Sebastian sent in this ad for a used car website that uses the stereotype of the wise Japanese “sensei”:
We’ve got all the elements: the wise older man in a robe, stylized letters similar to what Margaret Cho describes as “feng shui Hong Kong fooey font,” the broken English, the reference to nature (“clean as pebble from stream”).
Related posts: Asian enlightenment used to sell food, and more food.
A recent study by Chelsea Schafer and Greg Shaw found that, as of 2006, over a quarter of Americans would still rather not live near homosexuals. This percentage has been decreasing, however; in 1990 and 1995, 38% and 30% of people, respectively, wanted to keep their distance:
But tolerance for Muslims and immigrants has not increased alongside tolerance for gays and lesbians. The data show that rather high levels of tolerance in the ’90s (with about 90% of people being happy to have these groups as neighbors) disappeared and, by 2006, 22% of people did not want to live near Muslims and 19% did not want to live near immigrants.
The data on tolerance for Muslims is likely due to the way the attacks on September 11th, 2001, have been spun to stoke hatred against Muslims. What do you think about the increased intolerance for immigrants? Have “foreigners” been collateral damage in the smear campaign against Muslims and Arabs? If it were simply growing conservatism, wouldn’t we see the same pattern for homosexuals? Other explanations?
Borrowed from Contexts Discoveries.
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.
It is commonly claimed and, in fact, I have claimed it on this blog (here and here), that the U.S. is especially individualistic. Claude Fischer, at Made in America, puts this assertion to the test. “There is considerable evidence, ” he writes, “that Americans are not more individualistic – in fact, are less individualistic – than other peoples.”
He operationalizes “individualism” as “gives priority to personal liberty” and offers the following evidence.
Question: “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?”
Question: “ Right or wrong should be a matter of personal conscience,” strongly agree to strongly disagree.
Question: “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong,” strongly agree to strongly disagree.
Question: “Even when there are no children, a married couple should stay together even if they don’t get along,” strongly agree to strongly disagree.
Fischer entertains several explanations for these findings.
(1) Americans aren’t really individualistic (anymore).
(2) Americans means something else by individualism (like freedom from government or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps). Fischer thinks that these are different values, though: anti-statism and laissez-faire, pro-business economics.
(3) Americans are individualistic, but they are also religious and sometimes religion outweighs individualism. If that’s so, Fischer argues, then maybe it is true that we’re not that individualistic.
(4) American individualism is found not in people’s opinions, but in how we organize our society. Fischer calls this “undemocratic libertarianism.”
Finally, (5) maybe what is meant by individualism is really voluntarism, the right to leave and join groups as we see fit.
The argument and the answers clearly revolve around how we define (or operationalize) “individualism.” In any case, the comparative data does put the U.S. into perspective and Fischer’s discussion leaves a lot to unpack.
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.
After reading my recent post on how Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt survived World War II (hint: rank-and-file Nazis loved jazz!), Dmitriy T.M. sent me a link to a fascinating account of a German jazz band, called Charlie and His Orchestra, that was put together by Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi propaganda guy.
To recap, jazz music was labeled “Neggernmusik.” Attributed (rightly) to blacks and Jews, it was considered pollution to German sensibilities. Jazz lovers, jazz musicians, and swing dancers were all sent to concentration camps.
Nevertheless, Undercover Black Man describes how Goebbels saw potential in the music and, so, “weaponized” it to “screw with British and American minds.”
Charlie and His Orchestra recorded jazz standards, but changed the lyrics to “anti-British, anti-American, anti-Communist or antisemitic messages.”
The songs were broadcast via medium-wave and short-wave radio to Great Britain and North America. It was all about taunting and demoralizing the Allies… and trash-talking Winston Churchill and F.D.R. by name.
In this clip, the Orchestra, covering Goody Goody, is accompanied by WWII photographs. The propaganda starts at 1:04:
For more, check out the Charlie and His Orchestra versions of You Can’t Stop Me From Dreaming, You’re Driving Me Crazy, and Makin’ Whoopee.
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.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu popularized the notion of the habitus. The term refers to both the knowledges and physicalities that maintain distinctions between groups (examples in a sec). It’s a great concept for helping us understand the reproduction of class differences without relying strictly on economics. It takes more than money to make money, it also takes knowing the right things, the right people, and the right way to act.
