Everyday Sociology Blog

Green Occupational Status

By Sally Raskoff

Occupational prestige is a concept we sociologists use to better understand our society. Occupational prestige is measured by a scale created from the aggregate opinions about the status and perceived worthiness of an occupation.

In American culture, we assign a high value to those occupations that use mind-work over body-work and that have high financial rewards. For example, a doctor has more social esteem and occupational prestige than the maintenance worker. If we work in an occupation that has low social esteem, we don’t announce it when we first meet people, especially if those new people inhabit occupations with higher prestige than our own.

A report from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in the United Kingdom uses a new way of gauging the social value of occupations. The BBC recently reported that hospital cleaners have more value to society than bankers.

The NEF is a self-described “think and do tank” or advocacy organization focused on local and global ecological sustainability issues. Their study, titled A Bit Rich, has many important aspects, yet its newsworthiness is sociologically interesting.

The NEF’s goals in writing and releasing the study is to point out the societal and economic impact of occupations which are often the opposite of the way we tend to think about occupational prestige.

Their case studies of the hospital worker, banker, advertising executive, tax accountant, childcare worker, and waste recycling worker use a modified Social Return on Investment (SROI) method and illustrate the cost and benefit to the UK of these different occupations. Thus, their findings indicate that bankers “destroy £7 of social value for every pound in value they generate” and with respect to hospital cleaners, “for every £1 they are paid, over £10 in social value is generated.”  

While their modification of the SROI methodology isn’t exactly mainstream, and they aren’t publishing their findings in a peer-reviewed journal, their findings are interesting. Even more interesting to me is their attempt to change the way the public thinks about the relative prestige of various occupations.

Will they be successful at reframing society’s perspective on occupations? Will their ultimate goals of reforming economic pay scales and societal values towards ecologically sustainable hierarchies be achieved?

I have no answer for that. This study was released at the same time as an international summit on global ecological issues: their timing is perfect and, I assume, calculated.

Will their study help people feel more kindly towards hospital and child care workers and less supportive of bankers and tax accountants? Not likely.

Even in the wake of the recent economic meltdown, the capitalistic values that imbue our society with a focus on competition and “more is more” are still in place. We still value those occupations that make tons of money, even at our own expense, and ignore those occupations that involve physical labor (except for sports) and do the embodied dirty work of society.

Now that we assume we’ve moved through the worst of the global economic recession, the urge to restructure economic aspects of society is no longer deeply felt.

The NEF’s call to restructure society towards equal pay hierarchies is not new, nor are they alone in the call. I would imagine that Marx would be supportive of their goals as the current state of global economics aligns very well with his theory of the last stages of capitalism. What do you think Marx would say?

Authority in 2012: Who’s in Charge?

By Sally Raskoff

Have you seen the movie 2012? It’s an action film in the tradition of The Day After, Waterworld, and Independence Day, yet it has some characters and plot lines that reminded me of Max Weber's concept of authority. Spoiler alert: I will reveal details that may ruin the movie if you haven’t yet seen it.

In 2012, Dr. Helmsley, a geologist, informs White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Anheuser, about the impending doom for the planet. Things happen, including secretly building arks to ensure survival for important or wealthy patrons. Then geologic Armageddon happens, as well as the death of the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, and most other elected officials.

As the ark boarding commences, Anheuser is in charge and assumes he will continue as leader of the neo-American contingent. There are many people who are barred from boarding as the flood approaches and Helmsley gives an impassioned speech to allow all humanity on board. The other leaders agree and most of the people board the arks with only seconds to spare.

The movie ends with a budding romance between Helmsley and the deceased President’s daughter, Laura Wilson, and the suggestion that Helmsley would be assuming leadership instead of Anheuser.

Weber’s theory of leadership and authority include three types of legitimacy: charismatic, rational-legal, and traditional. All three can be seen in this movie.

The elected officials all held office and had elements of rational-legal authority. Our bureaucratic governmental rules about office holding include how people are elected president, vice president, and to Congress. These are rational and legal processes that are well documented.

The order of succession when high office is vacated is clearly delineated. While the Chief of Staff isn’t on that list, it was assumed in the movie that most elected officials didn’t make it on board the ark. Anheuser assumed that he was next in line and he relished the thought.

Anheuser had a tenuous claim to be president based on tradition, since he was the one remaining member of the last elected administration. He did not have rational-legal legitimacy, since his position was not on the list of succession and he was not elected. While Oliver Platt, the actor playing Anheuser, has some degree of charisma, his character Anheuser does not.

It quickly became clear that Helmsley was a more viable candidate for leadership. As he warned of the geologic meltdown of the earth and tried to save those who remained, his charisma and passion impressed people who gave him more and more to do in higher and higher positions of authority. He also got Laura’s attention after his predictions came true and after his impassioned plea for saving as much of humanity as possible.

While Helmsley gained leadership through charismatic authority, he was assured of the position by his connection to Laura. With their partnership, his claim to traditional leadership was much stronger than Anheuser’s. Marrying the previous president’s daughter connected him with the family who had previously held power – ensuring a traditional base of legitimate authority.

The only type of authority Helmsley lacked was rational-legal, although the viewer could assume their first election would remedy that. If Helmsley and Anheuser ran against each other, one could surmise that Helmsley would win based on his multifaceted claims to legitimate authority.

What other movies or books have characters whose leadership experiences could be assessed with Weber’s ideal type of legitimate bases of authority? Perhaps Harry Potter’s Dumbledore? Gandalf in Lord of the Rings? Margaret Tate in The Proposal? What other examples can you think of?

Solidarity: What Brings Us Together

By Sally Raskoff

Are you a member of a club? Have you joined any organizations and spent any time or money with the group and the other members? You might be experiencing something that Emile Durkheim wrote about.

