The foreclosure crisis that emerged in 2006 continues to displace families and change neighborhoods, creating holes in the social fabric of communities. Kathryn Clark, artist and former urban planner, has created a series of “foreclosure quilts” based on maps of urban areas, with holes representing foreclosed houses.  These unique visual representations call our attention to the holes that remain after foreclosure.

Clark writes on her blog:

The quilt is pieced together using patterns of neighborhood blocks taken from RealtyTrac maps.  Within these, foreclosed lots are shown as holes in the quilts.  The lot locations are completely random and they yield an unexpected beauty when laid out on fabric. These torn holes question the protective nature of a quilt. The situation is so dire that even a quilt can’t provide the security one needs.

Clark’s artistic rendering of these maps points to the size and spread of the foreclosure problem, but also evokes the conflicting experience of home and the reality of the housing market.  Homes, like quilts, promise warmth, comfort and continuity, a connection to family and a sense of protection.  The holes in the quilts powerfully evoke the false promise of security offered by home ownership in the contemporary U.S.

Public policy and real estate market professionals have actively worked to construct home as an owner-occupied, single family house (as opposed to rental, communal space, or other residential option).  The preference for ownership has become so strong that many forgo other forms of investment for a mortgage on a house, and those who rent are told that they are “throwing their money away.”  This normative belief that home ownership is the most desirable option for adults provided justification for consumers to risk their savings, even when offered poor subprime loans, because ownership is symbolically important.

The foreclosure quilts call our attention to the holes that have been produced by the collapse of the housing market.  The focus on neighborhoods and blocks rather than individual houses and families encourages us to think about the impact on communities as well as individuals.  These quilts offer little comfort, and hopefully provoke questions about the sustainability of our singular focus on home ownership.

For images of Clark’s quilts, check out her blog and website or an article on her work at The Atlantic Cities page.

Karen McCormack is an assistant professor of sociology at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.  She is currently studying the strategies that people employ to manage the risk of losing their homes to foreclosure.

Jay Smooth — always insightful and earnest — praises the movement for justice in the Trayvon Martin case, and points us forward to what’s next:

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.

The first drug court started in Miami in 1989 as an effort to stop the cycle of drug addiction and crime.  The program brought together judges, prosecuting and defense attorneys, addiction counselors, and social workers to collaboratively build an individualized treatment program.  Rather than sending people to jail, the drug court program was designed to treat addiction while participants lived in the community.  Drug courts have become an increasingly common way for communities to engage with low-level drug offenders.

Seeking to raise awareness and support for drug courts, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals has released a series of PSAs entitled, “All Rise.”  Using a mix of celebrities and drug court judges, these commercials assert that 75% of drug court participants are never arrested again.

The promise is clear.  Drug courts not only treat addiction, they also treat a number of social problems (“no more families torn apart… no more neglect… no more overdoses”).

Are drug courts really this successful?

The truth is, we still don’t know.  The 75% success statistic comes from a study published in 2003.  The authors report that only 27.5% of drug court participants had been re-arrested and charged with a serious crime within two years.  So, we don’t know what re-arrest rates look like after that two-year period and the data doesn’t include arrests for minor crimes or arrests for serious crimes that did not result in a charge.  This is a far cry from the claim made in the video: that 75% of drug court participants are never arrested again.

The claims asserted in the “All Rise” campaign, then, should be treated with caution.  That said, drug courts are a significant move away from punitiveness for addicted offenders. Increasing the time to reoffending is a very positive step for the offender, for the community, and for the criminal justice system.  Additionally, most recidivism occurs within three years of release, so if the drug court program is helping participants to make it past this milestone it may indeed lead to some graduates leaving criminality altogether.

But before we turn to drug courts as “the” solution, we need more research on the effectiveness of drug courts.  Women and Caucasians fare better in the program than men and people of color.  And large courts tend to be more effective than small courts. Nevertheless, since the 1990s drug courts have spread across the nation to all major cities and many medium and small-sized cities, some of which have limited resources and less dedication.  All Rise’s enthusiasm should be tempered with a critical eye aimed at making these programs work well, and for as many people as possible.

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Kimberly Baker is an assistant professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Ithaca College.  She teaches classes in crime, deviance, and law.  Her research is on drugs, addiction, and U.S. drug policy, including drug courts.

Yesterday, in honor of May Day, Anna North at Buzzfeed Shift posted a set of photos on the history of women in the (mostly U.S.-based) labor movement. One that I found particularly interesting was this 1918 poster urging women to be both thrifty and productive industrial workers as they play their role in winning World War I:

Note how patriotism is clearly connected to the idea of women having more opportunities:

To woman, the possession of a home, the opportunities of education for herself and her children, the betterment of her own social conditions, should always be the dominating thought.

But the poster simultaneously warns them against using their freedom for their own pleasure at the expense of the nation:

…restlessness urges the breaking up of home life and the shifting of occupations. It is for her to think well before jeopardizing the future for the sake of temporary gain…it is hers to show industrial stability and check the dangerous tendency to shift about and gamble with the future. America’s women can best serve American by being steadfast — bending to their task and holding it — and by saving all they can from today’s pay envelope for future needs.

