A new study shows that owners of run-down apartment buildings are selling them to each other  “in a criminal conspiracy to avoid having to do the legally required maintenance necessary to keeping their buildings habitable and safe” (BoingBoing).

A tenant advocate was working with the city to document unsafe living conditions in apartments — things like leaking sewage and lead levels that were causing mental retardation — and get the owners of the buildings to make repairs  “But every time documented problems were delivered to the current LLC [Limited Liability Company] owners by city officials,” the report says, “nothing would happen.”

When the city’s deadline approached to fix the violations, the old LLC owner would explain that the property had changed hands and they were no longer involved. The buildings continued to deteriorate as owner after owner avoided addressing the violations.

In fact, the buildings were shifting hands within an extended family.  Confirming the connections between the various landlords proved that “…properties exchanged hands not as independent and valid real estate investments but as a conspiracy to avoid fixing the building violations.”

So, it went something like this. The building was passing from one LLC to another:

But all the LLCs were controlled by people connected to one other:

So the family had found a way around the law, “allowing the owners to ‘strip mine’ the equity from the buildings,” while leaving tenants in dangerous conditions.

The authors of the report call this a “common slumlord modus operandi.”  You should read the whole thing; it’s pretty stunning.

This U.K. commercial for Hovis brand bread takes world champion, four-time Olympic medalist, Victoria Pendleton… and turns her into a woman on a diet.

It begins with an image of her on a bicycle overlaid with her voice discussing the “focus, discipline, [and] determination” she needs to race well… and ends with her in the kitchen talking about how she needs to “stop snacking” and stay slim be cause she “wear[s] lycra for a living.”

Thanks to Rowan T. for the submission!

The Society Pages editor and sociologist Doug Hartmann offers an explanation for why we love football in this one-minute clip:

The interview was filmed for a documentary about fan loyalty to the Minnesota Vikings during a losing season (Hartmann swears that he didn’t really mean it about the relative persistence of wives and religion):

How does the U.S. compare to other developed countries on measures of social justice? According to the New York Times, not very well.  The visual below compares countries’ poverty rates, poverty prevention measures, income inequality, spending on pre-primary education, and citizen health.  The “overall” rating is on the far left and the U.S. ranks 27th out of 31.

Via Feministing.  See also how the U.S. ranks on measures of equality and prosperity(33 out of 33, for what it’s worth). Thanks to Dolores R. for the link!

While most Americans think of the witch as a possibly evil character associated with Halloween in the U.S., many Italians would see a motherly figure who keeps a clean house (hence the broom) and gives candy or coal to children.  The character’s name is Befana.  Thanks to Katrin for drawing my attention to her.

Italians celebrate the end of the Christmas season today,  January 5th.  Tonight is the night before the Feast of the Epiphany (celebrating the understanding that Jesus was God in human form) (source).  According to Italian mythology, Befana will visit children’s homes, filling their shoes with candy (if they’ve been good) or coal (if they’ve been bad) (source). Epiphany Eve is celebrated throughout Italy.

For more examples of variation in the culture of Christmas, see our posts on Krampus: Santa’s Evil Side Kick, The ChristKind, Snegurochka: Santa’s Granddaughter, and Black Pete (trigger warning for blackface).

Cross-posted at Citings and Sightings.

In an interview discussing whether teen sleepovers can actually prevent teen pregnancy, CNN’s Ali Velshi says flatly, “This is a little bit counter-intuitive.” But as his interviewee, UMass sociologist Amy Schalet (who wrote on this subject in Contexts in “Sex, Love, and Autonomy in the Teenage Sleepover” in the Summer of 2010), explains:

Let me clarify: it’s not a situation where everything goes… It’s definitely older teenage couples who have established relationships and whose parents have talked about contraception.

Which is to say, as Velshi puts it, sex and sex education in countries like the Netherlands, in which parents are more permissive—or as Schalet says, “parents are more connected with their kids”—about allowing boyfriends and girlfriends to sleep over, take “a holistic approach.”

Schalet’s research, explored more deeply in her new University of Chicago book Not Under My Roof, takes a look at American parenting practices surrounding teen sex and the practices of parents in other countries. Using in-depth interviews with parents and teens and a host of other data, she finds:

The takeaway for American parents… isn’t necessarily “You must permit sleepovers.” Many parents are going to say, “Not under my roof!” That’s why it’s the title of my book. The takeaway is that you can have more open conversations—you should probably have more open conversations—about what’s a good relationship, sex and contraception should go together, what does it mean to be “ready,” how to get rid of some of these damaging stereotypes (gender stereotypes). Those are all things that are going to help promote teenage health and better relationships between parents and kids.

