Everyday Sociology Blog

Sociology & Tiaras

By Hilary Levey

Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in Health Policy

Every Wednesday night at 9 pm I sit down in front of the TV, put on TLC, pull out my notebook, and do research for two hours. Yes, that’s right—watching the pageant shows Toddlers & Tiaras and the new show, King of the Crown, is part of my research. Back in 1999, when I was a sophomore in college, I did a research paper on child beauty pageants for a required sociology class. Little did I know that a decade later I would still be writing about pageants, but now as a professional sociologist!

Ever since the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, Americans have been simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by child beauty pageants. Many people didn’t know about these events until the death of JonBenét, in late 1996, but I have found that child beauty pageants have existed in the United States in one form or another since the 1800s. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the growth and development of a variety of events that are precursors to the child beauty pageants of today, including May Day festivals, baby parades, and beautiful and healthy baby contests.

All of these festivals, parades, and contests started at about the same historical moment. Such child-centered contests were part of a larger movement that began to socially value children in new ways. It was during this time period, from roughly the 1870s to the 1930s, that child labor was eradicated, compulsory education began, and children came to be valued as “economically ‘worthless’ but emotionally ‘priceless,’” according to sociologist Viviana A. Zelizer.. This re-evaluation of childhood helped contribute to the development of distinct children’s spheres, like clothing designed especially for children (see Daniel Thomas Cook’s work on kids’ clothes).

The Asbury Park baby parade was arguably the most famous of the baby parades and contests that started at the turn of the twentieth century, rewarding children for their looks and their costumes. In its heyday, in 1893, it drew 30,000 spectators; in fact, it was so popular that Thomas Edison made one of his first movies of the event, on September 12, 1904.

As the popularity of parades and contests declined at the turn of the twentieth century, modern beauty pageants, for adult women, began to hit their stride. The first “live” beauty contest is said to have occurred in Reheboth Beach, Delaware in 1880. After that, pageants began springing up at carnivals and fairs and on beaches along both coasts, with pageants available for every age and body type.

The most famous, successful, and enduring of all of these is the Miss America Pageant , founded by a group of Atlantic City businessmen in 1921. These men wanted to keep visitors on the shore after Labor Day, the traditional end of the summer season, so they came up with the idea of a bathing beauty contest. They held the first Miss America contest on September 6, 1921 (though it didn’t come to be known by that name until 1941) with only seven “bathing beauties.” By the next year there were 57 contestants, and from there the Pageant continued to grow.

After the Miss America Pageant first appeared on television in 1954—breaking all previous viewing records with twenty seven million viewers—child pageants as we know them today started to develop in the void left by the closure of the parades and contests (which was mainly because of fears of polio in the 1950s). If you’ve seen Little Miss Sunshine, then you have a pretty good idea of how these pageants work.

One the biggest questions the public usually has after watching Little Miss Sunshine or one of the TLC shows is: Why do people, almost always mothers, put their little kids in these pageants? I’ve given you a bit of historical background, but I want to suggest a few explanations from other academic disciplines, before turning to my sociological analysis. Psychological explanations usually draw on the idea that many parents vicariously live through their children. Pageant moms are looking for self-affirmation when they are told their child is beautiful; they may be frustrated with their own lives and appearances and push their daughters to succeed in ways that they have not.

Economists focus more on the investment these moms are making in their children. Here the idea is that someday, their children will grow up to be successful (perhaps related to their participation in these events), and they will then have more resources to take care of the parents when they are elderly. Or, for some families, the pageants provide the possibility of a financial windfall. For example, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears both did child beauty pageants. On a smaller fame-scale, some pageant contestants can earn money in other ways. Remember the cringe-worthy final answer of Miss South Carolina Teen a few years ago?

Caitlin has now parlayed that “answer” into TV appearances, highlighted on TLC’s King of the Crown, and a recent commercial. Other pageant contestants use the scholarship money awarded to pageant winners. For all its faults, some of which I write about here, the Miss America Pageant remains the largest source of college scholarship money for women in the world.

