social construction

Click here to see a flickr slide show of dozens of people, starting with those below, with their BMI label (“underweight,” “normal,” “overweight,” “obese,” and “morbidly obese”). There’s something about seeing all these nice looking people with these judgmental labels applied to them that reveals that the BMI is a social construction. Also it’s a good illustration of the Foucauldian idea that knowledge (discourse, or even “science”) is used to label and control people, especially when it is internalized.

Erin Nieto’s project, How Much Do You Weigh, also puts the body front-and-center, challenging us re-think what numbers mean.  She counterposes photographs of volunteers with the number on the scale.  These women model a refusal to be embarrassed by their weight and show us the imprecision of the number itself.

See more images at Nieto’s tumblr.

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 The Sociological Cinema.

Back in 2007, Dr. Oz stood on the set of The Oprah Winfrey Show and infamously promoted to an audience of 8 million viewers the idea that African Americans experience higher rates of hypertension because of the harsh conditions their ancestors endured on slave ships crossing the Atlantic. This so-called “slave hypothesis” has been roundly criticized for good reason, but I was struck that it was being promoted by such a highly educated medical professional.

The episode got me thinking about the sociologists Omi and Winant’s notion of a racial formation as resulting from historically situated racial projects wherein “racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed” (p. 55-56). These projects take multiple forms but in at least one version, there is an attempt to collapse race—a socially constructed concept—into biology. Such projects are similar insofar as they suggest that the socially constructed distinctiveness between people of different racial categories roughly approximates a meaningful biological distinctiveness. Scientists have been centrally involved in this effort to establish a biological basis for race. In the middle of the 19th century Dr. Samuel Morton attempted to show that average cranial capacities of people from different racial groups were significantly different. Today, many people scoff at the misguided racism of the past, but I think Dr. Oz’s promotion of the slave hypothesis demonstrates that the search for a biological, and therefore “natural,” basis for race continues.

So how do proponents of the slave hypothesis explain hypertension? In 1988 Dr. Clarence Grim first proposed the theory, which is the idea that the enslaved people who survived the Middle Passage were more likely to be carriers of a gene that allowed them to retain salt. Grim argued that this ability to retain salt, while necessary for a person to survive the harsh conditions of a slave ship, would ultimately lead to hypertension as the person aged. Thus Grim proposed that African Americans living in the United States today are the descendants of people who have this selected feature. As I mentioned above, this theory has been soundly refuted but reportedly still remains in many hypertension textbooks. Looking at the clip above, which is from January of this year, it seems that medical professionals like Dr. Oz may be still promoting it.

I think it is important to recognize that this particular racial project persists in many forms, and one final example is from 2005, when the FDA approved BiDil as a customized treatment of heart failure for African Americans. The approval was based on highly criticized research, but the approval also implicitly makes the case that a racial group might be so biologically distinct from others as to warrant its own customized medication. Much like the search for different cranial capacities, the propagation of the slave hypothesis, and the marketing of drugs designed for different racial groups, BiDil’s emergence can be seen as an attempt to deploy racial categories as if they were immutable in nature (see Troy Duster’s article in Science).

Criticizing this racial project is more than an academic exercise. As a social construct, race is already a central principal of social organization, which benefits whites at the expense of other racial groups. It is already a powerful basis upon which privileges are meted out and denied. In my view, the effort to loosen race from its moorings as a social construct and anchor it again as a biological fact of nature is an attempt to fundamentally alter the discussion on racial inequality. If this project prevails and race comes again to reflect a biological truth, then fewer people will acknowledge racial inequality as the result of a human-made history. It will instead be seen as the result of humans being made differently.

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Lester Andrist is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park, specializing in the role of social capital and personal networks in finding jobs in India and Taiwan and cultural representations of groups in indefinite detention. He is a co-editor of the website The Sociological Cinema.