Schalet is clear that parental approaches are nowhere near the only factor in the stark differences in teen pregnancy rates between the U.S. and the Netherlands, but says they are, in fact, particularly important. “Kids are having sex, clearly,” Velshi says. And that’s precisely the point, no matter whether parents believe their kids should be able to have sex in their own homes, Schalet believes: “I think what you emphasize is that, above all, the conversation is important, and the conversation itself does not make kids have sex.” Ideally, she points out, that conversation will take place at home with parents, but a holistic talk about sexuality, relationships, and health can also take place in schools, with clergy, and in many other locations.

Dr. Schalet on CNN (we apologize for the commercial):

Amy Schalet’s new book is Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex.

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Letta Page is the Associate Editor and Producer of The Society Pages. She has a decade of experience in academic editing across a range of disciplines, including two years as the managing editor of Contexts. Page holds degrees in history and classical studies from Boston University and an art degree from the University of Minnesota.

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

Since its release in November, Get Up!’s commercial supporting gay marriage in Australia has garnered substantial social media interest (over four million views on Youtube). The U.S. LGBT news magazine The Advocate called it “possibly the most beautiful ad for marriage equality we’ve seen” (source). Take a look:

From a sociological point of view, what is interesting about this ad is how it avoids the powerful, but charged language of equality and rights. Supporters of same-sex marriage typically frame their cause in terms of non-discrimination (“all people are equal”), non-interference or privacy (“how is my gay marriage affecting yours?”) or in terms of freedom of speech (“I should marry who I want”). See images of posters using this frame here and here.

Rights language such as this, however, comes with the potential of conflicts and trade-offs. Accordingly, opponents of same-sex marriage have often capitalized on this in their responses. This poster, for instance, expresses a fear or mockery of assertive, unbridled individualism. Posters with this frame here.

 This “Yes to Proposition 8” video is another good example. In it one woman claims that, if gay marriage is legal, her religious identity will be subject to discrimination and her freedom to speech will be contested.

The language used by the marriage equality movement, then, enables its opponents to re-frame their responses in the same type of language.

This is why the Get Up! commercial is a game changer. Instead of using “rights talk,” it keeps both words and slogans to a minimum. It uses visuals to embed the couple in a network of family and friends.  At the end, for example, the camera steps back to show not just the couple but a wider network of people who happily witness a marriage proposal. This approach implicates the happiness of not just two individuals, but a community.  The message is that gay marriage is not just about individual rights, but about collective celebration and social recognition.

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Ridhi Kashyap is a researcher in the Migration Group at the Institute for Empirical and Applied Sociology in Bremen, Germany. She studied interdisciplinary social sciences at Harvard University, and was a human rights fellow there after graduating in 2010. She is actively interested in human rights, particularly as they implicate issues of gender, migration, and development.

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

Twenty-three of you (a record I think) have sent in this clip of a little girl in a toy store critiquing the way the store is divided into pink princesses for girls and superheros for boys.  It’s heartwarming and inspiring to see a child offer a critical analysis of the world she lives in, something that most commentators have observed.

What I, and some of you, noticed was that her own analysis and that of the adult taking the video (presumably her Dad) differ.  And, believe it or not, her analysis is more correct than his.

Rightfully identifying what sociologists call “androcentrism,” she notes that girls like both girl and boy toys, but boys only like boy toys.  She says:

…because girls want superheros and the boys want superheros and the girls want pink stuff and the girls… and the boys want… and the boys don’t want pink stuff… (gently shaking her head back and forth)

Her Dad corrects her, saying “Boys, well, boys want both…”

But her Dad is wrong.  Boys in the U.S. are taught from a very early age to avoid everything associated with girls.  Being called a “girl” is, in itself, an insult to boys.  And the slurs “sissy” and “fag” are reserved for men who act feminine.  So, no, boys (who have learned the rules of how to be a boy) generally reject anything girly.  (Indeed, this was one of the themes of Jimmy Kimmel “bad present” prank played by parents on their kids.)

The girl’s Dad, however, articulates a symmetrical analysis. The idea is that there are gender stereotypes — ones that apply to boys and ones that apply to girls — and that both are inaccurate, unfair, and constraining.  His mistake is in missing the asymmetrical value placed on masculinity and femininity.  Boys and girls are simply not positioned equally in relationship to stereotypes of femininity and masculinity.

I have to admit, it’s pretty neat that she has picked up on this nuance so early. I wish most adults had her insight… and her passion:

Thanks to James, Julie G., Carly M., Brooklin N., BogganStoryTeller, Denise, Allie H., Yvonne R., Mark L., Karim S., Ann K., Lenny M., Isabeau P.-S., Daniel K., Marsha, Jay L., Shayna A.-S., Josh W., Kimberly L., Melissa, Colleen W., Simon G., and Brad for sending in the link!