Beach at Agios Giorgis

In 1976, a Greek veteran who had immigrated to the United States was diagnosed with lung cancer and given nine months to live.  Facing death, he decided to return to his native Greek island, Ikaria.  There, he prepared to die.  But, after a few months, he starting feeling better.  In fact, today, three-and-a-half decades later, he’s still alive.

This story, remarkable in its own right, isn’t the only one of its kind.  The island of Ikaria is being studied by several demographers who are investigating the places in the world where people live longer.  Dan Buettner, who travels the globe in an effort to better understand longevity, recently explained in the New York Times that he, Dr. Gianni Pes of the University of Sassari in Italy, and Dr. Michel Poulain, a Belgian demographer, work together to study these “blue zones.”

Starting in 2002, we identified three other populations around the world where people live measurably longer lives than everyone else. The world’s longest lived women are found on the island of Okinawa. On Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, we discovered a population of 100,000 mestizos with a lower than normal rate of middleage mortality. And in Loma Linda, Calif., we identified a population of Seventhday Adventists in which most of the adherents’ life expectancy exceeded the American average by about a decade.

These researchers had their work cut out for them.  Tracking down the ages of people, especially those who didn’t have birth certificates, proved difficult to say the least.  “One year they were 80; a few months later they were 82. Pretty soon they claimed to be 100.”  It’s easy to lose track.

Once they were assured that these blue zones were real, they turned to studying their ways of life.  Buettner spent time learning more about the Greek Island of Ikaria, which you can read here.  As he details, their diets are important, consisting of much olive oil and wild greens, low amounts of dairy (except goat’s milk) and meat products, and moderate amounts of alcohol.   But, communal lifestyle also seems to matter.  Ikaria is a communal place—an “us place,” not a “me place.”  As a resident told Buettner,

 “Do you know there’s no word in Greek for privacy?…When everyone knows everyone else’s business, you get a feeling of connection and security…If your kids misbehave, your neighbor has no problem disciplining them. There is less crime, not because of good policing, but because of the risk of shaming the family. You asked me about food, and yes, we do eat better here than in America. But it’s more about how we eat.Even if it’s your lunch break from work, you relax and enjoy your meal. You enjoy the company of whoever you are with. Food here is always enjoyed in combination with conversation.”

In fact, social structure might be one of the most important reasons behind their (and other Blue Zones’) secrets to longevity.  Beyond community, the centenarians in these locations often live engaging lives together, which gives them meaning.  As the Nicoyans in Costa Rica like to put it, they have a “plan de vida,” or a lifelong sense of purpose.

Just gotta find the gold one… Photo by takingthemoney via flickr.com

We’re excited to announce the July and August Media Award Winners (and promise to announce the September and October Award Winners next week):

July“Mainstream Media Tend to Ignore Blacks’ Mental Health Problems,” MCJ Staff, Milwaukee Community Journal

In his brief explanation of the piece, TSP Editor Doug Hartmann noted how this sociologically-minded article called attention to a timely and oft-ignored social issue. 

August: “Divorce Too Expensive for Poorest Americans, New Study Says,” Catherine New, Huffington Post

In her write-up of the piece, TSP’s Letta Page explained how New drew upon sociological research to highlight how divorce is, in a sense, a luxury item.

As we’ve said before, the choice of each month’s TSP Media Award is neither scientific nor exhaustive, but we do work hard to winnow our favorite nominees.  And, while we don’t have the deep pocketbooks to offer enormous trophies or cash prizes, we hope our informal award offers cheer and encouragement for journalists and social scientists to keep up the important (if not always rewarding) work of bringing academic knowledge to the broader public.

 

Gun Vector Image
Image by Vectorportal.com via flickr.com

At the second Presidential debate, a comment that linked single parents and gun violence prompted much response in the Twittersphere.  It also prompted Time Health & Family’s Belinda Luscombe to ask, “Is there a correlation between single parents and gun violence?”

