Archive: Oct 2011

OccupyWallStreet has given rise to Occupy actions all over the United States and other countries as well.   One of the many slogans of this growing grassroots movement is “We are the 99%.”  This is a powerful slogan—highlighting the ways in which our current system serves the interests of a very small number of people.  Case in point: the top 1% of income earners captured 65% of all the growth in income over the period 2002 to 2007. 

Before this movement, there was another movement of 99ers.  Those were the unemployed facing life without a job and without any unemployment benefits.  Their ranks are about to grow again.  According to the Wall Street Journal, some 2.2 million people currently receiving unemployment benefits will lose them by Feb. 11, 2012 if Congress doesn’t renew our expanded unemployment benefits programs before the end of the year.

Here is some background on the two programs slated to end, the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program and the federal-state Extended Benefits (EB) program. Workers in all states are typically eligible to receive up to 26 weeks of Unemployed Insurance (UI) benefits from the regular state-funded unemployment compensation program.  Workers in any state who exhausted their UI benefits became eligible for up to 34 additional weeks of benefits thanks to the EUC program. That number went up to 53 weeks in states that had especially high unemployment rates (see chart below). Workers who exhausted their UI and EUC benefits were eligible for a maximum 20 additional weeks of coverage through the EB program if their state’s unemployment insurance laws allowed it.

So, depending on what state you live in and how bad the unemployment rate is, an unemployed person would receive the base 26 weeks, possibly an additional 53 weeks under the EUC program, and possibly a further 20 weeks under the EB program, for a maximum of 99 weeks. What is up for renewal now is not an extension of benefits beyond the 99 weeks, but continuation of the EUC and EB programs. 

If Congress lets those programs expire, people who would have received benefits beyond the 26 week limit will lose them once they run though the weeks corresponding to the program that now provides them benefits.  For example, workers receiving EUC benefits will not be eligible for EB benefits.  And workers receiving UI benefits will not be eligible for EUC benefits.  And of course all new unemployed will be limited to 26 weeks. 

The assumption seems to be that there are jobs out there for the taking.  In reality, people just cannot find work.  Here are two charts from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that illustrate just how bad the job market has been for American workers.  The first shows the percentage of unemployed who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.  The second shows the median duration of unemployment.

Here is what the Wall Street Journal has to say about recent and projected unemployment trends:

The number of Americans out of work for more than six months rose by 208,000 to 6.2 million in September, the Labor Department said last week. Some 44.6% of all of those who are unemployed have been sidelined for at least six months. Most of those individuals — nearly 4.4 million — have been out of work for at least a year.

In past recessions, unemployment extensions continued until the unemployment rate dropped below 7.5%. That’s a long way from the 9.1% rate recorded for September. Indeed, economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey see the rate still elevated at 8.2% in December 2013.

So, why is Congress reluctant to renew our extended unemployment benefits programs, a renewal which doesn’t even help those that have gone through their 99 weeks?  According to the Wall Street Journal:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost around $44 billion to extend benefits through 2012. That makes it a tough sell in a Congress looking to trim deficits. 

That’s right–$44 billion is just too much money to spend in a budget that includes close to a trillion dollars to fund the Pentagon, fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and maintain costly and intrusive domestic security programs.

What can we do?  The best response is to deepen our support for the Occupy America movement and force a change in priorities. 

Social justice scholars and activists suspect the recent push by many states to require government issued photo identification at the polls is a de facto strategy to suppress voter turnout amongst the poor.

The work of Symbolic Interactionist Michael Schwalbe helps us understand how prejudices like these institutionalize themselves in our democracy.  Powerful elites always define themselves as intellectually and morally superior to lower class others.   In viewing themselves as the guardians of our republic, these elites view it their personal responsibility to protect our democracy from the undue and corrosive influence of the poor who are implicitly thought unworthy of democratic rights.  For example, elites argue the poor are likely to succumb to what congressional Republican Paul Ryan describes as “the good politics and rotten economics of class warfare.”  By constructing the poor as contaminating our democratic process, restraints on voting are justified and rationalized.

In a satirical critique of a 2006 New York Times editorial about how many other Western democracies have gone to great lengths to maximize voter turnout, comedian Stephen Colbert draws upon the supposed intellectual and moral superiority of the wealthy to explain why America should only encourage the rich to vote “because they must know something, they got all that money.”  Colbert argues that we should keep the disadvantaged from the polls “because the poor don’t have much to offer democracy.”  By revealing the class prejudices many hold about both the wealthy and the poor, Colbert uses satire to reveal the real logic driving changes in how we vote.

