culture

The New York Times blog City Room, ran a story this week about a sociologist’s new book about graffiti…

Gregory J. Snyder, a Baruch College sociologist, spent years hanging out with graffiti writers, earning their trust and conducting scores of interviews. The new book based on his studies, “Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground,” reveals that he became more than an observer in that decade and a half: On very few occasions he wrote graffiti himself, scrawling his tag perhaps seven times.

The books discusses the origin of graffiti culture as well as the diversity amongst those who engage in in…

Professor Snyder, 40, argues that while graffiti culture emerged around the same time as hip-hop, in the early 1970s, graffiti in fact comes from a variety of cultural sources:

Whatever their class, race, ethnicity, religion, or age, writers define themselves not by what they look like, or what language they speak, or what clothes they wear, but by what they do. Their identities are as writers first, and as members of ethnic, religious, and other subgroups second.

He adds, “In its purest form, graffiti is a democratic art form that revels in the American Dream.”

The book, just published by New York University Press, argues that graffiti culture has, in some ways, been uniquely democratic. “What is lost sometimes in the cacophony of the debate over whether graffiti is art or vandalism is that when it’s art, it is free art,” he writes. “You don’t need money, or special knowledge, or the right outfit, or a car, or an ID to see it. This is why the graffiti subculture has inspired such a diversity of young people.”

Snyder addresses the where and why…

A provocative map in the book points out that unlike other “quality of life” crimes, graffiti does not tend to be focused in poor neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime. Professor Snyder writes:

Graffiti writers write in order to get fame and respect for their deeds, and therefore they write in places where their work is more likely to be seen by their intended demographic. It is not the amount of disorder that determines a good spot to write graffiti, but the number of potential viewers and the unlikelihood that the graffiti will be painted over. These spots tends to be where young people from all over the city are likely to congregate, and thus the East Village, the Lower East Side, and SoHo are the places where most of the illegal New York City graffiti can be found. These are not poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Indeed, he adds, “Despite all of the negativity associated with graffiti, it remains one of SoHo’s selling points, literally.”

Read more.

Famous Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman made headlines recently for his academic pursuits. A sociology degree of all things! And according to the Dallas Morning News, one of his remaining courses at UCLA was on race and ethnicity…

The Associated Press reports:

The Hall of Fame quarterback says he’s passed his two final college courses and will graduate in June from UCLA — 20 years after he left for the NFL. The Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday that Aikman is getting a bachelor’s degree in sociology and will participate in UCLA’s graduation ceremonies. The 42-year-old Fox Sports broadcaster says he’s “finally taking care of unfinished business.”

The Dalls Morning News noted:

Aikman had planned to make the walk two decades earlier. But the matter of the April 1989 NFL draft came along. The Cowboys insisted that the first player selected get to Dallas as soon as possible to help rejuvenate their floundering franchise. The two sociology classes he was going to take that spring quarter would have to wait. Aikman never dreamt graduation would be delayed 20 years.

“Finally taking care of unfinished business,” Aikman said Monday, explaining why he took the necessary courses to secure his degree. “It was important to me.”

For this famous sociology major, I can’t help but wonder… why sociology?

This past weekend the New York Times ran a fascinating article about the use of racial epithets by Britons. The Times reports, “Britons generally agree — or say they do — that being racist is bad and that making racist remarks is wrong. But there is no national consensus on what that means, exactly. Take references to ‘golliwogs,’ which are Little Black Sambo-style dolls, or to ‘Pakis,’ a slur referring to people of Pakistani descent. Both terms have been used in Britain recently by famous people in infamous incidents. But though public condemnation followed each time, so did condemnation of the condemnation, the gist of which was that no offense had been meant, so no offense should have been taken.”

A sociologist weighs in…

Perhaps these mixed-up responses come in part because Britain, while deeply cherishing its tradition of free speech, also has laws against using language that incites racial hatred, said Robert Ford, a postdoctoral research fellow in sociology at the University of Manchester who studies racial attitudes in Britain.

“There’s a debate over whether these laws are acceptable in a free-speech society,” Mr. Ford said. “Some people say that freedom of speech is a fundamental birthright and that to condemn people for their language is ‘political correctness gone mad.

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Chicago-Tribune reporter Rick Morrissey presented a theory about Michael Phelps’ documented experimentation with marijuana – he did it because he actually wanted to get caught…

In order to see whether or not this theory had any validity, he consulted a sociologist, and writes,

I brought [my theory] to sociologist Jay Coakley, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who has spent much of his career studying the sociology of sport. He agreed Phelps could be trying to escape something but wouldn’t go so far as to say the swimming star might have been making a conscious or subconscious effort to get caught partaking of the pot.

