trends

Yesterday the Columbus Dispatch ran a story exploring whether thefts and break-ins rise in hard times – the answer is yes, but it may not be clearly linked to the state of the economy. Reporter Elizabeth Gibson calls on sociologist Richard Rosenfeld for a more in-depth interpretation of this trend.

The paper reports:

More people struggling with the economy means more people turning to crime just to put bread on the table. Right? It’s poetic, but police, economists and criminologists say it’s neither that simple nor that dramatic.

“Everybody thinks it’s just a law of nature, but that’s just not true. There are a lot of things more powerful than the economy, operating all the time,” said David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention at the John Jay College of Criminal Studies in New York.

The buzz on the street is that car break-ins and petty thefts are on the rise, prompting some residents to beef up their block-watch programs. But crime actually has been going down or staying stable in many central Ohio communities.

But sociologist Richard Rosenfeld presents a more nuanced argument as to why this trend might occur…

Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said a subtle increase in crime will deepen with the economy. It’s not that desperate people turn to a life of crime, he said; it’s that existing criminals can make more money in a down economy as demand for cheap stolen goods rises.

“It’s anecdotal so far,” he said. “But when the numbers come out, I do expect an increase in crime over the next few years.”

The Columbus Dispatch emphasizes that among academics, the verdict is still out on this link…

Read more.

The New York Times business section blog Economix, ran a story yesterday including commentary from sociologist Viviana Zelizer about the history of holiday bonuses – an especially interesting topic given the recent outrage surrounding bonuses for failing companies’ executives.

Over at The Huffington Post, the Princeton sociologist Viviana A. Zelizer recounts some interesting milestones in the history of the bonus, and traces its evolution from gift to entitlement:

At the turn of the 20th century, U.S. employers began substituting the traditional 19th century Christmas offerings to employees — turkeys, watches, candy or gold coins — with a cash bonus. As early as 1902, J. P. Morgan & Company had apparently broken the record by giving each of their employees a full-year’s salary as a Christmas present. Gifts of cash were increasingly standardized, calculated as a percentage of the wage. By 1911, 10 percent was considered “liberal.” Some banks went as far as substituting the Christmas present for a first of the year merit increase in salary.

Most employers, however, continued to want to treat the bonus as a discretionary gift; after all, this custom of “remembering the workers” served them well to oversee and regulate workers’ productivity as well as assuring their loyalty. Indeed, it is reported that Woolworth’s first Christmas cash bonus to employees in 1899 ($5 for each year of service, with a limit of $25) was meant to match competitors’ higher wages and avoid a salesgirls’ strike. It was probably also a cheaper way to pay overtime. Around 1910, a 25-year-old saleswoman working in a New York department store told a National Consumers’ League investigator that in the week before Christmas “she worked standing over fourteen hours every day… so painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long periods that some of the girls forgo eating at noon in order to give themselves ..a foot-bath.” For this overtime the store gave her $20 “presented to her, not as payment, but as a Christmas gift.”

Significantly, while some companies offered a bonus to every employee, others made the Christmas present contingent on length of service or a worker’s efficiency record. Or on a worker’s proper disposition of the bonus; in Christmas 1914, a large Minneapolis flour-milling company reportedly gave each of their employees a $25 check to be deposited at a savings bank, the gift-check being valueless otherwise.

But the similarity to other forms of compensation invited recipients to treat the bonus as an entitlement, pressing for a definition of the additional income as a right. The personalization of a business gift from employer to employee was hard to sustain when the bestowal was standardized and expected. By the 1950s, the Christmas bonus officially lost its status as a gift: when a firm announced a reduction in its annual Christmas bonus as a way to make up for the expense of introducing a costly new retirement plan, the union tried to negotiate the employees’ holiday bonus. After the company refused any bargaining, the union appealed to the National Labor Relations Board. The Board ruled that the Christmas bonus could no longer be considered an employer’s discretionary gift but an expected and negotiable component of a worker’s wage. While a dissenting board member protested that a “genuine Christmas gift has no place at the bargaining table” (Niles-Bement-Pond Company and Amalgamated Local No. 405, International Union, United Automobile, Aircract & Agricultural Implement Workers of America, C.I.O., 1952), it was generally agreed that the bonus was no longer a present but a separate category of payment from the regular paycheck. The benefactor-beneficiary component of the employer-employee relationship, it follows, was vanishing…

Read more.

The New York Times recently ran a piece entitled “Why the Sting of Layoffs Can Be Sharper for Men,” in which they look into how job loss may affect men differently – with a greater negative impact – than women.

Psychiatrists and family therapists establish the claim that men are more adversely affected by job loss…

Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of “The Female Brain” and a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, says that women who lose their jobs “aren’t going to take as much of a self-esteem hit” as men. That is because the most potent form of positive social feedback for many men comes from within the hierarchy of the workplace. By contrast, she said, women may have “many sources of self-esteem — such as their relationships with other people — that are not exclusively embedded within their jobs.”