And this leads me to part of my sociological analysis of why mothers enroll their very young daughters in child beauty pageants, like those shown on TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras (for a more complete analysis of participation in child beauty pageants, check out a paper I recently published in the journal Childhood). The majority of the pageant moms I met explain that they have their children involved to help ensure that they will be successful later in life.

One pageant mom explains, “I just want to see my daughters go somewhere—go somewhere in life. I didn’t. I ended up having kids right away. I’m stuck at home now. I’m doing this for them.” The idea that pageants can teach children specific skills that will help girls be successful was brought up literally hundreds of times in interviews with pageant mothers. There are eight major skills mentioned by moms (in decreasing order of frequency): learning confidence, learning to be comfortable on stage and in front of strangers, learning poise, learning how to present the self and dress appropriately, learning to practice, learning good sportsmanship, learning how to be more outgoing, and learning to listen. Of course, these are lessons and skills the moms want their children to learn and the children may not actually be learning them…But that’s a subject for another blog entry!

What do you think—can you think of other sociological explanations that explain participation in child beauty pageants? What might some “big name” sociological theorists, like Pierre Bourdieu and Thorstein Veblen, offer as explanations? Have you ever thought about doing a beauty pageant, perhaps even to help cover the costs of college?

Postmodern Theory and the Balloon Boy Hoax

By Karen Sternheimer

By now you have probably heard that the runaway balloon supposedly containing a six-year-old boy was a hoax, according to his mother's admission. The story received hours of “breaking news” coverage on October 15, and has since consumed countless hours of news coverage about the scam perpetrated on the news networks and concerned viewers.

If French sociologist Jean Baudrillard were still alive, I dare say he would not be surprised that a father would allegedly cook up such a scheme, or that he contacted the local news, the police, or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He might even say he’s surprised it took so long for something like this to happen.

As I recently blogged, Baudrillard described our contemporary mediated age as one where the boundary between image and reality has blurred to the point where they can no longer be neatly separated. Where once we might have had clearer distinctions between entertainment and reality, the two have fused, and the 24-hour news cycles and the Internet have helped them come together.

It has never been easier to enter into what was once a rarified space of celebrity: with YouTube and “reality” television, fame is increasingly based on promoting one’s private life rather than on professional achievements. It’s not that there weren’t people who were “famous for being famous” in the past, but we have so many more avenues to achieve instant celebrity now. There are more celebrities and they get famous faster. We likely forget about them more quickly now too.

Cable news is a big part of this equation. In competing for viewers of “fictional” programming and the myriad of other entertainment choices we have now, the news has morphed into infotainment: a hybrid that is a perfect example of Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality.

Baudrillard suggests that hypperreality creates a uniquely entertaining experience, what he called the “thrill of the real.” This thrill is something we might experience when that “Breaking News” banner unfurls on the screen. But the thrill constantly weakens and extinguishes itself unless something even newer happens. So news becomes more about live action excitement than analysis and investigation.

Perhaps that’s why the same networks that pre-empted their regular programming to cover this story for hours later turned on the family by trotting out angry commentators condemning the family and talking with legal analysts about the charges they should face. The news networks sent reporters to dig up dirt on the family and reported that they couldn’t find evidence that the parents worked steadily, and interviewed neighbors and other acquaintances on camera to malign the father’s character.

Let’s face it, the news networks that covered this event got Punk'd (another example of postmodernity where celebrities thought they were living their private lives but were in fact part of a television show) but seem reluctant to admit it. Maybe behind the scenes news directors will see this as a wake-up call about the folly of chasing shiny objects—literally in this case—during a time when they could be covering other more meaningful stories in greater depth. I’d like to think that the next time a story like this “breaks”—and you know there will be a next time—news directors will think carefully about how much attention it really deserves.

Yes, the Heene parents deserve the bulk of blame for breaking the law, and for using their children to fulfill their own dreams of fame. They took advantage of our fascination with the real, the private, and the exciting. While they might not reap the financial rewards for diving into the fishbowl for the rest of us to watch, many clearly have (I believe their names are Jon and Kate).

