This past weekend I came across a piece by Pulitzer Prize winner Gareth Cook in the Boston Globe about new research showing that spending time helping others can actually make it seem like we’ve got more time for ourselves. It sounded like a great, eminently sociological project in so many ways: its emphasis on the social meaning and variable experience of time, the importance of selflessness and interacting with others, the use of interviews and experiments, and, of course, the classic, counter-intuitive conclusion that the best solution for not feeling like you have enough time is to make time for others.

My first thought was to throw it over to our Citings & Sightings team as another cool case of how sociological research finds its way to public attention in and through the mass media. But a closer look made me pause. It turns out the research was produced by a team headed up by a professor in a business school (Harvard, no less).  Scholars who teach future MBAs to make millions taking on questions of selflessness and the social experience of time? Suddenly I found myself getting cynical about the researcher’s claim that such activities give us confidence we can get things done and allows us to feel more in control of our own lives.

Lately, whether it is management professors, researchers in public health, or cultural studies critics, scholars all over the academy seem to be taking on topics and using methods and theories pioneered by sociologists. It is easy to be a bit skeptical or defensive, but rather than getting caught up in turf wars, I think it better to celebrate such insights and accomplishments as part of the structure and functioning of social life, claiming them as part of the big, broad sociological tent. It’s not important who is researching sociological questions, but that scholars of all stripes are calling attention to the importance and complexity of social life and interactions—a broad context that’s so often missing from the individualist, economistic, and biological visions of human beings and social life that are otherwise dominant in our academic culture.

Are you planning on watching the NCAA final four this weekend? Have you ever thought it unusual that we Americans put so much time and energy into college athletics? Have you ever thought about how strange it is that institutions of higher education in the United States field teams in the first place? (People from other countries and cultures sure do.) But no matter what your answers, take a look at this entertaining, little mock-advertisement featuring BYU math-letes and let us know what you think about why things are as they are (and they could be different).

Shantrelle P. Lewis’s Photos

Last spring a fascinating little story in the LA Times on the collective/behaviorial intelligence of fire ants put me in mind of the Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson (“Fire Ants for Sociology”). I first heard about Wilson in high school (his paradigm-shifting book came out in 1979; I graduated in 1985), read some of his work in college, and talked about it a fair bit hanging out with biologists in graduate school, but I hadn’t thought a lot about him and his ideas since.

Wilson, I learned from a recent New Yorker piece on the genetics of altruism, hasn’t been hiding or anything. Though now over 80 years old, Wilson is still as busy as the ants (too bad, for alliterative purposes, it wasn’t bees) he’s spent his life studying. Indeed, among his numerous accomplishments of last 20 years is a massive, richly (and apparently hand-) illustrated, 800-page book on Pheidole, the “most abundant genus of ants.”

The article in the New Yorker is actually not about Wilson, though, so much as a whole debate that has taken shape within his field. It centers on natural selection and the existence of altruism and cooperation. More specifically, it is about the validity of William Hamilton’s “inclusive fitness theory,” which posited that the Darwinian concept of competitive fitness was driven not only by how many offspring an individual manages to have, but also about the reproductive capabilities of surviving relatives. At the core of the controversy is the validity and utility of the elegant mathematical formula from and upon which Hamilton derived his theory in the 1960s.

For several decades now, the equation—which which I won’t detail here—has held essentially biblical status for explaining genes and cooperation. According to the story, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins called Hamilton “the most distinguished Darwinian since Darwin.” But a new generation of biologists are challenging the formula on mathematical grounds; they have joined forces with Wilson, whose own doubts stem from his voluminous knowledge and observations of insects. Wilson now says his embrace of Hamilton’s math was misguided: “I’m going to be blunt,” he told the New Yorker. “The equation doesn’t work. It’s a phantom measure.”

This article is a model of science reporting (and sociology of science type insight), with fascinating details about how an idea emerges and takes hold of a field, the relationship between mathematical modeling and empirical observation in the biological sciences, and the social nature of the development of scientific knowledge. The latter isn’t always pretty: the insurgents have weathered a storm of both public and private virulent criticism. It is, as reporter Jonah Lehrer nicely characterizes it, “science with existential stakes.”