She said that over the past six months, her clinic has had an increase in the number of men seeking help for difficulties related to job loss.

Terrence Real, a family therapist and the founder of Real Relational Solutions in Arlington, Mass., said the difference in reactions could be explained by the idea of performance esteem.

“Everyone who has written about male psychology has acknowledged that men base their sense of self on the maxim that ‘I have worth because of what I do,’ ” Mr. Real said. The feeling is that “you are only as good as your last game or your last job,” he said.

But research by two sociologists suggests an interesting nuance in this observed trend…

YET while men may appear to reel more socially and psychologically from job loss, they fare far better when it comes to re-employment.

In a 2002 study, two sociology professors at Wichita State University, Charles S. Koeber and David W. Wright, found that women who were laid off and went on to look for another job were re-employed less often than men in the same position. This was especially the case if the women were married, had previously held a part-time job or had worked in something other than a highly skilled, white-collar job.

The implication, Professor Koeber says, is that women have more of a burden than men to show their commitment to a job after a layoff.

“It looks like employers systematically apply some criteria to women that they don’t to men who are looking for jobs after being laid off,” Professor Koeber said.

Read more.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a new report based on the study of more than 200 professions puts sociologists firmly in the #8 position of the ‘best jobs’ list.

About the study:

The study, to be released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.

The findings were compiled by Les Krantz, author of “Jobs Rated Almanac,” and are based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, as well as studies from trade associations and Mr. Krantz’s own expertise.

And the article devotes significant time to how well sociologists are doing…

Mark Nord is a sociologist working for the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C. He studies hunger in American households and writes research reports about his findings. “The best part of the job is the sense that I’m making some contribution to good policy making,” he says. “The kind of stuff that I crank out gets picked up by advocacy organizations, media and policy officials.”

The study estimates sociologists earn $63,195, though Mr. Nord, 62, says his income is about double that amount. He says he isn’t surprised by the findings because his job generates little stress and he works a steady 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule. “It’s all done at the computer at my desk,” he says. “The main occupational hazard is carpal tunnel syndrome.”

Others who made the list…

Read the full story.

Yesterday the Kansas City Star ran a fascinating story about parental fear about children ‘sexting’ each other beyond the watchful eyes of their mothers and father.

But what is ‘sexting,’ you ask?

One in five kids have used their cell phone to send sexy or nude photos of themselves, according to an online poll by Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), a trend analyst firm in Chicago. The poll surveyed 1,200 kids online. The kids had signed up as volunteers to take TRU surveys. The study was sponsored by CosmoGirl! magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The results became national news and adults dubbed it “sexting.” Newspaper and television headlines asked worried parents, “Is your teen sexting?” No one asked: “Is this a real trend or adults just totally freaked out?”

Don’t worry, a sociologist clears all of this up…

Adults may just be nervous, according to the results of an academic study. The Digital Youth Report was the result of a three-year project in which 28 researchers studied new media and teens. The researchers interviewed 800 kids and young adults in person. They also observed more than 5,000 hours of online activity.

Sociologist CJ Pascoe and her research assistant interviewed 80 kids for the project and said sexting was not a major issue. “No one brought it up,” said Pascoe, an assistant sociology professor at Colorado College. “I had them go through their last 10 messages, their last 10 photos and I never saw it.”

Sexting was not a common enough practice to make it into the report. Instead, Pascoe suggested that adults have fears about teens and the Internet. “I think what makes adults nervous about new media is they have a window into a teenager’s world for the first time, ” Pascoe said. “Teen culture has been around since the 1950s and teens have been pushing the boundaries since the 1950s but adults haven’t seen it.”

Read on…

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.

Sociologist Juliet Schor wrote an opinion piece about holiday shopping that ran in the Los Angeles Times this weekend. The Boston College sociology professor urges us to “turn away” Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

She writes:

In fact, reining in holiday spending is a message some have been broadcasting for a while. Adbusters, with its Buy Nothing Day, begun in 1992, urges consumers to boycott Black Friday by refusing to purchase anything on the day after Thanksgiving. Performance artist the Rev. Billy Talen and his Church of Stop Shopping target the excesses of the season. The organization I helped to found, the Center for a New American Dream, helps people simplify the holidays by promoting socially responsible gifts, alternative gift fairs and spending time with family and community. 

These and many other groups have long recognized that the consumer binge was unsustainable, financially and environmentally. It has been depleting our savings, to be sure, but also degrading the atmosphere, destroying ecosystems and undermining the potential of the planet to support life in all its magnificent forms. Ecological footprint analysis reveals that by the late 1970s, humans had begun to draw down stocks of “natural capital” — that is, degrade the Earth’s ecosystems. We’re turning arable land into deserts, transforming ocean areas into chemically induced dead zones and heating up the climate. 

The U.S. holiday season, with its traditional excess, has long been an outsized part of that decline. Roughly a quarter of annual spending, garbage and ecological impact occurs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Measured in carbon alone, that represents five tons of emissions for each American. 

Read the full commentary.