Durkheim’s concepts of organic and mechanical solidarity are fun to think about. Organic solidarity is based on interdependence and is the social glue that keeps society together in complex societies. Mechanical solidarity, based on homogeneity and similarity, is the social glue that keeps society cohesive in less complex societies.

Durkheim saw in growing societies an increasingly complex division of labor, reinforcing differences among people. No longer would most people live in small communities, have the same jobs, and live the same type of lives, e.g., working on a farm. A more complex society consists of many different jobs and people living many different types of lives. If society is to survive as it becomes less homogeneous, new bonds would need to form based on those differences.

Interdependence is one such social bond, since when one specializes in one type of labor, one will depend on others to do the labor required in other areas. For example, if you are a doctor, you depend on nurses, physician’s assistants, and other medical professionals to get your job done, but you also depend on the mechanic to keep your transportation working, the barber or stylist to cut your hair, and the dry cleaners to keep your clothes pressed.

The social bonds created within occupational groups or within other interest groups is a secondary type of social glue connecting people in personal ways. Dense population centers support multiple interest groups, allowing people to join different networks of people and creating many different types of social glue.

When we first learn these concepts, we may assume that mechanical solidarity is replaced completely by organic solidarity. This may not necessarily be the case. In our current times, organic solidarity is likely to characterize the types of social cohesion that are primary while mechanical solidarity is less likely to describe how our societies maintain themselves.

Alexis de Tocqueville was well aware of our American propensity to volunteer. We are a nation of “joiners” as “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America). Those student clubs on campus offer but one type of opportunity to join with others to pursue interests. We may, throughout our life span, join interest-based clubs, parent-child groups, neighborhood collectives, and occupational associations.

Some of our understanding of this behavior is captured from surveys on volunteering. Volunteering is usually defined as working for some organization without pay. According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report, just over one quarter of the population volunteer for an organization. The tasks volunteers perform run the gamut from office work to ministering, food distribution, coaching, and artistic performances.

Can this sub-group activity of joining clubs be considered a micro version of mechanical solidarity? It does create groups of like-minded people, as those people come together to perform some common task. Volunteers have things in common that brought them together for a shared goal. The application of the concept doesn’t work entirely, however, since people who belong to the same organization are not held together as tightly as are people in smaller heterogeneous communities.

Durkheim’s concept of the collective conscience helps us understand the difference as it represents the shared beliefs in a society. Those who live in smaller homogenous societies (mechanical solidarity) share a very strong belief and moral structure while those in more complex heterogeneous societies (organic solidarity) may not. Those smaller occupational and interest groups that we join provide a collection of beliefs to which we may belong and between which there may or may not be any cohesiveness.

Take a moment and consider the groups in which you take part. How important to you are they? How strong is the group’s collective consciousness, or shared beliefs? How does interdependence relate to the group? Society is made possible by our bonds with one another; I invite you to consider the number and quality of yours.

War, Suicide, and Emotional Labor

By Sally Raskoff

Janis Prince Inniss recently blogged about the cost of war and mentioned the rising rate of military suicides. As the New York Times reported, the suicide rate within the military is higher than that in the general population. The graph on the right shows the “self-inflicted death” rates from the Department of Defense from 1980 through 2008. While the peak in 1995 is disturbing, it is clear that the rates have been increasing since 2001.

Military bases overseas and at home, including Fort Hood and Fort Bragg, have seen tremendous rates of – and been in the news for – suicides, domestic violence, and sexual violence. They have instituted many different programs to prevent and deal with the stresses of military life.

For example, Fort Hood instituted a "Resiliency Campus" on the base where soldiers and their families can get help coping with the emotional, financial, and mental health issues they face before, during, and after deployment.

However, the source the source of the stress has not abated. We are fighting two difficult wars and no one can predict when they will end.

The shootings at Fort Hood were allegedly carried out by an army psychiatrist about to deploy, whose job was to counsel soldiers coping with combat stresses. He was also apparently vocal about his objections to about the war. This event and other such mass shootings, including the workplace shooting in Orlando, Florida the day after the Fort Hood incident, remind me of a phenomenon familiar to law enforcement, “suicide by cop” in which a suicidal person attacks others as targets of their anger and frustration yet fully realizes they themselves will die as a result of that act.

Some news coverage has focused on how Major Hasan’s interpretation of his Muslim faith may have been a primary factor motive for his behavior. However, there are many Muslim soldiers who have not acted violently toward themselves or their peers. Further, there are soldiers of many different faiths whose personal opinions about the war are not positive. Some of the soldiers who have acted violently towards themselves and their peers may have said a prayer before their violent acts, but religion is not the main issue here.

To understand this act of violence, I’d like to go back to basics: basic training, actually. Sociologically, the high and increasing rates of violence within the military, violence focused on loved ones and on oneself, can be traced to basic military training and culture.

In basic training, your identity is stripped away, literally. When you arrive, your clothing and personal items are locked away, not to be seen again until you’re heading for home or for your training base. You are given new clothes to wear, identical to everyone else. If you are male, you lose all your hair; if you’re female, you have strict guidelines as to how your hair can appear. You wear no jewelry, or embellishment of any kind. If your clothes have buttons or zippers, they need to be buttoned or zipped up. Your classes teach you how and whom to salute, the customs and courtesies of the service branch you’ve joined, including ranks and insignia.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marine_Corps_Platoon.jpg

You rise in the morning with everyone else, dress quickly, and get in formation to march to breakfast, march to physical training, march to classes, march to your other meals, and march to anywhere else your training instructors want to take you. You look like everyone else and you must act like everyone else. Any individualistic expression is not encouraged.