Drawing on the research of sociologist Philip Cohen, Luscombe shows that understanding this relationship requires more than simply fact-checking a candidate’s statements.   Citing Cohen, she notes that while the number of single moms has increased since 1990, the number of violent crimes has been going down.

However, this doesn’t negate other benefits that may be associated with two-parent families in certain contexts.  Numerous studies have shown that children who grow up in stable two-parent households perform better across a range of social indicators.  For many, these benefits likely stem from the fact that stable two-parent families generally have more resources.  However,

There are other issues besides money: children from low-income single-parent families are more likely to have less parental supervision and support, simply because the parent is under much more time and economic pressure. With only one parent to do all the disciplining, the relationship can get very strained.

But, this doesn’t necessarily link to gun violence.  Anecdotally, Luscombe also quickly checked data on the 12 most recent mass shootings in the U.S.  Out of these, six of the shooters were raised in two-parent families, while three were raised by single parents.  (And it’s difficult to trace the family structure of the other three.)  So, single parenting may be tough on children in certain circumstances, but the link between gun violence and single parenting is rather murky (if present at all).

 

Photo by JETfri via Flickr.com

In an op-ed published in the New York Times a few weeks ago, Sociologist Stephanie Coontz argues that claims about the end of men greatly exaggerate the change in the distribution of power that has taken place over the last half century.

Fifty years ago, every male American was entitled to what the sociologist R. W. Connell called a “patriarchal dividend” — a lifelong affirmative-action program for men.  The size of that dividend varied according to race and class, but all men could count on women’s being excluded from the most desirable jobs and promotions in their line of work, so the average male high school graduate earned more than the average female college graduate working the same hours. At home, the patriarchal dividend gave husbands the right to decide where the family would live and to make unilateral financial decisions. Male privilege even trumped female consent to sex, so marital rape was not a crime.

Yes, things have changed.  For example, women’s real wages have been rising for decades, while the real wages of men have fallen.  Yet, this hardly makes women the “richer sex.”   Women started from a much lower base.  Furthermore, “….the median wages of female managers are just 73 percent of what male managers earn. And although women have significantly increased their representation among high earners in America over the past half-century, only 4 percent of the C.E.O.’s in Fortune’s top 1,000 companies are female.”

The ‘70s and ‘80s saw a reduction in job segregation by gender, especially in middle-class occupations.  But, as sociologists David Cotter, Joan Hermsen and Reeve Vanneman explain, this reduction in segregation slowed during the subsequent decades.  And, some fields even became more segregated.  In 1980, 64% of social workers were women; today, the figure has risen to 81%.

Further, many who note the rise of women often cite that, today, women earn almost 60% of all college degrees.  Yet, women are still concentrated in traditionally female areas of study.

According to the N.Y.U. sociologist Paula England, a senior fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families, most women, despite earning higher grades, seem to be educating themselves for occupations that systematically pay less.  Even women’s greater educational achievement stems partly from continuing gender inequities. Women get a smaller payoff than men for earning a high school degree, but a bigger payoff for completing college. This is not because of their higher grade point averages, the economist Christopher Dougherty concludes, but because women seem to need more education simply to counteract the impact of traditional job discrimination and traditional female career choices.

The decline of men has also been exaggerated.  As Coontz notes, rates of domestic violence have halved since 1993, and rapes and sexual assaults against women have fallen by 70%.  Husbands have also doubled their share of housework.

Yet, just like women, men also face an obstacle: over-investment in their gender identity.

Just as the feminine mystique discouraged women in the 1950s and 1960s from improving their education or job prospects, on the assumption that a man would always provide for them, the masculine mystique encourages men to neglect their own self-improvement on the assumption that sooner or later their ‘manliness’ will be rewarded.

Boys who engage in “girlie” activities are often bullied and ostracized, and men who take an active role in childcare and housework are more likely to be harassed at work.