The habitus, then, is one way to show that you “belong” to the group. Imagine being on a really fancy job interview for a really fancy job. Can you talk knowledgably about what vintage of which wine was really excellent in any given year? Do you know which fork is the salad fork? What parts of your body are allowed on the table? When? How quickly do you eat? What is the sign that you are finished with your food?
People who grow up in wealthy families that prioritize these things tend to absorb this knowledge naturally while growing up, just as a kid who grows up on a farm knows how to wrassle a lamb for fixin,’ mend a barbed wire fence, and spot a good steer at the auction. Both of these types of knowledges are useful, but they don’t transfer; my colleagues, for example, are forever unimpressed that I can tell the breed of most horses just by looking.
In any case, while these examples refer to class and rural or urban upbringings, Missives from Marx offered a great example of the habitus as a marker of religious belonging.
In the video below, made by evangelicals, the evangelical habitus is satirized. “Lost at an evangelical meeting?” the video asks, “Here’s how to do evangelicalism!”
* Title, post idea, and video stolen from Missives From Marx.
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.
Yes, but not, perhaps, as non-religious as you might think.
A study just published in Sociology of Religion, by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, reported that about 3/4ths of professors report some belief in God or a higher power. About 35% of professors are absolutely certain that God exists, while 21% believe, but are not absolutely sure.
Only 10% of professors are athiests and another 13 percent are agnostic.
So, is 23 percent many or only a few non-believers?
On the one hand, it may seem like very few if you consider that the professoriate is routinely characterized as radically liberal and anti-religious. As Shannon Golden at Contexts Crawler says:
Devout parents often worry about the “secularizing” effects of sending their children off to college. They envision professors pushing secular thoughts and anti-religious values on their impressionable students.
Despite the stereotype, this data suggests that the majority of professors would welcome religious belief in their classrooms.
On the other hand, it may seem like a lot of athiests and agnostics if you compare the numbers to the general U.S. population. According to the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, only 4% of the U.S. population is athiest or agnostic (see the data waaaay down at the bottom there):
From this perspective, 23% is a lot.
So what do you think? Are you surprised by how few professors report being athiests or agnostics? Or are you surprised by how many?
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.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.
With these words Karl Marx condemned religion for making the class-disadvantaged masses complacent in the face of injustice. New data from the Pew Forum, sent in by Dmitriy T.M. and Allie B., suggests that this may be true for some religions more than others!
Visual at GOOD, shown here in three parts:
Allie was actually quite troubled by this figure, arguing that it affirmed stereotypes that Jews controlled all the money and encouraged people of different religions to see each other as competition.
Indeed, how we choose to present data is always a political decision. Why correlate religion with income at all? Maybe religion is somewhat spurious, compared to variables like geographic location, race, or immigration status. That is, it may be that income correlates with geography, race, and immigration status and those variables correlate with religion.
It’s pretty tricky to figure these things out (and that’s why we force sociology graduate students to learn fancy statistical methods), but in the end we still can’t attribute causality, just correlation. Figuring out why and how things correlate requires qualitative of research.
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 US Census Bureau put together the map below. It shows what percentage of households in any given county include a married couple. In the counties colored with the darkest turquoise, between 59.6 and 79.6% of households consist of a married couple. In the counties colored white, less than 51.6 do.
I think it’s interesting to speculate as to how the reasons why there are more or less married couple households might vary by place. For example, some places may have disproportionate numbers of gay and lesbian residents who cannot, legally, get married. Others may have higher rates of poverty, which has been shown to decrease relationship stability, leading to less marriage and more divorce. Still others may have normative or religious pressures in favor of marriage (Utah strongly stands out as the most marriage-prone state). The racial/ethnic make-up of counties may contribute to marriage rates; we know, for instance, that black women marry at a lesser rate than white women for a whole host of reasons. Racial/ethnic homogeneity may play a factor too, since interracial marriage is still uncommon and asymmetrical when it does occur. Some counties have more disproportionate ratios of males and females, which may also shape marriage rates. What do you think? More hypotheses? Arguments one way or another?
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.
