,326.

 

But poverty is apparently chic, at least when it can add some element of authenticity to the new spring fashion line. As you can see from the ad copy on the right, words like “exotic,” “primitive” and “tribal colors” provide “inspiration” for “new designs.”

 

Yes, infant mortality rates in the Dominican are 47 per 1,000 live births, more than seven times the U.S. rate of 6.3 per 1,000, and 2.5 percent of the adult population is HIV positive, but they provide us with “simple shapes” and “vivid scenery.”

 

I found this ad for the green Dolce & Gabbana dress particularly interesting. The dress is nice, but the background is what is really interesting: the crumbling shack to the left and people adding “local color” in the far right. While I could not find the price for this particular dress, D & G dresses typically range from $1,500-$2,800 each. In other words, just about the annual income of an average Dominican.

 

The Quiksilver ad on the right offers a more up-close view of the “vivid scenery.” Here we have decidedly unhappy locals leaning against a house resting on crumbling concrete. Note that only the white model smiles. While his outfit probably cost under $150, much less than the D & G dress, his casual attire contrasts with the shabbier clothes of the others in the picture, particularly the boy with holes in his rolled-up jeans.

 

In these photos, the people of the Dominican Republic are mere props. Adding to a backdrop of what the ad describes as “exotic,” is the man riding a donkey pulling a cart on the left, and the young boys staring at the model on the right as she poses. 

 

Both of the women’s poses are interesting in light of the persistence of the global sex trade in developing nations. According to a 1997 Miami Herald article, prostitution is a particularly bad problem in the Dominican, with its high poverty rate and increase in international tourism. The majority of women working as prostitutes are mothers trying to support their children; and as with other poor countries, children themselves often end up ensnared in global sex tourism.

 

Yet the images of children in the ads are highly sentimental, enabling us to overlook some of the serious challenges children in “exotic places” confront. In the Dominican Republic, school children must wear uniforms, like the kids in these pictures, although no funding is provided for them. The girls in the ad on the right in the front are dressed in the American store’s clothes, in contrast with their uniformed peers. All stand in rubble but appear happy.

 

The white model to the left, posed as “teacher,” appears pregnant herself, and it is interesting to think about the different life chances that child likely will have compared with children in developing countries. Adding to the “local color,” the book she holds “Incas, Mayas, y Aztecas,” recalls other colonized peoples in a crumbling classroom.

 

Finally, nature itself becomes commodified in these ads. This Jimmy Choo handbag, pictured with a hay-thatched hut in the background, retails for $3,050, more than the average annual income of a Dominican citizen. 

 

And this necklace pictured on the right turns being green on its head. While the ad copy shown above details the “vivid scenery” and “colors inspired by nature,” this picture seems to suggest that nature itself needs adornment.

 

Advertising may not make us more likely to buy any of this stuff, but it is loaded with interesting sociological components. Here we see issues of the environment, race, socioeconomic status, and globalization embedded into a series of ads. They (probably unintentionally) help us see some of the contrasts between the materialism of the wealthy in industrialized nations and the extreme poor of developing countries. What do you see?

How Old is Old?

By Karen Sternheimer

A student of mine had a birthday this week. “How old are you?” a classmate asked.

“Old,” he told her. He had just turned 22.

The other students who had not reached the 21 year milestone agreed. Twenty-two is old.

I listened on, as someone with only faint memories of being that age myself. Surely someone in their late thirties like me would seem elderly to this group.

“Old” is of course relative. In my first year away at college, a friend of mine had a roommate who was 22. “She’s 22, can you believe it? She’s already had her own apartment and everything,” my friend whispered, so nobody would hear of the wizened woman she had been assigned to live with in the dorm. At eighteen, 22 seemed very worldly. And now many years later, my own perception of “old” continually gets older, and my expectations for what chronological age means shift as I pass through many previously “old” years myself.

We have been hearing the “how old is old” question a lot lately about presidential candidate John McCain. Although he is a long-time player on the national political stage, I never heard any reference to his age before this year. If you follow political news even a little, you have probably heard commentators note that if elected, he will be the oldest president to enter the White House at 72. This possibility has led to debate amongst the pundits—and jokes from late-night comics—about whether McCain is too old.

And while there have been many issues about sexism and racism that have arisen through the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, leading to discussions about both race and gender, I haven't heard any critical discussion about ageism. 

In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in February 2008, 32 percent of respondents thought that McCain was too old to be president, and when asked what adjectives first came to mind to describe him, the leading answer was “old.” By contrast, when former Senator Bob Dole ran for president in 1996 at age 73, 34 percent thought he was too old. Not much change in a dozen years.

