Resources for Teachers

This post is written by Todd Beer and was originally published on his excellent website SociologyToolbox.com

Examples of the social construction of the body are prevalent in the media’s objectification of the female body in particular. See the famous documentary Killing US Softly 4 for numerous patterns in the media. The biological body has purposes driven by genetics and “human nature”, but the meanings we as a society apply to the body are not fixed, “natural”, or static. They are socially constructed.

The nipple is a great example. Biologically, both men and women have nipples, albeit with slightly different levels of functionality. However, socially the symbolic meaning of men’s and women’s nipples is dramatically different in most societies. Women’s nipples are sexualized, objectified, censored, and stop Super Bowl halftime shows.

Men’s nipples get to be on display… when we’re running, doing yard work, in yoga class, in primetime television, and in advertising.

more...

“Students with a well-developed sense of self feel less threatened by new ideas involving beliefs that conflict with their own” (Ambrose et al 2010:160)

Teaching “traditional aged” college students about sex & gender can be tricky. Many of them are still discovering who they are. Even the most basic ideas about sex & gender can seem radical/threatening when the concepts are first introduced to students.

Last fall I sat down with Dr. CJ Pascoe from the University of Oregon to discuss her groundbreaking work Dude You’re a Fag and her award winning teaching. Given her area of expertise, I was dying to have her weigh in on how she overcame this pedagogical challenge.

*Note: this clip is excerpted from a much longer interview. More clips to come soon. *

Ideology is a lot like implicit bias. A smart person knows they have it, but they often struggle to see or describe it. One of the only ways to draw ideology into the light is to present it to students in unfamiliar ways. With this in mind I created the “Genie Scenario”.

Want to assign this to your students? Send them this link to an essay version of this complete with four assignable questions.

Walking along the beach one bright morning you trip over a hidden piece of driftwood. On all fours, a bright metallic spark of light escapes from the sand below searing your eyes. Like a blinded archeologist you clench your eyelids together while sweeping away the warm sticky yellow grains until your hand settles on something hot and smooth.
         “Are you done rubbing my lamp or should I come back later?” You whip your head around. A lumpy blue cloud with arms and a smiling face stands above you.
         “My god you’re… you’re a…”
         “I’m a genie, yes. Now how about you stand up and let’s talk about what I can do for you.”
         “Do I get three wishes?”
         “Nope. Not that kind of genie. Get up. Brush yourself off and get ready to listen carefully.” Rising to your feet you subtly grab a a piece of you hip and pinch down hard. You don’t wake up. This is happening.
         “As the saying goes kid, time is money.” Genie says arms folded. He starts in while you brush yourself clean. “I have been to the future and I know how you will live your life and how it will come to an end- well for our purposes here, the more important point is that I know *when* it will end.”
         “Wait, how I die?” Genie raises his hand.
         “Can’t give you that. Plus, knowing your fate only imprisons the rest of your life; just ask Oedipus and Cronus. What I offer you is the opposite of that. I want to give you… freedom.”
         “I am prepared to give you all of the money you will earn over the rest of your life. Take this offer and you’ll never have to sell another hour of your life to your employer. I will return ten more times over the remainder of your life each time with 1/10 of the money you are set to earn over the remainder of your career.”
         “Accept my offer and you are free to do anything you like with your time on Earth. Keep working if you like. Volunteer, travel, paint, or binge watch Netflix, it’s up to you. You would finally be truly free to do what you want. However in return, every time you see me, before I give you your money, I’m going to painlessly remove one of your fingers.”
         “So, do we have a deal?”

Bringing Capitalist Ideologies Into Plain Sight

I follow the “Genie Scenario” with a quick think/pair/share. That is, I ask my students to write down whether or not they’d take the offer and why. Then they talk to their classmates briefly before we talk as a whole group.

I have asked nearly 2,000 students to consider this offer and almost all of them have said they’d turn it down. The most common theme running through all the reasons they have given me for saying no can roughly be summarized as, “I need my fingers to live a quality life and once they’re gone they can’t be replaced.”

