After the French elected Socialist Francois Hollande in a rebuke of austerity policies gripping Europe, news headlines issued reports of worried markets.  The fear, among some, is that the new president would act in such a way, or more precisely that the public was acting in such a way that, would spook markets.  Some economists, most notably Princeton professor and Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, have argued against austerity in favor of government stimulus to push economic demand and growth.  Krugman has made frequent reference to the Great Depression-era economic theories of John Maynard Keynes.  While Keynes is important here, a less noted theorist – Karl Polanyi, is, in my view, more apt to the particular electoral impulses unfolding across Europe. (more…)

As prior posts may express, my attention has been gripped by the motivations and experiences of those engaged in deviant activity. More specifically, it is not major crimes under consideration but rather the marginal acts of expression and resistance – tagging, unsanctioned extreme sports, controversial fashions, and the like. While trying to empathetically understand the ‘deviant’ perspective, it seems this perspective is often dismissed as delinquent and nothing more, void of any further value. As scholars have often noted, this sentiment can be found along a rising fear of crime, profound sense of insecurity, and a perpetual need to safeguard against any act symbolizing little more than a threat to public order (see Garland, 2001; Hudson, 2003; Simon, 2007). This post then asks whether the practices and policies aimed at enhancing and maintaining civility are, in turn, provoking unrest, rebellion, resistance, and upheaval. (more…)

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how much of our lives are being captured and translated into numbers, percentages, and statistics. It seems that no matter where one turns, some aspect of our social life is being measured quantitatively. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon – things like age, weight, body mass index, intelligence quotient, height, and physical aptitude scores have been with us for some time now. However, it appears that this movement to quantify and measure aspects of our social life and then translate them into numbers and statistics has increased with great haste; perhaps resembling a juggernaut out of control. While gaining acceptance among many circles and embraced as a way to better one’s life, this movement as often been termed as the ‘quantified self’. (more…)

While leaving the gym this morning, I came across a dog that was left in a car with all of the windows sealed shut. Although it was by no means a hot morning in the southern New Mexico desert, the sun was nonetheless beating down directly on the car; by any indication, the panting dog inside was anything but comfortable. I decided to report the situation to the owner of the facility, only to be shrugged off with a flippant, “what do you want me to do about it?”

I ended up calling the police. Within minutes an officer responded to the scene and issued a citation to the couple that had left their dog in the car. Having two older sisters that are veterinarians, I realized that the animal, while not locked in the automobile for too long, may have suffered from minor heat stroke and should probably have been taken to the vet as a precautionary measure. The dog’s owners, however, merely cracked open the window and went back into the gym to resume their exercise routines.

Such treatment of pets, and animals more generally, seems far too common; and most likely, this dog’s owners probably did not think their actions equated to animal abuse any more than Archie Bunker thought that his routine slurs were racist. In many ways, this entire situation speaks to the larger question of whether animals actually have rights. Lyle Munro’s recent examination of the animal rights movement “in theory and practice” speaks to the fact that our understanding of the issue is empirically poor. In the article, he recommends a greater working partnership between research scholars and animal activists.

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In Guy Ritchie’s newest Sherlock Holmes movie, European political intrigue abounds as the 19^th century wanes. Politically consequential bombings are regularly blamed on anarchists who seem intent on spreading terror and chaos, and anarchists are used as a cover for an attempt at an even more effective disruption of European politics.

In my last post I reviewed some of these types of images of anarchism, and suggested that anarchism actually provides an interesting opportunity for analysis in terms of its history as a social movement, its trajectory as a political philosophy, and its alternative approach to social order. I use social order to mean the system that governs relations between people and their actions in groups, including how economic exchange takes place, how norms develop, and how conflicts are resolved. The elements of the system may be formal—for example, specific organizations or law— or informal—like patterns of interaction and expectation for interaction. For many anarchists (though again, there is enormous diversity in the philosophy and tactics behind protests labeled as anarchist), anarchism is not about the absence of social order, but about establishing social order that is not founded on coercion and hierarchy; anarchists’ opposition to an authoritative state derives from this principle. An alternative is a social order based on “customs, habits and usages” among all members.