Representative John Murtha, 75, has publicly stated that he thinks McCain is too old for the job. The AARP (formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons) criticized Murtha for making this statement, but ironically, older Americans like Murtha are more likely to think McCain’s age is a problem, according to a May 2008 Pew Research Center poll. In contrast to registered voters 18-34, of whom 24 percent said his age is an issue, forty percent of registered voters 65 and older thought McCain was too old to be president. Why the big difference?

Getting back to the idea that age is relative, being over seventy carries different meaning today than it did a half century ago, when McCain and his cohort were in their twenties. A white male born in 2004 has an average life expectancy of 78.3, according to the 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States. By contrast, when McCain was born in 1936, the average life expectancy for white males was 58.0 (up from 46.6 in 1900). So what would have been an elderly age decades ago has mutated into late middle age today. 

Other factors make age even more relative. Having long-lived family members is one indicator of longevity (McCain’s mother is 96), as is having access to quality health care, living and working in a safe and healthy environment, and having a positive outlook. Other lifestyle factors—such as not smoking and exercising regularly also extend one’s life span. 

Stress is another important issue. People who have jobs with a great deal of instability, little autonomy, and significant potential danger (such as in mining, construction, and driving a cab) also tend to have decreased life expectancy. While the president makes a decent salary—$400,000—and has arguably the best health care of any person in the world, the job is incredibly stressful. Even in the best of times, twenty to thirty percent of your constituents won’t like you. Lunatics making death threats require you to have a full-time cadre of bodyguards (four of your predecessors have been assassinated, four others have died of other causes; that means that nearly one in five haven't made it out of this job alive). And if you are vain about your appearance, this is the wrong job for you. Check out this ABC News slide show of before and after pictures to see how the presidency has aged presidents in recent years.

Questions about McCain’s age may seem legitimate and jokes just in good fun, but age discrimination exists in many forms, and has very real consequences for people who need to work for a living. As many people struggle economically, they will need to work longer. Federal legislation, first passed in 1967 and amended in 1986, bans age limits for most jobs, but that doesn’t stop employers from refusing to hire people looking for work. These are the issues we need to seriously consider as our population ages, especially since our society increasingly worships looking young and pathologizes the aging process.

Beauty Myths and Magazines

By Karen Sternheimer

I’ve recently reverted back to an old teenage habit…sort of. Last year I got a letter saying that my frequent flier miles would soon expire and that I could easily convert them to magazine subscriptions. I hadn’t subscribed to a magazine in years, so I went nuts. I ordered magazines about politics, technology, business, travel, and fashion.

In my teen years I devoured fashion magazines like Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and the now defunct Mademoiselle, and swapped them with friends to make sure no beauty advice would pass without my knowledge. I saved old issues in my closet for years just in case I would ever want to look at them again, like the reference books that are on my shelves today. When my old house went up for sale years later, my mother told me to take them or toss them. I tossed them. 

After I graduated from high school I stopped reading the magazines cold turkey. I don’t remember exactly why, but it probably had something to do with a lack of time to read them and (more to the point) the lack of disposable income to buy them. When the first fashion mag showed up in my mailbox last year it was like reuniting with an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in years. Yes, I had perused a magazine or two while waiting to have my hair cut, but it’s not the same if you can’t tear out the samples and dog-ear the particularly relevant advice about hair products to revisit later. Unlike the other magazines I ordered, the beauty ones required very little concentration or commitment to read since they are mostly filled with ads. They could be my secret escape.

As a sociologist, I am also deeply aware of the very narrow version of beauty these magazines typically promote. Yes, most of the women are impossibly thin, white or near-white in complexion, tall and blonde. Many of the articles are about getting/keeping/pleasing/marrying a man, and more than anything, they promote the idea that women’s worth is forever linked to how we look. If that’s not enough, in the world of most fashion magazines, beauty is something that comes from consumption, not necessarily from character.

That said, I think we often sell readers of these magazines short when we presume that they are merely victims of the beauty industry. I have known a fashion victim or two in my years (and spot them regularly on the streets of Los Angeles), but let’s not presume that all women and girls simply read these magazines passively. In a now classic 1984 cultural studies text, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature author Janice Radway interviewed women who read romance novels and found that rather than just internalizing the messages of idealized romance they contain, readers used them to escape the drudgery of everyday life. Likewise, we cannot presume that fashion magazine readers just mindlessly adopt the perspectives of the magazines. How readers make meaning of texts—a central goal of cultural studies research—often depends on the social context that each person lives within.