I ask my students to raise their hands if their reason for saying no fit’s with this summary and almost the entire room lifts up their arm. Then I ask them, “But couldn’t we say the exact same thing for your time? And many of you sell that for almost nothing.”

The Genie Scenario makes it easier for students to see one of their ideologies (i.e. selling my labor is normal if not moral). From here it’s much easier for students to understand Marx’s economic determinism and false consciousness, Gramsci’s hegemony, and the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. After the Genie Scenario, Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism helps students see how culture and the economy are both created by ideology and both also play a role in creating ideology.

“How can I get started on social media? Who should I follow on Twitter? What blogs should I be reading?” I must have heard some variant of those questions two dozen times at ASA this year. That will probably sound strange until I tell you that, I was an instructor for the JustPublics@ASA Media Camp Pre-Conference Workshops. As always, I’m here to help. Below are some suggestions for sociologists looking to dive into social media. Want a pdf version to email a friend? Here ya go.

First, you should check out the JustPublics@ASA Media Camp Workshop website for the handouts, resources, and best practices given out at the pre-conference workshop.

Who Should I Follow on Twitter?

You should follow people who are tweeting about your scholarly area of interest. That was the advice that Tressie Mcmillan Cottom, my Media Camp colleague, had for her workshop attendees. I’d echo that. The value of twitter is it’s ability to bring you people and information related to the things that interest you.

That said, if you’re looking for a list of sociologists active on Twitter, you could do a lot worse than the list that Rosemary F. Powers created on her webpage The Paradox of Society.

What Blogs Should I Read?

Below are all of the sociology blogs that I can think of. I’m sure I’ve left some off. This list has a clear bias toward the U.S., but I’m not up on sociology blogging outside the states (though I would like to be). Email me if you’ve got a blog you’d like me to add.

• A Backstage Sociologist
• Citings & Sightings
• Conditionally Accepted
• Contexts
• The Cranky Sociologists
• Creative Sociology
• Cyborgology
• Everyday Sociology Blog
• Family Inequality
• Feminist Reflections
• Girl w/Pen
• Japan Sociology
• Org Theory
• Public Criminology
• Racism Review
• Reading List
• Scatterplot
• Social (In)Queery
• The Society Pages
• Sociological Images
• The Sociological Cinema
• Sociology In Focus
• Sociology Sounds
• Sociology Source
• Sociology Toolbox
• Teaching TSP
• There’s Research on That
• TressieMC

The article below originally appeared on SociologyToolBox.com and was written by Todd Beer an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lake Forest College.

Systematic racism has been made evident again in the shooting of an unarmed young Black man, Michael Brown, by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Pulling stories directly from recent news headlines is one way to get students’ attention and demonstrate the abundant relevance of the sociological perspective. The New York Times has a timeline of the events that serves as a useful starting point (from the mainstream media) to share the events with students that may have not kept up with the story.

The community of Ferguson, Missouri (the site of the shooting) has responded with on-going mass protests.

Ferguson cannot be understood in a vacuum. These events are rich with sociological issues – inequality and poverty, racial profiling, the militarization of the police, protester and police interaction, social media (#Ferguson and hashtag activism) and the “criminalization of Black male youth”.

Looking first at the disproportionate levels of poverty and subsequent exclusion from the economy of many Blacks in the US, Brookings, a Democratic leaning think tank, analyzed census tract data of changes in the poverty rates in Ferguson (and the surrounding area) between 2000 and 2008-2012. They state:

“But Ferguson has also been home to dramatic economic changes in recent years. The city’s unemployment rate rose from less than 5 percent in 2000 to over 13 percent in 2010-12. For those residents who were employed, inflation-adjusted average earnings fell by one-third. The number of households using federal Housing Choice Vouchers climbed from roughly 300 in 2000 to more than 800 by the end of the decade.

Amid these changes, poverty skyrocketed. Between 2000 and 2010-2012, Ferguson’s poor population doubled. By the end of that period, roughly one in four residents lived below the federal poverty line ($23,492 for a family of four in 2012), and 44 percent fell below twice that level.”

The community of Ferguson, one of many that have been disproportionally hurt by the economic downturn, has experienced long term poverty, and this undoubtably was part of the mass frustration that contributed to the emergence of the protests. See Brookings web site for their full story.

