Search results for rape culture

According to a 2008 market research study, 72% of yoga practitioners in the U.S. are women; 71% are college educated and 27% have postgraduate degrees; and 44% have annual incomes of $75,000 or more.  Yoga practitioners, then, do not reflect the general population.

So how inclusive is yoga?  A collection of covers from the magazine Yoga Journal, spanning the years 1975 to 2010, sent in by Janet T., gives us a clue.

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Christie Barcelos is a doctoral student in Public Health at the University of Massachusetts who rarely sees anyone who looks like her in yoga class.

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

This Course Guide is in progress and will be updated as I have time.

Disclaimer: If you’re thinking about writing a course guide.  I totally overdid it on this one!  It doesn’t have to be nearly this extensive.

Course Guide for
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
(last updated 5/2012)

Developed by Gwen Sharp
Nevada State College

C. Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination

Intersection of biography and history as illustrated by:

• Year of birth and life success
• Kids’ exposure to technology
• Baby naming practices and media trends
• Other historical trends in baby names

“the capacity for astonishment is made lively again”

• The background of “Scotch” tape
• Applying the anthropological lens to “dark, mysterious Austria”

Karl Marx/Marxist analysis

• Marxist analysis of current economic crisis
• Invisibility of workers

Emile Durkheim

• The dangers of the ecological fallacy: measuring “sin” statistically

[Because the course guide has gotten to be so long, I’m putting the rest of it after the jump.]

more...

In Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq, John Dower discusses how the U.S. responded to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Militarily, it pushed the U.S. into officially entering World War II, but Dower is just as interested in cultural responses, particularly efforts to stigmatize all U.S. residents of Japanese descent as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

A prime example of this is the film December 7th, created by John Ford, legendary director of classics such as Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath. The first version of the film was 82 minutes long. In it, an idealistic figure representing the U.S. talks with “C,” a figure meant to represent his conscience. Uncle Sam naively believes the racial and ethnic diversity of Hawaii isn’t a problem, but C helps him see that the large Japanese American population is a threat, even when they appear to be loyal, patriotic, assimilated Americans. Japanese-language telephone books and newspapers are ominously shown as evidence of their lack of true American-ness. Start at about 8:40:

The message is unequivocal: Japanese Americans are untrustworthy, and any actions or behaviors that seems to indicate that a Japanese American is loyal to the U.S. provides potential evidence of just how deceitful they are — they cover their treachery with an appearance of patriotism. At around 18:25, Uncle Sam tries to defend freedom of religion, but C patiently explains the problem with this view. C says he’s not saying all Japanese Americans are disloyal, but that he’s “just presenting the facts,” and can’t be responsible for separating the loyal from the disloyal.

Ford cut the film down to 34 minutes before releasing it. This shortened version of December 7th won the 1943 Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject:

The attack scene from December 7th is often assumed to be actual documentary footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Dower points out that it was almost entirely staged by Ford, since there was almost no existing film of the surprise attack available.

Dower also discusses the animated Disney film Victory through Air Power. The film was based on the book Victory through Air Power, by Alexander Seversky. Seversky’s book justifies bombing non-combatant targets as a way to demoralize the enemy and disrupt supply lines and communication. Civilians would no longer be seen as inherently off-limits for military operations. The film served as propaganda for this view, which increasingly took hold in the U.S. military, eventually justifying dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You can find the entire film on Youtube, but the most relevant segment is at the end; the widespread bombing of (noticeably resident-free) Japanese cities is presented as key to a glorious victory by the U.S.:

These films served to justify military strategies (internment camps and bombing non-military targets) that could have faced stiff resistance by drawing on popular fears in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. In both cases, they widened the circle of legitimate potential targets of war-related government actions to not just Japanese soldiers and government officials but to the entire civilian population of Japan, as well as anyone with Japanese ancestry living in the U.S.

HAPPY JULY!

If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll have noticed three new members of the Sociological Images team.  We’re so pleased to announce that Philip N. Cohen, Caroline Heldman, and Jay Livingston have joined on as regular Contributors.  Each has a bustling public intellectual presence of their own and we’re thrilled that they’re blogging for SocImages!

Philip N. Cohen, PhD is a Sociology professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He writes about family, work, and inequality professionally, and at his fabulous blog, Family Inequality.

Jay Livingston, PhD is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University.  His expertise is in social psychology, culture, and crime.  He blogs at the equally fabulous Montclair SocioBlog, where he also does great work teaching science literacy with his posts about statistics.

Caroline Heldman, PhD teaches Politics at Occidental College.  She is an expert on the presidency and gender in politics, featured in the new documentary Miss Representation.  She’s also an intrepid investigative journalist and represents the liberal point of view on Fox programs weekly.

Please welcome them with your always incisive commentary!

AROUND THE INTERNET:

After Gwen posted my talk on hook up culture here at SocImages, it was picked up by BoingBoing (to my excitement!).  After seeing the talk, Ben Privot at The Consensual Project asked me to do a quick interview on deconstructing cultural narratives about sexuality.

Caroline, our new Contributor, published two essays exposing the culturally and politically corrupt response to a rape in Silsbee Texas.  You can read abridged versions at the Ms. blog (here and here) or her unedited version at her blog.