Looking back on my own relationship with fashion magazines, I read them more as a fantasy about what my impending adult life might be like, and for instruction about how to best be ready for that life. The magazines I read in the 80s, like many today, provided advice about careers and living independently in cities. They told stories about having grown-up relationships with men, which my friends and I had no real frame of reference for (and let’s be honest, most seventeen-year-olds would rather not talk to mom and dad much about this topic!).

So why my excitement today? I have had enough experience with being a grown-up to know that the magazines’ advice is just a guess, as much advice often is. Fashion magazines offer the promise of self-improvement, or as historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg describes, a body project. Brumberg’s study of adolescent girls throughout the twentieth century reveals that these projects continually shift. Unlike the nineteenth century, when girls wrote in their diaries about being better morally, most of the projects today focus on the external. 

Why did this happen? We can’t blame fashion magazines for the changes, since the ones that existed then bore little resemblance to those of today. Brumberg argues that as women have gradually gained more political power and experienced less external regulation that they have been encouraged to regulate themselves internally. For instance, nineteenth-century women were often discouraged from exercise, but wore binding corsets. Starting in the 1920s women shed these physically restricting undergarments, but took up “slimming” in order to restrict their body size.

So the magazines both reflect and reproduce images of beauty—if we took them away, girls and women wouldn’t necessarily feel better about how they look. From my personal experience, I read the magazines from the perspective that I was one of “them.” Although not tall, tan, or blonde, as many models in the magazines I bought were, I saw myself as like them in some strange way. And the advice in the magazines about make-up tips and products to try helped me feel part of this thing called beauty. Yes, Marx might say I was experiencing false consciousness—you might say I was deluded. And certainly there might be people who read the magazines and feel inadequate, but we can’t make generalizations either way. 

That said, I can’t say that I disagree with many of the critiques of the beauty industry author Naomi Wolf offers in her book The Beauty Myth or with Jean Kilbourne's analysis of advertising in her book Killing Us Softly. But we can’t analyze magazines and presume to know how people make sense of them. Sometimes we think that criticizing things we like makes us hypocrites or killjoys. We don’t have to be either; we can both enjoy and deconstruct forms of media culture we consume creating the best of both worlds: critical consumers who can have fun reading a magazine once in a while. And learn new make-up tips.

Everyday Sociology Talk: Social Change and the California Supreme Court's Ruling on Gay Marriage

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss the California Supreme Court's 5/15 decision to overturn the ban on gay marriage, focusing on social movements.

Social change often leads to the creation of social movements that mobilize to counter changes too.

Should Kids Work?

 

By Karen Sternheimer

Recently, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, a regional southern California newspaper, was bought out and will basically merge with a local competitor, suffering many staff cuts in the process. This prompted letters to the editor of the Los Angeles Times (another struggling southern California paper, but that’s another story) from readers mourning the demise of smaller papers like the Press-Telegram. One letter told of boyhood years delivering newspapers, and how smaller papers like this one gave kids “a first taste of what it meant to earn money that didn’t come from their parents” and a chance to run “their own micro-business.” These opportunities go away along with smaller newspapers.

This letter struck a chord with me; but it wasn’t a nostalgic one. I (briefly) had a paper route myself when I was about twelve for a regional paper called the Cleveland Sun-Press. Being an enterprising kid—I sold stationary, held my own garage sales, and sold homemade candy at school—a paper route seemed like a great idea to make some more money.

In order to have a paper route, I had to give the Sun-Press a deposit (about $30, if memory serves) to pay for papers that I would deliver. Then I would get to keep whatever I collected when I went door to door asking to be paid at the end of the month. This seemed like a great plan…until I actually started. 

The paper came out once a week, and had to be delivered early in the morning before school. I got up well before dawn, at around 4:00 on the first day. My father didn’t like the idea of his twelve-year-old wandering the streets in the middle of the night, so he got up to come with me. Although he drove me, I had to trudge up unplowed, icy driveways in the middle of winter, and barely finished to make it to school on time. My dad thought we would need to get up even earlier the next week, so we were up well before three and did it again.

When it came time to collect my hard-earned pay I was in for a big surprise. Turns out most of the people on the streets I was told to deliver to never subscribed to the paper in the first place. I remember a lady slamming the door in my face, telling me she wasn’t going to pay for the paper and not to bother her again. I didn’t come close to collecting the money I had invested.

