nation: Switzerland

The United States is a nation of immigrants… in that the majority of its citizens are not part of the native population of North America.  In other words, because it was and remains a colonized land.

That aside, is the United States unique in receiving an extremely large number of new immigrants relative to its size?  It turns out, No.

Lane Kenworthy, at Consider the Evidence, posted this figure, showing that the U.S. population does indeed include a substantial proportion of first generation immigrants (both legal and illegal), but it is not unique in that regard, nor does it carry the highest percentage:

It also fails to be true, as many anti-immigration people claim, that the U.S. accepts a uniquely large number of immigrants who need help once they arrive:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Claude Fischer at Made in America offered some data speaking to the idea that Americans are especially patriotic. That they, in other words, are more likely than citizens of other nations to think that “We’re Number One!”

Fischer provides some evidence by Tom Smith at the International Social Science Programme (ISSP; Tom’s book).  The ISSP, Fischer explains…

…involves survey research institutions in dozens of countries asking representative samples of their populations the same questions. A couple of times the ISSP has had its members ask questions designed to tap respondents’ pride in their countries… One set of questions asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with five statements such as “I would rather be a citizen of [my country] than of any other country in the world” and “Generally, speaking [my country] is a better country than most other countries.”

Smith put responses on a scale from 5 to 25, with 25 being the most patriotic.  Here are the results from some of the affluent, western democracies (on a shortened scale of 5 to 20):

As Fischer says, “Americans were #1 in claiming to be #1.”  Well, sort of.  Americans were the most patriotic among this group.  They turned out to be the second most patriotic of all countries.  Venezuela beat us.

(In any case, what struck me wasn’t the fact that the U.S. is so patriotic, but that many other of these countries were very patriotic as well!   The U.S. is certainly no outlier among this group.  In fact, it looks like all of these countries fall between 14 and 18 on this 20-point scale.  Statistically significant, perhaps, but how meaningful of a difference is it?)

Fischer goes on to ask what’s good and bad about pride and closes with the following concern for U.S. Americans:

We believe that we are #1 almost across the board, when in fact we are far below number one in many arenas – in health, K-12 education, working conditions, to mention just a few. Does our #1 pride then blind us to the possibility that we could learn a thing or two from other countries?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In the U.S., many little girls and boys are told that, if they don’t behave, they won’t get any presents on Christmas.  Sound like a significant threat?

Some cultures–parts of Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Italy–have an anti-Santa Claus, Krampus.  Krampus is Santa’s sidekick; he’s his evil twin, if you will.  He stalks the streets hitting people with switches.  If a child is bad, Krampus will take the child’s gifts away.  If the child is awake Christmas Eve night, Krampus will take the child away!

Krampus:

More images found here, here, here, here, here, and here, via.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Max shoes advertises its sturdy laces with sexualized and racialized violence in this Swiss ad:

NEW! Penny R. sent in these ads for Bisazza tiles.  They were banned in England, but she saw them in a waiting room in the U.S. in a magazine called Wallpaper:Both via Copyranter (here and here).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Andrea G. sent this Swiss billboard in after posting about it on her blog:

In her post, she said,

It seems to be related to the the UEFA08 European Soccer Championship which is being hosted here in Switzerland this month. My off-the-cuff translation of “Frauen an den Ball” was “women on the ball”…But when I actually looked closer, I realized that “an” is being used in the accusative, which (in German) implies motion or movement from one place to another rather than fixed location, so the translation is closer to “women coming to the ball”. It turns out if you go to the website advertised, you can download a brochure (pdf) which includes several similar images and a several page summary of the rules of soccer (“das kleine ABC der Fussballregeln” = “the small ABCs of football rules”) apparently targeted towards women to bring them up to speed on the game so they can enjoy the games too. The intro text, which I can’t entirely translate, discusses surprising your man with your knowledge of football so you can talk with him (rather than avoiding the topic as in years past). It certainly seems targeted towards enhancing his pleasure of the games by having an enthusiastic female at his side (rather than a party-pooper who doesn’t care about the games).

Thanks for the post and your encouraging comments, Andrea!

This Australian ad for Lipton tea suggests that it’s mind clarifying qualities are so good that it could help even George Bush achieve the feat of naming all 50 states.

This Brazilian ad for Rolling Stone, featuring a picture of George W. Bush, reads: “We don’t show naked women to sell more. At the most, we show some asses.”

This Chinese Greenpeace ad, portraying Bush’s spin on global warming, reads: “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Voice yours at forum.greenpeace.org.”

This Chinese ad for an erasable pen reads: “Everyone makes mistakes.” 

In Malaysia, Bush is used to sell Smart cars.  Text: “Still looking for weapons of mass destruction.  Not smart.” 

Also in Malaysia, Amnesty International makes fun of Bush in their effort to inspire opposition to Guantanamo Bay.  “Write to him and help stop torture at Guantanamo Bay.  Remember, use simple words.”

This is a Mexican ad for a dog kennel.  “We don’t discriminate any kind of breed.”  (The source says that, in Mexico, like in the U.S., “dog” is a name for a bad person.)

 This ad for a Mexican newspaper reads: “Such a complex world needs a good explanation.”

This is an ad for the movie American Psycho in New Zealand.

In Portugal, playing war games (paint ball) is advertised as equivalent to playing George W. Bush.

This Swiss ad threatens, if you fall off your bicycle without a helmet, you may end up as dumb as George W. Bush.

These and more borrowed from here, found via adfreak.

Update: There have been some really nice points in the comments about how, in the process of making fun of Bush, we are also seeing the further stigmatization of “people with developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and psychological diagnoses” (that from Penny in the comments). 

Andrea G. in Switzerland snapped these pictures of an ad campaign for TerraSuisse natural agriculture. Their tagline translates as “TerraSuisse guarantees natural Swiss agriculture.” They might be useful for a discussion of doing gender (West and colleagues) or gender as performativity (Butler). As Andrea S. noted, it’s obvious instantly that the bird is supposed to be female and the chipmunk male by their pose alone.

Posed like a chick:

Posed like a dude:

They might, also, be a nice contrast to this one for which a gender is not immediately apparent (to me…but who knows in Switzerland):

Thanks Andrea!