So women are encouraged to think of themselves as empowered workers, with increased opportunities available to them, but only to the degree that this makes them reliable, productive workers and thrifty citizens, drawing on ideas of women’s special role in the home. Just as women are the “custodians” of their homes, they must also ensure “industrial stability” by sticking with their jobs for the good of the nation — a choice which might, of course, conflict with a woman’s efforts to improve her own or her family’s social conditions by, say, taking a job that pays more or has better working conditions. The poster encourages women to consider their opportunities, but ties those opportunities tightly to the common good of the nation and the family, ultimately warning women against too much pursuit of individual self-interest.

Yikes.  In a report designed to prove the feasibility of measuring electrodermal activity on subjects going about their daily life, at least one student showed near brain-death during class.

Am I exaggerating?  Yes.  But, even so, brain patterns during class matched watching TV closer than any other activity on the list.  Studying and homework, lab work, and socializing got more of his attention… sleep was a veritable mental work-out compared to class.

Draw whatever conclusions you will…

Joi Ito, via BoingBoing.  Full text of the paper here.

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 Montclair SocioBlog.

In case you wondered about what we in the U.S. pay for health care compared with those unfree unfortunates who suffer under various forms of socialized medicine, here are some graphs from 2009 showing the advantages of what is sometimes called “the best health care system in the world.”

The graphs are from the International Federation of Health Plans. I’ve selected only four — to show the relative costs* of

• an office visit
• a day in the hospital
• a common procedure (childbirth without complications)
• a widely used drug (Lipitor)

You can download all the charts here, but be warned: it gets boring. We’re number one in every chart, at least in this one category of how much we shell out.

Since we have the best health care in the world, this must mean that you get what you pay for. Our Lipitor must be four to ten times as good as the Lipitor that Canadians take.

Hat tip: Ezra Klein.

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*These amounts are what providers are paid by governments or other insurers, not what the patient pays, which in many Eurpean countries is essentially nothing. See the footnotes for the tables in the original document. Or look at the comments on this at Boing Boing, a discussion which is remarkably civil (do they monitor comments?).

Tenure!

Lisa Wade is celebrating the news that, come Fall, she will be a tenured professor at Occidental College!  Now that she’s in the “golden handcuffs,” she can say all the stuff she’s been holding back on Twitter and Facebook. :)

New Course Guide:

• The Sociology of Sports, by J.A. Carter

New Pinterest Page: 

• Sexually Suggestive Advertising

Best of April:

Two of our posts received over 1,000 “likes” on Facebook this month:

• Lisa Wade, Fat People Can Be as Healthy as Thin People
• Wendy Christensen, Lost in Translation: Tattoos and Cultural Appropriation

Other popular posts in April include:

• Lisa Wade, Welcome to the State Home for the Manic Pixie Dream Girls
• Martin Hart-Landsberg, We Are Not All In It Together
• Jenny Davis, Trayvon Martin: The Mistake of the Progressive Left
• Gwen Sharp, The Harsh Realities of Juvenile Detention
• Lisa Wade, Manipulated Women and High Fashion
• Lisa Wade, Portraying and Pushing Female Competitiveness
• Gwen Sharp, Race, Representation, and Reactions to the Hunger Games
• Caroline Heldman, The Hunger Games, Hollywood, and Fighting Fuck Toys
• Lisa Wade, Class Privilege and Parental Leave

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:

Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.

You can also follow Gwen’s great Twitter feed or find Lisa on both Twitter and Facebook (she just joined this month!).

Most of the rest of the team is on Twitter too: @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, @jaylivingston, and @wendyphd.

Links this Month: 

• i09, Fat People Can Be as Healthy as Thin People
• TVGuide, Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish Mascot
• PhD in Parenting, Adultification and Sexualization of Girls in French Vogue
• Tofugo, Yaeba: Culture and Cosmetic Infantilization
• Corporate Governance, Boys Want Success, Girls Want Boys

NASA has posted a series of pairs of satellite images that show a range of changes around the world. They’re great for illustrating human-environment interactions; some of the changes are directly human-caused, while others, while others show the changing consequences of floods and fires as our settlement and agricultural patterns change.

For those of us living in Las Vegas, these images of the shrinking Lake Mead reservoir, which provides water and electricity, is not reassuring. The reservoir has gotten smaller due to multiple factors, including a long-term drought and more water being taken from the Colorado River upstream:

Deforestation in Niger, as land has increasingly been turned over to agriculture:

Here, we see increasing urban growth around Denver International Airport, which now takes up 53 square miles of what used to be farmland:

Algal blooms due to agricultural and household runoff into Lake Atitlan, Guatemala:

Changes to the Sonoran coastline in Mexico due to shrimp farming:

The dramatic shrinking of the Aral Sea, largely due to the amount of water taken out of rivers for irrigation:

The full set of 167 paired images is really striking, and if viewed in the “all images” layout, you can select among various topics, focusing on cities, water, human impacts, and so on.