A recent story in the Metro News (Vancouver, Canada) caught my attention…

A group that tells people how to kill themselves has been barred from presenting at Vancouver’s public library over concerns that the library could be held liable for helping people to commit suicide.

Paul Whitney, the city’s librarian, said he cancelled the booking — which tells people how to kill themselves, what drug to buy and where to buy it — after legal and law enforcement advisers told him it would violate the Criminal Code.

Whitney said it was inappropriate for the publicly funded library to be putting itself in that position of “undo risk.”

About the group:

But Dr. Philip Nitschke, director of the Australian right-to-die group Exit International, said the group does not encourage people to commit suicide, but rather it gives them end-of-life information to better consider their options.

“This is an issue of vital importance to elderly Canadians … The library is a place where one would expect the free impartation and discussion of ideas and information,” said Nitschke, via an Internet video link from Australia yesterday.

The sociological perspective…

Russel Ogden, a criminologist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University who has studied assisted suicide in Canada for the past 20 years, said talking about suicide is not an offence.

There is evidence, he added, that discussing suicide can even act as a deterrent.

Read more.

The New York Times ran a story at the end of last week about the media flurry surrounding celebrity deaths over the last several months. The article takes a closer look at the context and meaning of all the alarm.

The trend…

ONE after the other, they were dying: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon, all in the same week earlier this summer. Next were Walter Cronkite, John Hughes and, in late August, at a pitch point of public grief, Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Then on Monday, Patrick Swayze died after a widely publicized struggle with pancreatic cancer, only to be followed by Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Wednesday night.

It has been, by all appearances, the endless funereal season, with a news media swarm on the departed and a parade of nostalgic tributes, as bloggers and Twitterers went on “celebrity death watch.” Even before Senator Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer Aug. 25, columnists wrote pleading laments like one in The Washington Post that said, “God, please stop taking away our celebrities.”

But the trend may be exaggerated.

But in fact, no more celebrities had died than in past summers, according to Lou Ferrara, a managing editor in charge of entertainment and lifestyle coverage for The Associated Press.

The perception of numerous celebrity deaths was not supported by the number of obituaries the news agency wrote, he said, because it was not a matter of how many died, but who.

What does all of this mean? The sociologist explains…

This summer could come to be known as the summer when baby boomers began to turn to the obituary pages first, to face not merely their own mortality or ponder their legacies, but to witness the passing of legends who defined them as a tribe, bequeathing through music, culture, news and politics a kind of generational badge that has begun to fray.

“This is a historical development in cultural history,” said Todd Gitlin, 66, the sociologist and author of “The Sixties,” who teaches at the Columbia University School of Journalism. “It’s the ebbing of figures who have a wide enough span of appreciation and admiration so they appeal to significant numbers of people, like incarnations of virtue. So people take a new measure of themselves when they ask, ‘Will there ever be anybody else like X’ ”?

Read more.

The Chicago Tribune ran a story this week about the rash of bad behavior by politicians, celebrities, and athletes alike in recent months.

The breakdown:

After watching South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilsonheckle the president during a joint session of Congress,Serena Williams cuss out a line judge at the U.S. Open andKanye West snatch the microphone from a 19-year-old newcomer, to champion a much-honored megastar, on theMTV Video Music Awards, you may have had the following thought:

What the (bleep) is wrong with people these days?

Those three incidents during the past week represent the latest trifecta of public incivility in a year in which town-hall health-care discussions routinely have devolved into shouting matches, President Barack Obama has been compared to and depicted as Adolf Hitler and figures across the political spectrum have flung epithets unprintable in a family newspaper.

The incidents, notable as much for their breaches of decorum as for their content, follow a general pattern: incident, outrage, hundreds of thousands of YouTube hits, apology and, maybe, punishment. What’s unclear is whether such outbursts are signs of shifting times or just a news cluster that gives us an excuse to wring our hands and look back at polite ol’ days that may never have existed.

Sociologist Gary Alan Fine is asked for his comments, and thoughtfully responds that this is likely not a new pattern of behavior, but a new pattern of interest…

Northwestern University sociology professor Gary Fine was reluctant to draw big conclusions, noting that Williams follows a long line of athletes — among them tennis players Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe — who have berated umpires, that presidents have been heckled in some form at least since Lyndon Johnson and that the British Parliament shows far less respect toward its head of government.

What the current controversies really indicate, Fine said, is what kind of news most people prefer.

“People like to pretend that they care about policy, but they really care about people and stories,” Fine said, noting that the Wilson outburst “provided a story about what is otherwise a complicated, confusing and, dare I say, boring debate about the details of health care.”

Read more.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story earlier this week about a recent recommendation by the NCAA to screen college athletes for the gene that can cause sickle cell disease. This has resulted in a significant amount of heated debate including testimony from experts who claim the testing is unnecessary and highlight the possibility of unintended discrimination against minority athletes.