Still, for my money, the Wilson parts of the story are the most compelling. Wilson, after all, is the one who helped make Hamilton’s equation famous; now he’s leading the charge against the theorem, and he seems to relish the attention and controversy. Perhaps I’m a sucker for the drama and intrigue of the renegade scholar. But at a more intellectual level, what I find appealing is Wilson’s insistence that “human generosity might have evolved as an emergent property not of the individual but of the group.”

“Group selection” is apparently dismissed by most evolutionary biologists, but Wilson believes it holds the key to understanding altruism. “Goodness,” as the article explains, “might actually be an adaptive trait, allowing more cooperative groups to outcompete their conniving cousins.” Wilson cites cases of cooperation the animal kingdom ranging from microbes to plants and female lions. “In all of these studies, many of which have been conducted in the controlled conditions of the lab, clumps of cooperators thrive and replicate, while selfish groups wither and die.”

Lehrer goes on to quote a wonderful, concise bit from a 2007 Wilson paper: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”

I love those first two sentences. But as profound and compelling as I find them, the third gives me pause, reminding me of the difference between the straight biological sciences and the human sciences. My sense is that in the human domain it is precisely the tension between selfishness and altruism and the choices we make between ourselves and our collective commitments—Wilson’s “commentary”—that is most interesting and uncertain (not just theoretically, but in actual social life).

In my earlier post on Wilson and his ants, I wrote that a group or collective can develop complex systems to achieve things that no individual member could have imagined or enacted. In addition, I suggested humans have a unique ability and capacity to organize, structure, and reflect upon our collective activities. Indeed, in my view, self-conscious reflection is one of humans’ real sources of power and adaptability in the natural world. As both individuals and groups, we are constantly faced with choices about if and when to be self-interested or altruist, individualistic or cooperative. These are not easily summarized by mathematical equations. Nor, for that matter, are they fully structured and determined—which is why, as biological as we are and as much as the social sciences share with the hard sciences, important differences remain regarding what the significant questions are, how we act upon them, and what is only just commentary.

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to take a little time and read the new TSP white paper on religion and political culture in contemporary American life.
(https://thesocietypages.org/papers/religion-and-politics/) It is by our friend and Minnesota colleague Joe Gerteis who not only writes well and thinks big, but also has that rare ability to bring classic sociological theory and research to life and real-world relevance. We are excited how Gerteis uses Max Weber’s observations about religion in America over 100 years ago to frame an explanation for some of the cultural dynamics of our current political climate. Perhaps not surprisingly for those of you who have heard or read Joe’s previous work, ideas about social solidarity, trust, and exclusion figure prominently. And just so you know, we subjected Joe’s ideas to relentless double-blind review and our esteemed readers both agreed and offered a few observations and suggestions that made the piece even better.  Suffice to say, it all fits together so seamlessly and flows so naturally you’ll may wonder why you didn’t put it all together this way yourself.

Goodmorning, dear readers! In case you haven’t noticed on our front page, a new TSP department has slipped into our site navigation bar: Changing Lenses. The first post will really tell you what we’re up to there, but the short version is that I will be teamed up with my frequent on-court foe, Wing Young Huie, to have a conversation about perspectives roughly every week. Please do check it out.

In response to the sport and politics white paper Kyle Green and I recently wrote for this site, ThickCulture writer and loyal friend of TSP Andrew Linder emailed to suggest that although Barack Obama is obviously not the first “sports president,” he may be the first “ESPN President” or “SportsCenter President.” Andrew’s point (now up on ThickCulture as a more fleshed out post—jinx!) was that, although ESPN had become a cultural fixture under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama represented the core network demographic in its first two decades of its existence and it seems to have been formative for him. To the extent that ESPN has transformed sporting culture, then, Obama is the first President to be fully fashioned in and through that new culture.

This seemed plausible enough—and was definitely borne out in a recent interview the President gave to the star sportswriter/reporter Bill Simmons. At least two things about the interview should be pointed out. The first is why Obama chose this particular venue and reporter: “Simmons,” as one report put it, “is revered by the under-30 crowd” and “has more than 1 million—1,642, 522 to be exact—Twitter followers.” Indeed, his “B.S. Report” podcast, on which the Obama interview originally appeared, is said to be one of the most downloaded podcasts on the web.  The second point is how this interview and exchange reveals what a great fan of sports and sports talk our President actually is.