“I would say there was a desperate desire on his part to get out of this tunnel in which he has been living,” he said.

That tunnel is chlorinated. Phelps spends a good number of his waking hours underwater, and he has been doing it for a long, long time. Swimming is not generally a social sport. It’s hard to grow as a person when you’re basically in an isolation tank.

“After living in this training tunnel for eight to 10 years, he would have to at least fantasize about being outside of it,” Coakley said. “I don’t know whether this is a cry for help, ‘Please stop this train, get me out of this tunnel, I never want to go back,’ or whether it’s, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get out of this tunnel for my own sanity for at least awhile before I go back in.’ ”

But you can understand why Phelps might crave some modicum of normalcy. Most 23-year-olds don’t spend a large part of their free time in watery solitude. So as stunning as that photo of Phelps in a British tabloid was, maybe the idea of him partying hearty at the University of South Carolina isn’t.

“You really don’t have time to be normal with the kind of training he did,” Coakley said. “In terms of development, I’d say he’s probably developmentally delayed. He hasn’t had a chance to have the kinds of experiences that lead to normal adulthood.

“We just assume that, if you win a medal for some reason, it builds your character. That’s a crock. So he actually is facing this as a 23-year-old who is probably less mature than any average 23-year-old on the street.”

Read more.

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about how kids these days aren’t into planning in advance – attributing this ‘new’ phenomenon to the rise of mobile communications via text messaging and web-based chat. The Inquirer reports:

The ubiquity of cell phones and text messaging, especially among young people, has changed the whole idea of the word plans – most significantly, it allows people not to make any.

“One of the consequences of the mobile phone is that you can postpone any decision until the last minute,” said James E. Katz, chair of the Rutgers University communications department, where he directs the Center for Mobile Communications Studies. “Since you have up to that last minute to obtain information for the decision, cell phones can give you the opportunity to delay it. What do you want for dinner? Hmmm, I’ll tell you when I am really hungry.”

But a sociologist isn’t so sure that this is a new trend…

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers-Camden, is not nearly as worried, saying that the late-planning habit, especially for young people, started at least a generation ago, or even before, with the countercultural 1960s and ’70s.

“There was a value of being spontaneous and free of entanglements,” said Goertzel, 66, whose own children, now 43 and 39, weren’t big on making long-term plans when they were younger. In comparison, when he and his wife were younger, she had to know Tuesday what they were doing Saturday.

“Even with wired telephones, there was a lot of last-minute communication,” he said. “It might also be cyclical, a matter of generational culture, an ‘uptight’ generation followed by a ‘laid-back’ one.”

Read more.

Market Watch reported with a follow up to an article on ‘sexting’ previously discussed on the Crawler. This new blurb, from United Press International, clarifies that the original claim that 20% of teens were ‘sexting’ was overblown…

A sociologist says she believes claims many U.S. teens are using their cell phones to send provocative photos of themselves are overblown.

C.J. Pascoe, an assistant professor at Colorado College, told the McClatchy-Tribune News Service she and her research assistant interviewed 80 youngsters as part of the three-year Digital Youth Report study. She said her look at what teens actually do online did not match a poll’s claim that 20 percent of teens have sent sexy or nude pictures, a practice nicknamed sexting.

“No one brought it up,” she said. “I had them go through their last 10 messages, their last 10 photos and I never saw it.”

The 20 percent claim came from a poll by Teenage Research Unlimited for CosmoGirl! magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Pascoe said she believes teenagers are doing what they have always done — at least since teen culture emerged in the 1950s.

“I think what makes adults nervous about new media is they have a window into a teenager’s world for the first time,” she said.

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story this week about a new study from sociologist Chadwick Menning. The study surveys 300 Midwestern college students and suggests that ‘dirty dancing’ and an abundance of male guests are better indicators of danger at a party than whether or not partygoers are drunk, according to the students. 

Chadwick Menning, an associate professor of sociology at Ball State University, asked respondents to name signals that make women feel unsafe at a party. They cited such things as suggestive dancing and and a disproportionately high number of men. But they did not mention alcohol, Mr. Menning said.

“Drinking is considered normal at college parties, and that hasn’t changed in decades,” he said in a Ball State news release. “Students expect to drink lots of alcohol at both Greek and non-Greek parties. Yet they do look for secondary traits that may signal that there could be danger.” The study, “Unsafe at Any House?” is to be published in the October issue of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Mr. Menning pointed out that women who attend parties centered on drinking put themselves at risk of sexual assault, which he said ranks as “their biggest fear, even bigger than death.” So the students’ lack of concern about alcohol is noteworthy, he said, particularly given the efforts by college administrators to educate young people about the dangers of binge drinking.

