culture

The continued mass dumping of Hillary Clinton’s personal emails by WikiLeaks makes one wonder about the fine line between transparency in government and violations of privacy. Recently, NPR spoke to UNC sociologist Zeynep Tufekci about this very issue. Tufekci acknowledges the importance of whistle-blowing, saying that items like Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches pass the public interest test. However, she goes on to explain that what is currently being done by WikiLeaks may go beyond simply exposing a politician’s attempt to keep secrets.  She explains,

“[T]here’s a lot of personal information that is being exposed. What this does – and this is what scares me – is that this method is going to be used in the future to any political organization – dissident organizations – that are trying to challenge power. And what they’re going to end up seeing is that their personal information is going to be dumped for the world.”

For Tufekci, it does not have to be all or nothing. Her ideal is that the hacks would go through journalists who could pass on things that are in the interest of the public. This method could help avoid having a flood of distracting information that makes it difficult for people to figure out what is important and what is not. Consider her response to the adage, “Never write an email that you wouldn’t be willing to see on the front page of the New York Times”:

“That, as a warning, strikes me a little bit like you shouldn’t wear miniskirts if you don’t want to be sexually assaulted, to be honest. It might not be – it might be something you take into account. But it doesn’t mean that if the hacking does occur, that it’s all fair game.”

For now, the debate continues — does being a public official mean you are no longer entitled to a private life? And what kinds of information should be deemed public interest and what should be kept private?  

From the Olympics in ancient Greece to modern extravaganzas like the FIFA World Cup, sport has been historically associated with the purest form of competition. Ingrained moral and ethical values drive the spirit of competition, which helps make sport a cultural phenomenon. Of course, there are those who take short cuts, and these ideals of “purity” in competition come to the forefront with every new doping scandal and the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) by athletes.

Jan Ove Tangen, a professor in the sociology of sport from Norway, has an interesting point of view when it comes to PEDs.  Tangen proposes that the natural solution for monitoring PEDs and the ever-increasing performance of athletes is simply to allow doping.

“Wherever the arbitrary limits of doping are drawn it is the nature of competitive sports to strive towards getting as close as possible to those limits to achieve perfection. Sometimes that will lead to ‘accidental’ breaches of the rules.”

Tangen says that by accepting PEDs, the penalization of athletes for larger institutional flaws will come to an end. It will also eliminate the hefty costs of monitoring and regulation of doping, which could lead to positive outcomes like proper medical attention for athletes. Plus, this helps fight the inevitable dynamic where a rule is set and athletes toe the line as close as possible, but invariably step out of bounds.

As the election edges ever closer, the question of how support for such a polarizing figure like Donald Trump even became possible is on many people’s minds.

An article in The New Yorker examines sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book “Strangers in their Own Land,” for answers to this Trump phenomenon. Hochschild set out to understand the emotional root of the Tea Party movement and the Trump euphoria. Hochschild spent five years conducting research in rural parts of Southern Louisiana, where the vast majority of the population are poor, uneducated, and white.  She found that Tea Party supporters often described American society with a single narrative of “cheaters” and individuals who “do not want to work.” The New Yorker describes this narrative, below:

“The line-cutters were African-Americans, promoted by affirmative action, she writes, but also ‘women, immigrants, refugees, public-sector workers—where will it end? Your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don’t control or agree with.'”

Hochschild writes that Trump fuels this perspective, shaming “virtually every line-cutting group” as people who are just eating away at government handouts, but then failing to mention that blue-collar white men benefit from food stamps and Medicaid. 

“‘In this feint’—by making it seem that white people who accept welfare are only taking advantage of what everyone else gets—’Trump solves a white male problem of pride.'”

Want to avoid the left-swipe? According to Tinder sociologist, Jessica Carbino, the best way to secure a right-swipe is to include a profile picture that does not cover your face. In an article with Yahoo! Beauty, Carbino explains why you will want to avoid the sunglasses for your online dating profile.

In a process known as “thin-slicing,” we make judgements about the personality characteristics of others by examining their facial features. People often make these judgments unconsciously, but these initial impressions appear to be very important. Studies demonstrate that we can accurately predict the trustworthiness, extroversion, and even aggressiveness of an individual in a single-second view of their photo. Carbino says,

“[Making these evaluations] helps us categorize our life when we’re walking down the street. We’re trying to assess if somebody is like us, dangerous, what have you. In dating, it’s: Is this person compatible with us?” 

Online dating has its benefits, but it has specific challenges that come with it as well – you need to convey to your potential suitors who you are in a brief moment in time and with a single picture. So, if you want to be successful at Tinder and other types of online dating, show your true self and your future date can do the rest!

Bring on the sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes!  The time of year has finally arrived where jackets and boots become wardrobe staples and changing leaves capture the imagination. What exactly is it about the autumn season that people love? Kathryn Lively, professor of sociology at Dartmouth College, might have the answer.

In a recent Huffington Post article, Lively explains that people view fall as comforting. From a sociological perspective, individual’s emotions are tied to the meaning we give ourselves, others, and times of year.  For example, the emotional connection towards Thanksgiving and football season symbolizes what many believe the autumn represents. This coming together of joy and creating memories provides special meaning to this season. But perhaps the biggest reason for our infatuation with fall is that we have been socially conditioned to enjoy fall since we were children. The fall represents a temporal landmark where a clean slate can begin and new routines begin. As Lively explains,

“We’re conditioned from a very early age that the autumn comes with all these exciting things…As children, we come to associate fall with going back to school, new school supplies, seeing friends. It’s exciting, for most. We still respond to this pattern that we experienced for eighteen years.”