Not only is his obsession with ESPN’s SportsCenter evident, Obama shows himself to be an extremely knowledgeable sports fan, gifted in the arts of sports talk and debate. Talking with Simmons, the President riffs on Linsanity (claiming to have been on the bandwagon early) and the joys and challenges of coaching his daughters, argues about the best NBA teams and players of all time (MJ and the Bulls figure prominently), revisits his vision for a college football playoff, and waxes poetic about his philosophies on sportsmanship and scoring in golf. Obama even brags a bit about the “solid” crossover move he threw on NBA All-Star point guard Chris Paul in a summer scrimmage. All this is to say, Obama doesn’t just talk about sports, he’s really talking sports.

Entertaining (and impressive) as I found all of this, I was even more intrigued by a follow-up Washington Post post that explained why the President would take time out of his unbelievably busy schedule to do this interview (as well as other sports related activities such as his sit-down with Matt Lauer during the Superbowl pre-game show in February or his annual NCAA/march madness picks). “Sports,” according to the WSJ, “is a universal language that can bridge ideological, cultural, and socio-economic gaps …you are much more inclined to like people who share that fandom regardless of whether you have anything else in common with them. You feel some sort of connection to them. They speak your (sports) language.”

The piece goes on to speculate that sport may be particularly a particularly important medium (and media outlet) for Obama “whose background—biracial parents, childhood in Hawaii, Harvard Law School, etc.—is somewhat unfamiliar to many of the voters he needs to convince to back him if he wants to win a second term in November.” While talking with sportswriters “isn’t going to convince on-the-fence voters that Obama is one of them,” the writer says, we shouldn’t “forget the connective power that sports holds in the world of politics.” The article concludes: “Obama’s ability to speak the language of sports is a major political plus for him.”

In the past few days there is one story I’ve been asked about more than any other in the news or current events—it involves the (unexpected) hot hand of undrafted NBA rookie Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks. “What do you think?,” everyone wants to know. “You must have an interesting angle or two given your interest in race and sport, right?”

Well, I am fascinated. Indeed, my son Ben and I were intrigued enough to buy tickets to our first Timberwolves game in at least five years to see Lin and his New York team take on our local favorites Saturday night (led by another heralded rookie point guard Spaniard Ricky Rubio). It was quite a spectacle: over 20,000 fans (the most in Minneapolis since 2004, they said), more Asian Americans than I can ever remember seeing at a pro sports event, and some interesting commentary up in the nosebleed seats where we were perched. There was also a puzzling (if racially revealing) reference in the local paper the next day about a budding “international” rivalry between the two rookie playmakers. (I mean, Lin is from Palo Alto, after all.)

Still, most of my interest so far has been at Lin’s amazing play. The number of points and assists he posted in his first five games in the league was better than any other first five-game stretch of any player in NBA history. He led the Knicks to a comeback win here in Minnesota even when he was clearly exhausted from having played the night before in New York. On Valentine’s Day, he nailed a last second three-pointer for the win. I just love seeing great basketball. Check out any of his highlight clips on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.

Thankfully, one of our TSP bloggers, C.N. Le, writing on The Color Line, has been able to maintain professional decorum and provide some sociological meaning and context for the Lin-sanity.

Le reviews some of the ground he covered in 2010 when he wrote when Lin was still playing for Harvard—how the ballplayer provides a counter to certain model minority stereotypes and expectations and in doing so is expanding the definition of success for Asian Americans. (Le’s even earlier post mentioned some of the racial stereotypes and slurs Lin has dealt with along the way as well.) But what I like most about the post is at the end, where Le is talking not about Lin but about colorblindness:

But as Asian Americans becoming increasingly common in these areas of U.S. popular culture, are we headed for a day when it is no longer a “big deal” when we see Asian American faces in the media, just like it’s taken for granted when we see White faces or Black faces? Ultimately, yes, that is the goal—for us as a society to no longer consider it “strange” or “unusual” to see Asian Americans in the media or in other prominent positions in U.S. social institutions.

Le goes on to point out—and this is the part I really like—that what we are talking about here is the concept of colorblindness, a concept that many of us race scholars actually tend to be quite critical about. It is a provocative reminder of what is good, right, and valuable about colorblindness as an ideal. But appropriately, Le also insists on reminding us—as he does over and over in his writings—of two points: (1) that we are still not there yet, and (2) to get there we actually have to be aware of race and racial inequalities and racism and vigilant in trying to resist them.

