Archive: Jun 2014

A difficult, reflective (if not reflexive) weekend that saw the TSP crew scattered about the country was rewarded, at least to some small degree, this morning, when we arrived at TSP’s HQ to find a squat little box containing our latest volume with W.W. Norton & Co., Color Lines and Racial Angles. The third in our series of readers, this book brings in big names like Douglas Massey, Jennifer Lee, David Pellow, Charles A. Gallagher, and Michelle Alexander with core contributions, cultural contexts, and critical takes on the construction, understanding, and functioning of race in American society. Perfect for an intro class, the slim volume literally fits in a roomy pocket and serves as an accessible entry-point for developing the sociological imagination. For everything else, hop right on in to this week’s roundup!

The Editors’ Desk:

“The TSP Debt Series,” by Chris Uggen. Introducing a summer’s worth of readings on debt, inequality, and the life course in the United States today. From student debt to credit cards, legal debt, the return of the debtor’s prison, climate change, and reparations, these pieces comprise an incredible introduction and will be released in a volume, Owned, this fall. For now, they’re free online, of course!

Features:

“Has Borrowing Replaced Earning?” by Kevin Leicht. The first in a three-part series, this article explores the growth of and change in credit in the U.S. over the past three generations, as measured against wage growth. more...

“Every school offers financial aid services, but listen to what the University of Minnesota is doing,” began Michelle Obama at a 2014 White House summit. “They’re committing to expand those services to include financial literacy programs to help students and their families manage the costs of college.”

In fact, all incoming students at the U of M now get lessons in credit and debt as part of the Live Like a Student Now So You Don’t Have to Later campaign. The website, Facebook, and campus posters offer a steady stream of practical advice on everything from buying generic ketchup to finding the free days at local museums. A Plan Your Debt page even suggests the maximum advisable debt limit for students planning careers as graphic designers, nurses, and accountants.

Such programs can be a great help to individual students, but they also obscure a bigger sociological story: structural and institutional changes place young people today at risk of enormous debt loads. When I started college at the University of Wisconsin, the annual tuition was only $994 per year ($2,442 in today’s dollars), which barely covers a course these days. So, it hardly seems fair to blame today’s students for accumulating more debt than I did—or to blame their debt problems on $4 lattes.

In C. Wright Mills’ famous terms, the sociological imagination reveals the link between our “personal troubles” with debt and the broader “public issues” that have placed us in this position. And it isn’t just students. For the past five years, headlines have shouted about all manner of debt—people, companies, and even cities declaring bankruptcy, families losing their homes to foreclosure, and, the Occupy Wall Street movement arising to challenge the “1%” who prospered in the Great Recession. That’s why we chose debt as the subject of a new TSP volume, Owned, due out this fall with WW Norton and Company.

In curating TSP and putting the book together, we’ve been learning a lot about the power and importance of a sociological approach to debt and inequality. Starting next week, we’ll be running a series to showcase some of these pieces.  We’ll have a real expert, Kevin Leicht, kick us off this Monday by explaining the development and depth of the debt crisis. With hard data and vivid description, he shows how middle-class families suffer when borrowing replaces earning. On Wednesday, Leicht offers a hard-hitting progressive critique of the “politics of displacement” that distract us from needed economic reform, while proposing three steps to reinvigorate the American Dream. We’ll conclude Leicht’s series on Friday with a cogent piece contrasting the old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” success narrative with the current structural realities. In the weeks to come, we’ll be running more new features, including interviews and articles with contributors like Dalton Conley, Bill Domhoff, Rachel Dwyer, Erin Hoekstra, Karyn Lacy, Rahsaan Mahadeo, and Andrew Ross. And don’t forget earlier pieces such as Out of the Nest and into the Red, where Jason Houle shows exactly how debt has shifted across the last three generations, Alexes Harris on the Cruel Poverty of Monetary Sanctions, David Schalliol’s Debt and Darkness in Detroit, and Rob Crosnoe on the Hourglass Economy.

The best sociology has long been critical of existing social arrangements and idealistic about the alternatives. And the new sociology of debt (reflected here and in projects like debtandsociety.org) is no exception. In detailing the grand society-level problems of the debt crisis, these TSP features point to social solutions on both ginormous (global climate reparations) and modest (a lone shopkeeper lighting his street) scales. And making small reforms to alleviate human suffering is hardly incompatible with changing the structural conditions that create or sustain the problem. So students can simultaneously rally for lower tuition and loan rates for everyone as they learn about personal finance to manage their own debt. Some might dismiss the latter efforts as “Band-Aids” for the structural issues, but we wouldn’t discount them completely. A well-applied Band-Aid can sometimes stop the bleeding while we pursue a more lasting fix to our problems.