All of this recalls the 1998 movie, The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey’s character finds out that his entire life is actually a television show, and that everyone in his life has been cast by the producers. Truman is devastated to find out that his whole world is a set.

Fast forward a decade later, and many people clamor to turn their lives into a television set, to convert their friends and family members into cast mates. Yes, money and attention are huge motivators. Baudrillard might add that the “real world” and the “television set” can no longer be distinguished from one another. It could be that many of us feel like life might be more thrilling if someone was watching, and that to matter in the twenty-first century is to be observed by others, a character in our own Truman Show. What other sociological theories do you think might help explain this phenomenon?

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.

Soap Operas and Postmodern Theory

By Karen Sternheimer

On September 18^th, the CBS daytime drama Guiding Light aired its final episode after 72 years on the air (fifteen years on radio and 57 on television). Ratings declined as they have for many soap operas over the past few years, leading to the network’s decision to end the longest running program in television history. Both my grandmother and great-grandmother watched the show religiously, and its end represents the passing of more than just a television show. It marks a major social shift.

Daytime melodramas became popular during a time when women spent less time in the paid labor force than they did in the early and later years of the twentieth century. In pre-television radio days, these dramas became known as soap operas because manufacturers of cleaning products advertised heavily to the mostly female audience.

The content of the soaps offered an escapist fantasy of outlandish plots that could temper the tedium of regular housework. For the uninitiated, soap opera characters regularly commit infidelity, plot each others’ deaths, come back from the dead, grow from childhood to adulthood after a year’s absence, and marry and divorce at a rate that would make Elizabeth Taylor’s eight marriages seem normal. Good and evil characters can change overnight and even come back in the form of another person, especially if a surgeon managed a scar-less face transplant.

When I would visit my grandmother, I would hear the plot twists unfold to dramatic music, watch the camera zoom into an actor’s dramatic facial expression and think that this style of storytelling seemed so different than many other programs on the air today.

One might argue that reality shows are a twenty-first century answer to twentieth century melodramas. For those who watch them, reality shows suggest that we are getting an inside glimpse into someone’s private life, usually someone whose life is marked by drama (or edited to highlight--if not produce--dramatic incidents). Most viewers are now savvy enough to know that reality shows are not entirely unfiltered windows into participants’ lives, but it is their illusion of reality that is part of the interest.

This fascination highlights some of the ideas of postmodern theory, particularly French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. According to Baudrillard, the real and the simulated are no longer distinguishable. He argues that in our media age, images of reality and reality itself interact so much so that they have become interchangeable.

You can think of this as like a mirror that reflects an image from another mirror so much that the original image can no longer be identified. Baudriallard calls the outcome of this endless interaction hyperreality, and suggests in his 1983 book Simulations that we are fascinated by the "thrill of the real," particularly because in his view "reality" has imploded with simulation.

There are certainly limits to the application of postmodern theory, but it might help us understand why traditional twentieth century soaps are watching their audiences dwindle. Yes, with more women in the labor force fewer are at home during the day to watch television. And as women have more opportunities outside of the home they might find their lives less mundane and therefore would be less interested in melodrama.

Despite including younger characters, part of the soaps’ recent challenge has been that their audiences have aged and younger viewers have not begun watching in large number. A 2008 Boston Globe article describes how producers attempted to adopt the style of reality shows to attract new viewers. In particular, they sometimes use smaller cameras to mirror the informality of reality shows. But perhaps the biggest hurdle is that soaps are a product of twentieth-century modernity. Audiences may now prefer to observe people “being themselves” in our hyper-mediated age.

We can also look at the genre itself and see how it does not reflect our postmodern condition, where reality itself seems more entertaining than fiction. Soaps are deliberately unreal, asking viewers to enter a fantasy world and suspend their disbelief. We know the characters are played by actors, even if sometimes fans blur the boundary and think of the actor as their character. But the actors and producers make no claim that their character is real.

