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The figure below, borrowed from Good via Graphic Sociology, is a great example of the way that social problems are not given or automatic, but must be made.  It shows that, in 1998, gay marriage was not largely a social issue that needed to be addressed at the state level. Only Alaska had taken a stand on gay marriage.

Somehow gay marriage became a threat. And, by 2004, many states had passed resolutions making it illegal. Note that they needed to do so specifically because the possibility of legal gay marriage had gained support for the first time in (recent?) U.S. history. This was, essentially, a backlash against gay marriage that proved that pro-gay marriage initiatives were gaining ground, even as states moved to counter them.

The backlash continues through 2009, with a handful of states saying “yes” to gay marriage, creating a conflict that simply did not exist in 1998.

This is a great example of how social “problems” are socially constructed. Social processes, like activism and media attention, affect what issues gain the attention of the day, whether that be homelessness, nuclear power, teen pregnancy, global warming, or same-sex commitment.

The figure also reminds us that all of those anti-gay marriage laws can be interpreted as progress for the pro-gay marriage effort.  The laws prove that gay marriage is on the agenda.

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.

I’ve got a special treat for you today: an interview with artist Nathan Meltz about his pieces on industrial food production. Nathan has shown his art in group shows around the country.  He received a Master’s degree in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently a graduate student at SUNY-Albany, where he will be graduating this spring with his MFA.  He lives in upstate New York with his wife, Abby Kinchy, and their infant son Aldo. His artistic and musical exploits can be followed at The House of Tomorrow.

I went to grad school with Abby, so that’s how I knew about Nathan’s work. As a sociologist who specialized in food issues and rural communities, I immediately loved these pieces and thought many of our readers would too, so I convinced Nathan to let me post an interview and some of my favorites. (And be forgiving of my amateurish interview questions. I am not a Creative Type, and my general reaction to art I like is “You made a pretty!”)

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Animal Farm

What drew you to the issue of food?

I have to give a lot of credit to Abby, who is a sociologist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has done a lot of research on controversies surrounding genetically-modified corn and canola. [She’s currently working on a book about conflicts over genetically modified crops in Canada and Mexico.–Gwen].  A lot of the themes in my art developed from kitchen-table discussions we had while in grad school in Madison.  What was technology doing to agriculture? And then, from my end, what would it look like?

How did you come up with the idea of representing food products as machines?

I wanted a visual metaphor that would reveal tech taking over plants and animals.  Unfortunately, our most current tech can be hard to visualize.  A series of ones and zeros?  Some sort of digital technology?  I decided to combine elements of Dada collage with early modernist German machine aesthetic [Oh, yes, the early modernist German machine aesthetic! Of course!–Gwen]  to create my own visual vocabulary. One that, while not exactly 21^st century, would act as a symbol of science and technology for the viewer/audience.

What does your Animal Farm series convey about our modern food system?

Waiting for My Mechanical Bull

Enviropig

In my machine world, animals are put on assembly lines, cramped together in feed lots, and, in the case of the chickens in The Chicken Coup animation, reside in an agricultural system designed by sadists.  They all look the same because there is no diversity on the factory farm.

The Chicken Coup, pt. 1

The Chicken Coup, pt. 2

Many people have at least some knowledge of slaughterhouses and the treatment of animals, so the Animal Farm series is probably fairly accessible. But O Canola! is, I think, more complex and harder to understand if you’ve never thought much about bioengineering before, or why the song “O Canada” would be particularly meaningful in the context of discussing canola and bioengineering.

O Canola!

O Canola! was a project long in the making, very much piggybacking on the research Abby was doing at the time. I try to tell the story of Canada’s GMO [genetically modified organism] canola contamination* in a visual form. The clever riffing on the Canadian National Anthem (which Abby thought of) is meant to reflect the nationalist tensions inherent in the controversy, where a hybrid plant created by the Canadian government during WWII to produce a mechanical lubricant at the local level would years later be threatened by GMOs produced by agribusiness.

What about Food for Fuel?

Food for Fuel

Food for Fuel came after news reports kept coming in about food shortages around the world, particularly in Mexico, because so much edible food was being turned into fuel for vehicles.  The message on this one is pretty straightforward.