Anarchist protesters have been a part of many of the major social movements in modern European history, from the 1848 French Revolution to the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War. Organizations based on anarcho-syndicalism, which proposes an economic and social system democratically governed by workers, proved influential in Central and South America in the early 20th century. The history of anarchist thought, as distinguished from social movements based on anarchist principles and tactics, is also rich and varied. For example, some have argued that the ancient Chinese school of thought of Taoism is anarchist in nature, in that it argues that there should be no lords or subjects; others saw Greek philosopher Zeno’s work to be anarchist, as he argued that there was no need for states.

In The Sociology of Philosophies (a shorter version of the tome is here), which surveys the social conditions around many of the worlds’ great philosophical traditions, Randall Collins makes a number of points about the when and where schools of philosophy emerge, and the form in which philosophical thought takes. Far from being the product of brilliant, isolated, individual efforts, major philosophical works were clustered in the same time period, within a small number of physical spaces, and around social ties, often arranged as chains of teachers and students. Indeed, Collins argues, the social relations between schools of thought—how contentious or harmonious relations were—influenced the degree to which the philosophy produced was abstract or concrete. Schools of thought relied on the organizational structure—for example, the strength of patronage ties—supporting the people carrying out philosophical work. The history of anarchist thought might be read in light of Collins’ observations as well; a cursory review suggests a great degree of temporal and spatial clustering; from the emergence of Christian anarchism through Europe during the Middle Ages to Enlightenment versions of anarchism as proposed by William Godwin to French anarchist thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and others who were involved in the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune. (Of course, actually examining whether the schools and strands of anarchist thought developed as Collins’ describes philosophies in general would require a much more in-depth knowledge of the history of anarchism than I have, but Collins’ provides an entry point for thinking about anarchist thought.)

A major criticism of anarchism is that it seems totally unserviceable in light of what we know about how humans create groups and maintain order. Rosabeth Moss Kanter describes one possible result that “Though communes may remove the repressive control of distant, impersonal institutions, they replace it with the control of the intimate, face-to-face group of peers, which is perhaps a more benign kind of coercion, but coercion nonetheless.” However, she argues, though some social order is required, these types of groups attempt to carry out creating and enforcing order in as equitable way as possible.

A number of researchers have pursued studies of social order within anarchists communities—how social order actually occurs. Randall Amster uses examples from utopian experiments, indigenous cultures, and the group, Rainbow Family of the Living Light, and finds evidence that anarchist communities punish members, but are more likely to do so using restorative or restitutive justice. The bottom line seems to be that doing anarchism right is very difficult, and requires a lot of effort and energy from all participants, but there are historical and current examples where it succeeded, including the community in Madagascar that David Graeber, who has been closely involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests, studied for his doctoral dissertation.

For more resources on the history of anarchist social movements and philosophical thought, see Anarchy Archives, which also includes a number of critiques of anarchism, and comparisons between anarchism with socialism.

Photo by Joseph Morris

President Obama receives the script from his recent Mic Checking

Author’s Note: This piece was originally posted to Sociology Lens on December 10th. On December 13th, the piece was temporarily removed and I was asked to make revisions to make more explicit the conventional sociological themes in this piece. This request was made as the result of pressure from a senior professor who deemed this piece too “polemical” and not “sociological.” While I and many others in the discipline have epistemological objections to very concept of value-free social science, and thus view with suspicion any implication that sociology can be separated from politics, I agreed to make revisions, because I think that argument in this piece important and can only be strengthened by further reference to the social theory canon. The downside is that the post is now less accessible to a popular audience than it was originally intended to be, so I have archived a copy of the original here. Finally, I must note that, while examining power is, perhaps, the oldest and most important task of sociology, it is (and has always been) political by nature.

A recent news piece for Inside Higher Ed reports on several instances where students have disrupted public presentations by conservative academics, activists, or politicians. The students used “the human microphone”—i.e., a practice of amplifying a speaker’s voice by having many people repeat the speaker’s words in unison—to offer counterpoints to the arguments being made by the presenter. The article’s author, Allie Grasgreen, asserts that the mic checking the conservative presenters is tantamount to “censorship.” This assertion shares the logic of what Karl Rove demanded when he was mic checked at John Hopkins:

If you believe in free speech and you have a chance to show it… if you believe in the right of the First Amendment to free speech… then you demonstrate it by shutting up and waiting until the Q&A session… line up behind the mic…