I’m not sure how aware Jeremy Lin is about any of this (though I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s not only doing amazing things on the court, he is clearly a very smart guy. In fact, as a friend of mine speculated today, one of the stereotypes Lin is laying bare is the old dumb-jock trope. Even in his “nerdy handshake” with other smarty-pants baller Landry Fields—seen below—Lin is showing that Ivy Leaguers can definitely hoop.) But I very much appreciate C.N. Le’s ability to draw out this broader social significance and use the power of the popular in service of making these vitally important sociological points about race and the struggle to move past race in contemporary American society.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read it yet or not, but last week, Kyle Green and I posted one of the first TSP white papers on the interrelationships between sport and politics in contemporary American culture. (https://thesocietypages.org/papers/politics-and-sport/).

Intended to coincide with the super bowl and in the middle of the republican primaries, the main point was to examine all of the ways in which sport and politics are intertwined, even if we don’t like it. We concluded that piece by saying that our goal was not necessarily to argue that the two should be separate but concluded that some might take it that way.

Well, what do you know but this week’s back page column in Sports Illustrated is a mock political campaign by columnist Phil Taylor to push for passage of a bill that would “ensure” the permanent “separation of sports and politics.”

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1194467/index.htm

Taylor is clearly having fun with the piece, mostly at the expense of politicians who have pretended to be sports fans and men of the people. (Joe Biden, John Kerry, Newt Gingritch, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney all take shots).  There are no great sociological insights here–just a number of great and revealing examples of the awkward, potentially combustable collusion of sport and politics in contemporary life.

My favorite part is Taylor’s speculation that this campaign might be one of the few arenas in which a bipartisan coalition in American politics might be possible. I love that line–both because it speaks to how deeply and broadly-held are our beliefs about the separation of sports and politics (“God bless any elected official who doesn’t pretend to care about the Super Bowl,” he writes) and as a commentary on how difficult it is to imagine Democrats and Republicans coming to consensus on anything these days.

My late mother-in-law was born and raised in Okinawa and came to the United States as an adult. She didn’t read a lot of English publications, but she swore by Dear Abby. She said read the column because Abby’s advice taught her what it meant to be a good American. I’ve thought about that a lot over the years, and I’ve often wished there were more such commonsense voices of decorum, belief, and behavior in our public discourse—never more so than right now.

Which brings me to the website “Yo, is this racist?” (yoisthisracist.com) by blogger Andrew Ti.

Okay, well, that’s not exactly accurate. I mean, I wouldn’t have put Ti in the “Dear Abby” category on my own. He and his website are often irreverent , sometimes offensive or downright vulgar, and just seem to be having too much fun most of the time. But that’s how Rachel Brahinsky, writing in Antipode described him: “Ti …mocks overt and subtle racism with comedy and brilliance, using a renovation of the old ‘Dear Abby’ format.”

Brahinsky explains:

Readers send in questions, and Ti tears them apart, mocks them, and applauds them for their insights. The exchanges range from goofy to deadly serious, and Ti has a tendency to curse a lot and use text-isms like LOL to reach his audience—and the consistency of his critique is highly uneven (sometimes he’s just name-calling, but that usually seems to come after receiving a raft of nasty racist emails from readers; the blog is his outlet).

But there is a lot of brilliance in the blog, and it generally comes at moments when Ti uses the space to redirect a reader’s question from the micro-moments of interpersonal racism to the socio-structural factors that bracket those moments.

I think that Brahinsky’s is a pretty accurate description and assessment, and in fact I had been meaning to write something on the site myself (my son had introduced me to it) ’til she beat me to the punch. I am especially convinced that Ti is at his best when he situates various comments, questions, and episodes in the context of larger racial hierarchies in the U.S. In doing so, he shows that not all comments and quotes are equal—and that things like context, who is speaking, and who is listening are crucial to the racial implications and effects of any given utterance or interaction. I also believe that Brahinsky is precisely on point about the challenges—and necessity—of using humor to get at racism, not only in the classroom but in the culture. Plus, I appreciated the quote from my former advisor George Lipsitz. Thanks, Rachel, for writing this up!