We’re happy to announce the media award winners for September and October!

September: “Why Surveys Should Pay Attention to Prisoners,” Carl Bialik, Wall Street Journal.

In her write-up of the article, TSP’s Sarah Shannon reminds us that much of the young, African-American male population in the United States is incarcerated and thus unaccounted for in national surveys.  

October: “Tracing the Link Between Single Moms and Gun Violence,” Belinda Luscombe, Time Health & Family.

As the Citing explains, Luscombe uses social scientific research to weigh in on a current issue and show that the link between single moms and gun violence is tenuous, to say the least.

 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.

Education News and the Minnesota Daily report that new research from a University of Minnesota team helmed by John Robert Warren reveals a whopping 450,000 students between grades 1 and 8 are held back every year, and there is wide variation across states. Previously, it had been thought that most of these “retentions” were evenly distributed and happened in the first grade, with students not quite ready to move into the second. Presumably, these earlier retentions would be less likely to derail an educational track or firmly established friendship ties, but those that come further into grade school would hold further-reaching effects.

As Warren tells the Daily:

“I think first grade is kind of a formative year, it’s where you begin to do the building blocks of reading and math and it’s always hard to tell when a kid is ready to move on,” Warren said. “I think there is a sentiment, right or wrong, that it might do some good to hold a kid back in first grade to help them build those foundational skills.”

Warren’s team is the first to get a look at state-by-state data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data, and they have published their full report in the journal Education Researcher.

China is an expanding country, trying to find where it fits in the social and economic framework of powerful nations. Conversely, its people are trying to find where they fit in the Chinese social structure. As they prepare for a change in political leadership, China is also faced with they rise of the individual. In an article for Voice of America, Shannon Van Sant interviewed UC Irvine sociologist Wang Feng about this phenomenon.

Much like in many areas in the Middle East, Europe, and North America, parts of China have recently seen a surge of protests and “mass incidents.”  Feng describes this as “directly linked to the growth of China’s middle class.”  While incomes in China increase, Feng explains, the expectations Chinese citizens have of individual rights and pursuits grow too. Everything from land ownership to corruption and taxation is now a subject of contestation.

These protests put the Chinese government in an awkward predicament.  Once infamous for its stifling of public activism, the state must react to these protests with the eyes of the world upon them. So far, it has tried to clamp down on the instigators but, in some cases, have also given in to the protestor’s demands. According to Dr. Feng, Chinese society has already changed—the government will “need to come in to really implement these bold reforms. Otherwise, well, time is running out.”

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.

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.

The global recession has caused a crisis of trust in both the political and financial systems. In his new book Aftermath, Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells turns his attention to the current financial crisis and life beyond the crisis. Speaking to the BBC’s Paul Mason recently, Castells talked about his particular interest in how the recession has forced people to reimagine their lives outside of their identity as a consumer. It has, he says, produced new, “non-capitalist” forms of economic behavior operating outside the financial system, rather than seeking to reform it.

A kind of protest counterculture, these growing alternative economies directly resist individualistic consumer culture through strategies such as no-interest lending, barter networks for goods and services, and co-operatives through which consumers can collectively access and raise resources. This financial system backlash also includes the rise of “ethical” banks, which forbid the kind of speculative investment and lending that created the financial crisis in the first place.

Another cooperative ethical model includes “crowdfunding,” in which individuals collectively raise money toward a specific goal. Made famous by websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, crowdfunding has been used for software development, independent movie and music ventures, and political campaigns. It has also been used as grassroots activism. This summer, as documented in a Christian Science Monitor article, the Spanish government refused to investigate the collapse of one of its major banks, which taxpayer money had bailed out. Through crowdfunding, the Spanish version of the Occupy movement raised enough money to initiate a class action lawsuit against the bank—an incentive for the government to launch its own investigation into the bank’s collapse.

The significance of alternative economic movements for Castells, then, lies in the control that it gives to individuals and groups otherwise rendered powerless by political and economic structures.