But Grasgreen and Rove both miss the point. Occupiers are trying to demonstrate—through the very performance of this act—that “free speech” is not evenly distributed. The point is that only the 1% ever find themselves at the podium. The 99% are left to fill the seats in the audience, and, if they are lucky, they may have the chance to do as Rove commands and line up behind the mic for a few brief seconds in the spotlight. This is, of course, because the opportunity to speak and to be heard is inextricable from issues of wealth and power. The few who hold these assets in abundance have more purchasing power in the attention economy. K Street is nothing if not an industrialized machine for converting money and power into speech that will be heard. Sure, we all may have “free speech,” but as George Orwell quipped in Animal Farm “some animals are more equal than others.” (more…)

Since the Occupy movement began in September, my sociological imagination has been churning with questions. I initially thought: Is this the beginning of a revolution, or is it an anti-tea party left wing group? But most of all, I wondered more broadly: What is it? Seemingly, I am not the only one in the realm of confusion. The Occupy Movement has been criticized for not being a cohesive movement. It has likewise been lauded as unstructured, lacking of a clear agenda, and a disjointed group of “lazy, unemployed” people. In all reality, the list could go on with the criticisms. It behooved me to ask my students and colleagues what they believed the movement was meant to represent. While I was met with different responses, I was most commonly told that the protesters are an impassioned group of people: “The 1%” who have taken it upon themselves to speak on behalf of the 99% that are fed up with exploitative, economic meltdowns which are the fault of the big banks.” Many respondents were fed up with the fact that when the rich make “mistakes” they do not get prison; they get bailed out (see Jeffrey Reiman’s, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison). Underneath the surface, both the movement and public perceptions of it are  multi-faceted and complex. My next move, therefore was to continue this line of questioning at the movement itself.

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When Indian anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare went on an indefinite hunger strike last April in Delhi, his main demand was the passage of legislation (the Jan Lokpal bill) creating an independent body to address public corruption. The hunger strike lasted only four days, as the Indian government agreed to re-introduce the bill in Parliament. (The bill has yet to be passed.)

Hazare is the most public face of an active social movement regarding government corruption in India that has included conferences, investigations and judicial action, formal complaints, and protests. Many middle class Indians, who are often considered politically apathetic (I don’t know whether or not this actually the case), have participated in the protests; their participation is seen as representing serious public will behind anti-corruption measures. (The organization behind many of the events over the last couple of years, India Against Corruption, has U.S. branches in many states, including New Jersey and New York.)

But, despite the ostensibly pro-social goal of reducing and eventually eliminating corruption, there is skepticism regarding both the bill and the movement around it. Novelist and activist Arundhati Roy has argued that because the anti-corruption movement is funded by the World Bank and private foundations (e.g. the Ford Foundation) presumably in the interest of promoting international commerce, the motivations behind the movement are suspect. (Hazare has also received money from right-wing Hindu nationalist groups.) Additionally, she argues, the bill creates a “panel oligarchy” of ten non-democratically chosen elites. Others have questioned the exact nature of the body created by the legislation, to whom it is accountable, the extent of its judicial powers and its relationship with the courts, and whether it is extra-constitutional.

Both the public demonstrations in support of anti-corruption measures and the criticism of the Jan Lokpal bill illustrate just how serious, and how slippery, a problem corruption is. It is slippery on many fronts: hard to define, hard to measure, hard to change.

Take the recent example of ticket fixing in the New York Police Department. Police officers routinely changed the parking tickets of their friends and family members so that they did not have to pay the fines. In the aftermath of the charges, several former police officers have discussed how widespread, common, and accepted this practice was for several decades. They discussed how their superior officers demanded that they fix tickets for individuals from powerful constituencies, or the City Council staff members. Not only were police officers not charged for doing this, but they were occasionally punished if they did not participate. Of course, what the officers were doing was explicitly illegal; some might see their actions as violating moral codes of conduct, while others might argue that it was a simple perk of the job to which they were entitled. (One might debate why these officers are being prosecuted for ticket fixing at this point in time, given that ticket fixing was a common practice for so long; perhaps because so many officers were involved and the evidence was particularly strong, perhaps because some officers were involved in other criminal activities (the initial investigation was launched in response to a report that an officer was protecting a drug dealer), or perhaps because the revenue source provided by parking tickets is now more important to the city than previously because of the recession.)