About the issue:

Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder that can cause severe pain, stroke and death, but sickle cell trait is almost always benign, and many people never know whether they carry the gene. About 8 percent of black people and about 1 percent of Latinos have sickle cell trait, but it’s rare among white people, affecting only about 1 in 10,000.

Several high-profile cases of athletes dying during extreme workouts have led some researchers to believe that sickle cell trait can be fatal. The case with the most impact was the 2006 death of 19-year-old Dale Lloyd II, a Rice University football player who had sickle cell trait and collapsed after a physically intense practice.

Lloyd’s family filed suit, saying the university should have tested the young man. As part of a settlement, the NCAA made its recommendation to screen athletes, which was announced in June.

A medical opinion:

But sickle cell experts, including at Children’s Hospital Oakland, say the action is misguided. There is little science to back up the assumption that sickle cell trait causes death, they say, and screening players could do more harm than good for black and other minority athletes. “A coach is going to be able to say, ‘Even though this kid is great, do I really want to put him out there as the quarterback or starting player and take the risk of something happening?’ ” said Dr. Elliott Vichinsky, a sickle cell expert and director of hematology and oncology at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

And a sociological opinion:

The United States has a long history of discrimination against people with sickle cell trait, said Troy Duster, a sociologist at UC Berkeley and New York University. In the 1960s, people who tested positive weren’t allowed into the Air Force Academy, and into the ’70s people were denied insurance or certain jobs, he said.

It’s irresponsible to screen people when there’s little scientific evidence that the gene causes death and no specific precautions athletes can take to protect themselves, Duster said.

“When you screen someone, the question is, for what? What are you going to do with that information?” Duster said. “The NCAA is saying they want education, but education requires research, and there’s no research.”

Read more.

The BBC World Service Program, The Forum, ran a segment this weekend featuring sociologist Diego Gambetta…

About the program:

This week we take a trip into real and imagined dystopian worlds…

We travel to the future to meet the environmentally friendly humanoids from Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood’s latest book, “The year of the Flood”. She asks whether an environmental religion can prevent the extinction of the human race as we know it, or whether it would accelerate our evolution into a new, unrecognisable species.

The British opposition security minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones argues that the right balance needs to be struck between privacy and the efficiency of the state.

And sociology Professor Diego Gambetta peers down into the underworld to crack the codes and signals of criminal communication.

We discuss how we modify our bodies and our communication in order to protect our planet and evade the state, both today and in a possible dystopian future.

LISTEN HERE.

Earlier this week United Press International (UPI) ran a story about research by sociologists Sarah Burgard and James House of the University of Michigan and Jennie Brand at the University of California, Los Angeles, which revealed that “persistent job insecurity — not necessarily job loss — poses a major threat” to workers in the United States.

About the study…

[The authors] analyzed data on more than 1,700 adults collected over periods from 3-10 years. By interviewing the same people at different points in time, the researchers were able to disentangle the connection between poor health and job insecurity, and to control for the impact of actual job loss and other factors.

The first wave of the study was completed between 1986 and 1989 and the second between 1995 and 2005.

The authors note:

“It may seem surprising that chronically high job-insecurity is more strongly linked with health declines than actual job loss or unemployment,” Burgard said in a statement. “Ongoing ambiguity about the future, inability to take action unless the feared event actually happens, and the lack of institutionalized supports associated with perceived insecurity are among them.”

To measure feelings of job insecurity, study participants were asked, “How likely is that during the next couple of years you will involuntarily lose your main job?” At any given time, as many as 18 percent of those surveyed felt insecure about their jobs, the study said.

Read more.

The Washington Post reports today on how the Christian right has “found new life with Barack Obama in office, particularly around healthcare” as many had speculated about the declining potency of the group for cultural and political change.

The state of affairs…

As the president prepares to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to press for health-care reform, conservative Christian leaders are rallying their troops to oppose him, with online town hall meetings, church gatherings, fundraising appeals, and e-mail and social networking campaigns. FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, has scheduled a webcast Thursday night for tens of thousands of supporters in which House  Minority Leader John A. Boehner(R-Ohio) and other speakers will respond to the president’s health-care address.

And a sociologist explains the trend!

“Movements do better when they have something to oppose,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociology professor at Rice University who studies evangelicals. “It’s easier to fundraise in those kinds of situations. It’s easier to mobilize volunteers because you have an us versus them mentality, and that plays very well right now for the Christian right.”

After seeing their bread-and-butter issue of abortion take a back seat during the election last year, the Christian right has been a prime force in moving it back to the front row by focusing on it as a potential part of health-care reform.

Additional scholarly commentary…

Laura Olson, professor of politics at Clemson University, said health-care reform has been a way to rally Christian conservatives and get them back into the national conversation.