Realities shows like the Real Housewives and the Kardashian family shows, however, ask us to enjoy the illusion of reality itself by suggesting to us that these programs are depictions of real events. The stories are not limited to a television time slot: events can develop in blogs, tweets, texts, or even in the news, as pregnancies or marriages are reported by the press. Further complicating things, reality show participants are called casts and shows can win Emmys.

I think back to my grandmother, who to my knowledge had no interest in reality shows, and her mother before her, who knew nothing of them since she lived well before they existed. For those coming of age in an era of multimedia, a fantasy melodrama might not be as interesting as something that bleeds into many other forms of media. Rather than just different content, the different forms of media attract audiences today. How else might Baudrillard’s theory help explain today’s media environment?

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?

Courtroom Dramaturgy

By Sally Raskoff

I just finished a week of jury duty. In my experience, lawyers on either side of a case don’t typically like sociologists on a jury but in this case, I was chosen. I was glad to do my civic duty of serving on a jury, and I was fascinated by the rituals and rigid structure of the events.

When jurors walk into the building, they’re welcomed by metal detectors and uniformed sheriffs.. No knitting needles, knives, or handcuffs are allowed.

Signs instruct visitors to remove sunglasses and not to chew gum, eat, or drink. You must wear a Juror badge everywhere you go, even during breaks, so that those involved in the case will know not to talk around you.

In the assembly room before we were selected, we were advised to turn off our cell phones and to use them only in the hallway, if at all. We were given the “handbook” (a flyer) with an outline of what to expect and what to wear. (I actually neglected to read it until the third day of my service).

The courtroom itself is a highly structured space, intended and effective in regulating the behavior of those in it. The judge’s seating area in the center-back of the room is elevated above all others; we couldn’t see what the desk looks like up there. The witness stand and jury box, on one side of the judge, allow for a clear view of each other, with the separation of the low wall enclosing the jury box. The witness stand is elevated as are the second tier of the jury seats, though neither are elevated as high as the judge is.

The court reporter sits in front of the judge, and in front of that are the two tables for the prosecution and defense, evenly spaced in front of the judge. Over on the other side of the judge, to counterbalance the witness stand, is the clerk’s area, probably the largest and busiest desk in the room. On the other side of the room, by the defense table, is the bailiff’s table, complete with a phone that rings surprisingly often. And, of course, between this entire area and the door through which we enter are the rows of seats for onlookers.

During some off-the-record moments during the trial, I also noticed that the lights in the ceiling were not evenly spaced as they tend to be in most rooms. More lights were over the clerk’s desk than over the jury box and over the court reporter, defense, and prosecution areas while very few were in the onlooker’s gallery.

The subtle differences in lighting, coupled with the elevation changes in seating reinforce the patterns of attention in the room. Most of the action occurs from the defense and prosecution tables as they take their turns getting up to speak. The elevation of the witness stand commands your attention when someone is sitting there. And, of course, the judge, elevated the most, commands the most attention even if there is no movement or verbal statements coming from that judge.

All of this physical structure sets the foundation for the social structure and rituals that reinforce the serious nature of the proceedings.

The judge is referred to as ”the court”: he or she is not representing a person, they are representing the constitution and legal system. The lawyers must always request to approach the witness rather than walk up to them without the court’s permission.

As the jury enters and leaves the room, the attorneys stand.

Much of what you see in television shows and movies does reflect the structure and behaviors of a courtroom, although real life moves much more slowly and without a clear story arc. Rarely are there exciting moments of suspense. It is actually sometimes a struggle to stay awake and focused on the proceedings, especially if you aren’t interested in the legal terms and processes.

However, the ritualism of behaviors reinforced the serious nature of the setting. The presence of the defendant also served to remind us that these issues related to someone’s life and were not some abstract issue.

When the judge, lawyers, and court reported moved outside the back doors for a sidebar, people stayed in their seats yet some talked quietly, drank their water, or looked over their reading materials.