Food for Fuel, along with Animal Farm, definitely reflects my interest in Agitprop.  At the time I made these, I was sharing a studio with printmaker/activist Josh MacPhee, a member of the Just Seeds print collective, which promotes socially activist printmaking.  A lot of the work he was doing really influenced me, and I think these two prints reflect my desire to have a clear social message.

How have people reacted to the series? Do you get a sense that people react more forcefully, or emotionally, to the ones about animals than the ones about crops?

Reaction has been positive, or at least the reaction I hear about.  A lot of the prints have traveled around in various shows.  I think the animation The Chicken Coup has maybe received a little more attention than the prints among the art audience.  Static prints on paper have a hard time competing with moving images with sound, music, etc.  And I don’t think people care any less about the crop-based works than the animal ones.  I find people who are really into food/agriculture issues care just as forcefully about what is happening to corn as they do cows.

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* GMO contamination occurs when genetically modified seeds migrate to fields that were not intentionally planted with them, an increasingly common occurrence. Aside from the problems this can cause farmers who want to sell their products as specifically not GMO, and concerns about the ecological effects that could occur if modified genes spread into other varieties (or even related wild species), it also puts farmers at legal risk. GMO crops such as marketed under the Roundup Ready label and engineered to be immune to the effects of Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, are patented. Farmers are not allowed to plant them without buying a license (including saving seeds from their own crop to plant the following year, a traditional practice of many farmers to eliminate the cost of buying seeds each year; so-called “terminator” varieties are even engineered to produce only sterile seeds, thus ensuring farmers must buy fertile seeds from the manufacturer annually). Monsanto has sued farmers for patent infringement in cases where a field was contaminated with Monsanto’s GMO seeds when they blew in from a neighboring field. Conversely, a group of Canadian organic farmers sued Monsanto on the grounds that genetic contamination had made it impossible for them to sell their products as organic.

If you’re interested in the topic, you might try to get a copy of Abby’s new article, “Anti-Genetic Engineering Activism and Scientized Politics in the Case of ‘Contaminated’ Mexican Maize,” Agriculture and Human Values.

Caspian P. and his roommates sent us a link to the newest Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Playbook cover.  It seems it makes quite a departure from previous editions.  (D&D fans: I’m reconstructing this history from here, so let me know if I make any significant mistakes in my summary.)

Various versions of the D&D Playbook–e.g., regular or basic, advanced, and expert– have been published.  For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to treat them all equivalently.

The first D&D Playbook (1971):

1981:

Playbooks from the late 1980s:

You might have noticed that the covers include fantastical creatures and male warriors and wizards… but no women.

In 2000, ownership of the game changed hands and the new cover simply looked like this:

And then this (2003):

And then the Playbook went the way of the Evony ads:

Caspian wrote that he’s played D&D for years and always felt that it included great female characters.  So he was disappointed with the inclusion of a highly sexualized, part-naked woman on the recent cover, prompting him to send it to us.

Consider the new cover alongside our posts on Gossip Girl promotions, the New Beverly Hills 90210, the Burger King shower girl, this crazy post on hot horses and puppies, and the makeovers of Dora the Explorer, Holly Hobbie, Strawberry Shortcake, and the Sun Maid.

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 figure below, sent in by Muriel M.M. and Josh P., shows the relationship between health care spending (on the left) and life expectancy (on the right). Perhaps the most stunning finding is what appears to be a rather loose correlation between the two. But a second finding is the inefficiency of U.S. spending (see it at the left top of the figure?): it is far above the other states included and is, nonetheless, translating into less-than-stellar results (if you measure by life expectancy).

Via National Geographic.

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.

Sociologist Stephanie Coontz, in her acclaimed, fascinating, and fact-dense book, The Way We Never Were, illustrates the way that what is considered “traditional” must be socially constructed. For example, when people say “traditional marriage,” do they mean marriage between a man and his property? Between a man and more than one woman? Is the ideal age for marriage 13, 20 or 27? Is it for love, political maneuvering, survival, babies, or kitchens?  How you answer these questions depends on when, exactly, in history you’re talking about.  (See here for some humorous takes.)

The point: Since all of history is potentially a source of tradition, identifying any given period of time as The Traditional, and therefore deserving of our nostalgia, is arbitrary.

The Daily Show did a great job of illustrating this idea this week:

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.