Gwen was all over the internet this month: on About for a story about Arnold Schwartzenegger’s Love Child Scandal, on the Huffington Post about a racially-charged Dove Ad, and on a local Las Vegas NPR station offering some perspective on home buying and the recession.

Finally, I was also tickled to see my post about the “obscene” Dossier cover featuring a feminine male model used in a Newsy video report about the controversy.

WHERE ELSE WE ARE…

This is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter and Facebook.  You can learn more about your editors at my website and Gwen’s.

Oh and, um, I totally joined twitter this week!  And you can follow Philip Cohen and Caroline Heldman too.  :)

We’ve discussed American Indian mascots, advertising featuring anachronistic caricatures of American Indians, the ice skater who appropriated aboriginal culture, the lie at the heart of the famous crying Indian PSA, and the stunning irony that is Avatar, but we’ve never directly addressed the use and appropriation of the idea of the Eskimo.  The term refers to the Inuit and Yupik people in Eastern Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.

Russell Potter, a professor of English at Rhode Island College, collected a few vintage advertisements featuring the idea of the Eskimo.  He argues that they fall roughly into two camps: cheerful adorable Eskimo and the Eskimo as primitive and backwards.

These first two for apples and ginger ale fall into the first category:

But this ad presents the “Esquimaux” as “dull” and Grape Nuts as civilized:

Building on Potter’s collection, Adrienne at Native Appropriations posted some more contemporary uses of the Eskimo.

Eskimo Joe’s (Stillwater, OK) uses an image of an Eskimo looking downright ridiculous and very much like his dog:

Any child of the ’80s probably remembers the Lisa Frank Eskimo girl (which Adrienne points out looks decidely anglo):

And this ad seems to suggest that even decapitated walruses speak better English than Eskimos:

Here’s another example of the childlike Eskimo, tweeted to us by @Matthew_Kneale:

All of these ads turn Eskimos into (cute but inferior) childlike figures or (deficient and inferior) backwards adults, or some combination of the two.  For a population with essentially no contact with the Inuit or the Yupik, the idea that they are real human beings can become lost.  When real members of a group are invisible, imaginary representatives can be demonized or romanticized as we see fit.

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.

Jeremiah sent in a fascinating post by Nicola at edible geography about how Prohibition, which outlawed liquor in the U.S. from 1920-1933, changed our culture in a number of ways that aren’t immediately apparent. Nicola draws heavily on historian David Okrent’s book Last Call.

An image from Detroit the day before Prohibition went into effect in 1920:

Although Prohibition made liquor illegal, there were a number of loopholes, including certain alcoholic “fruit juices” (which in effect meant wine and hard ciders were often allowed), medicinal uses of alcohol, and industrial alcohols. Nicola provides an image of a prescription booklet for medicinal alcohol:

These loopholes led to a dramatic rise in the popularity of wine in the U.S.: “American wine consumption increased from 70 million gallons in 1917 to 150 million gallons in 1925,” according to Nicola. That change affected the agriculture of California, in particular, where many acres of other crops were replaced with wine grapes. In another unexpected consequence, Okrent argues that the medicinal use loophole was a central factor in the success of drugstores such as Walgreen’s, since sales of alcohol for medical purposes were very profitable.

Prohibition also affected international maritime laws. At that time nations controlled the areas up to three miles off their shores. Along much of the U.S. coast, “Rum Rows” emerged, strings of generally foreign-owned ships anchored just outside the 3-mile jurisdiction limit, all full of liquor. They would openly advertise prices. This is an image of the Kirk and Sweeney loaded with illegal alcohol in 1924 (via):

The U.S. Coast Guard has a collection of images of its efforts to stop the illegal importation of liquor. This image shows one of the small rum runner boats that would sail from the shore to Rum Row to load up on alcohol, as it approaches a British-owned boat called the Katherine in 1923:

Nicola describes the scene:

…a floating ship-city, thousands of miles in length, bobbing up and down in place along the coast of America, and serviced by a fleet of much smaller, nimble rum runners that slipped to and from the mainland under cover of night.

The U.S. government began to push for an extension of the area of the ocean over which governments have jurisdiction, from 3 miles to 12, which would make it much more difficult, time-consuming, and dangerous to run liquor in from the larger ships. The U.S. eventually succeeded in pushing its national borders outward, expanding national sovereignty over oceans, another unexpected consequence of our anti-alcohol policies. Rum Row dutifully relocated farther offshore.

Apparently Prohibition also fueled the popularity of mixed drinks (the mixers helped mask the smell and often unpleasant taste of bootleg liquor) and dinner parties (since you couldn’t buy liquor openly at restaurants but were relatively safe serving it in your home).  According to a set of Life photos about Prohibition, sales of Coca Cola tripled, since soda served as both a substitute and mixer for alcohol:

From the Life photoessay:

“People don’t realize,” Okrent told LIFE.com, “how much drinking there was in this country before Prohibition. We were awash in booze. In 1830, for example, the per capita consumption of alcohol was three times what it is today — 90 bottles of booze per year per person over the age of 15. By 1933, drinking was around 70 percent of pre-Prohibition levels, and with some fluctuations has stayed well below pre-Prohibition levels ever since.