Contrary to the fears of some pundits, the ascent of women does not portend the end of men. It offers a new beginning for both. But women’s progress by itself is not a panacea for America’s inequities. The closer we get to achieving equality of opportunity between the sexes, the more clearly we can see that the next major obstacle to improving the well-being of most men and women is the growing socioeconomic inequality within each sex.

 

 

Protest photo by the AP via Voice of America

Last week, an anti-Muslim movie produced in the U.S. influenced protests and attacks in Libya, Egypt, and several other countries. In the aftermath of the protests in Egypt, VOA spoke briefly with Said Sadek, Professor of Political Sociology at American University in Cairo.

According to Sadek, it’s important to realize that majority of people (in any religion) are not extremists but are rather caught by extremists that “try to push the silent majority into extremism, and suspicion, and intolerance.”

These extremist groups often single out media products and use them for their own messages. “There are many sites and many films and books against all religions… Why do you all of a sudden [shed] light on a particular film and ignore the others? This has to be a politically motivated process.”

Unfortunately, many members of civil society do not understand how these media products are produced.  As Sadek explains,

There is a misunderstanding in Muslim countries [about] the relationship between government and media. They still believe it’s like in autocratic regimes, the government orders the media to do this or to do that. President Obama did not order that movie about Islam is made. In fact, he is being accused in America that he is pro-Muslim.

Pledge Photo by Jeffery Turner via flickr.com
Photo by Jeffery Turner via flickr.com

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America….”  Many of us can remember standing and reciting this each morning at school.  But how many of you have thought about its origins?

NPR’s Shirish V. Dáte raised this question last week in reaction to Mitt Romney’s use of the Pledge of Allegiance in his campaign.

When Mitt Romney uses the Pledge of Allegiance as a metaphor for all that’s good and right with America, how many in his audience know that the two-sentence loyalty oath was penned not by the Founding Fathers in 1776, but a fascist preacher more than 100 years later?

Or that the original recommended posture was with a straightened arm raised upward and outward? Or that it was changed to the hand over the heart during World War II after the Nazis adopted the original as their salute?

Though Dáte makes several points about the use of the pledge in politics, the sociological point is that its use becomes so institutionalized that we (regardless of our political affiliation) don’t even question its origins.

And what are the precise origins of this custom?  Well, Francis Bellamy (the “fascist preacher” noted above) and his friends asked President Benjamin Harrison to incorporate the pledge, which he wrote, into the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus’s arrival in America. It has been used ever since, with one change.  In 1954, President Eisenhower added “under God.”

For more on the use of the pledge in politics, see the rest of the blog post here.

Photo by Melissa Gutierrez via flickr.com
Hope she’s seen this one before! Photo by Melissa Gutierrez via flickr.com.

If you love to curl up on the couch and watch a re-run of your favorite TV show (who doesn’t?!), you’re in luck.  Research by Jaye Derrick has shown that watching re-runs might actually provide a mental boost.

Derrick, a researcher at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions, conducted two related studies that were covered in Science Blog.  In the first, half of the participants were asked to perform a structured task, while the other half were asked to do a less structured task.  Then, half of the participants were asked to write about their favorite TV show, while the others listed items in their room.  Finally, participants were asked to complete a difficult puzzle.

Overall, those who wrote about their favorite TV show wrote for longer if they had completed the structured task (rather than the unstructured task).  According to Derrick, this indicates that they were seeking out their favorite TV shows and wanted to spend more time thinking about them.  In addition, those who wrote about their favorite TV shows performed better on the difficult puzzle.

Similarly, in the second study, participants were asked to complete a daily diary; and those that reported effortful tasks were more likely to seek out a rerun of their favorite show.  Derrick explained,

“When you watch a favorite re-run, you typically don’t have to use any effort to control what you are thinking, saying or doing. You are not exerting the mental energy required for self-control or willpower,” Derrick explains. “At the same time, you are enjoying your ‘interaction,’ with the TV show’s characters, and this activity restores your energy.”