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

Sociologist Joel Best debunks the idea that “sex bracelets” — bracelets that indicate what type of sex you’re interested in and that oblige you to perform it — are really a thing. He and his colleague, Katherine Bogle, have been tracing the story over time on the internet and across continents in what he calls “the dynamics of rumor and legend.”

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.

Indeed, even time is a social construction.  This point is well-illustrated by our bi-yearly clock-switching ritual in the name of “daylight savings.” Writes Economist Nick Rowe at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative:

I’ve heard stories about people who set their watches 10 minutes fast, so they won’t be late for meetings. It’s hard to understand how it could work. Do they forget they set their watches 10 minutes fast? Because if they remember, they should be able to figure out they’ve got an extra 10 minutes, so there’s still plenty of time to grab a quick coffee before the meeting starts. If it works, they must be fooling themselves.

This weekend the government will tell us all to put our watches back one hour. They want us all to do everything one hour later. It’s hard to understand how it will work. Do they think we will all forget we’ve set our watches one hour slow? What’s more, they can’t even force us to change our watches.

But I know it will work. We will (almost) all set our watches one hour slow, and we will (almost) all start doing (almost) everything one hour later, by the sun, compared to what we would have done if we hadn’t changed our watches. But why?

Why?  Because, as I’m sure Rowe’s well aware, collective agreements matter.  In this case, you’ll be early!  For everything!  Doctor’s appointments, classes, meetings, dates… you’ll show up for lunch and the restaurant will still be closed… you’ll drop off your kid and the school won’t be open… you’ll arrive at happy hour and the drinks will be full price!  Tragedy!  You’ll get fired for leaving work early everyday and piss off your spouse with an alarm clock that goes off an hour before it needs to.   There are real consequences, in other words, for deviating from the norm… even when it is a total fabrication.

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.

Christie W. sent in an idea that inspired me to revive our pointlessly gendered products post.  It’s  a fun one.  I’ve added Christie’s submission — a super-pink for-her version of a continuous positive airway pressure machine for people with sleep apnea.

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At this point, the gendering of things like phones doesn’t surprise me, such as this set, sent in by Ben C.:

But really…pink ear plugs?

We seriously need our own earplugs that are “silky soft”? Starchy G., who sent them in, says:

I’ve been told that these things have the extra-feminine side effect of dying one’s earwax pink.

Lovely.

Feminist Philosophers found this delightfully marketed pair of earplugs for, um, I’m gonna guess working class men:

Gendered tape, also from Feminist Philosophers:

Lee D.-T. found these sandwich bags for sale at a Safeway store in Melbourne, Australia. Sandwich bags, people!

Original Will sent in this image of pink computer cables, found at boing boing:

NEW! (Mar. ’10): Marjolaine N. found pink and blue chocolate Easter bunnies:

Michelle at The Red Pill Survival Guide took this photograph of gendered lollipops.  But not just any lollies: “Girls Enchanted” and “Boys Adventure” mixes.  Sigh:

Em wanted to download Style XP to customize Windows XP, but had to decide between men’s and ladies’ versions:

Em says,

The Man theme “gem” and the Lady theme “gucci” look pretty much the same. Still I’m glad it’s called “gucci” so I know it’s for me. Me and my lady friends are going to giggle about it then go online shoe shopping together. I just hope they’ve added extra-easy installation instructions to that version.

Christie W. sent in a pink version of a continuous positive airway pressure machine, and related items, for people, er women, with sleep apnea:

Over a dozen more ridiculous examples, after the jump.

more...

Cross-posted at The Social Complex.

Take a look at these two images.  The people in Image A and Image B are identical, save for their relative heights and the way that their heads are tilted in order to maintain eye contact.  Now how do you think each of these images would be independently perceived by the average person?  How do you perceive the events depicted in these images?

(see full sized image here)

Do one of these men seem “assertive” while the other seems “submissive” or “pushy”?  What would you imagine the woman is thinking in each of these images?  How would you rate the social esteem of each of these men?  Which one seems to have the most business acumen?  The most leadership potential?  Which man would you rate as more attractive?  What do you think these two people are talking about in each image?  Does your perception of what is happening in the conversation change from image to image?