These are my memories of basic training. Although I’ve been out of the Air Force for almost 30 years, I still remember much of that six-week period. I still eat meals too fast because of basic training!

At mealtime, we filed into the mess hall, picked up our trays, and filled them with food as we went through the line, much as anyone would in a cafeteria. You had to be sure not to take food you weren’t going to eat since you cannot throw any food away. When you approach a table, no one could sit down until there was a person at all four chairs. When your peers who were seated at the first table get up from their meal, people at the last table only have minutes to exit – with all food eaten – and the entire group gets into formation outside the mess hall. The first people cannot linger to allow the others more time since the training instructors are also in the room making sure that these rules are followed.

These rituals and restriction reshapes people into soldiers. You learn to finish what you start. You learn to work together with the other people in your unit to get the job done and get it done the right way. (The “right” way is the Army way, or the Air Force way, or the Marine way, or the Navy way, you get the picture.) You learn to suppress any emotion or feelings about what you are doing since you took an oath to do the job and your peers depend on you. You learn to respect the hierarchy of authority even if you don’t agree with the details.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BasicCombatTraining.jpg

People who serve in the military can hold whatever personal opinions they want about political issues. However, they must do the job that they hold no matter if they agree with it or not.

In the military, to acknowledge emotional issues is to appear weak. To acknowledge emotional problems is to appear unable to do one’s job. To appear weak and not do one’s job, you leave your unit to do the job without you and that is not an acceptable alternative.

If one gets physically injured, that can be a tolerable way to leave the front and/or your unit and not suffer any stigma. But psychological injuries have not traditionally been considered within military culture.

We are now paying a lot of attention to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to explain the high rates of suicide and interpersonal violence within the service. Vietnam-era veterans experience more depression, anxiety, and PTSD compared to pre-Vietnam era veterans and their rates of deaths from suicide, drugs, accidents, and homicide continue to be high many years after that conflict ended.

The military has created new programs to deal with PTSD, including public talks by high-ranking members on their own family losses or their own experiences of PTSD. They have also pointed out that PTSD affects brain structure and has physical causes, attempting to re-categorize it as a physical problem, not just an emotional one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Air_Force_Military_Training_Instructor.jpg

Sometimes when boys and men are socially isolated they turn to violence. Social isolation is an important factor in explaining aspects of suicidal behavior, yet the gender distinction is important. The typical military context involves a combination of suppressed emotion, dangerous situations, and a competitive environment and this is the very definition of a masculine culture.

Sociologically, what is happening is that soldiers may use the tools of this culture – aggression and violence - when they experience high levels of prolonged stress and are unable to adequately deal with the situation due to the suppression of their emotions.

The bigger issue is that the masculine and patriarchal culture of the military undercuts its ability to effectively deal with issues of stress in prolonged times of war and deployments. The military features that make good soldiers can also create troubled and damaged people.

Those who do emotional labor, such as flight attendants and service workers, often have a backstage where they can vent or let down their performance of managed emotions. There is no backstage in the military since soldiers must control those emotions while in combat, with their units away from the front, and even with their families.

To limit wartime stresses we could include end war or decommission the entire military. Most would agree that these are not likely or optimal options. Changing the culture of the military is another logical option, but intentionally changing culture of any kind is not an easy task. How would military culture change to allow the full range of expression for human emotions yet still create soldiers who can effectively protect the country?

As long as the military is defined by aggression and emotional suppression, we have to expect that there will be a toll on service members (and their families), especially when there are prolonged exposures to wartime stresses. What might be a solution to this problem of increased violence within the service?

Dichotomous Thinking: Structure and Agency, Nature and Nurture

By Sally Raskoff

There are many basic sociological concepts that we all use to help us explain the dynamics of humans in groups.

Social structure is a core sociological concept that explains how societies (and other entities) take shape and maintain a particular form. Social institutions are part of that structure—institutions like education, politics, families, media, and religion all maintain and challenge societal norms. Those norms (guidelines for expected behaviors) exist to create social order – which is also a primary function of those institutions. Take all those institutions and their impact on norms, add in the actual physical structures in which they exist, and you have many different levels of societal structures that maintain that society.

Families produce and socialize children who are further socialized within religious and educational organizations. Those religious and educational organizations tend to reinforce the societal practices that support the power structure in that society. The media reflects the power dynamics in society and typically reinforces the accepted practices.

While the media (and other institutions) may also challenge the status quo, it’s often co-opted by it. Notice how the Internet can be used to share any information across space and time yet as time passes, it has become more commercialized and its uses have been circumscribed and diminished – and more regulated.

We spend a lot of time in sociology classes talking about how societal structures limit opportunities and life chances for people in disadvantaged positions. We also discuss the societal dysfunctions that occur when the larger structures (institutions) of society don’t work as they should, thus signaling an imbalance that needs correction.

Structures may also propel people to behave in ways that are outside the society’s dominant norms. When a large number of people face barriers, they often create new structures that can help them navigate through or around those barriers. The Underground Railroad that facilitated escape from slavery created networks and communication techniques in the form of quilts (which provided coded directions to freedom) that operated below the surface of the dominant society.

Agency is the flip side of the structure coin. Individuals do have the freedom to act on our own choices. Commonly referred to as free will, it is true that people can make a decision to do something or they may just do it no matter what societal norms had been guiding them. No matter how many norms may exist in a society, people often behave in ways that deviate from those norms. Even when norms are written into the legal code, people break laws. Whatever barriers society may place in the path of people to reinforce the social class or caste system, some people may either break through those systems or operate completely outside them.