However, the key grievance that seems to have inspired mass protest is the relationship between the police and the community. In previous posts I have explored the disproportionate number of Blacks incarcerated, arrested for drugs, and racially profiled under programs such as “Stop and Frisk”. While the population of Ferguson is 63% Black, 90% of the police officers are White. As noted by the New York Times (see below), Blacks in Ferguson are disproportionally stopped and arrested by the predominantly White police force.

An FBI and federal justice department investigation is on-going and reports of the events present conflicting stories – an eye witness that was with the victim at the time says Michael had his hands up, but slowly emerging (which certainly adds to the distrust) police accounts argue that an unarmed Michael was in a confrontation with the officer. The job of the police is to make arrests and allow a court system to decide guilt. The police later released images from a video of a suspect robbing a convenience store (no weapons were used). Let’s just say it was Michael (that would still have to be proven). A police officer should be able to subdue a suspect without shooting him six times. In essence, (presuming guilt instead of innocence) Michael was sentenced to death for supposedly stealing a handful of cigars.

The police responses to the protests in Ferguson have exposed the results of the militarization of municipal police forces. Images of police in full military gear, helmets, armored vehicles, sharp-shooters, high caliber weaponry, and military fatigues certainly garnered the attention of the media.

The distribution of military weaponry to local police departments began after the terrorist attacks of September 11th under the guise of preparing communities for foreign attacks. Now we see this weaponry and accompanying tactics used in our own communities. The saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail” comes to mind.

This weaponry has been widely distributed.

Click on the map above to have students go to an interactive version that allows them to see the distribution of the weaponry in their county. For example, I can see that in Cook county, home to my city of residence, Chicago, the police have obtained over 1200 assault rifles and even three “mine resistant” vehicles.

The use of these weapons and tactics is not limited to Ferguson. In June of 2014, the ACLU published the following report:

In it they report the increased use of SWAT tactics for search warrants for low level drug investigations and that the “militarization of policing encourages officers to adopt a ‘warrior’ mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies” (p.3). These tactics and mentality have resulted in the deaths of innocent people, including infants and children (see the report for numerous stories).

Do these tactics pay off? According to the ACLU’s research, the majority of the time they do not. Drugs are only found about a third of the time.

And these tactics are used disproportionately in cases involving racial and ethnic minority suspects.

So, was this an isolated event among two individuals – the officer and Michael Brown? No. Sociologically, the impoverished community context likely leads to community members feeling disconnected from the rewards of mainstream society, the stereotyping of Black males as “thugs” and criminals likely added to the officer’s fear of Michael and activated socially constructed cognitive cues of “danger”, the community’s response is generated by local and national racial profiling by the police and a lack of minority representation among the officers, and the type of police response to the protests was a result of the militarization of the police driven by the “war on terror” and the power of the military industrial complex in our economy (and foreign policy).

Teach well, it matters.

Additional reading:

Elijah Anderson, Editor. 2009. Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male

Kate Harding. 2014. “Ten Things White People Can Do About Ferguson Besides Tweet “

Viktor M. Rios. 2006. “The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration”

Robert Sampson and William Julius Wilson. 2005. “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime and Inequality” in Race, Crime, and Justice: A Reader edited by Shaun L. Gabbidon and Helen Taylor Greene

Nick Wing. 2014. “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims”

…

ADDENDUMS

August 20th, 2014

Recent Gallup survey results show vastly different perceptions of the police. These are not skewed by the events in Ferguson as the data is from 2011-14, but they certainly explain some of the resulting protests.

August 21, 2014

Below is a link to a good article on the challenges and weaknesses of the data on the number of people killed by police each year. It’s great to inspire critical thinking about facts.

Here is polling data specific to this event from the Pew Research Center…

For more excellent resources like this, please check out Todd Beer’s SociologyToolBox.com.

I want my students to see that social change isn’t magic. That it is a social process directed by social forces. I want them to know that previous historical events often serve as antecedents to change. And finally I want them to experience how learning about the past can help us better understand our present and predict our future. These are the goals I set for myself every time I teach my Social Change class.