All of this reminded me of Erving Goffman front stage/back stage conceptualization of performance. Front and back stage performances take place in different locations. The courtroom as the front stage is obvious and the back stage could be the area behind where sidebars take place. However, I got the impression that the actual front stage is wherever the judge was – since the courtroom became a break room once the judge had exited. I assume the court reporter kept recording events and statements and the lawyers kept their performance going as they discussed things with the judge. We maintained our performance as jurors when court was in session – when the judge was in the room.

Thus when court was out of session – when the judge exited the room – we were allowed to break our performance albeit not completely. We did chat but in hushed tones; we did drink our water although quickly and quietly.

Because the bailiff and defendant also stayed in the room, they continued their performance as the bailiff kept eyes on the defendant and the defendant kept still in the seat.

I spent a total of five days in this courtroom yet it wasn’t until the fourth afternoon, when we went to the jury room to deliberate, that we got to see that back area. It was indeed a hallway, with the jury room almost directly behind the courtroom door. The hallway extended the length of the building and, I imagine, held the office where the sidebars take place and three other jury rooms and office for the other courtrooms on that floor. We only got to traverse the distance from the courtroom door to the juror’s room door and back again.

Once in the jury room, we were left alone, although there was a phone to contact the bailiff, our one connection with the court. We kept our performance going as we deliberated and discussed, for the first time, our reactions and opinions about the case and the evidence presented. We read the legal instructions and voted our opinions on the counts before us.

Our jury room front stage performance remained intact until we called the bailiff to communicate that we had concluded our deliberations and reached unanimous decisions on all counts in the case. While we were waiting to be called back into court, we relaxed a bit and chatted more informally about the case and other matters.

Thus with both the courtroom and jury room, the concepts of front stage and back stage can be applied to different locations, but also to the same space when the roles and purposes change. Once the formal process is concluded, what was a performance of front stage behavior can quickly become a variant of back stage behavior without any spatial movement at all.

Economics, Education, and Anomie

By Sally Raskoff

It’s been really hard not to see the world from a Marxian perspective in recent days.

As my home state, California, implodes financially and other states and the federal government experience instability, I keep hearing Marx whispering in my ear, “Our material conditions and productive activities create and maintain all other societal institutions.”

As the economy has faltered, other societal institutions are following suit. Cuts to education have already begun and welfare services seem to be next. As unemployment remains high – and those figures only count those who are actively looking for work – more businesses are failing, storefronts empty out, and more people are on the street selling wares or fruit or holding signs asking for money, shelter, or food.

It may be easy to forget that government exists to distribute our societal resources, those public goods to which we all must have access. To do that, they depend on tax revenues as their funding to then provide services to the people. Services such as education prepare future and current generations for civic life and jobs, public health infrastructure to keep us healthy with clean water and sewage systems, welfare services for those who cannot provide for themselves in the short term or the long term.

The government has less money to spend in these lean times, since their income depends on productive work by businesses and people. Thus government must be as efficient as possible, cut programs, and/or raise tax rates in the efforts to balance budgets.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported on legislators’ discussions to cut programs, regardless of the other two issues. For example, many states are considering or already cutting educational programs and services, such as classes and educational loan forgiveness programs.

At my own college, our trustees voted to cut our second summer session. This doesn’t sound like a huge problem since we still have the first session. However, our first session was designed to be small to deal with budget issues in this fiscal year while the second session was to be rather large. We had expected many university students to come to our community college and take lower division courses since their universities had cut those types of classes in their summer sessions. So, cutting the second session leaves us with a tiny summer session and the lack of opportunity for both university students and our own students who had that one last class to take before transferring to the university. We know that more cuts are coming for the fall session too.

Cutting these programs bars people from opportunities, from transferring to universities and from re-training into new jobs. Couple these lack of educational opportunities with the cuts in other social programs, and one might wonder how we will be able to create a functioning economy!