People are not robots programmed to perform certain functions, no matter what science fiction says about it. (Donna Haraway has written some fascinating work about cyborgs if you’d like some dense and abstract feminist/post-modern theory to read.) () Even if we do move toward more bionic implants than we could have imagined, whether or not they can control our behavior to be entirely predictable will remain to be seen.

Sociology exists because people in groups create patterns that we can analyze scientifically. There is much variation in those patterns because of the diversity of factors and that thing called agency. Yes, people in groups create patterns (as do individuals) even as there is tremendous complexity and difference within those patterns. Both structure and agency are at work in all of the data we analyze.

The terms nature and nurture are often bandied about. Are these the same as structure and agency or are they parallel yet different issues? Nature implies that certain features or dynamics are innate or inevitably present while nurture links to the impact of treatment and social interaction in creating various features or dynamics. Nature seems a lot like structure as it exists as a given and seems impervious to change. Nurture seems more like agency since it suggests that people have some ‘say in how they affect and are affected by others.

In their book The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann discuss how people create societies and then consider them as existing outside themselves and hence beyond their control. But social structure doesn’t just emerge from nowhere, it is built and maintained by the people in that society who conveniently forget or ignore that they created it. In this sense, nature could just be a term we use for phenomenon that seems given and unchangeable.

From scientific studies, we also know that our culture has a distinct fondness for dichotomous thinking. Moving between two extremes, our thoughts and discussions oscillate between right and wrong, good and bad, rich and poor, black and white, men and women. While being able to consider two things at a time may be a limitation of the human brain, a simplifying strategy, or a practice that society advocates to reinforce the amnesia that we create our society’s structures, the world is so much more complex than two opposing categories.

Use your sociology education as an opportunity to explore these issues, to peel the onion of society. As you consider the issues behind societal features we take for granted using sociological perspectives, your critical thinking skills will deepen and you will understand much more about how society really works.

Equality in Justice: Cognitive Dissonance and Fame

By Sally Raskoff

Two cases involving the rape of a young girl have been in the news: one involving Roman Polanski's arrest and the other about Elizabeth Smart's court testimony. While these cases have the “adult male-minor female” rapes as their basic similarity, most other things have been very different, especially in news reports and public reactions.

The “Polanski” case actually involves this Academy Award winning director’s flight from sentencing after his guilty plea and conviction in the rape of the 13-year-old girl. After 32 years, he was arrested recently in Switzerland to await extradition back to the United States for sentencing and additional charges of evading justice. The news reports focus on what a terrible time he’s had in life, from his family’s losses in the Holocaust to the murder of his pregnant wife by the Manson “family”, and on the fabulous movies he’s produced since living in Europe after he fled Los Angeles.

Until recently, little had been mentioned of the rape survivor, who is now an adult woman. A recent article fully identifies her and discusses the apparent civil settlement in which Polanski allegedly was to pay her half a million dollars, although no public documentation can confirm that she received those funds. Her lawyers’ requests to the court for him to pay the settlement past its due date ceased about the time she wrote a public letter stating that she thinks he should be able to return to the country, ostensibly to attend the Academy Awards show when he was nominated in 2002.

The "Smart" case involves the nine month long abduction of Utahan Elizabeth Smart. Her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, subjected her to a “plural marriage” ceremony and according to Smart repeatedly raped her. She is now 21 and gave her testimony at the mental competency hearing of Mitchell just before leaving on her religious mission to France. Mitchell is cast as a religious fanatic who told her that he was doing what the lord wanted him to do. As of this writing, he has not yet been convicted of the crime as it has not yet been established if he is mentally competent to stand trial.

Let’s look at these cases sociologically.

Note the language used in the reporting of each case. Is it clear who the victim is in each case?

Many news reports and editorials about the Polanski case lament his treatment by the justice system, and some even suggest that he is the victim. Some articles discuss the cost of bringing him back to court, which makes the taxpayers the victim. Some articles focus on how the rape survivor, the actual victim, said that he should be free to live his life and if she says that, well, we should let her decide, which reinforces the idea that he is the victim.

The Smart articles focus on her as the rape survivor and certainly do not cast Mitchell as a victim. They cast him as crazy or as a crafty rapist who acts like a religious fanatic so as not to take the blame for his actions.

The headlines use “Polanski” and “Smart”, not “Mitchell” or “Geimer”.

Polanski’s name is certainly a familiar one since he is famous. Smart has become famous as an icon of parental fear – the girl who was abducted from her bedroom at night. As is typical in rape cases, Samantha Geimer’s name was withheld when she was a minor yet she herself went public when she wrote the letter in support of Polanski. Mitchell is not a name familiar to people even though most know that some man abducted and raped Elizabeth Smart.

From this point forward, I will refer to the “Smart” case as the Mitchell case.

Note the basic features of each case: an adult man raped a young girl.

Is this contested in either case? Yes and no. Mitchell has been in a mental institution since his arrest in 2003 and the recent hearing was to establish whether or not he could stand trial. Polanski testified that he did the crime (although in his plea agreement he plead guilty to “unlawful sex with a minor”) and his latest issues revolve around his flight from the justice system to escape sentencing and serving more time. Mitchell has not been convicted yet Polanski has. However, in the news articles, Polanski’s guilt is downplayed and Mitchell’s is assumed.

Note the social class differences in each case.

While Polanski is clearly a member of the upper socioeconomic strata, Mitchell and his co-defendant wife are in the lower strata. Polanski was able to flee to Europe, continuing to make his films and generate his substantial income. While the social class status of Ms. Geimer is not fully apparent, it is likely that she and her family live a middle class life, even if she did not receive the settlement. The Smart family are firmly in the upper middle class of suburban Salt Lake City, while the Mitchell couple were basically homeless and firmly ensconced in the lower echelon of society’s social class levels.