I came to the realization many other entrepreneurs do: I had to shut down my business since I was losing money (and sleep) in the process. After some shame I told my parents. I felt like a quitter, but they supported my decision, and were probably glad not to wake up in the middle of the night any more.

Having a few decades of distance from this “micro-business,” I think this arrangement was exploitive rather than a business opportunity. Aside from the questionable practice of making a child pay to work for them, and providing an invalid subscription list, this task could have put me in significant danger had I not had a parent willing and able to help me do my job (unpaid…thanks again, Dad).

In hindsight, it is easy to see “working children” as a vestige of a less-informed past. Fortunately, my family was not dependent on my wages so they didn’t insist that I keep the paper route. 

Sociologist Viviana Zelizer, author of Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children found in her historical study that perceptions of working children vary by the economic needs of society. When a large number of children are needed in the labor force, work is seen as character-building, and their productivity is seen as moral, rather than exploitive. She contends that when children were no longer needed en masse in the labor force, this construction shifted to view children as emotionally priceless but economically useless. At this same time, child stars on the stage and screen began to emerge, as their “child-like” qualities ironically became valuable commodities.

In many developing countries today, it is commonplace for children to work to help their families survive. It’s very likely that the clothes that you are wearing now were made by a girl not too much older than I was when I had my paper route. 

Let’s not think that young children only work for wages in “other places.” Have you seen I Know My Kid's a Star on VH1? The latest of a genre of stage parents trying to get their kids into “the business,” this show follows the latest conventions of so-called reality television, where the contestants all live together in a 

house and are eliminated week by week. The real characters on this and the other shows like it are the parents (mostly moms) who seem way over-invested in getting their kids work in Hollywood. 

It’s easy to caricature these parents as monsters, but we are all involved in children’s labor in some ways. We watch them on television, in movies, buy their CDs and ask them who they think should be the next president. Yes, this is different from working in a factory or walking the streets before dawn to deliver papers, but we might ask whether these kids are as free from exploitation as we might think. If we watch them, criticize them when they stumble into adulthood, or buy the products they work 14 hours a day to produce, we are in some ways benefiting from working children.

And what about kids—do they benefit from work? And if so, what kind? Remember, I wanted my paper route, and many children who pursue careers want them too. Even children who helped support their families a century ago liked the autonomy of having jobs, says historian David Nasaw in his book Children of the City.

Parents also often think children should have chores to help around the house, babysit, or earn their allowance. Teenagers, of course, often work part-time because they or their parents want them to earn spending money, learn valuable skills like responsibility, or have work experience to include on their college applications. Beyond “good” parenting, how do these ideas about working children reflect our economic realities at the start of the twenty-first century? How do they create the meaning of childhood itself?

Can Sociology Explain American Idol's Appeal?

By Karen Sternheimer 

By now you have probably seen at least one episode of American Idol, and maybe even have a strong opinion about who this season’s winner should be. But have you ever thought about why it is so popular? 

It is certainly not the first talent show to be on television. Remember Star Search? I barely do. Not just because the show has been off the air for thirteen years, but it never generated the buzz of American Idol…a Star Search winner might be an interesting tidbit of  trivia, but Idol winners become household names almost immediately. How come?

Clearly, there are many reasons the show has been so successful. As Bradley Wright recently blogged about, the judges are a key factor. I have to admit that I prefer to watch the early auditions to hear the judges respond to the talent-challenged contestants. Simon’s snappy barbs violate my own sense of kindness and the social norm of “being nice,” yet somehow seeing that violated is entertaining (particularly since I am not on the receiving end). The auditioners reflect a central principle of comedy: a character totally committed to his or her actions while completely lacking self-awareness. And there are plenty of those. 

But beyond the bad singers, one of the key elements to Idol’s success is its interactivity. The audience can have a stake in the outcome by voting for their favorite right away by phone or text message. In our Internet age, media that don’t allow for our input and interaction seems dated. Even some national news programs encourage viewers to post comments online during the program. This challenges old complaints about television being a “passive” medium (see books like The Plug-in Drug for example). 

What’s interesting now is how books from the mid-twentieth century made interactive media seem apocalyptic. Did you ever see the 1968 film based on Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, when Hal the computer takes over? It still freaks me out.

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

Another example is the 1966 movie based on Ray Bradbury’s great sci-fi book, Fahrenheit 451, which some interpret to be about how television destroys interest in reading. In this dystopia, “firemen” burn books, and an underground society springs up where