Read more.

The LA Times ran a story yesterday, attempting to present some ‘straight talk’ about the economic crisis. The article focused largely on the comments of economist Paul Krugman, but Barry Glassner weighed in on the fray.

Barry Glassner, the USC sociologist, wrote “The Culture of Fear” to expose what he said was the media’s tendency to exaggerate the danger of various phenomena, such as road rage and workplace violence. He called TV news “by far the most breathless” in pumping up worries about the economy, but urged print journalists to be cognizant of their power.

“If we do a little thought experiment and imagine that the media suddenly told us everything is about to turn around,” Glassner said, “wouldn’t it seem a lot more likely we would call a broker and buy on the stock market, or make an offer on that house we have been waiting to move on, and so forth?”

Read more.

The Chicago Sun Tribune ran a story today about how Chinese immigrants working in Italy’s fashion industry have had a transformative effect on the Tuscan city of Prato. While the impact of this wave of immigration and success appears positive, there are some indications that life for Chinese workers in the fashion industry be more grim than originally thought.

Christine Spolar reports:

Like some city neighborhoods, suburbs and small towns across the U.S. where Mexicans and other immigrants gather in search of jobs, Prato is a place where two culturally different communities can live side-by-side and never really know each other.

“In all my travels, I had never seen anything like it,” said Roberto Ye, a son of Chinese immigrants and an Italian citizen who opened a Western Union office in the heart of Prato. “I said to myself: This is not like being in Chinatown in Chicago or New York or anywhere else. This is like China. White people are the foreigners here.”

To understand the impact, follow the money. This year, Chinese immigrants in Italy sent home a whopping 1.68 billion euros, about $2.4 billion, the lion’s share of all 6 billion euros in remittances recorded by Italy’s government.

“You have to forget anything you have ever learned about immigration when you come to Prato. Forget typical patterns. Europe has turned itself into a global marketplace and the Chinese who come are trying to take advantage of that,” said Andrea Frattani, Prato’s multicultural minister.

The darker side of this success story…

Police have raided hundreds of crowded workshops in the past few years where Chinese live, work and sleep. They earn far-below standard wage yet produce wares reportedly sold even in designer shops.

Some Chinese offer excuses for breaking labor laws. Workers still find conditions in Italy better than in China, they claim. But law-enforcement agents argue that Italian and Chinese entrepreneurs wrongly squeeze the most vulnerable. Italians subcontract with Chinese businessmen to cover dodgy business practices. Chinese owners rule over workers desperate for jobs.

Authorities worry about potential dangers: Criminal networks can prey on outsiders who don’t speak the native language — and Italy is a place where mafias already operate.

Social integration between Italians and Chinese is almost non-existent; schools are the few places where the young of both cultures mingle.

The sociological commentary…

Chinese businesses exist in Italy but they aren’t part of Italy. There has been immigration but not integration,” said Daniele Cologna, a sociologist at the Codici research group in Milan.

Full story.

The New York Times reports on the apparent downturn in major cosmetic surgeries as the US economy seems to be faltering. The article, ‘Putting Vanity (and Botox?) on Hold,’ explores how even with the advent of Botox in 2002 – making wrinkle reduction a more affordable luxury – people may still be cutting back on their body alterations. The Times asks, “But now, as the country plunges into recession, will financial hardship demote the pursuit of physical perfection?”

Time to call in the sociologists…

In uncertain times, people tend to re-evaluate their priorities, dismissing aspirational purchases as frivolous, said Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

“Cosmetic surgery is going to become the new S.U.V., something that you can do without, that is less justifiable for you and your family,” said Dr. Pitts-Taylor. She is the author of “Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture.”

A second opinion…

Deborah A. Sullivan, a sociology professor at the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, said that people who feel forced to forgo cosmetic medicine might experience a loss of control in their lives.

“I think it will intensify the sense of downward mobility: ‘I can’t even get my wrinkles treated,’ ” Dr. Sullivan said. She is the author of “Cosmetic Surgery: The Cutting Edge of Commercial Medicine in America.”

Against a tide of people eschewing cosmetic medicine in the new economy, she also predicted a counter current of consumers having procedures to feel proactive.

“People who would not have considered it, when they get laid off at 45, 50, 55 and are back on the job market, might consider it as they try to enhance their human capital,” she said.

Read the full story.