The ambiguity around the example of ticket fixing (if indeed you see any ambiguity) illustrates sociologist Mark Granovetter’s argument in his paper, “The Social Construction of Corruption,” that the local meanings and norms attached to transactions are very important in understanding and defining corruption. A good deal of social scientific writing on corruption focuses on how individual incentives make corruption more or less likely, Granovetter notes. In these accounts, the creation of such incentives and the social and cultural apparatus supporting such incentives is often neglected. Plenty of types of transactions can be codified as illegal, but if the individuals involved in the transactions see them as legitimate, as part of the rights and rewards of an organizational position or role, then they will be very difficult to change.

For example, few people would consider bringing sweets and other gifts to employees of an archive in Egypt in order to facilitate access to documents to be bribery. Instead, they understand these behaviors as part of the local context in which gifts to officials are basic norms. Local context, and individuals’ perceptions of the prevalence and social acceptability of transactions, are essential to both understanding what is locally considered corruption, what effect certain forms of corruption may have, and how to change corrupt practices. We call transactions we consider illegitimate corruption; but determinations of legitimacy and illegitimacy depend on a good deal more than general moral standards. This is not to argue for extreme relativism regarding corruption, but to point out that there is a lot of ambiguity in practice in the transactions that take place between officials and non-officials. (See Granovetter’s paper for a number of great examples and a nuanced discussion of how the relationship between transaction partners (the status differences between the individuals involved) and the social context of transactions (market vs. network-based), in addition to different standards for embezzlement and bribery, contribute to the sense of transactions as legitimate or illegitimate.)

Each year, Transparency International puts together a “Corruption Perceptions Index,” a country-level measure of perceptions of the “misuse of public power for private benefit” using a variety of surveys of the opinions of individuals involved in business or performance assessments from analysts. In 2010, India received a score of 3.3 on a scale of 10, similar to China, Greece, and Peru (all with scores of 3.5), above countries like Iraq (1.5), Sudan (1.6), Russian (2.1) and Paraguay (2.2), and below countries like Turkey (4.4), Malaysia (4.4), Poland (5.3), and South Korea (5.4). But the measure is subject to a good deal of criticism for a lack of standardization, incomplete data collection across countries, and changing methodology between years which makes it hard to compare across years. Two critiques are more fundamentally damaging, however. One argues that by virtue of whose opinions and analyses are included in the index, the perceptions index captures mainly the perceptions of (often Western European and American) business elites. Not only might these individuals use particular definitions of corruption, but presumably they are focused on corruption in areas related to conducting business; they are likely unaware of corruption in other areas of life. Another critique points out that there is evidence that perceptions of corruption and the actual experience of corruption are very different—this measure does not take into account the impact of corruption on everyday lives and without that, it is difficult to understand exactly what consequences corruption has. The experience of corruption of the type where telephone company workers demanding additional payment for installing a telephone line might be very different, and have different political consequences, than governors offering senate seats for a fee, to take a not-so-hypothetical example, or when local officials require international corporations to use a particular local construction company.

In addition to these problems of definition and measurement, there the additional issue of the political use of corruption charges. As historian William Gould reminds us, charges of corruption have been utilized strategically for political purposes in India, in particular during periods of rapid political transition as during the first General Election of 1951-52. Corruption charges have been wielded in the service of questioning the role of government and current leaders. (Gould also has an interesting discussion of the legacy of the British colonial bureaucracy in shaping corrupt transactions in India. Gould writes, “conditions of colonial rule by a western power in India largely exacerbated certain forms of corruption, by basing power on particular kinds of authoritarian administrative structures. These structures allowed a whole range of public servants to effectively allow corrupt transactions to continue, since government was not accountable.”)

These issues drastically complicate understanding corruption as people experience it, and tackling those transactions between officials and citizens that are most harmful to individuals’ lives.

For more corruption-related readings, see:

“Globalization and Corruption.” WARNER, CAROLYN. The Blackwell Companion to Globalization. Ritzer, George (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 2007  OR Corrupt Exchanges: Empirical Themes in the Politics and Political Economy of Corruption. Della Porta, D. and Rose-Ackerman, S. (eds), 2002.

(Photo by Pushkar V)