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Jason Eastman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Coastal Carolina University who researches how culture and identity influence social inequalities.

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Last month I wrote about gender differences in notions of health in a 1922 public health campaign designed to teach American teens about sex.

Today, we might not recognize that any of these recommendations had anything to do with sex. But in fact, they many of them were about masturbation.  At this time, fewer physicians thought that it would cause madness, epilepsy, homosexuality, or gout, but they still believed that it would encourage depravity and a lack of self-discipline.

To encourage a healthy sexuality, they advised lots of exercise. Exercise was believed to teach self-control. It was also considered a good outlet for “energy,” leaving one to worn out to masturbate.

TEXT:

Can you walk 20 miles in a day? Can you work an 8-hour day in the field? Can you “chin yourself” 8 times? Can you run 100 yards in 12 seconds?

They promoted a healthy diet.  Too much meat and too much spice were thought to encourage masturbation.

TEXT:

1. Eat fresh vegetables, cereals, bread and butter, eggs, fruit and a little meat or fish. 2. Eat slowly and thoroughly masticate (chew) your food. 3. Use judgment in amount and choice of foods. 4. Drink 6 to 10 glasses of water a day. Do not drink much water after supper. 5. Use your tooth brush at least twice a day — in the morning and at night.

People were also advised to sleep in well-ventilated rooms and to wear loose clothes that did not cause any friction:

TEXT:

Sleep with the windows open. “Turn in” at regular hours. Get 8 to 9 hours sleep every night.

Interestingly, only the boys’ posters actually discuss masturbation directly (self-abuse).

TITLE: Outdoor Life (avoid self-abuse)

TEXT:

1. Athletics. 2. Abundant outdoor life. 3. Wholesome companions. 4. Lots of good fun. 5. Constant employment. 6. Will power will help a boy break the habit called “self-abuse” (in case he has acquired the habit) and recover from any harm it may have done. This habit does not produce the terrible effects some ignorant people say it does. Most boys who have abused themselves stop before any great harm is done. Self-abuse may, however, seriously hinder a boy’s progress toward vigorous manhood. It is a selfish, childish, stupid habit. The strong boy will “cut it out.”

The posters are held at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries.

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Christina Barmon is a doctoral student at Georgia State University studying sociology and gerontology.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Gay men and bisexual men still represent a disproportionate number of HIV cases in the United States (CDC).  In addition, African-American and Latino men are significantly more likely than white men to be diagnosed with HIV and die from AIDS-related illnesses.  Numerous HIV prevention campaigns are thus aimed at these populations.

It’s important to try to reduce the HIV among these populations, but we also need to think critically about how prevention strategies reinforce stigmatization.

For example, this ad from a western Massachusetts clinic uses the phrase “man up, get tested” — taking care of yourself by getting tested for HIV is linked to your masculinity.  What’s interesting is that by including only men of color in the photo, the ad suggests that black and Latino men are particularly obsessed with their masculinity, more so, perhaps, than white men.  It also potentially reinforces stereotypes about black men as hyper-sexualized and Latino men as machismo.

I know a guy, bless his heart, who is unendingly surprised to learn that women do things to themselves to try to be more conventionally attractive.  Most recently he learned that bleach blondes are almost always, well, bleached. He thought it was a common natural hair color for adult women. LOL.

In any case, I thought the photographs below — by Zed Nelson, and sent along by zeynaparsel — were neat. They disembody the tools women use to enhance their beauty — eyelash extensions, breast implants, hair extensions — revealing them as undeniably artificial.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Last year Raquel Nelson was crossing the street with her 4-year-old son who was struck by a driver who fled the scene. Her son died and Nelson — just to be clear, the mom, not the driver of the car — was convicted of homicide by vehicle and reckless conduct (source). Nelson, you see, was jaywalking.  Her apartment complex was directly across the street from the bus stop and a half-mile from the nearest crosswalk.  None of the jurors on her case had ever taken public transportation.

(source)

There was a chorus of opposition to her trial and conviction and, likely in part because of the uproar, the judge gave her a probation instead of jail time. He also offered her a new trial; it begins this month.

