I recently discovered a series on Chicago Public Radio which features reports from Greg Scott, a sociology professor and documentary filmmaker.
The most recent installment explores the daily lives of women working as prostitutes on Cicero Avenue in Chicago’s West Side. Scott’s story paints a vivid picture of the complex relationship between sex and pride for these women…
Listen to ‘Women of the Brickyard’ here.
For more of Scott’s stories, look here.
The New York Times reports this morning on the concern among New Yorkers about whether crime will return to the city ‘with a vengeance’ as the economy continues to falter. The Times contends, “Expert opinions differ, but the question is hardly illogical. The last time stocks on Wall Street fell hard, in 1987, crime was exploding, and the city saw historic highs in murders in the following years.”
And the Times calls in a sociologist…
“Every recession since the late ’50s has been associated with an increase in crime and, in particular, property crime and robbery, which would be most responsive to changes in economic conditions,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Typically, he said, “there is a year lag between the economic change and crime rates.”
The Times adds…
New York, of course, has over the last 15 years seen an extraordinary drop in crime, from the most serious to the mildly irritating. But across all those years, economists and sociologists have debated how much of the success was attributable to new trends in policing and how much to other factors, including a robust economy.
Read the full story.
Well-know sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh of Columbia University has written for Slate Magazine on Grand Theft Auto 4. Venkatesh’s article “Unjustifiable Carnage, Easy Alliances, and Lots of Self-Doubt: What Grand Theft Auto IV Gets Right About Gangland and Illegal Economies” draws connections between ‘Liberty City,’ the setting of the game, and Chicago’s South Side.
Venkatesh writes,
“If you are a fan of the new Grand Theft Auto video game, I have just the neighborhood for you. The setting of GTA IV, Liberty City, is an amped-up version of the New York metro area. If you want a slice of the real thing, however, I’d recommend Chicago’s South Side. The last time I visited Chicago, I stopped by 59th Street, near Washington Park (and only a few short blocks from the picturesque University of Chicago). Two of the local gangs were fighting each other in full view for control of a prime sales spot, a hotel. For a monthly fee, the proprietor had promised to allow one gang to turn the place into a bordello—drugs, prostitution, stolen merchandise. For the gangs, winning meant more than simply getting rid of their enemy. Neither controlled the area surrounding the hotel. Anyone bringing drugs (or women, or guns, etc.) to the hotel would have to run the gantlet formed by other enemy gangs, who would be at the ready to shoot down the transporter.”
The Houston Chronicle picked up a story on the recent violence in Mexico against ’emo’ youth in the city of Queretaro.
The Story from the Chronicle:
“The dramatic dress style of urban music followers known as ’emos’ has struck a nerve in Mexico’s macho society. The result is a wave of violent attacks in recent weeks against the scene’s mostly teenage followers. The attack getting the most publicity occurred last month in the central city of Queretaro. Hundreds of youths shouting ‘kill the emos’ pounced on a handful of long-haired teenagers in a plaza. As the victims lay bleeding on the concrete, their assailants filmed the scene on cell phones. Within hours, the footage was posted on YouTube, fueling attacks in other cities and the Mexican capital.”
Sociological Commentary:
Hector Castillo, a sociologist in Mexico, specializing in youth culture suggests that the cause of this violence is homophobia and intolerance. In addition, Castillo suggests that the 2006 presidential elections, which were highly contested, created a climate of polarization which pitted the ‘far right’ groups against the left.
The Courier Post recently covered a recent lecture by Nikki Jones, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara about the rising problem of violence among teenage girls. Jones asserted that the justice system and social services provide nearly ten times more support to programs for males than those for females.
This lecture in Camden, NJ covered the subject of Jones’ upcoming book on her field work in Philadelphia with female students at Martin Luther King High School, primarily African-American girls.
“Those girls, from middle through high school, she said, can primarily be separated into two categories, but many navigate between both camps. One group of girls, she said, ‘want to be known as able fighters’ and confrontations with them often lead to cuts, especially when the targets are considered pretty.”
“It is not uncommon, she said, for a pretty teen to suffer permanent scarring from a bladed weapon for no reason other than her looks. ‘It’s the code of the street. It’s about reputation and respect,’ Jones said.”
“The other group of girls avoids being in confrontations. As violence increases in a community, Jones said, these girls avoid social relationships, spending more and more time at home and restricting movement in public places.”
“‘Many avoid going to school altogether. They isolate themselves from close relationships, so they have no need to defend anyone because it generally is expected that you will fight for a friend,’ said Jones.”
In an interview with Nick Jackson recently published in The Independent, University of Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta explains why engineers are more likely to become terrorists based on current and ongoing research.
“So why is this? Everyone’s first reaction is that they are recruited for their technical proficiency, but there’s no evidence for this. Recruiters say they look for a personality profile rather than technical skills.”
“So we are left with two ideas: that certain social conditions affect engineers more than other graduates; and that certain unobservable traits attracting people more to radical Islamism are a little more frequent among engineers. My co-author Steffen Hertog and I think it’s a combination of these two things.” Read on from The Independent.
Sudhir Venkatesh talks research methods with Stephen Colbert:
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A recent study from York University indicates that nearly 43 percent of ‘personal support’ workers experience physical violence in their workplace everyday. This group of workers is predominantly made up of women and many of them are immigrants or from other minority groups. These workers experienced being slapped or hit with an object, being pinched, having their hair pulled, or even being poked or spit on. The workers also reported receiving unwanted sexual attention in the workplace.
“What we found is disturbing,” says Pat Armstrong, a professor in York’s Department of Sociology, and study co-author. “Canada’s levels of violence towards long-term care workers are significantly higher than the other countries we looked at. The situation is out of control, as one respondent put it.”
Workers at 71 unionized long-term care facilities in Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia were surveyed about their experiences of physical violence, unwanted sexual attention, and racial comments. They were nearly seven times more likely to experience such daily violence than workers in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden…
Armstrong says most violent incidents go unreported.
“Workers are afraid to report violent incidents, fearing that they will be blamed. Or they simply don’t have the time to do so. Alarmingly, workers inform us that they are expected to take such abuse. They are told to ‘lighten up,'” she says.
The study also establishes a correlation between levels of violence and heavy workloads placed on staff. The main difference between Canada and Nordic countries is staffing levels.
The New York Sun review of Randall Collins‘ new book Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, highlights Collins’ distance from macro-level analysis based on history and demographics in favor of a method which seeks out individual cases to identify the conditions present at the time the violence was committed.
Review author Graeme Wood highlights Collins’ tentative conclusions:
“Mr. Collins concludes with recommendations: Educate soldiers about forward panic and how easily it can feed its own appetite (addictively, ‘like eating salted nuts’). Learn how to defuse dangerous situations by matching an aggressor’s bluster without seeming to top it. And, most interesting of all, he urges us to consider reviving the practice of dueling — which was, during its heyday, a way to reduce and contain violence, not a way to encourage it.”
