47 Senators: Cultural Performance and Politics

Jack Delehanty on March 26, 2015

In March 2015, 47 Republican Senators signed a letter, authored by Sen. Tom Cotton and addressed to “the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In what the New York Times called a rare direct congressional intervention into diplomatic negotiations, the cosigners warned Iran that any agreements they may negotiate with President Obama’s administration would not have lasting power, because the U.S. Constitution grants the power to ratify treaties to Congress alone and Obama will leave office in 2017. Most political commentators were surprised by this senatorial foray into sensitive diplomatic affairs; even many conservatives have expressed concern about how the letter might affect negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But there are good sociological reasons to believe that the cosigners’ goals have little to do with Iran.

Jeffrey Alexander argues that social actors, including political parties, develop “power narratives of civil repair” to redefine social groups. The GOP Senators’ invocation of the Constitution can be understood as an attempt “repair” the damage to America’s international standing they believe Obama has done. In this view, the letter is more a nationalistic statement about who defines what America is than a diplomatic maneuver—a cultural performance intended to grant legitimacy to future political goals.
Drawing on Alexander’s theories, Jonathan Wyrtzen argues that elite political actors have strong strategic incentives to try to claim national symbols, such as the Constitution, as their own.
But even if “reclaiming” the Constitution makes strategic sense for Republicans, why choose such a controversial venue as an open diplomatic letter to a foreign government? Craig Calhoun points to the centrality of the nation in modern culture, saying that strong claims to allegiance are especially effective when “the nation” is perceived to be under threat. The Senators, then, may have used their letter to play up Americans’ fear of unstable relations with Iran.
And Rhys Williams underscores the importance of “blood and land” as symbols in “American Civil Religion.” Iran’s nuclear program invokes both, giving Republicans reason to believe power narratives involving Iran will contribute to a moral panic regarding Obama’s foreign policy—and, by extension, the leadership of any Democrat candidates.

Joke’s On You: The Italy/ISIS Twitter exchange

Sarah Catherine Billups on March 16, 2015

ISIS recently announced they “will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission” in a video that showed the murder of 21 Christians in Libya.  Not long after the video’s release, Italians offered cheeky travel advice to the militant group via Twitter, using the hashtag “#We_Are_Coming_O_Rome.”  Tweets warned of traffic jams and tourist traps at landmarks like the Trevi Fountain, while others humorously applauded ISIS’s “vacation” choice.  But is laughter the best medicine for international threats? 

Jokes are a way for societies to cope with threats.  People use irony to lessen their anxieties about an unsettling situation without seeming paranoid.  Humor also give status by discrediting those with strong anxieties and giving the joker an air of nonchalance. 
Ethnic jokes also draw symbolic boundaries between who does and doesn’t belong.  These jokes reinforce the moral values of the in-group by characterizing outsiders’ unacceptable behavior. Framing is key in being playful with something political—those involved in the interaction need to have shared beliefs and the joke needs the right context.
However, humor is a double-edged sword as evidenced by the events that followed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons earlier this year and the Jyllands Posten depictions of Mohammad in 2006. Targeting a minority group reinforces stereotypes and masks the diversity of individuals within the group. When a member of the dominant culture “punches down,” with an ethnic or racist joke, the audience is more likely to be judgmental of individual members of a minority group.

Race and the Classroom

Neeraj Rajasekar on March 9, 2015

Race’s role in higher education gets a lot of press. Recent challenges to admissions procedures and classes on race highlight problems with whiteness, raising questions about the state of college diversity.  But what often gets left out of these conversations is the impact of diversity on learning itself and the nuances of how these impacts differ between students.

A diverse student environment can have a positive effect on learning, especially since students from other backgrounds can help each other think about topics differently. In addition, students can learn from the lived experiences of their out-group peers.
While diversity has overall beneficial impacts for the educational process, these outcomes are not created equal. White students are more likely to connect class concepts to abstract theory or class contexts rather than personal experiences, and they are more likely to join in class discussions than are black students.
Students from different backgrounds connect to professors, faculty, and educational spaces differently, affecting their scores and educational success. Notably, this affects the way educators teach and grade. Nonwhite students, particularly under a white teacher, are more likely to feel alienated in the classroom, participate less, and receive lower scores.

How Hate Crimes Count

Evan Stewart, Jack Delehanty, Ryan Larson, and Stephen Suh on March 4, 2015

By Evan Stewart, Jack Delehanty, Ryan Larson, and Stephen Suh

The shooting of three young adults in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, raises a number of questions about hate crimes in the United States. All three victims were Muslim, and interviews with their family members about previous conflicts indicate the killings may have been motivated by anti-Islamic sentiment. On the other hand, police released a statement that the killings were motivated by a parking dispute, and the regional U.S. attorney called them “an isolated incident.” Research shows the social context of a crime matters, even when it isn’t officially labeled a “hate crime.”