While our economy is in need of some radical re-structuring – I often wonder how the feudalists felt as their economic system was crumbing and capitalism was emerging around them – the institutions tied to it will also require some rebuilding. It will not be easy living through these times but it is quite exciting, sociologically speaking. Such change certainly does not occur quickly, although its does seem that things change more quickly now than they had in the past.

Emile Durkheim would identify the division of labor and interdependence in such a complex society as the social glue to keep us functioning as a society. While computer programmers, nurses, café servers, and teachers all do contribute to society and do depend on each other, what happens when those people lose their jobs? Durkheim also noted that during times of flux like these anomie, or a sense of normlessness can develop, where people don’t feel as connected to one another and are therefore more likely to violate rules and laws.

Returning to a Marxian perspective, we might also ask, “Who benefits from the status quo?” Who may be profiting from maintaining one of the few industrialized nations with limited access to higher education?

Social Theory and the NBA Finals

By Sally Raskoff

During this year’s NBA finals, I found myself less focused on basketball, and more on the players and on how they adorn themselves. The uniforms and tattoos are only some aspects of their costumes. It was their “arm covers”, for lack of a better word, that caught my eye – the close fitting sleeves that run from wrist to upper arm.

Since I was watching the game with a lot of fans, I asked them what those covers were for and I got almost as many answers as there were people in the room. The most prevalent responses had to do with sports ergonomics (it keeps their shooting arm “warm” as the spandex supports better circulation) and enables modesty or prevents them from being fined for tattoos the league might find offensive.

Sociologically speaking, it occurs to me that the functionality is only one interesting aspect of the “shooting arm sleeve”. Instead of analyzing this phenomenon from a functionalist perspective, which would focus on the benefit and overall purpose of the sleeve, the combination of symbolic interactionist and conflict perspective can highlight the importance of the sleeve. Symbolic interactionist theories focus on how we construct a sense of identity in social settings, while conflict theorists consider the ways in which these identities are constrained by economic forces.

Drawing on symbolic interactionism, it is apparent that many professional athletes use tattooing as a form of expression. This subject caught enough interest to spur a book, In the Paint: Tattoos of the NBA and the Stories Behind Them, published in 2003. Tattooing in the NBA has increased tremendously in the last few years and many players are covered with tattoos depicting their hometowns, teams, spouses, and other images. (Click here for a slide show of NBA players and their tattoos.)

Using bodies as art or expression is certainly not a new phenomena. However, these players are already somewhat objectified since their bodies are used to sell both basketball as entertainment and other products and services. Much like prostitutes and porn actors who sell their bodies for a particular purpose, professional athletes are getting paid for using their bodies to entertain others. Their tattoos make their already objectified bodies become even more of an object when they are used as a canvas for expressing hometown ties (Carlos Boozer) or spousal apologies for infidelity (Kobe Bryant). Stephan Marbury has gone so far as to tattoo his clothing company logo onto his head ().

One might imagine that tattooing corporate sponsor logos is coming next – what player will have the Nike swoosh tattooed on his head or legs and how much would that deal cost? Actually, this has already happened. Marcon Gortat has a Nike logo on his leg

that his current sponsor, Reebok, did not appreciate in the Spring 2009 NBA finals.

Selling space on a body for corporate ads takes this objectification of the body to a new level, not wholly unexpected in a capitalist environment. Gortat's responded to Reebok: "They didn't say anything about it when I signed the contract, so it's not going anywhere. I don't think they are paying me enough to take it off.'' (Source)

Objectification of the body exemplifies Marx's concept of alienation, in this case from the body. If one’s body becomes an object, one’s connection to that body is one of distance; it isno longer subjective, intimate, or holistic. As the objectification of professional athletes’ bodies intensifies, their alienation from self also intensifies. With alienation comes depression, anger, dissatisfaction with life. This may help explain some of the infamous pro-athlete “misbehaviors” although one might expect that training regimens and the insulation and isolation of fame are also important contributing factors.

How else can we apply sociological theories to understand professional sports and professional athletes’ behavior?