Features:

“Deep Play and Flying Rats, with Colin Jerolmack,” by Kyle Green. The contingent relationships between people and pigeons. Oh, and the Million Dollar Pigeon Race.

Citings & Sightings:

“Colbert: If Hispanics Identify as White, GOP’s Alright,” by Kat Albrecht. In a recent wørd segment, the Colbert Report highlighted sociological research on changing racial identifications.

There’s Research on That!

“Why Students Don’t Sweat Sweatshops,” by Jacqui Frost. Remember the uproar over sweatshop labor that led to the rise of brands like American Apparel? Why hasn’t it taken hold with similar reports about today’s iPhones, Nikes, and other items? more...

What’s that? You needed two weeks’ worth of sociology after you noticed soc is so hot even Stephen Colbert’s getting on the bandwagon? Oh, we’ve got you.

Features:

“Violence and the Transformation of Ethno-Racial Categories in Rwanda,” by Marie Berry. Perpetrators of genocide rely on division, hardening ethno-racial classifications like “Hutu” and “Tutsi” as resentments and violence build.

“The Homoegenization of Asian Beauty,”  by C.N. Le. Watching one culture converge on an ideal of beauty, Le shows a process at work around the world. more...

Big news! The Society Pages is absolutely delighted to welcome the Council on Contemporary Families to TSP. Over the past two decades, CCF has built an outstanding reputation as a go-to source for authoritative social research on family life. Much like the Scholars Strategy Network, CCF will work with our staff and students to post selected policy briefs and research statements on timely topics, all of which can be found here. In addition, the CCF’s peerless contributors, including Barbara Risman, Philip N. Cohen, Adina Nack, Virgnia Rutter, and others will soon be blogging in TSP’s Community Pages (several already write for Sociological Images, Girl W/ Pen!, and more). We look forward to great conversations, cutting-edge research, and an ongoing examination of American families—as they really are. You can follow CCF on Twitter at @CCF_Families.

The World Cup was the subject of local media and culture reporter John Rash’s column this past weekend. He interviewed me for the piece and we had a wide-ranging conversation about a number of different dimensions of soccer in contemporary U.S. culture–the status of its main professional league (MLS), soccer’s relation to other major league sport in terms of viewing, consumption, and cultural influence, rates of participation among youth, recent sociological research on soccer and international awareness, the tremendous international success of the women’s national team, its popularity among immigrants, etc. Here are the ideas and quotes he ended up using:

Hartmann, who focuses on the sociology of sport, detects an interesting inversion of how Americans perceive global sporting spectacles.

“Americans often watch the Olympics only as a nationalistic competition with a patriotic idea of ‘How is the U.S. doing?’ I think fans of the World Cup are a little less interested in how the U.S. is doing, and more interested in the international competition,” he said. “If you think of the long ideals of sport creating cross-cultural understanding, [the World Cup] is a little bit true to the Olympic ideal.”

Hartmann points out that because soccer is “not a dominant part of our hegemonic sports culture, but a little bit more peripheral,” the fan base is a bit different. Given its global nature, soccer has always been popular with immigrants, who make up a higher proportion of the population than at any time since Ellis Island. And American-born fans tend to be worldly, compared with the general population, he added.

Suffice to say, I am fairly happy with all this, and feel like Rash, the good reporter and thinker that he is, made me sound fairly knowledgeable and smart. Still, perhaps because I took Rash’s call in the middle of a media training session for academics organized by Theda Skocpol’s Scholar’s Strategy Network (coincidence?), I find myself reflecting more than usual on the process and my own participation in it. For example, I don’t remember if I actually used the phrase an “interesting inversion” of typical perceptions of global sporting spectacles, though I kind of like the phrase and wouldn’t put it past myself to have talked my way into a line like that. (I definitely said “global sporting spectacles” a time or two.) I also find it funny that I said “a little bit true” to the Olympic ideal as it is the kind of qualifier I am often critical of professionals in the sports media for over-using.

More significantly, I definitely recall stumbling over the question of how to label the more Olympian ideals of cross-cultural understanding (“internationalist,” or “cosmopolitan,” or something else altogether ) and whether to set them directly in contrast to nationalism or patriotism. I’m still not sure which set of terms make my interpretation (and soccer itself) more palpable to ordinary Americans. But the one that thing really makes me cringe in retrospect is the phrase “dominant part of our hegemonic sports culture.” I know I used it, and maybe the term “hegemonic sports culture” made me sound smart. But hegemony is one of those words we often work hard to avoid here at TSP because so few folks out there in the regular world know what the word means.  If only our editor Letta Page had been on hand to clean up my spoken prose.