Social class alone can explain much of the dynamics of these cases. Those with the higher class status tend to gain more favorable coverage in the press. Polanski received more favorable coverage than his victim did, and Smart certainly received more media attention than her abductor did.

One might hope that people who have been victimized would receive more careful and supportive press coverage, this certainly didn’t happen in the Polanski case.

Note the issues of fame and social power in each case

Social power derives from social class but also from fame. Smart was featured on America's Most Wanted and has spoken in public and to Congress about sexual predator issues and legislation.

Most particularly in the Polanski case, fame insulates the perpetrator from paying his full debt to the justice system. So much so that some even call into question his guilt even though that had been firmly established in court. (See Harvey Weinstein’s quote about the “so-called crime” in the Los Angeles Times). Reaction to the Polanski case avoids discussion of his guilt in this crime of rape and focuses on other issues that are not salient. Consider how Mr. Weinstein might react if a female family member of his had been the victim in this case - might he advocate the release of that person as he does Polanski?

The exploitation of women in the entertainment industry is a related topic— some may not see why having sex with someone at a photo shoot was wrong – even if she was underage and under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Some also point to the mother who dropped her off at the house where the rape took place as culpable.

However, only the rapist is responsible for the rape, no matter what bad decisions others might have made.

What isn’t being talked about?

In the Polanski case, the exploitation of women is not a topic that many are choosing to discuss. How many other girls and women have been raped by people with power over them? We’ll never know, especially if those powerful people are not held to the legal standards that govern our society.

Absent from the discussion of the Mitchell case are the cultural underpinnings of how religion played a role in the abduction and rapes. The “plural marriage” as it was called when she was first rescued, was code for rape yet the word "rape" was not uttered for some time after she was freed. That this particular crime took place in a specific religious and cultural environment with a history of patriarchy (and, decades ago, of plural marriage) isn’t a coincidence. Elizabeth Smart was raised, as most of us are, in a culture of male dominance and female obedience.

It is also likely that Smart, like Patty Hearst and many other children abducted by sexual predators, was experiencing something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome. When she was first discovered, she did not readily identify herself. When held long enough under certain circumstances, people may “go along” with their captors and not escape when they might have had the chance.

So, how can we explain the different ways that we are reacting to these cases?

While both cases have at their core the rape of a 13- or 14-year-old girl by an adult man, public discussion and reaction to these cases is notably different. Social class, power, and fame all have their influences yet cognitive dissonance is also taking place.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when people have to reconcile two conflicting ideas at the same time. We often try and alter one of the ideas to be consistent with the other. For instance, people generally want to like and respect people with fame and power. When those people do bad things, we can react in many different ways but in the Polanski case, so many years after the event, some want to believe he paid his debt to society by having lived such a troubled life. Thinking of someone as both a good person and a rapist is very difficult to reconcile. Normally we decide that someone who commits rape is no longer a good person. In this example, many people, especially many in the entertainment industry, have chosen to downplay his actions to maintain the idea that their conflicting image of him as a good person.

But the justice system doesn’t see it this way, and after all, time spent living in a Swiss chalet isn’t the same as “doing time”. How do you think we would talk about the case if Elizabeth Smart’s alleged rapist had fled the country for more than three decades and evaded justice?

Social Structure and the Subway

By Sally Raskoff

One of the hallmarks of sociological thinking is to recognize the existence and impact of structure. That society has structure is an elusive concept to many!

The ways that society is structured guides our behavior. It allows us to create and maintain order, to conform to norms, to signal innovation and change, and, inversely, to highlight when deviations from those norms and structures take place.

Consider public rapid transit – a subway station. While these may not exist in rural areas, they are quite common in urban and even suburban areas. (Yes, we do have them even in Los Angeles!) Train or bus stations in rural areas may have similar features.

Within the subway station, structures guide us to enter, pay our fees (if we don’t already have a pass), find our way to the trains, and exit the station once at our destination. Some of the structures that guide us through this path are physical and obvious, others less so.

The following photo essay includes images from the Los Angeles metro – important to know since this is a city with a relatively new system and with many people who don’t know how to navigate it. Whether this affects the way that the stations are structured, well, you can be the judge of that.

Starting as we walk into the station, you travel down a large staircase or escalator and find yourself channeled into the space, heading in one direction. Notice in the photograph the markings on the floor. They (and the walls) clearly tell you to walk in one direction – as those in the photo are doing. At the far end of the walkway, there is a more complex floor pattern and in that area one can go in multiple directions.

Once inside the station, the ticket buying area is well lit and gets your attention even if you already have a pass.

Seen from the other direction (from past the card readers – the metal stands), the area is populated and illuminated. Note the floor patterns here as well. The photos above and below are in different stations but both patterns signify activity or detail near the ticket machines and maps. If no people are present, the location of the machines is signaled by the cacophony or direction of patterns on the floor.

Once inside, there is usually waiting to do. Eating and drinking are prohibited, so if you have to wait for your train there is not much to keep you entertained. In LA’s stations, each stop is decorated differently using public art that pertains to the history and economy of that area. Tiled art and creative benches are included in each station.

The art keeps people from focusing on each other. In such a stuffy and somewhat dark enclosed area, it seems important not to encourage people to look or interact with others. The subway is a unique social space where people of different backgrounds and social classes find themselves—perhaps for the only time that day-- in the same, small space. Also, most people who ride the subways or buses have come across a person whose mental state was altered and may be afraid of encountering people like that again. The art and signs serve to help people feel safe in subway stations and offer diversions from potentially uncomfortable encounters.

The hardest part of getting to know a subway station is knowing which side of the platform you need to be on to going in your intended direction. While the signposts are there, they are not always readily apparent.