The Prevalence of Social Norms

By Bradley Wright

A social norm is one of the core concepts of sociology, and it refers to the behavioral expectations that a social group holds for its individuals. Basically, a social norm tells you what you’re supposed to do in any given situation. Social norms can operate in both small groups, such as a circle of friends, or a large group, such as a national society. They can be explicit, e.g., written down as laws, or implicit—something everyone just knows. Breaking norms can result in a formal punishment, such as being fined or imprisoned, or an informal punishment, such as being stared at or shunned by others.

There are a lot of things that can be said about social norms; in fact, sociology departments usually offer courses just about social norms and their violations, in a course called “deviance.” In this post, however, I have a fairly modest goal, and that is simply to illustrate just how many social norms guide every aspect of our life. As an example, I’ll consider classroom behavior in a college setting. Sometimes we don’t realize that norms exist until someone breaks them. Here, then, are just few of the many norms operating in this one situation.

Some classroom norms involve how students are to speak in class. If students want to say something, they should discretely raise their hands and wait to be called upon. (By the way, this norm is tough to break. In ten years, I’ve only been able to convince one of my classes to just speak without raising their hands). Once acknowledged, students can then offer their input with several limitations. They shouldn’t talk for too long, and they shouldn’t go too far off topic. What happens if they do? It’s not like the professor will call campus security, but instead the other students in the class will let the student know that they have strayed from appropriate behavior. They do this by rolling their eyes or snickering or some other means.

Other norms involve where and how students should sit during class. They should sit in the chairs provided, facing forward. Once I had a student realize that I never use the comfortable swivel chair provided for the professor (I walk around when I lecture), so he would routinely grab it at the start of class and sit through class leaning back with his feet up on a desk. I was fine with it, but his other students didn’t seem to think this was quite kosher.

When seated, students should give the appearance of paying attention by making a minimum of eye contact with the professor and by, hopefully, by staying awake. If a student dozes off, they should discretely close their eyes and definitely not just lay down or lean against the student next to them.

Students should also limit behaviors normally reserved for outside of class. For example, it’s usually a bad idea to order a pizza to be delivered to class and then share it with your friends. I know this because I encourage students to do this during evening classes, and it takes several weeks before they actually believe

that they can. Students should also have only specific interactions with their fellow students, such as talking or quietly joking around. Once I had two students in the back row start making out during lecture. Now, I tend to run a pretty loose class, but that surprised even me, and when I stopped lecture in befuddlement, the rest of the class turned around and started hooting and hollering.

Suppose that students need to leave class early. They can do so if they follow the right rules. If the class is small enough, they should let the professor know ahead of time. They should sit by the door, and when the time comes quietly pack up their belongings and they slip out unobtrusively. Often students will try to time it so as to leave when the professor has his/her back turned, which can be disconcerting—sometimes I turn around to a smaller class than I had just a moment ago.

This is not to say, however, that all rules are agreed upon. Sometimes people disagree about social norms. A classroom example of this is texting during class. I find it very distracting to have students texting on their cell phones during lecture, and so I think that it’s obvious that they shouldn’t. They, on the other hand, accept texting as appropriate in a wide range of settings, and so as long as they are trying to be discrete, they think what’s the problem?

In reading these examples of social norms, you might be thinking to yourself that they are obvious. Of course you’re not supposed to do some things and you’re supposed to do other things. This is the whole point—we’ve internalized social norms so well that we automatically know the hundreds, if not thousands, of rules that we need to follow as we go through our everyday life. Think about this as you go through today—you’re being guided by a comprehensive, albeit usually unwritten, rule book.

How to Think Like a Sociologist

By Karen Sternheimer

Here’s a shortcut for those of you currently taking a sociology class (or will someday soon). If you can learn to think like a sociologist you can not only earn a higher grade but develop a much more nuanced view of the world around you. You can still be a student of sociology even if you never step foot in a sociology classroom, too.