I pair these with the goals I have for every class I teach. For instance, I always want my students to learn about the scientific method, how to find and read peer-reviewed research, and how to write like a sociologist. Lastly, I want my students to develop the skill of creatively solving interesting problems because that it what they will be doing every day of their professional career. I always tell my students, if a question can be answered with a google search, no one will pay you to answer it.

“Align Your Goals With Your Assessments!”

Everyone tells us to align our teaching goals with what we are doing in the classroom and with the graded assessments. That is excellent advice and I think it’s safe to say we all aspire to have our goals, classroom activities, and assessments aligned. However, in reality it’s really hard to get all of your ducks in a row.

This semester I worked really hard to ensure that my student learning outcomes (SLOs) aligned with the written papers I assigned my students. Today I want to 1. give everyone a copy of my assignments and 2. discuss how I worked to get my goals and my assessments in line.

Student Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this class students will be able to…

1. Analyze a social change event using sociological concepts/tools like social/historical contexts, social structure, sociological theory, materialist/idealist factors, etc.
2. Answer a social change research question using peer-reviewed research. (aka think and write like a sociologist).
3. Design a Direct action campaign to alter the power relations surrounding a social issue (aka creatively solve interesting social problems).

Download All 3 Papers Here

Paper 1: Analyze a Social Change Event

I decided to focus my class around one single example of social change: mass incarceration. I had my students read the first 2 chapters of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Alexander (2010) is making a clear argument that the War on Drugs (WoD) policies have recreated the racial caste system that has been with the United States since slavery. She walks the reader from slavery to vagrancy laws to Jim Crow laws to WoD polices arguing that each instance was a mutation of the prior system of oppression.

I ask my students to write down all of the social antecedents they see in the assigned two chapters. Then we worked together to create a list of antecedents (download here). The next day in class I draw a big time line across the double-wide white board at the front of the room. We worked together to fill the timeline with all of the crucial events and other social antecedents. With their antecedent list and timeline in hand, I have my students apply everything we’ve learned about social change from the rest of the class to the WoD and mass incarceration in paper 1.

Paper 2: Think & Write Like a Sociologist

One of the key ideas of social change is that if something hasn’t changed yet, then it’s probably because somebody else doesn’t want it changed. That’s my one sentence summary of Darhendorf’s (1959) Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Really what we’re talking about here is hegemony and the social forces that maintain the status quo. I want my students to be able to identify those on each side of the WoD issue. I also want my students to develop their skills at doing literature reviews and using empirical evidence to support their arguments. Paper 2 combines both of these into a simple research paper.

Paper 3: Creatively Solve Interesting Problems

What good is knowing how things change if you don’t learn how to create some change yourself along the way? The book Organizing for Social Change is a workbook that guides you step-by-step through the process of fighting for social justice. The first two chapters explain what direct action organizing is and then the rest of the book is a series of worksheets and tasks to get your activist campaign off the ground. In paper 3 my students are challenged to plan a direct action campaign to mitigate the consequences of the WoD polices and mass incarceration in general.

This assignment is a “choose-your-own-adventure” style assignment. Students have to come up with their own ideas and then flesh out their campaign from there. As I write my students are working on this paper right now. Not a day has gone by that a student hasn’t said, “This is hard! I can’t think of any good ideas.” To which I always say, “Excellent! It sounds like you are doing the hard work of learning right now. Keep it up.”

While it might sound like I am enjoying their anguish, in reality I don’t. But I know that frustration, anger, and exhaustion are all common side effects of learning. Too often writing assignments are paint-by-numbers style activities. Students have grown accustomed to being told exactly what to write about, so open assignments like this give student the opportunity to creatively solve interesting problems.

How much should I share with my students? Here’s a guide that has always served me well: think about what is motivating you to share personal information.

If you want to share because you think it will be a boon to your students learning, then do it.

If you want to share something personal because you need to share it with someone, don’t. Get a therapist or call a friend.

Share only when it’s pedagogically rich.

Writing is hard. Actually pushing the keys on the keyboard is easy, but getting your butt in the chair is hard. For most people writing is second only to public speaking on their list of things they’d rather not do.