This next photo shows a hopeful scene – the train is approaching. Its direction is noted at the top of the image, next to the exit sign. Many people come down those stairs and look around multiple times to find which train they want – few actually look up! Once they do, typically after searching the wall alongside the train’s path, they relax and go to the correct side.

If you gaze down to the floor on the platform, it is much plainer than upstairs. Yet I noticed this yellow patch (below).

What might this yellow patch be? Most don’t notice it. People congregate all along the pathway, often ignoring these patches. They have raised bumps thus one might surmise that they have an important function.

Note that there are a few of them, spaced apart but not in sequential or even intervals.

Once the next train came, I noticed their most important function!

These yellow patches highlight where some of the trains’ doors will stop! Not all doors, but at least one per train car. The people who know this, gather around those patches while those unaccustomed to these subtle structural guides may have to run towards a door in fear of having the doors shut before they reach them.

Once on the train, the seating shows you clearly that the train may run one way or the other as the seats face both directions.

There are rails everywhere to hold onto in case one is standing or getting while the train is in motion. What might be another function of those rails?

In the photo below, there is a vertical rail in the middle of the floor in front of the doors.

Do the rails adequately and effectively mark the personal space of the train riders?

Some of the problems that trains have is that of pickpockets and frotteurists (people who rub up against or bump into people for purposes of sexual gratification). Do these rails assist in protecting people against such practices?

The concepts of manifest and latent functions can be helpful here. While the intent and design of the rails are for stability during the ride (manifest or intended functions), the latent (or unintended) function is that they actually may encourage close physical proximity, which may explain why pickpockets and frotteurists find trains so inviting.

Take a good look at the previous photo and the next two photos of the train car.

What other subtle (or not so subtle) structures guide our behavior?

Notice the posters on the front of the seating area and on the walls.

These Metro posters include the messages:

“Safety begins with you” The image is a hand holding onto the rail.

“We’re watching. Are you?” The image is a shoulder patch of the LA County Sheriff.

“Which one is working undercover?” The image is of train riders in their seats, three men and a woman.

“Better safe than sorry” The image is of a purse under a seat

“Planee su viaje en cualquier momento” which translates to “Plan your trip at any time” The image is of the Metro Trip Planner.

The majority of messages are about safety and point out that one is not alone in that train. There are cameras installed in every car but these posters remind you that there is not just passive security through surveillance, there may be undercover officers and that everyone should be vigilant.

Interestingly, the one message in Spanish is not about safety, but about the convenience of the website trip planning feature.

What would be the effect of the safety posters for riders who speak only Spanish?

Some criminological theories state that people are more apt to commit crimes of opportunity – crimes that they would not be caught doing. Do these posters inhibit such crimes?

Once you leave your train and head out of the station, the same structures guide you out.

People head for the lighted ticket area and up the stairs and escalators that brought them underground.

As one heads up those stairs, the world beckons with its more diffuse and diverse signals of where to go and what to do. Our behavior becomes much less controlled and guided outside the metro station. Do people feel different once they emerge into that space? What other examples of spaces reflecting social structure can you think of?

The Wages of War: The Oldest Profession

By Sally Raskoff

The other day I heard from someone currently on active duty in the Army. During a discussion on the difficulties of overseas deployments in wartime, he mentioned that female soldiers often make extra money “servicing” their fellow soldiers (i.e., sexual services if you didn’t get my innuendo). He said that this was common knowledge and due to the fact that the deployments are long and there were so few available women, especially American women.

Are you shocked? Surprised?

Historically, there are usually prostitutes available where a military congregates whether they are provided by the local economies or by the sponsoring governments themselves. Rarely, however, are those selling their bodies also members of the active duty military. (For example, the Comfort Women of World War Two)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_girl_from_one_of_the_Japanese_Army%27s_%27comfort_battalions%27.jpg

Whether or not my acquaintance is right about this phenomenon, the pressures of the situation – and the structure of the situation –could easily lead to this kind of prostitution.

After I was active duty (Air Force) and started taking college classes, I wrote most of my sociology class papers analyzing my experiences in the military. This was a few decades ago when women made up a smaller percentage of the armed forces, but today women are still a minority – less than 15% - of those on active duty.

At that time, it was very clear that a woman, no matter what her job skills, was considered “available” unless she was married. If a woman stayed single, the chances that she would develop a “reputation” were quite high. It didn’t matter if she was exploring her sexuality with one or many partners or if she was celibate, many colleagues saw all single women as fair game. A civilian parallel is the phenomenon that early developing girls are sometimes called “sluts” whether they are sexually active or not. (Leora Tanenbaum wrote a great book on this phenomenon called Slut! Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation.)

When I was in the military, the pressure to get married was intense, especially for those concerned about maintaining a good or professional reputation. The service also encouraged marriage as it made more stable soldiers even if those soldiers were married to each other. Married soldiers got paid more, better housing, more services and family support.

Anyway, back to what my friend was saying about female soldiers prostituting themselves.

When does prostitution occur? The research literature points out a number of patterns. The buyer buys sex when they can’t get it elsewhere or don’t want the encumbrances from getting it elsewhere. The seller sells sex when they have no other options.

Alienation exists in each case as each person is exchanging their body for cash, thus their body becomes an object and commodity rather than remain a personal subject of experience and emotion.

There is more prostitution in societies with greater gender inequality since the more powerful gender can exploit the less powerful in a variety of ways. When there is more gender equality, those in the different gender groups are considered more equal and thus there’s less exploitation based on perceived differences in value. Social interactions are much less likely to enter into the commercial arena where pricing and negotiation assume power differences and competition.

What is it like to be deployed, especially in today’s wars?