But, this effect is specific to re-watching favorite TV shows; just watching television does not provide the same benefit. So, if you’re going to veg out, make sure you’re watching a re-run!

Pitchers of beer at Garnett's Cafe

It’s the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, which means thousands of sociologists have invaded downtown Denver to present their current research.  While much of the research is newsworthy, several studies have already garnered public attention.

One study presented at the meeting, profiled in Live Science and a number of other sources, found that marriage appears to drive women to drink.  According to University of Cincinnati’s Corinne Reczek and her coauthors, it’s not because they’re unhappy.  Rather, it’s because they are influenced by their spouses’ drinking habits.

Previous studies had shown that married people drink less than single people.  This new study confirms this relationship in men but shows that married women actually drink more on average than women who were never married, divorced, or widowed.

For more on drinking and marital status, check out the article here!

Sample Analysis

“Ze,” the person sitting next to me at the fire said. “Ze,” I repeated tentatively. In my first year of graduate school, I wound up doing fieldwork at a radical environmental conference in the mountains of Oregon.  While I learned about setting up roadblocks and doing tree sits, I also learned about gender-neutral pronouns.

Most texts aren’t quite to the point of using “ze.” But, according to a new study by Psychologists Jean Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Brittany Gentile, gaps between the use of “he” and “she” in books have narrowed. As a writer from Associated Press explains, the study tracked pronouns in almost 1.2 million texts in Google books archives. In 1950, the ratio of male to female pronouns was roughly 3.5:1. By 2005, it had shrunk to less than 2:1.

“Those numbers are quite staggering,” says James W. Pennebaker, author of The Secret Life of Pronouns and chair of the psychology department at the University of Texas in Austin. “Pronouns are a sign of people paying attention and as women become more present in the workforce, in the media and life in general, people are referring to them more.”

Books by and about women have proliferated in the last half-century. However, more books by women do not mean that more books are getting reviewed or more women are getting to write for literary publications. For example, the nonprofit VIDA: Women in Literary Arts has shown that men receive more space in magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

The continued prevalence of male writers/male reviewers is “very much the old guard hanging on, as they always do,” Belieu [the Executive Director of VIDA] adds. “But the progressive mind wins in the long ball game.”

And maybe we’ll even more “ze’s” in texts in the future!

Statue Of Joe Paterno

This past week, the N.C.A.A. announced its sanctions against Penn State University in response to the Jerry Sandusky scandal.  Among the sanctions was the decision that all of Penn State’s football victories from 1998 to 2011 were to be vacated.  While there were varied reactions, Sociologist Gary Alan Fine reacted in an Op-Ed in the New York Times by stating that famous author George Orwell would be amused.

In his magnificent dystopia, “1984,” Orwell understood well the dangers of “history clerks.” Those given authority to write history can change the past. Those sweat-and-mud victories of the Nittany Lions — more points on the scoreboard — no longer exist. The winners are now the losers.

While Fine agrees that Penn State deserved sanctions and that the N.C.A.A. had an obligation to respond forcefully, he asks if re-writing history was the proper answer.

We learn bad things about people all the time, but should we change our history? Should we, like Orwell’s totalitarian Oceania, have a Ministry of Truth that has the authority to scrub the past? Should our newspapers have to change their back files? And how far should we go? Should we review Babe Ruth’s records? Or O. J. Simpson’s? Should a disgraced senator have her votes vacated? Perhaps we should claim that Joe McCarthy actually lost his elections. Or give victory to John Edwards’s opponent?

It is understandable that an organization wants its official history to reflect its hopes, but Fine argues that histories must properly reflect what happened at the time.  Discomfort and shame honoring flawed people is understandable.  Yet, “building a false history is the wrong way to recall the past. True and detailed histories always work better.”