Step #1: Never assume anything

Assumptions about the way life is might seem to be “common sense”, but if you rely only on this you are not thinking like a sociologist. Sure, even sociologists have our own assumptions, but we find out if they are verified by finding out what actual empirical evidence tells us. This means before we presume our assumptions are true, we test them  (or find results from other studies of the same phenomenon). When I first started graduate school, a professor reminded us that assumptions rely on a sample size of one, hardly sufficient to claim a consistent sociological pattern.

Step #2: Get ready to be wrong

Now that you recognize that your assumptions are just your opinions, you might be surprised to learn that your assumptions are sometimes off, or in some cases, completely wrong! In fact all scientists are supposed to presume we are wrong to begin with, which is the logic behind the concept of the null hypothesis in statistics. When doing statistical tests, we need to disprove the null hypothesis (that there is no relationship between the two variables we are testing) first before drawing any conclusions about our own hypotheses.

It may seem, for instance, that crime keeps getting worse and worse, but as I blogged about a few weeks ago, it’s actually declined a great deal in the last fifteen years. And although women victims are frequently portrayed in the news and in crime dramas, men are most likely to be victims of violence, and elderly people are among the least likely age group to be victimized.

Sociologists think beyond simply right and wrong—we also ask why. For instance, why do we tend to think crime is on the rise? That women are uniquely vulnerable? We ask questions about how misperceptions like these sometimes benefit particular groups, institutions, and the overall balance of power in society. We might consider what purpose “common sense” notions of crime serve for those who have a vested interest in the status quo.

Step #3: Ask even more questions

If at this point you fear we are reading too much into things, you are not thinking like a sociologist. Some tip-offs that you have strayed off the sociological path include responses like:

• “It’s just human nature”
• “It’s always been this way”
• “That’s just the way it is”

I confess that in my student days I occasionally used these well-worn but un-sociological answers myself. Sociologists respond to conclusions like these with more questions:

• “What makes us understand human interactions the way that we do?”
• “How, then, does social change happen”
• “Is this the way things should be?”

You might find yourself resisting these additional questions, as Sally Raskoff recently blogged about . This is completely normal, since it can feel unsettling to find out that many of the “answers” we thought we had about life were not as useful as we might have once thought.

Step #4: Make the everyday strange

Sociologists borrow some of our thinking strategies from anthropologists like Clifford Geertz, who encouraged what he called “thick description” of the cultures we observe. In order to do this, we have to be ready to think about everyday events and patterns critically. This can be very hard, particularly for people who are members of the cultures we study, because it is easy to take things for granted and not even notice them as sociological phenomena.

For some of us, this practice is not just intellectually stimulating, it’s also fun. For others, it may seem like a chore, especially if thinking critically implies that there is something wrong with what we are observing.

Take your favorite television show, for example. If you think like a sociologist, you might observe that the show presents a somewhat skewed impression of crime, or maybe only features whites, or women who are a size 0. If you’re not thinking like a sociologist, you might not even want to be aware of these aspects of your favorite show because you really like it and want to keep watching it.

Thinking like a sociologist, you might understand how this is an outcome of specific entertainment industry practices and want to learn more about how these decisions get made (as sociologists like William Bielby did). Sociologists can both understand something more deeply and still enjoy it.

If you’re not thinking like a sociologist, you might conclude that television just contains dramatic stories people want to watch, and thin women are just nicer to look at, so what’s the big deal? The big deal is everything from our daily lives contains sociological questions, and the answers to those questions help us understand our society in greater depth.

Step #5: Embrace life’s complexities

Life isn’t simple, and neither are sociological findings. Sometimes they may seem contradictory, or you might have personally observed specific situations that appear to challenge a sociological concept. Sociological theories, research, and analysis are not meant as one-size-fits-all proclamations about the way the world works all the time. We might find, for instance, that some forms of crime have declined in one city but not another; that not all explanations for trends in divorce rates make sense in all situations; or that the economic downturn can cause both higher rates of unemployment and savings. The world can be complicated, and so can sociological explanations.

Practice these five steps; challenge your own assumptions, ask questions instead of looking for simple answers, and you just might start thinking like a sociologist.