Archive: 2011

This week I listened to a Freakonomics podcast featuring Economics PhD-student twins, Alison and Steve Sexton.  They had studied the phenomenon of conspicuous conservation, which I’ve defined elsewhere as “the (often lavish) spending on ‘green’ products designed mainly to advertise one’s environmentally-moral righteousness.”  The Sexton’s studied how much people are willing to pay for the conspiciousness of their conservation.

They found that, in places where being environmentally-friendly is looked upon positively, people will spend more (or gain less) to ensure that their conservation efforts are obvious. For example, people will sometimes have their solar panels mounted on the shady side of their house. Why? It’s the side that faces the street. Why have solar panels if no one in the neighborhood can see that you do?  Likewise, the Prius is so popular in part because it is obviously a hybrid; no other car looks like it, so it can’t be mistaken for a “regular” (person’s) car.

I thought of this willingness to pay to display one’s environmental thoughtfulness while visiting Goldstein’s Bagels in La Cañada, CA this week. They had this photograph proudly displayed:

I just love how not only are they paying to keep the highway clean, they’re being rewarded with a big advertisement for their store alongside the freeway, AND they get to take a picture of that sign and put it up for all to see.  It’s win-win-win; a win for the environment and a double win for Goldstein’s.

The Sexton’s argue that all of this conspicuous conservation is probably good.  Competing to be environmentally-friendly translates into more conservation, no matter what the motivation. (Especially as compared to conspicuous consumption; remember the Hummer?)  Accordingly, they suggest that public policy should focus on incentivizing the types of conservation efforts that aren’t visible, like insulation and weather-proofed windows, and leave the showy stuff to the market.

For another example of conspicuous conservation, see our post on faux-oil slicked shoes purchased to benefit the Gulf; on conspicuous consumption, check out the Louis Vitton mommy diva birthday cake; and see this post on conspicuous intellectual consumption.

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.

A blogger named Aluation posted this graphic showing how the New York Times changed the first line of a story about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.  The change subtly shifted the blame for the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge from the police to the protesters.  In the first version of the story, police allowed them onto the bridge and then “cut off and arrested” them.  In the second, there was a “showdown” in which demonstrators “marched onto the bridge.”

Adding interest, the author of the piece was changed from “Colin Moynihan” to “Al Baker and Colin Moynihan.”  Who is Al Baker?  He is the guy in charge of the police bureau at the Times.

This is a great example of how important language is in framing events.  The difference isn’t dramatic, but a close look at the wording reveals a clear difference.

It’s also a great example of the power of certain individuals and institutions to shape how the rest of us understand reality.  We should be especially suspicious of the change in the authorship of the story.  When reporters have “beats,” they have to maintain good relationships with important sources on those beats. They rely on the same sources, over and over, to provide inside scoops.  If they alienate important sources, they have a much more difficult time doing their job.

What I’m trying to say is… there is good sociological theory, based on strong evidence, to suggest that an important person in the New York police department saw this story, called Baker, and told him to change the wording.  In which case, Baker might have done so to avoid alienating a source on which his job depends.  I’m not saying that’s what happened, I’m just saying that these kinds of things do happen.

Thanks to Jay Livingston for the tip.

For another example of framing, see the captions on a slideshow covering survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

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.

While men have always had sex with men and women have always had sex with women, the idea that a person could be of a particular homosexual type (as opposed to someone who did homosexual acts) only emerged in the late 1800s (in Western culture anyway).  Even then, it took a very long time for the idea that gay people might be among us to filter through popular culture.  Only after an active gay liberation movement made homosexuality more visible did people actually start to look for it in people they knew.

Accordingly, things that look very “gay” to us today, didn’t look that way before homosexuality became part of our consciousness. In a previous post on this topic, I discuss a vintage soap ad in which two naked men in a public shower have a conversation about “hard” water and “lathering” up.  It seems to have clear gay undertones today (maybe overtones), but it wasn’t meant to suggest homosexuality then.  Likewise, a series of military recruitment posters, sent in by Katrin, might very well trigger the “specter” of homosexuality today, but likely would not have inspired giggles at the time.

More at Scribd.

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.

What happens after we throw something in a garbage can? From the user’s perspective, it disappears once the trash collectors pick it up (if you live in an area with municipal trash collection, of course; I grew up in a rural area where everyone had to deal with their own trash). Where does it go? Sometimes items are taken to a dump not far from where it was thrown away and either buried, bulldozed into large heaps, or incinerated.

But Carlo Ratti, an architect who works with the SENSEable City Lab at MIT, directed a project to find out just how far garbage can travel, with the goal of helping us understand the “removal chain” that conveniently disappears our trash for us as well as we’ve come to understand the global supply chains that bring us items in the first place. His team asked 500 people in Seattle to tag items they would be throwing out anyway with small tracking chips. They tagged a total of 3,000 objects, everything from tin cans to cell phones to sneakers. And the results showed that some of the items we get rid of can go on a rather dramatic journey, traveling thousands of miles:

The Trash Track website contains information about the methodology and ideas behind the project.

Thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for the tip!

Cross-posted at The Oreo Experience.

With the summer over, it’s time for Hollywood to pull out a new season of films. Here’s some of what’s coming up this fall and winter. For each trailer, I note what white people get to do and what non-white people get to do.

Let us begin:

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

Things White People Get to Do: Be part of a loving family, be content with simple things, be blissfully unaware, be sweet, be naive, be oddly cool, progressive parents, live in a small town, live in a big city, parody Almost Famous, be hot, be regular looking, be super hot with a regular looking boyfriend, be the hero.

Things Not-White People Get to Do: be threatening, drive a car.

Contagion

Things White People Get to Do in This Movie: Play craps, have a family, be an expert, cry convincingly, deliver bad news, be unable to accept bad news, probably be the focal point of a conspiracy, populate towns.

Things Not-White People Get to Do in This Movie: Play craps, provide and clarify exposition.

Main Street

Things White People Get to Do: Fake an American accent, come up with a plan, be taken advantage of by the boss, be savvy about the boss, believe a stranger, be troubled, look out for the troubled, work in an office.

Things Not-White People Get to Do: Believe a stranger.

Warrior

Things White People Get to Do: have tattoos, cage fight, announce fights, reconnect with parents, gamble, join the military, lose a home, offer help, make up for lost time, walk around the house in matched undies and undershirt, throw tires around, be an adorable father, kiss the girl, be a war hero, cheer supportability, go head to head.

Things Not-White People Get to Do: walk through frame, lose a fight

I Don’t Know How She Does It

Things White People Get to Do: Have a career AND a family and be totes supes adorbs about it.

Things Not-White People Get to Do: n/a

Straw Dogs

Things White People Get to Do: Watch old movies, be in old movies, be way too aggressive, terrorize innocents, be a cheerleader, have sex, have a nice date, disrespect their partners, sexually harass women, fight back against bullies, go to church, rise to the challenge, wield a tire iron, use boiling water effectively.

Things Not-White People Get to Do: n/a

Drive

Things White People Get to Do: be really good at driving, set up dirty deals, be mobsters, live in a big city, meet guys in elevators, be a stunt person, be a loving single mom, get their hands on more money than they were expecting, kiss the girl, bash someone’s head in, wear freaky masks, slit some throats, be the dad the dad couldn’t be.

Things Not-White People Get to Do: be a felon.

30 more movie trailers after the jump:

more...

Last month I posted a video from the PBS series on U.S. inequality, showing the misperceptions many Americans have about the level of economic stratification in the U.S. In a new segment in the series, PBS looks at the often hidden health impacts of this economic inequality:

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Full transcript available here.

In light of the mean-spirited Obama-wants-everyone-on-food-stamps meme, and the Heritage Foundation’s mocking attack on poor people as air-conditioned, Xbox-loving couch potatoes, let’s consider something else about poor single parents — especially poor mothers: their Google searches.

That’s right, in addition to refrigerators, apparently almost everyone in America today has Internet access — often at their local public libraries.

And yet they still complain about their little problems. They type searches into Google like, “help paying electric bill,” “hair falling out,” and even — presumably so they can laugh at the poor suckers who actually work for a living — “walmart jobs.”

The old “misery index” was just unemployment plus inflation. Maybe the new index to watch is Google searches for “help for single mothers.” Here is the trend for that search, along with one of the searches that most closely follows its trend, “walmart jobs.” The temporal correlation between these two — the amount they rise and fall together over time — is .96 on a scale of 0 to 1.

You can see the full list of 100 searches most correlated with “help for single mothers” by following this link.

After the poverty report came out last month, comedian Andy Borowitz tweeted, “One in six Americans is living in poverty, but the other five are more concerned about the changes to Facebook.” Whether you’re in the first group or the latter one — or neither — it’s worth pausing for a minute to think about the lives of people Googling things like, “help with rent,” “iud side effects,” “cheap dinner ideas” and “get a credit card with bad credit.” (The searches all correlate with “help for single mothers” at .94 or higher.)

A similar list comes up in the correlations with searches for “food stamps.” Here it is graphed with “housekeeping jobs,” correlated at .97:

The list of correlated searches is similar, including a preponderance of women’s health terms (“clots during period”) economic crises (“light bill”), and ideas for climbing out of an economic hole (“medical assistant jobs,” “dispatcher jobs”).

On the plus side, both of these trends peaked in mid-2010, for now. So maybe things have stopped getting worse quite so fast. Or maybe they just lost their Internet access at the library due to budget cuts.

Am I being selective, not reporting the searches like “loving this cool TV,” and “food stamps rule”? Not intentionally, but you never know. The links to the searches are above, and the data is free.

Post under “No comment” by Sarah Richardson at Ms.:

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.