Drought and Social Division

Evan Stewart and Rebecca Farnum on April 21, 2015

California is facing record drought, water restrictions, and threats of wildfires. The solution seems simple—just find more water through increased pumping or desalination—but these quick fixes ignore deeper questions about how we turn public necessities into commodities and determine who can lay claim to natural resources. These issues can lead to cultural conflict, but struggles for water can also renew solidarity across different social groups.

Sociological case studies remind us that professional environmental responsibilities to the land, its residents, owners, and governments change over time and through particular institutional cultures. Power and inequality shape who is exposed to environmental problems and how we address solutions.
Water conflicts also bring up commodification—the way we turn public necessities like water and health into market goods. Research on commodification examines everything from how the water industry actively competes with the tap to how insurance markets change the culture of life and death in the United States.
Water resources—even when scarce—do not inevitably lead to conflict. Environmental concern is not only high in affluent nations; even in places as tense as the Middle East, local activists regularly use the environment to bridge cultural, political, and religious tensions.

Rebecca Farnum is a 2012 EPA Marshall Scholar researching for a PhD in Geography at King’s College London, where she explores environmental conflict and cooperation around food and water resources in the Middle East and North Africa. She has an LLM in International Law on environmental and human rights law, an MSc in Water Security and International Development, and undergraduate degrees in anthropology, interdisciplinary humanities, international development, and international relations.

Lil’ Ladies and the Gendering of Legitimacy

Caty Taborda and Anne Kaduk on April 13, 2015

Limbaugh WadeDuring his April 1 on-air radio show, Rush Limbaugh cited a recent SocImages post titled, “Are Economics Majors Anti-Social?” In debating the content of the post, Limbaugh frequently referred to author and editor Lisa Wade as “professorette.” In making up this word, he intentionally gendered the gender-neutral title “professor.” Given the cultural devaluation of femininity, the unnecessary gendering of Wade’s profession signals a discounting of her position and expertise. While Wade is, notably, the author (with Myra Marx-Ferree) of the new book, Gender, women of all professions face challenges to their legitimacy.

Education, prestige, and capital do not exempt women from sexist stereotypes about incompetency. Female researchers and professors are often viewed as less competent than their male colleagues, and male-dominated academic disciplines are perceived to draw more innately brilliant and talented practitioners than female-dominated disciplines.
Even when women occupy high status positions of expertise they are more likely to be interrupted than men. Furthermore, men are more likely to interrupt women even when women occupy a higher professional prestige, suggesting that the gender hierarchy can be more influential to power dynamics than professional status.
Women are also limited in the range of emotions and behaviors they can exhibit in the workplace without being judged negatively. Emotional displays of anger, for example, are interpreted differently if exhibited by men or women, to the likely disadvantage of women. Additionally, displays of dominance by agentic (that is, self-organizing and proactive) female leaders are subject to dominance penalties, backlash, and prejudice.

Curious what our friends in sociolinguistics have to say about gendered titles? Consider listening to Lexicon Valley’s exploration of feminine word endings here.

Rights and Rites: Religion at Work

Jacqui Frost and Evan Stewart on April 7, 2015

Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act (not to be confused with the 1993 Federal RFRA), faced widespread public controversy and brought a number of high profile boycotts against the state. The law allows private businesses to use the free exercise of religion as a defense in court should they face a lawsuit for discrimination, raising concern about whether businesses are allowed to discriminate against clients on religious grounds. Similar laws are under debate in other states, while in Madison, Wisconsin, officials have signed the first legislation that includes the “non-religious” as a legally protected category. The laws illustrate the importance of religion in shaping social and political issues in American lives.

While religion often works as an inclusive, community-building institution, it also has the potential to reinforce existing social boundaries and inequalities. Cultural and historical contexts shape the ways that religious beliefs are interpreted, and in the American context, religious beliefs are often used to exclude religious and sexual minorities.
Even if these laws are repealed or amended, these social boundaries underlie deeper issues in the workplace. Despite being prohibited by the Employment Non-Discrimination act, audit studies find discrimination against religious minorities and openly gay men in the hiring process.

For more on this issue, check out our post from last year: Religious Freedom and Refusing Service.

The Politics of Peeing

Caty Taborda on March 28, 2015

The Canadian Senate recently passed an amendment that excludes transgender people from using public restrooms of their choice. Transgender rights are facing similar challenges domestically, as Florida, Texas, Kentucky, and Minnesota consider bills that would limit or restrict the use of restrooms based on one’s sex assigned at birth. Additionally, Missouri State Rep. Jeff Pogue is pushing to ban gender-neutral bathrooms. As trans activists take to Twitter, sharing powerful photographs of themselves in bathrooms that do not fit their gender identity, some may be wondering: when did the loo become so political?

Gender policing is by no means new; in fact, regulating and upholding the gender binary has long been key to social and legal organization. Upon meeting someone new, it is common to make assumptions about their gender based on their body and presentation.
Assumptions about gender vary based on context. Whereas gender identity and presentation may be used as criteria for gender-integrated social spaces, biological sex and genital appearance is emphasized in sexualized situations (e.g. dating) and gender-segregated spaces (e.g. bathrooms). Culturally held beliefs that men are dangerous and women are vulnerable exacerbate the policing of women’s only spaces like restrooms, while gender nonconformity may create ‘gender panics’ for nontransgender people.
The policing of gendered bathrooms can include anything from strange looks and verbal challenges to interpersonal violence and arrest. As a result, transgender and gender nonconforming people may avoid public restrooms or alter their presentation substantially to avoid harassment and conflicts.
Legislation that seeks to regulate bathroom use must first venture down the slippery slope of legally defining sex. This is no small task. In the absence of any federal definition of sex, dozens of judicial gender determination cases demonstrate the variety of factors courts use to determine gender, including personal identity, physical presentation, medical history, and genital appearance and function.

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.