{"id":60030,"date":"2013-12-14T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-12-14T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=60030"},"modified":"2013-12-06T14:40:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T19:40:51","slug":"civilization-and-its-stoplights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/12\/14\/civilization-and-its-stoplights\/","title":{"rendered":"Civilization and Its Stoplights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stoplight\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Three in the morning, Dad, good citizen<\/em>
\n stopped, waited, looked left, right.<\/em>
\n He had been driving nine hundred miles,<\/em>
\n had nearly a hundred more to go,<\/em>
\n but if there was any impatience<\/em>
\n it was only the steady growl of the engine<\/em>
\n which could just as easily be called a purr.<\/em>I chided him for stopping;<\/em>
\n he told me our civilization is founded<\/em>
\n on people stopping for lights at three in the morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 from a poem<\/a> by Bruce Hawkins.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I read these lines and I thought of Murray Davis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One December long ago, I got a ride home from Boston to Pittsburgh with Murray in his black VW Beetle. He was a graduate student, I was an undergrad, and in those days the trip took twelve hours.\u00a0 We got into Pittsburgh some time after 2 a.m.\u00a0 The streets were deserted<\/p>\n

In Shadyside on Fifth Avenue, not far from my parents\u2019 condo, we came to a red light. Murray paused, then drove on through.<\/p>\n

\u201cSociology allowed me to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember his explanation, but I think it had something to do with \u201crules in use\u201d and the negotiability of norms. That\u2019s interesting, I thought.\u00a0 Maybe it was even convincing, though I still turned in my seat to see if there were any cops behind us. There weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Murray was right. At that hour of empty streets, waiting for the green serves no rational purpose. When there is no traffic, traffic safety is not an issue. But Bruce Hawkins\u2019s dad is also right.\u00a0 He takes a more Durkheimian view: rationality is not the basis of society. What makes society possible is people\u2019s attachment to the group and its ideas \u2013 its values, its beliefs, and its stoplights.I wonder what Murray would have said now about this poem.<\/p>\n

Photo by David Allan Rueter<\/a>. \u00a0Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three in the morning, Dad, good citizen stopped, waited, looked left, right. He had been driving nine hundred miles, had nearly a hundred more to go, but if there was any impatience it was only the steady growl of the engine which could just as easily be called a purr.I chided him for stopping; he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":60094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,3175,293],"class_list":["post-60030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-norms","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/stoplight-Copy.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60030"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60100,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60030\/revisions\/60100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}