Okrent says that contrary to what we often see in movies, where speakeasies are built to be easily dismantled or disguised as legal businesses in case the cops raided, by the late 1920s, many speakeasies were set up as permanent structures that were clearly serving liquor, and customers felt fairly secure going to them:

As soon as liquor became legal again, Americans enthusiastically returned to openly buying and selling it, though, as Okrent said, not at pre-Prohibition levels (photo from a different Life photoessay):

The Budweiser company decided to deliver beer to several high-profile locations by horse-drawn cart as a marketing stunt, giving us the iconic Budweiser Clydesdales. Here they are on their way to the Empire State Building:

And if you buy Okert’s argument, Prohibition even gave us NASCAR; he says it emerged in the South after Prohibition ended, when all the former runners of liquor needed new uses for their driving skills and fast cars now that they could no longer make a profit smuggling booze.

So there you have it: some of the unintended consequences of Prohibition, and example of the way public policy can have implications for areas of social life that seem far removed from the topic at hand.

NEWS:

I’ll be in New Orleans until June 23 and the big Island of Hawaii from the 23rd to the 1st.  It’s always fun to meet readers, so if you’re nearby please send us an email (socimages@thesocietypages.org) and we’ll have coffee or drinks!

A Louis Vuitton advertising campaign that we critiqued has been determined by the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency to be a violation of truth in advertising.  Check it out.  Thanks to Anjan G. and Katrin for pointing it out.

This is your monthly reminder!  You can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook where we update with a featured post everyday.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! May ’10):

Cara McC. sent along another example of a commercial separating normal from abnormal… this time it’s “normal” skin.  We added it to our post on hair.  On the same theme, Renée Y. took a photo of bike helmets in women’s and… um… helmet.  We also added more examples to our post on gendering default icons, this time bike traffic lights in Amsterdam.

We added breast cancer-themed grape tomatoes — yes, you read right — to our post on surprising things themed as such.  Sent in by Renée Y.

M.I.A.’s  “Born Free” video shows red-headed, freckled male adolescents being rounded up as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. We added it to our post on gingerism.

Orangina has a drink with grenadine in it called “Indien” that features an orange wearing a feathered headdress. We added it to our earlier post on the use of feathered headdresses and other elements of some American Indian cultures.

We updated our post on the CNN experiment on children’s attitudes toward skin color with a segment of a parent reacting to her child’s preferences. Thanks to Abeer K., Dimitriy T.M., and Alex P. for sending in the one we missed!

Ang B. snapped a photo of an advertisement for men’s and women’s haircuts with the phrase “Fuck your Gender Binary” written across it.  We added it to our post featuring small acts of resistance against gendered and objectifying advertising.

Andi S. sent a photo of Spanx for men, designed to shape his upper body.  We added it to our post on the push-up panty for the penis.  Relatedly, Michelle R. sent us another example of how the diet/nutrition industry markets products differently to men and women.

We added two videos of the “men are like this, but women are like that, hahaha!” variety to one of our posts on gender stereotypes.  Also, in case you haven’t had enough of pointlessly gendered products, we added an example of a gendered “find” game and another example of gendered earplugs to our post on the topic.  On the other hand, doggie poop bags are unisex. Good to know.

In case you’re looking for some polite, submissive women, we added an online ad for “beautiful Russian ladies” to our post about a website that sells the submissive Asian stereotype to (mostly) non-Asian men.

We updated our post on a child’s zebra-striped string bikini with a bikini pulled from shelves in the U.K. The bikini, meant for young girls, included a padded bra.

We updated our post on envisioning how highways would affect the city of the future with an exhibit from the 1939 World’s Fair that pointed out that benefits of being able to avoid slums.  Also on the topic of highways, we added an image sent in by Jayna T. to our post on teens, the elderly, and driver safety.

At BoingBoing, German professor Michael Shaughnessy offered his insights regarding how Americans and Germans see and talk about color differently.  Among other things, he noted how few foods in the U.S. are described as blue.  Blueberries, of course.  And blue cheese, I suppose.  (Or “bleu” cheese, as TheophileEscargot points out.)  But little or nothing else.

In contrast, Shaughnessy suggested that many more foods are described as blue in southern Germany.  Notably, blue onions, blue grapes, and blue cabbage (pictured):

In northern Germany, however, “Blaukraut” is “Rotkohl.”  That is, the same color (“blau”) is described as red “(“rot”).  He ponders whether “red onions [in the U.S.] are truly red.” In fact, their better described as purple.

He continues, “Words, impacted by the visual, often vary at the crossroads between colors.”  In other words, perception may be influenced by language and culture.  Where does blue end and red begin?

UPDATE: In the comments Alissa notes:

German wikipedia tells me that the south/north naming difference results from the difference in prepararation of the food. in northern germany it is usually prepared with acidic substances like vinegar giving it a more reddisch color, thus “Rotkraut” (very good with apples), in southern germany sugar or natron is the ingredient of choice, which enhances the blue of the original purple color, hence “Blaukraut”.

Interesting!

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.