Archive: 2011

Time Magazine (2009) reports that McDonald’s has approximately 32,000 restaurants in 118 countries. Of those, only about 45% were in the United States. The key to success of the American restaurant chain in other countries is to adapt its business to the local culture.

For example, today McDonald’s operates approximately 1,000 restaurants in China.  In the book McDonald’s: Behind The Arches, Yunxiang Yun argues that it has been successful in Beijing because it has become a fun place to hang out. While it seems foreign to many Westerners, who think of McDonald’s as a place to buy cheap food quickly, many Chinese people eat there because of the atmosphere and service. More, the food isn’t associated with obesity, as it is in the U.S.

This perception of McDonald’s has made it a sought out location for weddings. Er, McWeddings.

A McDonald’s nuptial package in Hong Kong costs about HK$10,000 (US$1,300).   According to the New York Times, a McWedding…

…includes food and drinks for 50 people… a “cake” made of stacked apple pies, gifts for the guests and invitation cards, each with a wedding photo of the couple.

The ability to reinvent itself is the key to the Golden Arches’ success in China.  It also suggests that the associations Americans have with the chain aren’t inevitable, but specific to cultural context.  Projected to double the number of stores by 2013, it will be interesting to see what other adjustments McDonald’s makes down the road.

 Sangyoub Park is an assistant professor of sociology at Washburn University, where he teaches Social Demography, Generations in the U.S. and Sociology of East Asia. His research interests include social capital, demographic trends, and post-Generation Y.

Back in February I posted about this commercial for Dr. Pepper 10, which was then being introduced to the market:

Dr. Pepper is market-testing a new product, Dr. Pepper 10, which is a 10-calorie (per 12 ounces) soda aimed at men aged 25-34. The problem the company faces is how to market a diet product to men, given the association of dieting with femininity. Dr. Pepper has apparently decided to face this challenge head on and make it very, very clear who this product is and isn’t meant for. This commercial, sent to us by Sully R., uses over-the-top tropes from action movies to prove the soda’s macho cred, and practically yells that it isn’t for women:

Wait, did I say “practically”? I meant literally yells that it’s not for women. Just in case you didn’t get it.

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Now, Dr. Pepper is rolling out the product for real. Dave E., Dave W., David B., Rob W., Christopher D., Kathy W., Andrew D., and Emma H. all let us know that the full-scale ad campaign is out, and they are going all-out with the “no women” theme. Here’s the image from the Dr. Pepper 10 Facebook page:

There’s an app on the Facebook page which takes you to lists of requirements for being sufficiently manly; I didn’t go to it, as it required you to allow Dr. Pepper to access all your Facebook info and send you emails, but according to abc News, it includes tidbits like “Thou Shalt Not Pucker Up. Kissy faces are never manly” and “Thou Shalt Not Make a ‘Man-Gagement’ Album. That is all.”

It’s another example of over-the-top ridiculous masculinity presented with a wink and a nod that is supposed to reassure us all that we’re in on the joke, which somehow makes it less absurd that if you want one group of human adults to drink your product, you feel the need to scream from the rooftops that you’re doing your best to prevent another group of human adults from drinking it, so they won’t get symbolic cooties.

UPDATE: Dr. Pepper’s brand index fell among both men and women (but especially women) in the weeks after this campaign was lost.

Graphic Sociology linked to a study by the Office of the State Comptroller aiming at understanding the importance of the securities industry to New York City’s economy.  It reveals something we already know quite well — that compensation to financial services sector workers is extraordinarily high (~350,000/year) — but also that the relative compensation of financial services sector workers, compared to the average worker in New York City, has increasingly advantaged the former.

This figure, included in the report, shows just how disproportionately compensation in the finance sector has been growing compared to compensation for everyone else.  While workers in other private sectors have seen their incomes about triple since 1981, workers in securities are making, on average, eight to ten times what they were making 30 years ago.  This means that, while people in finance made about twice what the average worker made in 1981, they now make about six times the income of the average private sector worker.

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 Love Isn’t Enough.

This six-minute video, uploaded to youtube by Sanjay Newton, does a wonderful job of explaining and illustrating the portrayal of masculinity in Disney movies.  It’s pretty troubling when laid out so simply.

Via Dr. Danielle Dirk’s blog for her Contemporary Sociological Theory class.

More on Disney: pickaninny slaves in Fantasia? yes, the happiest place on earth?, the working poor at Disney world, how Disney came to Times Square, media consolidation and Tinkerbell, the real Johnny Appleseed, fallen princesses, modernizing the fairy tale, racist Disney characters, infantilizing adult women, advice for young girls from the little mermaid, gendered Disney t-shirts for kids, deconstructing Disney princesses, Disney makes over Minnie Mouse, are the new Disney princesses feminist?, making light of sex slavery at Disneyland, Disney diet food for kids, race and gender in Princess and the Frog, socializing girls into marriage, and…

…did you know that the very first political tv commercial was made by Disney?  I like Ike!

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.

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.

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

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.