The idea of paying reparations to African-Americans for slavery is not new, but it is usually relegated to the fringes of lefty radicalism or scholarly academic critique. Not anymore. With a piece from Ta-Nehisi Coates called “The Case for Reparations,” a recent issue of The Atlantic magazine has suddenly, if unexpectedly, mainstreamed the topic.

Coates’s article is comprised of ten chapters illustrating the enduring impact of slavery on contemporary African-American families. Coates identifies countless examples of the way whites have benefited from state-sponsored programs including Social Security and the GI Bill, reminding readers that there was a time “when affirmative action was white.” As much manifesto or treatise as conventional reporting, Coates’s piece argues forcefully for the need for America to grow up and repay its outstanding debt to its most vulnerable citizens. Failing to fulfill this promissory note, Coates insists, will leave all Americans morally impoverished.

Among its many exemplary characteristics is the way in which Coates draws directly and extensively on the works of numerous sociologists and political scientists. For example, Coates uses the work of sociologists Doug Massey and Nancy Denton to describe the role of residential segregation in the construction of inner-city ghettos, as well as their wealthier spatial counterparts-the suburbs (in 1993’s American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Urban Underclass, from Harvard University Press). Crim-Soc scholar Rob Sampson’s research on “neighborhood effects” is at the core of Coates’ discussion of the enormous power the ghetto wields in conditioning the lived experiences of its residents (see his 2012 Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect from the University of Chicago Press). And Coates engages political scientists Michael Dawson and Rovana Popoff’s studies of pre- and post-election survey data from 2000 (including views on reparations and racial apologies for Japanese American internment during World War II) to show how racialized views of politics shape public opinion as well as remind us that reparations are not unprecedented (for more on this, see Dawson and Popoff’s 2004 DuBois Review article “Reparations: Justice and Greed in Black and White”).

There’s a lot more where this came from—including Rodney. D. Coates’ 2004 scholarly treatment (“If a Tree Falls in the Wilderness: Reparations, Academic Silences, and Social Justice,” Social Forces 83(2): 841-864). And as you read it, remember that while you may or may not agree with Ta-Nahesi Coates’s opinion on reparations, the social scientific data and research about the social foundations of persistent African-American inequality are not up for debate.

Features:

“Coded Chaos and Anonymous, with Gabriella Coleman,” by Kyle Green. Anonymous and the contested space of the Internet.

Citings & Sightings:

“Under God or Over It? New Data on Religion and Politics,” by Evan Stewart. Americans are now slightly more trusting of atheists, but they’re still not rushing to elect one.

“Can a Rise in Rape Reports Be Good?” by Molly Goin. Unlike other crime numbers, when rape stats go up, it might mean a city’s doing something right.

There’s Research on That!

“Mass Shootings and the ‘Man’ifesto,” by Evan Stewart. “Mass shootings are rare, but the culture that creates them is not.” more...

Last week I danced in my first flash mob, saw a powerful set of storytellers at a live Life of the Law event, and pontificated on public outreach with super sharp friends from JustPublics, OpenDemocracy, and LOTL. In my #LSAMN14 session for graduate students and new professors, I offered 5 bits of advice for those eager to write for a public audience.

1. Use your expertise. Make it about your expert knowledge as a social scientist rather than your views as a citizen. Use the command and authority you’ve developed on a project to really break it down for the rest of us.

2. Don’t wait for tenure. Graduate students and assistant professors today should develop an online presence. And writing short pieces for the public can often offer accessible calling cards to your work and interests.

3. Timing matters. Don’t just react to the news by beginning a new piece. Have some ideas and drafts that you can work up quickly when the time is right. Many events are seasonal or predictable (e.g., back to school season, election season, release-of-crime-statistics season), so write now for August or December.

4. Avoid zero-sum thinking. Public work need not detract from your research. In my experience, my journal articles and public posts tend to be mutually reinforcing and complementary rather than competing substitutes for one another. Staying in touch with journalists, for example, helps me stay on top of new developments in my field. And the more you write, the easier writing becomes.

5. Use your editor! There’s a premium on brevity & clarity in public writing. My first op-eds were a sea of red ink, as sharp editors reduced both my word count and my syllable-per-word count by at least 50 percent. And, in my experience at TSP and Contexts, the most famous and highly regarded experts in the field tend to be most amenable to smart editing. They get it.

In the spirit of brevity and humility about the limits of my own expertise, I’ll close by repeating the best bit of advice I learned in school — what I’ve come to call the Wu Admonition: “Remember, Chris, that not all advice is good advice.”