In the meantime, Nelson’s tragedy drew attention the many neighborhoods that are unsafe for pedestrians. Transportation for America is collecting photographs of streets designed and maintained with cars in mind, but unsafe for pedestrians and those using public transportation. Here are a few examples from their flickr stream:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

At least that’s what Skinny Water is promising in their latest advertisement. The ad shows a woman facing a throng of cameramen snapping her picture, elegant earrings dropping to the top of the headline which says: “Skinny Always Gets the Attention.” Take a look:

Below the headline and photo of the various flavors, it also says “Zero calories, Zero sugar, Zero Carbs, Zero Guilt.” With all that’s not in this water, you might wonder what it does offer. The website tells me that depending on the flavor of water, they’ve added vitamins B3, B5, B6, B12, C, A, and E. They’ve also thrown in magnesium, folic acid, calcium and/or potassium.

Despite paltry efforts to market itself as healthy, Skinny Water is instead perpetrating the cultural message that the best — or only — way to ensure that women get attention is by being skinny. This of course positions them well to try to push their product on those women who have been pulled into this lie.

In fact, Skinny Water is doing precisely the opposite of what a health-conscious company and product should be doing. Promoting the idea that those who are skinny deserve attention more than others creates communities that support harmful diet-related behaviors and disordered eating for the goal of a wispy appearance. Not to mention reinforcing the ever-present undercurrent of bias against the overweight — or even normal weight! — it reinforces the idea that women’s size and appearance is the most important thing about them.

In defiance of that, let’s remind ourselves why Skinny Water is wrong. While the website details the added vitamins and dietary minerals of each drink, it’s far better to get your needed supplements through a healthy diet rich in cruciferous  and dark and leafy vegetables, fruits, whole grain and lean proteins. Washed down, in fact, by regular old water that keeps you hydrated and helps your body process and absorb nutrients. Skinny Water is telling its buyers that by adding these vitamins and minerals to their product, one can, perhaps, eschew a calorie-free but vitamin-rich manipulated water diet. For example, the “Power,” “Sport” and “Fit” drinks are all fortified with calcium, magnesium, and potassium – to help activate metabolic enzymes, keep your blood regulated, and support strong bones and teeth. Do you know what else can do that?  Bananas, yogurt, kale, almonds and cashews, and quinoa.

These are madly marketed products that don’t substitute for a healthy, well-rounded diet. Instead, they capitalize on the now-entrenched notion that women care more about being skinny than anything else.

UPDATE: Jezebel reports that this advertisement has been retired by Skinny Water, thanks to objections from consumers.

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Larkin Callaghan is a doctoral student at Columbia University studying health behavior and education. She is particularly concerned with gender disparities in access to healthcare and prevention services, and has done research on adolescent female sexual health, how social media operate as an educational platform, and differences by gender in the effectiveness of brief health interventions. You can follow her on Twitter, Tumblr, and at her blog.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Cross-posted at Thick Culture.

The Occupy Wall Street protests have garnered a great deal of attention in recent weeks. The core argument is that the “top one percent” has gotten a free ride in the last few decades, particularly during the last few years where the financial sector has seemingly not been held to account for their role in the financial crisis. But who is the “top one percent”?

Suzy Khimm on Ezra Klein’s blog sheds light on this question.

You’d be in the top 1 percent of U.S. households if your income in 2010 was at least $516,633. Your net worth in 2007 was $8,232,000 or more, and your average income this year is $1,530,773.

Khimm also shares some charts from Dave Gilson that looks deeper into who these “1 percenters” really are. In this chart, he notes that those in the top one percent have a broad range of professions. You’ll note from the chart than only 14 percent come from the financial sector, and a scant 2 percent are classified as “entrepreneurs.” As a side note, how did any professors make this list (1.8 percent)!

This data doesn’t play into the story the “99 percenters” want to tell about the “top 1 percent.” The preferred narrative is that the top one percent come from the financial sector (e.g. their wealth is not earned in the same way an entrepreneur’s wealth is earned).

But another of Gilson’s charts does help the 99 percenter’s story. According to this chart, the top one percent owns a majority share of the nation’s stock/mutual funds, securities, and business equity) when compared to the “bottom 90 percent.”

What does this say about the validity of the Occupy Wall street movement? Should they be focusing their efforts on challenging concentrated wealth regardless of whether it is in the financial sector or not? Or is Wall Street the perfect villain?  Does it matter if the story of who constitutes the “top 1 percent” is more muddled if the objective is met? Do the means justify the ends?

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Jose Marichal, PhD, is an assistant professor of political science at California Lutheran University. He teaches and writes about: public policy, race and politics, civic engagement, the Internet and politics, and community development.  He is founder of the blog ThickCulture.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.