Isolating. Alienating. Fearful. One doesn’t know if one is going home intact or at all.

Many members of the military struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and the suicide rate is higher in the military than it is for the general population. It often takes outside organizations to help soldiers deal with the conditions of their service, such as Suicide.org and Gold Star Families Speak Out, but those organizations are not meant for those currently deployed.

When you consider these unique stresses, is it surprising or shocking that an underground economy of sexual services emerges on overseas deployments, especially when outside purveyors of sexual services are not available in the areas to which these troops are deployed?

It’s not surprising at all when you consider: (1) single female soldiers face intense pressure to be socially and sexually active; (2) there are a minority of women compared to men thus there are not equal opportunities for heterosexual social interaction; (3) there is much inequality between women and men as men are more likely than women to have positions higher in the authority structure; (4) people are isolated from home, family, and even those in the host country; (5) they are in fear of their lives and may have no hope for their futures.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:755th_at_Bagram.jpg

An additional factor has to do with the age of these soldiers; most are in their twenties, some older, some younger. For these generations, oral sex is not as taboo as it was for previous generations. In fact, to many in these generations (and some others), oral sex isn’t really considered sex. Rather, it is something friends may do in the absence of a steady partner. And yet oral sex is considered a form of sexual intercourse, particularly by the Centers for Disease Control, and one can spread sexually transmitted diseases through it.

If indeed some soldiers are making extra money by doing sexual favors for their colleagues, it can be explained by the structural demands of the overseas deployments.

If our military leaders wanted to decrease the chances of this happening, what could they do to ease the strain of these conditions and ensure an effective egalitarian military force?

Cultural Perspectives and Assumptions

By Sally Raskoff

We see the world through our own particular perspective and often assume that others share our views. Public events reveal these different perspectives, such as the conflict between Professor Henry Louis Gates and the police officer called to Dr. Gates’ home about an attempted break-in. Thoughts on this incident varied based on one’s experiences and cultural perspectives.

As I read thought about the differing views of the Gates incident, I was reminded of a summer trip we took in 2006 to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana. This is the place commonly known as the site of Custer's last stand. We were on the trip with some people who were really into discussing the battle and the strategies that the U.S. Cavalry could have used to prevail. I wasn’t comfortable with that particular discussion for many reasons.

For those who don’t remember their history, this is the notable battle in which Native Americans (specifically, Lakota-Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho) and the U.S. Cavalry (and their Native American scouts) ultimately clashed and both sides suffered tremendous loss of life. The twelve companies of the cavalry fighting this battle perished, including its leader, General Custer. My travel companions and many others feel that the cavalry underestimated the number of Native Americans or that their strategies were insufficient. Although the native peoples “won” this battle, they too suffered tremendous loss and they ultimately did not win the war.

The battle took place in June of 1876, and my visit was on the 130^th anniversary. The terrain there consists of beautiful rolling hills, and it is hard to see who or what is on the other side.

Once you get to the battlefield, the most obvious feature is the monument on top of Last Stand Hill. In 1879, three years after the battle, this location officially became a National Cemetery controlled by the War Department; in 1881, the twelve foot high granite monument was placed on top of Last Stand Hill.

Also at the top of Last Stand Hill is an enclosed area that delineates where Custer and many of his men fell. The fence around this area and the headstones invoke the common cultural markers of a cemetery.

If you move back from this hill, the view is quite grand (see photo below) and the granite marker and the cemetery fence are visible from many different angles.

The park map (see below) also shows this area as the focus of activity both historically and currently. Most of the tourists in this area were quiet and reverential, realizing that many people died at this location.

White headstones are placed wherever cavalry members fell. When you look over the expanse of the terrain, the white markers are obvious in contrast to the grass.

These two photos (above and below) were taken atop Last Stand Hill, looking south and east. The darker green grasses grow closer to the enclosed area mentioned above while the rest of the area is left to grow naturally.

If you’re at the top of this hill and you turn around to look to the north/east, you will see the image below – an iron sculpture of an Indian riding through the hills.

What you are seeing is the top of the Indian Memorial.

In 1940, the National Park Service took control of the cemetery and in 1991 it was renamed the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and plans began for a memorial to the Native Americans who perished here. By 1997, the design was selected and construction began.

The memorial is on the other side of the hill from the Custer cemetery but one can still see the granite marker atop the hill. This new memorial consists of a round area with inscriptions on one side framed by the sculpture of the riders on the other side.

I found it to be quite beautiful and reverential, comparably as moving as the cemetery on the other side of the hill. However, my reverie in this space was interrupted by families traipsing through, children running and jumping up and down the steps in front of the sculpture. Tourists behaved appropriately on the other side of the hill, quieting their children and, if they were old enough, pointing out why. Few ventured to this side but many of those who did, in the time of my visit, seemed to forget they were still in a cemetery.

The quotes on the inside portion of the wall reminded people of what had happened there, yet I noticed that many of the tourists did not take the time to read them. (see photo below of two markers) They were walking through the space as if it were a rest area.

The design of this memorial was intended to serve many functions but also to serve as a ”weeping wound” in the earth.

As you leave Last Stand Hill and take the many trails throughout the rest of the park, there are some other interesting sociological aspects to notice.

Off the main trails, there are headstones. There are paved paths to the white headstones. In addition to those white headstones for the cavalry, there are dark red granite headstones for some of the Native Americans who died. Those that are relatively close to a trail also have a path to them, although they are not paved. The photo below shows two vistas with headstones, red granite on top, white on the bottom, from one of the trails.

I noticed immediately that the red headstones were quite difficult to see whereas the white markers were obvious, even from quite a distance. I was curious as to why the white headstones had paved paths while the red headstones had identifiable yet unpaved paths.