“It has the potential to remind people in that sector. . . of the American electorate that, ‘This is really one of our core concerns, and here’s a new manifestation of it,’ ” Olson said. “It puts a whole new coat of paint on it and makes it even more useful strategically.”

Read more.

The San Jose Mercury News ran a story this weekend about how women’s role in sex crimes has resurfaced as an issue. Citing a handful of recent crimes in which women have played significant parts, the article delves into women’s roles in the crimes and the leniency they sometimes receive in the courtroom.

Charlene Williams of Sacramento lured six teenage girls and four young adults to their deaths as her husband demanded the perfect “sex slave.”

Michelle Lyn Michaud, also of Sacramento, customized curling irons to help her boyfriend torture and murder a 22-year-old student abducted from a Pleasanton street.

In Utah, Wanda Eileen Barzee was accused of helping her husband kidnap 14-year old Elizabeth Smart at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City bedroom so that he could secure another “wife.”

Now along comes Nancy Garrido of the Bay Area. Like the others, Garrido is accused of teaming up with a male partner — in Garrido’s case, her husband of nearly three decades — and allegedly committing unthinkable crimes against other women and children.

The arrests Aug. 27 of Nancy and Phillip Garrido revealed a stunning story about the 1991 kidnapping of 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, snatched off the street near her home in Meyers. Authorities say Jaycee, now 29, had been living for 18 years in the Garridos’ backyard near Antioch and is the mother of two children fathered by Phillip Garrido.

While attention focuses on Phillip Garrido’s history of sexual assault, his reduced prison term and evasion of parole oversight, the case also raises haunting questions about what role his wife may have played.

The article draws upon sociological commentary from Jack Levin…

One noted criminologist said he believes that some female offenders actually have benefited by the persistent notion that women could not possibly be the leaders — especially in a sex crime.

“The court typically throws the book at the man, believing that he was the instigator — that he initiated the attack. So he’ll get the death penalty,” said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston.

“His female companion is considered an accomplice who went along for the love of her man. She gets a much lighter sentence.”

That view is not always accurate, said Levin, an expert in serial murder and hate crimes.

In one case in Canada, he said, a woman caught up in a rape and murder case involving teenage victims testified against her husband in exchange for leniency.

In a move decried in Canada as the “Deal With the Devil,” Karla Homolka got a 12-year sentence in 1993 for manslaughter in the murders of two Ontario teens.

Motivations vary widely

She is now believed to be living in Paris, Levin said. Her former husband, Paul Bernardo, was sentenced to life in prison in Canada, which does not have the death penalty.

But after the deal was struck, Levin said, videotapes showing the rape and torture of the schoolgirls revealed Karla Homolka was a willing participant.

“She was seen enjoying herself and participating fully,” he said. “Karla Homolka was just as guilty as her husband.”

But women in these types of cases can also fall into the category of being so passive they “just go along with the plan,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

He said besides women who are battered or psychologically controlled, some are simply “low-functioning” and dependent on their mates.

“It’s not like there’s a single profile,” he said.

Read more.

A new study funded by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations and publicized by the New York Times this week revealed that low-wage workers in the U.S. are often cheated out of their pay. The survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago found that low-wage workers are “routineley denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage.”

The Times reports:

The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.

“We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate,” said Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors and a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the City University of New York.

In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay.

The researchers said one of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries.

“The conventional wisdom has been that to the extent there were violations, it was confined to a few rogue employers or to especially disadvantaged workers, like undocumented immigrants,” said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “What our study shows is that this is a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”

More of their findings…

According to the study, 39 percent of those surveyed were illegal immigrants, 31 percent legal immigrants and 30 percent native-born Americans.

The study found that 26 percent of the workers had been paid less than the minimum wage the week before being surveyed and that one in seven had worked off the clock the previous week. In addition, 76 percent of those who had worked overtime the week before were not paid their proper overtime, the researchers found.

And…

The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites.

“These practices are not just morally reprehensible, but they’re bad for the economy,” saidAnnette Bernhardt, an author of the study and policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project. “When unscrupulous employers break the law, they’re robbing families of money to put food on the table, they’re robbing communities of spending power and they’re robbing governments of vital tax revenues.”

Read more.

U.S. News and World Report also picked up the story.

On PBS’ NewsHour, business correspondent Paul Solman sat down with sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh to talk about how even though the economy is inching toward ‘recovery’ the perils of jobless and job-seeking Americans suggest a need for new metrics to evaluate economic recovery.

Solman reports:

According to Venkatesh, the days of a company giving someone a job for 10 years may be over; many American companies don’t know where they themselves will be in six months to a year. Instead, as companies hire more people for shorter periods of time, on a contract or freelance basis, we’ll need better ways to evaluate how this type of employment fits within our models of economic recovery.

Read more.

Watch the video.