Hate crimes are retaliatory and respond to particular social events and contexts. Racialized talk of hate crime, especially when discussed over the Internet, is provoked by anxieties over close social ties to minorities—such as interracial marriage or integrated neighborhoods—more than economic competition. Time, neighborhood, and labeling factors all point to social context as a necessary tool to understand hate crimes.
Social context is often ignored in hate crime data. Government offices and watchdog organizations often define hate crimes differently than others, and their data focus on the number of attacks rather than contextual risk factors. This makes it difficult to study hate crimes, especially when witness reports or police records show a parking dispute.
Anti-Islamic attitudes are also central to the UNC case. Emerging research indicates these attitudes are unique in the U.S. context as well, where racial bias interacts with cultural bias against public religious practice in a particular political climate.

Who—and How—Community College Helps

Anne Kaduk and Amy August on February 25, 2015

President Obama’s recently unveiled proposal would make two years of community college freely available to most students who graduate from high school, maintain a 2.5 or greater GPA, and are enrolled at least half time. Others have pointed out that students must also be from families earning $200,000 or less annually to be eligible for the free tuition. Universal access to community college is a popular idea in some circles, but is it really the most effective way to increase equality of opportunities?

How students attend college is changing. Half of students who begin at a four-year college attend at least one other school before graduating (or otherwise leaving school), and over a third take some time off after enrolling initially. Disadvantaged students are more likely to follow interrupted pathways to degree completion, so differences in patterns of college attendance could be influencing social class differences in graduation rates (and thus inequality in opportunities).
While community colleges improve college access and extend post-secondary educational opportunities to underserved groups, they aren’t closing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged groups in terms of program completion. As a result, they don’t necessarily reduce racial and socioeconomic inequities. However, enrolling in a community college modestly increases the probability of completing a bachelor’s degree among disadvantaged students who would not have otherwise attended college (the majority of community college-goers).
More education yields economic benefits in earnings, occupation and employment. It also provides non-economic benefits in areas like marriage, fertility, social participation, and physical and mental health. The returns on a four-year college degree are greatest for marginal students—those whose decision to attend college could be swayed by free access to community college. Completing an associate’s degree or certain certificates that involve at least a year of coursework can also lead to much greater income when compared to just taking some courses.

Extra! Extra! Read All about It, All the Time!

Sarah Catherine Billups on February 21, 2015

Between social media, television, Internet, and yes, even newsstands, a person has to work pretty hard to not hear about new and noteworthy events. Avoiding spoilers in Game of Thrones or the winner of a major election is nearly impossible without a retreat into the wilderness. Now, with passing of one of America’s most prominent journalists and media critics, David Carr, the news has taken a self-reflective turn. We took some time to review the research on how journalists don’t just report the truth—they make it.

Mainstream news provides the general public with information about current events. Choices about what to cover direct attention and influence public opinion, but these choices aren’t always at the center of the action. For example, social movements get more coverage when they appear as formal, professionalized organizations rather than confrontational, volunteer-led groups. It’s news agencies that frequently affect whether a movement is seen as serious and effective or a disorganized bunch of crackpots.
Network ties and framing strategies within the media also change who gets coverage. Insider self-promotion helps draw attention to stories about social problems, and the old “15 minutes of fame” rule only applies to newcomers. Once celebrity is established, that notoriety has staying power.
Good journalism relies on emotional storytelling, but this isn’t because readers are passive consumers of salacious media. Instead, most are “news omnivores” who learn about events through multiple sources and recognize that even “objective” journalism has an angle. With so much happening in the world, stories that help make meaning and emotional sense out of basic information tend to engage readers.

Justifying Our Love

Jacqui Frost on February 11, 2015

To understand the way Americans feel about and experience this “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” music is probably the first—but worst—place to look. A quick search for “American songs about love” results in “Love Hurts,” but also “Love Will Conquer All.” Further, “Love Takes Time” and “Love Runs Out,” but “Love Is Forever.” How to untangle this mixtape? Sociologists and their research show some of the reasons Americans are so “Crazy in Love.”