Jillian Y. sent a really interesting example of the gendering of housework. The example comes from a non-profit organization, Cleaning for a Reason, that assists cancer patients with house cleaning.

The organization is for people struggling with any type of cancer (not just breast cancer, as the pink ribbon suggests), but it still only assists female patients.

Jillian didn’t want to trivialize how useful and important such a service is, and I don’t want to either.  There are reasons why women may need this service more frequently than men.  The first reason is, of course, that women do the majority of housework in the U.S. and most Western countries (see also the links below).  So when a woman gets sick and she can’t do her job anymore, this organization steps in and helps.  When a man gets sick, the housework (apparently) keeps getting done with no problem because it wasn’t his job in the first place.

This, of course, assumes that everyone who gets sick is (heterosexual and) married (and able-bodied to begin with).  What about single people?  Who does their housework?  Much of the time their female relatives do some of it… but let’s assume that single people are especially vulnerable because they have no one to help them do the daily upkeep of the house.

I recently saw a study that stunned me.  It looked at the frequency with which married couples separated or divorced after a cancer diagnosis.  Get this:  If you are a man, the chance that your relationship will break up after diagnosis was three percent.  Three.  If you are a woman, the chance is 21.  Twenty-one.  One out of five women diagnosed with cancer (compared to one out of every thirty men) finds herself single.

So, yeah, maybe it makes sense to be especially aware that female cancer patients have a burden that many male cancer patients do not (whether by virtue of the fact that housework is gendered or the fact that female cancer patients are more likely to end up single).

That said, I don’t appreciate that the organization reinforces the idea that housework is women’s work; nor do I like that it excludes men who need help (largely by making single men or men with partners who cannot do housework invisible).

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See also our post on how health-related activism is sometimes for women only.

For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.

Historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.

And, of course, it’s hilariously funny to think that men would actually do housework:  see our posts on “porn” for new moms (also here), the househusbands of Hollywood, and calendar with images of sexy men doing housework.

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.

Keely W., Sophie J., and Austin C. sent in this 20-second commercial for KFC in which a white guy surrounded by black people makes the “awkward” situation all better by giving them fried chicken:

So, first of all, feeling awkward because you’re the only person with your particular racial make up in a group is called white privilege.  Most racial minorities find themselves the only or one of the only members of their group all of the time.  Calling the situation “awkward” just suggests that white people are, or should be, uncomfortable around black people.

But, second, is it racist that the guy soothes the situation by sharing fried chicken?  In the U.S., the idea that black people eat a lot of fried chicken is a stereotype (applied recently to Obama).  But this is an Australian commercial and KFC is saying that there is no such association in Australia.

I don’t know if that’s true.  But if it is, it raises interesting questions as to (1)  just how cognizant companies should have to be about various stereotypes around the world and (2) whether the biased histories of some countries must be more attended to than others.

A Guardian article quotes a professor arguing that the U.S. has “…a tendency to think that their history is more important than that of other countries.”

Ouch.  Does it hurt because it’s true?

I think these are tough questions.  What do you think?

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.

When I was 15, for some bizarre reason, I saw War of the Roses (trailer).  The movie stars Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, who play a married couple in the midst of a divorce and basically spend the entire movie trying very, very hard to hurt each other physically and emotionally.  It’s a violent, violent comedy.

I remember really liking it and telling my Dad who, with his usual gentle wisdom, said something to the effect of “it’s never funny when two people who are supposed to love each other try to hurt each other.”  I was chagrined.

I was reminded of this moment when I watched the trailer for Bounty Hunter, sent in by Ryan G.  In the movie, Jennifer Aniston plays a woman who fails to show up in court and is then, essentially, violently kidnapped by her bounty hunter ex. The trailer:

Now, 20 years later, I’m with my Dad.

(Trigger warning for all the links below.)

What it is about U.S. society that makes sexually-charged violent hate so funny? Are we, as the bemoaners claim, anesthetized to violence? Is it an internalized sense that men and women are at war? Is it the idea that (heterosexual) relationships are, ultimately, a zero sume game? Is it a conflation of sex and power, and a constant affirmation that good sex (and relationships) include violence, that makes a movie such as this so titillating? Is it a true hate for the other, supposedly opposite sex? In other words, why doesn’t this trailer, for most, inspire disgust instead of anticipation?

Also related: violent divorce cakes.

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.