If you are being honest with yourself here, you probably are imagining many differences in the social interactions depicted in these two images that don’t actually exist outside of our cultural framework. From the age that we become aware of our environment we are bombarded with cultural images, traditions, behaviors, and ideals (both expressly and implicitly conveyed) which foster heightist concepts within our psyche.

These heightist concepts come into play along with our perceptions of gender.  Masculinity is culturally tied to “Tall” and femininity is culturally tied to “Short.” Therefore, the negative cultural perceptions that apply to “feminine males” also apply to “short males” and the positive cultural perceptions that apply to “masculine males” also apply to “tall males.”  That is why we perceive Image A and Image B differently, even though there is no story behind the images beyond what we imagine.

Perhaps (to some extent) the negative cultural perceptions that apply to “masculine women” also apply to “tall females” and the positive cultural perceptions that apply to “feminine females” also apply to “short females”?  I do not know.  However, I have my doubts that it works this way for females.

This is because (in my humble opinion – with no evidence to back this up):

• Being a masculine woman is probably NOT considered as negative in our society as being a feminine man.  In other words, our society values masculinity more than femininity and so it is more important for a male to be masculine, but much less important for a female to be feminine.
• Additional height (or “tallness”) is considered a masculine trait and so more important for a male to have than it would be detrimental for a female.
• Tallness (for some reason) is not considered masculine on a female.  Body mass (weight) is considered more of a “masculine” trait on a female than pure height.

Any comments?  Discussion?

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Geoffrey Arnold is an associate with a mid-sized corporate law firm’s Business Litigation Practice Group.  When Geoffrey isn’t chasing Billable Hours in the defense of white-collar criminals, he is most likely writing about social justice with a special emphasis on height discrimination at his blog: The Social Complex.

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

Time Magazine (2009) reports that McDonald’s has approximately 32,000 restaurants in 118 countries. Of those, only about 45% were in the United States. The key to success of the American restaurant chain in other countries is to adapt its business to the local culture.

For example, today McDonald’s operates approximately 1,000 restaurants in China.  In the book McDonald’s: Behind The Arches, Yunxiang Yun argues that it has been successful in Beijing because it has become a fun place to hang out. While it seems foreign to many Westerners, who think of McDonald’s as a place to buy cheap food quickly, many Chinese people eat there because of the atmosphere and service. More, the food isn’t associated with obesity, as it is in the U.S.

This perception of McDonald’s has made it a sought out location for weddings. Er, McWeddings.

A McDonald’s nuptial package in Hong Kong costs about HK$10,000 (US$1,300).   According to the New York Times, a McWedding…

…includes food and drinks for 50 people… a “cake” made of stacked apple pies, gifts for the guests and invitation cards, each with a wedding photo of the couple.

The ability to reinvent itself is the key to the Golden Arches’ success in China.  It also suggests that the associations Americans have with the chain aren’t inevitable, but specific to cultural context.  Projected to double the number of stores by 2013, it will be interesting to see what other adjustments McDonald’s makes down the road.

 Sangyoub Park is an assistant professor of sociology at Washburn University, where he teaches Social Demography, Generations in the U.S. and Sociology of East Asia. His research interests include social capital, demographic trends, and post-Generation Y.

In this 21-minute talk, Bruce Schneier does a great job of explaining the difference between feeling secure and being secure.  The difference between risk and the perception of risk is one of the things that sociologists in the “social problems” sub-area study.  Whether problems are seen as problems at all, whether non-problems are believed to be problems, and whether they are seen as social (versus individual, for example, or natural)… all of these things must be established by people who have the power to put issues on the agenda and frame them in particular ways.

Schneier’s discussion of security is a great illustration of this phenomenon, and his talk is full of concrete examples and psychological mechanisms that nicely balance the sociological import:

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.