Some sociologists have pointed to a somewhat linear evolution in the way love is experienced in America. They argue there’s been a move away from love as a permanent obligation to love as an individual choice that only lasts as long as it is beneficial for everyone involved.
Others argue a more complicated evolution. Ann Swidler finds that people go back and forth between the romance of “love at first sight” and love as permanence to seeing love as fragile and requiring hard work. Swidler proposes this tension is largely due to the demands of marriage as an institution: the ideals of marriage fit the romanticized version, but the realities of a relationship fit better with more realistic conceptions. So, most Americans hold both views at the same time.
Modern Americans’ increasingly individualized form of love fosters more democratic relationships and increased gender egalitarianism, though it can also lead to increased anxiety about love and relationships. Eva Illouz believes American culture promotes love as “difficult and painful,” offering advice from Cosmo quizzes to sex therapists to self-help books. Combined with the rise in for-profit online dating sites and the ubiquity of advertisements encouraging us to demonstrate love through consumption, Illouz says we’ve come to a “commodification of love,” where you have to work, and often pay, to find and keep romance.
For more on the sociology of love (and whether sociologists can fall in love), check out this great piece at Sociology Lens.

Vexed by Vaccination Refusals

Caty Taborda on February 9, 2015

As the outbreak of measles in Southern California continues its spread, public health officials have turned their attention toward the rising number of parents forgoing vaccinations for their children. Once based on the now discredited study linking vaccines to autism, the choice not to vaccinate is now considered an issue of individual choice, albeit one made at the expense of public health.

Vaccinating has become highly politicized. With conflicting information about potential side effects and the increase in mandated vaccines, some parents have grown anxious and distrustful—they are now known as “anti-vaxxers.”
Social networks and institutions help distrust spread. For instance, you can’t “catch” autism from other people, but as parents near each other share information and experiences, the chances that a child will be diagnosed with autism increases.
When parents who distrust medical advice about vaccines consider other parenting practices, such as breastfeeding and nutrition, they also seek out institutions like private schools, which are more friendly to alternative choices. The parents’ networks are thus made smaller.
Although anti-vaxxers are not necessarily motivated by religious values, sociologists study how multiple sources of authority, such as religious and political affiliations, impact scientific distrust and result in deeply held personal beliefs that may place facts and values at odds.

Curbing Police Profiteering

Ryan Larson on February 5, 2015

Attorney General Eric Holder has reduced the ability of law enforcement agencies to seize assets without a criminal conviction, an “informal measure” of policing known as civil forfeiture. The program had been expanded by the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act in an effort to curtail the sale and distribution of illegal drugs, and it has since allowed law enforcement agencies to divide and keep the majority of proceeds seized from forfeitures.

Proponents argue that civil forfeiture makes certain crimes less profitable and redistributes resources for socially beneficial programs. Critics say it might be part of a “hidden economic agenda” behind “tough on crime” initiatives and can lead to due process infringements
Institutional contexts are important: 40% of law enforcement agencies report dependence on the revenue produced from civil forfeitures. Agencies in states with strict forfeiture policies tend to use federal “equitable sharing” policies more often, even after accounting for factors such as official crime rates and drug arrests. This suggests agencies try to maximize their returns on civil forfeiture seizures.
Law enforcement agencies operating in high inequality areas and more conservative voting districts seize more value per drug arrest. This ratio also increases with agency complexity but drops in districts with higher black populations. Agencies may use more formal measures, such as arrests, in majority minority areas.

Parents Prepping Kids for Racism

Lisa Gulya and Alex Manning on February 4, 2015

Charles Blow recently devoted his Times column to relaying the news that his son, a junior at Yale, was racially profiled and detained at gunpoint by campus police. Blow mentions that he was glad he had had “the talk” with his son—how to deal with police as a black man:

This is the scenario I have always dreaded: my son at the wrong end of a gun barrel, face down on the concrete. I had always dreaded the moment that we would share stories about encounters with the police in which our lives hung in the balance, intergenerational stories of joining the inglorious “club.”

When that moment came, I was exceedingly happy I had talked to him about how to conduct himself if a situation like this ever occurred. Yet I was brewing with sadness and anger that he had to use that advice.

Blow is not the only parent to impart such advice—recall New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s controversial comment about advising his biracial son in dealings with police. Poor, middle-class, and even rich and well-known* parents of children of color advise their children on how to stay safe—to thrive, they must survive.

Scholars call how parents talk to their children about racial discrimination and how to cope with it “preparation for bias,” and it is just one practice among several that comprise ethnic-racial socialization.
Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins powerfully conveys how this work is done by black women sharing child-rearing responsibilities within woman-centered networks.
And these lessons seem necessary: Black adolescent males report repeated negative interactions with police and black mothers report constant worry about the well-being of their sons, who they believe are profiled and targeted by both police and other citizens.
Parents emphasize racial barriers and protocol to prepare their children for racism, often using role-playing to demonstrate how to reduce risk in reacting (or not reacting) to discrimination.

*For his part, Blow’s son acknowledged his own class privilege in having his experience so widely publicized, a statement his father shared on Twitter.