It has been a tough year for Chicago. A recent surge in gang conflicts has increased crime—so much so that Chicago saw its 400^th murder of 2012 by the beginning of October. In a New York Times op-ed, Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia sociologist and author of Gang Leader for a Day, describes ways in which the efforts to control guns in Chicago are insufficient. Venkatesh explains:

Homicides are up about 25 percent over last year. Chicago has surpassed New York and Los Angeles as a hub of gun-related violence, most of it involving young people. Since 2001, it has recorded more than 5,000 gun-related deaths, compared with the 2,000 American military deaths in the war in Afghanistan.

Venkatesh sees several ways to improve outcomes for Chicagoans. First, he identifies a police focus on finding “gun-runners,” who buy from licensed dealers and resell to others, when nearly half of gun purchases actually come from a secondary market comprised of gangs, gun brokers, or informal traders such as family or friends. He suggests more amnesty programs like gun buyback programs could help here. Next, Venkatesh fingers a lack of support for mediation programs like Boston’s CeaseFire. These programs help open up conversations between gang members and police officers, and have been shown to lead to sharp declines in gang violence.

Finally, Venkatesh turns to a back to how guns get from person to person. A surprising amount of firearms, he writes, are passed between friends and family, and he believes a sensible, “clever” media campaign must be launched to discourage gun-lending.

These may seem like small steps, but they could have very important effects. As Venkatesh puts it, “Good gun policy is good social policy.” To underscore the point, he turns to his Freakonomics colleague, Steven J. Levitt, who has estimated “each homicide is associated with out-migration of 70 city residents. The total social costs of gun violence in Chicago have been estimated at about $2.5 billon—$2,500 per household—a year.”

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).

Americans are extremely dubious about the integrity of atheists. In fact, an article by several of Minnesota’s own sociologists, “Atheists as Other,” found that atheists are the least trusted minority. Most Americans think that the absence of belief in the divine renders one prone to turpitude and without basis for morality.

According to Rohan Maitzen in a recent article from Salon, the remedy for this ethic-less reputation lies in the most unlikely of places, namely the semi-obscure novel Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by famous atheist George Eliot. In contrast to Richard Dawkins’ and Christopher Hitchens’ confrontational stance toward religion, Eliot understood “religion as the form through which many people have, historically, expressed their best moral impulses.” She did not mind religiosity so long as it fostered feelings of sympathy and responsibility for human suffering.

At once a “stringent moralist and an unbeliever,” Eliot wove a tale of human suffering, loss, and redemption through the experiences of the title character, using the “affective power of fiction to convert us to faith, not in God, but in humanity.” Indeed, through the tale of Silas Marner and her own letters to her deeply religious family, Eliot poignantly makes the case for the morality of atheism, mainly because “in a material universe there are no rewards or punishments to come later.” Summing it up, Eliot explained to another writer,

It is a pang to me to witness the suffering of a fellow-being, and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he is mortal—because his life is so short, and I would have it, if possible, filled with happiness and not misery.

Think of it like this: Once, workers had unions. Now they have parties.

In the Silicon Valley (and, we’d argue, most other areas), the workday doesn’t stop at 5pm. But working the late shift, writes Chris O’Brien in the Silicon Valley Mercury News, is less about pounding coffee and more about cocktails and socializing—a new form of required labor for the dot-com and post-Internet boom eras. O’Brien looks to the work of sociologist Gina Neff and her new book Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries to show how the parties these high tech workers attend (and feel pressured to attend) signal a shifting relationship between work and risk. The basic idea is a key, neoliberal ideal: “individuals… are told success is theirs if they just work hard and network enough.”

Neff told O’Brien that the workers she interviewed reported not wanting to go to the various social functions, but feeling like every time they skipped out, they were further out of the loop of well-known workers on the radar of employers and investors:

One woman Neff interviewed laments that her inability to attend parties after she got pregnant hurt her career: “That’s what derailed my rise. Because a lot of this is about going out and networking a lot and I just stopped.”

And maybe the dot-com boom seems a little out of date, but O’Brien points out that the responsibility for not getting laid off (or bouncing back after a layoff) is increasingly absorbed by workers themselves. It’s on them to always have secondary career options, get their business card into the right hands, and have the right numbers in their phones should they get a pink slip one day. Uncertainty has made hitting the social scene, O’Brien writes, more crucial than ever.