The Boston Globe reported this weekend on a study from University of Chicago sociologist James Evans about the booming number of readily accessible journal articles online. The Globe notes that this has enabled academics and other researchers to find materials they might not otherwise have access to, but that there may be downsides to this trend as well.

A recent study suggests that despite this cornucopia, the boom in online research may actually have a “narrowing” effect on scholarship. James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, analyzed a database of 34 million articles in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and determined that as more journal issues came online, new papers referenced a relatively smaller pool of articles, which tended to be more recent, at the expense of older and more obscure work. Overall, Evans says, published research has expanded, due to a proliferation of journals, authors, and conferences. But the paper, which appeared in July in the journal Science, concludes that the Internet’s influence is to tighten consensus, posing the risk that good ideas may be ignored and lost – the opposite of the Internet’s promise.

“Winners are inadvertently picked,” says Evans. “It drives out diversity.”

Evans’ study contributes to a growning concern over the neutrality of web-based search tools, which most often privilege the popular and new. But these conclusions have been controversial, even in the academic community.

Yet there is vigorous debate over the Internet’s effects, and the Evans research has proved controversial. A University of Quebec researcher, Vincent Lariviere, has coauthored a forthcoming paper that challenges some of its conclusions. (Evans plans to publish a rebuttal.) Another researcher, Carol Tenopir at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, says that she has not studied citations, but that her surveys of reading patterns show the reverse of a narrowing effect.

“Electronic journals, I can say with confidence, have broadened reading,” says Tenopir.

Delve into the fray, here.

Yesterday the Telegraph (UK) ran a story about Malcolm Gladwell, famous author of ‘The Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink,’ and pop sociologist extraordinaire. The article was based upon an informal interview with Gladwell to discuss his latest book ‘Outliers: The Story of Success,’ which has received critical acclaim here and abroad. Telegraph (UK) reporter Bob Williams writes about meeting Gladwell in his Greenwich Village apartment, and the pleasure of being greeted with a properly-prepared cup of tea — which is later criticized for its weakness.

Williams writes:

As with his previous books, Gladwell glides effortlessly across every subject imaginable to back up his theories with statistics – from the tendencies of Korean airline pilots to crash and of sportsmen born in January to do well, to why so many top lawyers are Jewish. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a theory about why he likes watery tea, as he has seems to have one for everything else. It would, by definition, be elegantly framed, somewhat left-field, but guaranteed – when snappily packaged as, say, The Pouring Point – to capture the zeitgeist instantly.

About the book itself:

Exceptional people – or “outliers” as [Gladwell] calls them – excel for rather more prosaic reasons. Geniuses are made, not born, benefiting from very specific advantages in their environment and putting in at least 10,000 hours of practice first. The premise is not exactly counter-intuitive. Indeed, some have carped that it is obvious.

“Hopefully it will be an anti-anxiety book,” says the author. “The route to success is ordinary – it’s not based on extravagant, innate gifts. I want to demystify.” He wants to “humble the successful and strip them of their illusions of their own virtue”.

Read the full story, here.

USA Today reports on statistics from the Census that indicate “the age at first marriage has been climbing steadily for all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The median age is now the oldest since the U.S. Census started keeping track in the 1890s: almost 26 for women and almost 28 for men.”

There are general pros and cons for marrying at different times, but there seems to be little agreement…

And as young people wait longer to marry, there is growing debate over whether waiting is a good idea, and if so, how long is best. Those who advocate marriage in the early to mid-20s say that’s the age when the pool of possible mates is larger, it’s when couples can “grow up” together and it’s prime for childbearing. But others favor the late 20s or early 30s, saying maturity makes for happier unions and greater economic security — both of which make divorce less likely.

Sociologist Andrew Cherlin weighs in…

“It’s better not to get married as a teenager,” says sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University. “Beyond that, I don’t think there’s an ideal age.”

There does seems to be sociological evidence that earlier is better…

A study being drafted by sociologist Norval Glenn of the University of Texas-Austin finds that those who marry in the early to mid-20s are slightly happier and less likely to break up than those who marry in the later 20s, but are significantly more satisfied with their relationships than those who marry at 30 or older.

But marrying later might be best, according to Paul Amato…

But research by sociologist Paul Amato of Pennsylvania State University for a 2007 book he co-wrote suggests quite the opposite. The studies for Alone Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing used different data and different criteria and found distinct benefits to marrying older.

“We found that the delay in marriage was actually a good thing and it actually improved the average marital quality by a fair amount,” he says.

“Older marriages (30s vs. 20s) were more cohesive in the sense they did things more often together as a couple. And couples who married at older ages were less likely to report thinking about divorce or that their marriage was in trouble.”

But ultimately whether or not you are ‘ready’ does seem to matter…

“People are more concerned with their own self-development than they used to be,” [sociologist Andrew] Cherlin says. “People are postponing marriage until everything in their lives is working in order. The order means after you’ve finished your education, perhaps after beginning your career, and increasingly after you’ve lived with your partner. They’re postponing marriage until they think they’re ready for it.”

Read the full story.