Once back at the Visitor Center, we attended a park ranger talk. I was fascinated to learn that all the rangers who do the talks about the park are themselves Native American and they tell the story that is not often told. They tell the story from the Native American point of view. Thus we learned more about how this was the culminating battle in which they were fighting to keep their way of life from these invaders.

They mentioned that the paths to the red granite headstones were not paved because that honored their culture while the white headstones were paved since that was in sync with that particular culture. Thus, when ceremonies were done to honor the dead, people used the paved paths to lay items on the white headstones and people also took the unpaved yet very clear paths to the red headstones. I also learned that the red headstones were placed in 1999.

We also learned some new facts about the battle. The conscripts in the cavalry at that time were mostly new immigrants, Italian and Irish, who did not necessarily speak English well or at all, thus the troops did not always understand the officers’ orders. This added to the problems that army was having in fighting this battle.

On the main building of the Visitor Center, the words of Black Elk are clearly placed (see photo below). I would have loved to ask everyone who passed by how they interpreted those words, but alas, I did not.

Visiting this site with acquaintances who were focused on calvary strategies challenged me. I used my sociological analytical skills to see as many sides of the situation as possible and to consider the impact of culture on its creation and on how people experience it as tourists and local residents.

I would encourage everyone to visit historical locations and use your sociological imagination to assess what you see. Don’t rely on your first impressions or assumptions. Instead, gather information about what you see so that you can compare the different sources and decide what makes sense to you. Consider alternative viewpoints, especially those that are contrary to your own.

Click here for further information about Little Bighorn.

The Social Construction of Sex: Intersex as Evidence

By Sally Raskoff

In our society we take for granted that sex has only two categories: male and female. We learn in school that sex is caused or created by chromosomes, XX for females and XY for males. We assume that the typical path is that those sex categories create bodies with male or female characteristics. We teach in sociology classes that we then socially construct or build gender on top of the sex assignment based on those body characteristics.

All of this is founded upon the premise that sex has just those two categories. We tend to ignore the facts about sex that suggest that sex itself is also a socially constructed category.

The case of Caster Semenya has hit the news. She is an amazing athlete in track and field whose abilities were evident as a child. As she continues to win races, the controversy grows about her sex – is she a she or really a he? The Los Angeles Times published an article questioning the fairness of her competing as a woman since she appears to be a man.

A subsequent article cast her as a real person who has been teased since childhood about her appearance and abilities. However, an Associated Press video accompanying the story sounds suspicious, especially when they play a recording of her voice and assume everyone will hear it as a male voice. Note that the video also shows many images of her body and focuses on the area where breasts or curves would be expected on a typical female body. Semenya's story reminds us that biological sex is not always clear-cut.

Other articles in the Times bring up the dominant perspective on the variants of sex categories. The article below, to its credit, brings in the concept of Intersex that acknowledges how people may have variants of chromosomes and bodies that do not align with the expected XX female and XY male.

When the chromosomes present in a developing embryo give the instructions for hormones to work on the tissues and create the sex-specific physical structures, the hormones may not flow as instructed, the tissues may respond differently, or, later upon puberty, wholly different things may happen.

For example, a condition called 5 alpha reductase deficiency causes male infants to appear female, yet upon puberty they develop into fully functioning males. In societies without the medical resources that we have, they raise these children as girls and then accept them as men upon puberty (in the Dominican Republic and Papua New Guinea the condition occurs with frequency). However, in our society, we might surgically alter the person as a child or upon puberty to keep the gender assignment consistent.

Our dominant perspectives of sex and gender frames Intersex as a medical anomaly. However, using sociology, we can understand this situation more clearly.

Scholars disagree about the incidence of babies born with some form of Intersex condition. Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling suggested that Intersex occurs at a rate of 1 in 2,000 births, yet other recent estimates range from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000. Either way, this happens fairly often!

In sports, where the sex distinction dictates which races you run and with whom you compete, the issue has been paramount. Yet the controversies are not often publicly discussed. The Los Angeles Times reports that eight female athletes in the last Olympics had XY chromosomes but were reinstated when it was also determined that they were physiologically female. (And isn’t it interesting that only women are scrutinized for their biological sex?)

Did you know that Texas marriage laws define their “marriage protection” statute by chromosomes and that a female with XY chromosomes can legally marry her female partner with XX chromosomes even though the state does not allow same-sex marriage? This could be useful for couples whose members include either transsexuals or Intersexuals.

In any case, our society has trouble understanding that these variations in sex may be part of our diversity as a species. Just as sexual orientation (though we have trouble with that one too) or other human characteristics that vary biological sex apparently can too. We accept that hair and eye color varies and that those characteristics have no implicit meaning yet we can’t seem to do the same for biological sex.

Sociologically, seeing how the cultural norms favor one category over another for specific types of traits demonstrates not only who has power in this society but also how we attribute meaning.

If we don’t allow ourselves to consider that there may be more than two types of sex categories, what does that mean to us as a culture and to people as individuals?

Beyond the issue of power and powerful groups based on membership in the privileged categories, what does it mean and what does it feel like to be in a non-dominant category?

In the past few years, groups of intersexed individuals have formed. The Intersex Society of North America has actually closed their doors but their website is still a useful resource. One of the ISNA founders, Cheryl Chase, has a strong presence on the internet. Organisation Intersex International is an active group providing perspective and resources for those who are part of the intersexed community or those who want to learn more.

Sociologically speaking, is there a social movement in the making? Perhaps as the experiences of intersexed people continue to be made public others will speak out and challenge the either/or notion of sex, which excludes those that don’t neatly fit into one category or another.

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20090819_Caster_Semenya.jpg