Whatever the case may be, enjoy the fall season, but remember to brace yourself – winter is coming.

While the gender gap in time spent on household chores is slowly declining, ideas about women as the primary caretaker of the home and caregiver for the children is still very present. These ideas in turn influence how men and women feel about parenting. A recent Huffington Post article features a new study that found mothers report more stress and fatigue than fathers. The researchers attribute this to the division of parenting tasks — married mothers are more likely to mange basic childcare tasks and are more likely to be alone with children, while married fathers are more often in charge of children’s play and leisure activities. Moreover, even when moms have leisure time, they are more likely to be interrupted or to report multitasking during this time.

According to sociologist Ann Meier,

“Having data systematically collected from thousands of parents allows us to confirm what parents have known for years — that parenting is meaningful but also stressful and tiring. Many mothers will recognize their experiences of interrupted sleep and daily feeding and bathing. Hopefully, many dads will see that their partners will likely be happier if they trade some of their leisure time with kids for more of the ‘work’ of parenting.”

It’s no question that the nomination of Donald Trump has caused a highly publicized divide in the Republican Party, but that divide may have taken roots decades ago. A recent Washington Post article by Josh Pacewicz explains that intra-party contention began as a conflict between establishment Republicans and party activists. As far back as the 1970s, Republican Party leaders became increasingly partisan on major issues, with establishment Republicans showing more interest in business than in hot button issues. When the corporate mergers of the 1980s forced businessmen to focus more on economic development, the door was left open for party activists to start exerting their influence on the party.

In his 2006 interviews with Americans living in the Rust Belt, Pacewicz found that the Republican Party was at war with itself: the business community versus the activists. One local businessman and big-time GOP donor interviewed said “the GOP has repositioned itself to a fault. [Those] of us in the middle don’t know what to do; [we’re] so disgusted.” An activist he interviewed, on the other hand, explained that instead of just being a donor, she was willing to go out and knock on doors and make phone calls. As she put it “Why should all the tickets [to political events] go to these Country Club Republicans?” As Pacewicz says,

“A full accounting of Trump’s rise needs historical context. And it was a long-brewing conflict between establishment Republicans and party activists — eventually won by the activists — that laid the groundwork for the current foment within the GOP.”

But we won’t tell The Donald that.

Professors of sociology often struggle to introduce sociological concepts in new and thought-provoking ways to their students. According to a recent article in Bowling Green Daily News, Professor Bertena Varney is tackling this issue in an unconventional way and using the Harry Potter series to engage her students with various sociological topics. In her “Inequality in Society” class at Southern Kentucky Community and Technological College, Varney sorts students into the houses of Hogwarts and each day a specific house leads class discussion on social issues. For example, the students apply the Harry Potter terminology of “muggles” and “squibs” to a discussion of the disabled and mentally challenged.

Not only do the students use Harry Potter to understand concepts, but they also engage in community service, tutoring, and social media in order to compete for the house cup, which awards the winning house fifty points of extra credit at the end of the semester. Varney also views this immersion structure as providing students with future skills outside of the classroom, saying:

“Once you get them thinking about other people besides themselves, they take off. It teaches them a lot of social skills and problem solving … [and] it’s easier for students to find out how they can work together to make the world a better place. ”

When professors use magical teaching methods like Varney, students are so entranced by the material that anti-cheating spells are no longer necessary!  

Social media continues to be a pioneer of new social trends and reshaping society through its ability to connect individuals across cultures and geographies. One of the latest trends involves the process of mourning through social media.

University of Washington recently covered Nina Cesare and Jennifer Branstad‘s new research, presented for the first time at this summer’s annual sociology meetings, that finds that people who use Twitter to mourn a death do so more publicly than compared to other social media sites, like Facebook, where mourning is more private. They explain,

“While posts about death on Facebook, for example, tend to be more personal and involve people who knew the deceased … Twitter users may not know the dead person, tend to tweet both personal and general comments about the deceased, and sometimes tie the death to broader social issues — for example, mental illness or suicide.”

The researchers describe this change as an opening up of the public conversation surrounding death and mourning and an expansion of the “inner circle” that typically mourns the death of a loved one. Cesare explains,

“…I think the ability of Twitter to open the mourning community outside of the intimate sphere is a big contribution, and creating this space where people can come together and talk about death is something new.”

More and more women are becoming the primary income earner for their families. Conservative commentators have been quick to claim that women working and earning more than their male partners has negative effects on marriages, children, and the home. But new research shows that both men and women are happier when the woman is the primary breadwinner.

As described in a Washington Post article, sociologist Christin Munsch found that men who bring in a larger share of household income are more likely to have low psychological and physical well-being scores. However, when women bring in a larger share of household income, both men and women reported higher scores. Though this finding seems to defy conventional wisdom, it is driven by gender norms, as Munch explains.

“Gendered expectations often pull people into making different career decisions … Men are more likely to blindly take on responsibilities with work because they’re associated with more income. Women are more likely to ask: Do I like this? Do I want to do this?”

In other words, women are more likely to take a high-paying job because they’re interested in the work. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to feel that they have to take a stressful, high-income job because that’s their role. These new findings show that changing long-held gendered expectations surrounding work and earnings is in everyone’s best interest.