The secret to writing is starting. If you start writing early enough and thus give yourself plenty of time to work through your writing process, you are way more likely to write something you can be proud of. However, despite imparting this wisdom on my students I can tell that they wait until the absolute last minute to write my papers.

Before we lament “students these days!”, let’s think about why students procrastinate on writing papers. For many, they are just simply too busy with a full class schedule, work/family obligations, and their campus clubs/activities. There is little we can do about this first issue.

Even students with ample free time procrastinate on writing papers and this I blame on fear. They are afraid that they will bomb the paper. They are afraid they won’t know what to do and they’ll have to stare into the abyss of the blank white Word document screen. Their fear tells them that anything they write will probably suck, so what’s the point? Yes, they are afraid and that’s why they wait until the last minute.

They wait until something they are more afraid of shows up. The big fear is that they have waited too long and now they are certain to fail this paper which certainly means they will fail the class or worse (!) fail out of school all together. Gripped with the big fear their former anxiety seems small and they sprint as fast as they can to complete the paper at hand. As my friend says, no one thinks of their sprained ankle while they’re running for their lives.

How To Get Your students to Start Writing Earlier?

Make them start right now. Hand out the directions to your class paper and then give them 10 minutes to free write their ideas or draft an outline.

Last week I gave my students directions for their first paper in my Social Change class. After handing out the directions, I asked them to draft a three bullet outline right on the back of their directions. Then I asked them to circle on the directions the aspect of the paper they felt they were least prepared to write about. This week in class the first 10 minutes of class my students will do a free writing activity for each of the main components of the paper. The paper isn’t due until 2/28, but after this week they will have drafted notes, outlines, and scraps of writing that can be used in their paper. No one will have to start with a blank page.

Lower the on-ramp to the writing process by having your students start before they can even think of procrastinating. If you believe me that the hardest part of writing is the starting, then have your students start the writing process immediately.

Sometimes it’s not what is said, but what isn’t. Research done by Race Forward shows that when the media talks about issues of race and racism, they do not discuss the systemic aspects of the issue. Most often when the discussion turns to issues like incarceration rates, youth unemployment, immigration, etc., the news presents only an individual level analysis. Without the context of systemic racism, the viewer is left to draw conclusions about the individual. Personal responsibility and accountability are some of the only tools left in the toolbox when we myopically focus on the individual.

Jay Smooth explains it all in the video above far better than I could here. You should read Race Forward’s full report and do yourself a favor and subscribe to Jay Smooth’s YouTube Channel.

Below is a guest post written by Amanada Kennedy originally posted on Masculinities 101. If you have a teaching resource or idea you’d like to share on Sociology Source please let us know.

With the Spring semester about to begin, I am deep in “course prep” mode. This semester I will be teaching American Society, a staple in the sociology department. I generally teach this class as a course on inequality, specifically debunking the myth that our society is a classless, egalitarian society. I divide the course into four segments on class, race, gender, and sexuality, with the final component of each segment working to tie these categories together and introduce students to the theory of intersectionality. We explore how science, medicine, family, religion, popular culture, media, education, and public policies (like marriage, health care, and immigration law) both create and propagate inequality. And we talk about whether institutions like these, which are often used to preserve the status quo, can instead be used to fight inequality. By the end of the semester, students are able to explain how social identity categories operate in the United States, and accurately link these categories to existing problems of inequality. It is my favorite course to teach, and generally students seem to enjoy the provocative discussions that emerge out of the readings and lectures.

This term, however, I am prepping the class in the midst of writing my dissertation, specifically a chapter documenting the men’s movement in the United States. This movement is comprised of diverse groups with different, often contradictory, goals. For example, the profeminist men’s movement works alongside feminist organizations, and aims to change masculinity in ways that improve the lives of both women and men. Profeminist men are well known for their work engaging men in anti-rape and anti-violence causes (for example,the National Organization for Men Against Sexism, or NOMAS). But not all of the strands of the men’s movement share these politics. Some, called the mythopoetic men’s movement (like the ManKind Project), are decidedly apolitical, advocating instead for personal, psychological growth and change. These men believe that changes in modern society have left men struggling, searching for decent role models of “true” masculine behavior. The solution for them is not necessarily working for social change, but helping men develop more fulfilling identities and relationships. And finally, there is the men’s rights (or men’s human rights) contingent (like A Voice for Men and the National Coalition for Men, or NCFM). This wing of the movement is highly conservative and reactionary. They see modern social changes, especially those brought about by feminism and other civil rights movements, as the cause of a great many ills for American men. They believe that the tables have turned so dramatically in our society, that now women have advantages over men. Issues tackled by these groups run the gamut: from concerns about false rape allegations and coercive military draft policies, to the unfairness of “ladies’ nights” and men’s lower health quality. The solution for these organizations is enacting legal and policy changes, especially through litigation. While they do not share goals or tactics, one thing they all share is a belief that current iterations of masculinity are limiting and fail to represent the diversity of men’s needs and desires.

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with my class. Well, I like to push students to see inequality not just as a disabling force, but also an enabling one. In other words, while inequality is disadvantaging for many, it persists because it seems to “work” for a small (but powerful) few. But inequality is bad for everyone—this is a big message in my class. Highly unequal societies are less healthy and happy societies overall. That means that it is disadvantaging even for those who also benefit from it. Studying the men’s movement pushes me to think about ways to teach inequality that highlight its schizophrenic nature. Inequality is not just about those on the bottom rung, it also about each privileged step up the ladder. Even those in power are often unhappy, as evidenced by the men’s movement.

So when I teach gender inequality, I begin with what students expect: namely, with the assertion that ours is a male dominated society. That means that the qualities we value in one’s character, in leadership positions, in the public sphere generally, are those qualities associated with masculinity. Masculinity reaps rewards—we can see this in the gender wage gap, among other things. But then I go further. Whose masculinity reaps rewards, I ask? Upper class, white, heterosexual men’s masculinity is the masculinity that pays. That leaves out most men. Moreover, masculinity demands much from men, sometimes much more than it repays.

My favorite example is (American) football (see some great posts on the topic here, here, and here). It is definitively American and blatantly masculine. It creates heroes of its players, and provides fame and fortune. But, it is a warlike sport that ravages men’s bodies. Men battle on the field to demonstrate their physical ability, their courage, their competitiveness, just as in society where men compete with one another for dates, promotions, etc., all of which rests on their masculine performance. But this performance can be grueling. For football players, it brings broken bones, chronic pain, and CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a condition in the brain, produced by repeated sub-concussive trauma, leading to early onset dementia, mood disorders, and memory loss. In society, the price men pay may not be as obvious as the scars and bruises that football causes; men pay for their privilege in shorter life spans (often attributed to risk-taking behaviors like fast driving and drinking, and lifestyle choices like eating red meat), stunted emotional development, and a lack of fulfilling relationships (because the characteristics that make good businessmen do not always make good friends or partners).

We do not have to turn to reactionary models like the men’s rights movement to make sense of why American men are unhappy and feel dissatisfied by their social roles, nor should we. We do not have to blame feminists or women for making things better for themselves, nor should we. In fact, any move toward greater social equality is good for everyone, even those whose power is threatened (or diminished). We can, however, take note of the facets of life where different groups (of men, of women, of immigrants, of workers, etc.) find flaws, and see how these flaws emerge out of unequal conditions. We will obviously find them among those most disadvantaged in society, but we will also discover them hidden behind social privilege. The solutions to these concerns will be found in dismantling structures of inequality.

How do you teach inequality? Have you discovered innovative ways to get students (at any level) to think about privilege and power? Or have you encountered resistance when teaching these topics, and if so, how do you manage that response?

Further Reading

• Kimmel, Michael. 2013. Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books.
• Rothenberg, Paula. 2014. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. 9th Edition. New York: Worth Publishers. [this is the textbook I use for the class, which contains a variety of readings that lend themselves to the structure I’ve laid out]

And, for more on teaching and pedagogy, see Markus Gerke’s post here.

Amanda Kennedy is a founder and editor of Masculinities 101. She is currently completing her PhD in Sociology at Stony Brook University.

Crossposted at Masculinities 101