culture

The Sunday Assembly, an organization dubbed by the media as the first “atheist church,” more than doubled its number of “congregations” over one weekend. This group almost replicates the church model in that they meet on Sundays, they sing songs and listen to speakers, they bring snacks and coffee, and they focus their “assemblies” on building community and living a good life—they just simply do all of this with no reference to a deity or the supernatural. At first glance this seems paradoxical. Why do nonbelievers want to create something so much like the church that believers frequent? Sociologists point to one major reason – community.

The drive to come together and share space and ideas with others is a fundamental way humans build identity and community. As far back as Emile Durkheim, sociologists have shown how sharing beliefs and rituals both create and sustain identities, communities, and society. Today, sociologists are finding the same thing happening among nonbelievers who are riffing on the structure and rituals of religious institutions in order to build their own community.

• Jessie Smith. 2013. “Creating a Godless Community: The Collective Identity Work of Contemporary American Atheists.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52(1)
• Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith. 2014. Atheist Awakening: Secular Activism and Community in America. Oxford University Press.

Community building has historically centered around religious institutions. As Americans leave churches at an increasingly higher rate, they are left at a loss with how to form communities without the church model. In many ways, the atheist church phenomenon is due to what sociologists call “institutional isomorphism,” which shapes the available models for building community.

• Mary Pattillo. 1998. “Church Culture as a Strategy of Action in the Black Community.” American Sociological Review 63(6)
• Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48(2)

The church model is not the only thing that nonbelievers are borrowing either. Groups of nonbelievers have used social movement rhetoric from civil rights groups, especially LGBTQ rights, to build a movement around non-believing identities. This kind of appropriation is common, however, and sociologists argue that all movements do some version of this, looking to past movement successes to build from when creating their own strategies.

• Whitney Anspach, Kevin Coe, and Crispin Thurlow. 2007. “The Other Closet?: Atheists, Homosexuals and the Lateral Appropriation of Discursive Capital.” Critical Discourse Studies. 4(1).

Every year, the MacArthur Foundation releases a list of fellows recognized for “originality and dedication” in their respective fields. 2014’s list honors social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, whose work on implicit biases showed up on TROT last week. Known informally as the “genius grant,” the MacArthur fellowship offers funds for a wide range of scholars, artists, and entrepreneurs to pursue new directions in their work. But what exactly is a genius? How do we decide who has that special something? Social science suggests we should not only look at geniuses themselves, but also at how socialization and networks among people craft innovation.

Biographical studies show that genius and other talents are not born, but rather cultivated through an extraordinary amount of practice, habit-forming, and parenting.

• Joyce Tang. 2005. “Manufacturing Great Scientists.” Sociological Inquiry 75(1):129-150
• Michael J. A. Howe. 2001 Genius Explained. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Daniel F. Chambliss. 1989. “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers.” Sociological Theory 7(1):70-86.

Institutions and social networks also play a big role. “Genius” level work in the arts and sciences must be recognized by peers and labeled as such.

• Gabriel Rossman, Nicole Esparza, and Phillip Bonacich. 2010. “I’d Like to Thank the Academy, Team Spillovers, and Network Centrality.” American Sociological Review. 75(1) 31-51.
• Gary Alan Fine. 2004. Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Howard S. Becker. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Robert K. Merton. 1965. On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Fears of a “terror pipeline” running from Western countries to ISIL and other militant groups are on the rise. The New York Times reports that at least a dozen men have left Minnesota to join radical Islamist groups. Community leaders and FBI officials suggest that cultural isolation, social discontent, and economic challenges drive recent immigrants abroad to fight, and expert accounts in the media argue solving these local problems is the best means of curbing the trend.

Social science has two things to say about this: first,  sincere religious belief, political ideology, and rationalistic behavior may play a stronger role than the media recognize. Second, Western media and governments may have an interest in portraying the motivations for militancy in particular ways.

Ethnographic research shows that the incentive structures of fundamentalist Islam make militancy an appealing choice. Young men who spend hundreds of hours per year in prayer groups and become leaders in their local mosque communities come to view radicalism as the only sure path to Heaven. They don’t join militant organizations because they are confused, isolated, or have no other choices, but because they sincerely believe that doing so is the right path.

• Quintan Wiktorowicz and Karl Kaltenthaler. 2006. “The Rationality of Radical Islam.” Political Science Quarterly 121(2): 295–319.

This type of radical religious behavior becomes more appealing in times of political uncertainty. Given the instability of Iraq’s fledgling democracy following the U.S. occupation, conservative Muslims may see ISIL’s rise as an opportunity to reclaim the region after a more secular approach to governing failed.

• Robert J. Brym. 2007. “Six Lessons of Suicide Bombers.” Contexts 6(4):40–45.
• Robert Pape. 2005. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Random House.

Western media organizations have strong incentives to blame militancy on local social and cultural problems. In times of moral or cultural panic, audiences look to pundits to see who to blame. “Disaffected Muslim youth” may be one such constructed class.

• Dan Berger. 2009. “Constructing Crime, Framing Disaster: Routines of Criminalization and Crisis in Hurricane Katrina.” Punishment & Society 11(4):491–510.

And, once blame has been placed, media accounts perpetuate that particular frame of the situation through a “fringe effect” where angry arguments from the margins become mainstream.

• Christopher A. Bail. 2012. “The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks.” American Sociological Review 77(6): 855–79.

For more on why people may flee micro-agressions at home, check out this Reading List.

Miley Cyrus’ VMA activities recently hit the news again – but this time it wasn’t for twerking. Instead, Miley took the spotlight off herself and put it on the issue of homeless youth. Passing her award acceptance on to 22-year-old Jesse Helt, a formerly homeless youth, Miley brought attention to severe social inequality across the U.S. The move raised over $200,000 for Los Angeles homeless youth. However, sociologists show that increasing media awareness of a stigmatized group can have both positive and negative consequences.

Regardless of Miley’s intentions, her effort to give voice to the homeless population is a step in the right direction. Sociologists show that increased awareness of and contact with stigmatized populations can help decrease that stigma.

• Barrett Lee, Chad Farrell, and Bruce Link. 2004. “Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness.” American Sociological Review. 69(1).

The media also plays a large role in which issues get deemed “social problems”—problems we feel responsible for helping to fix. Positive media attention given to homelessness at the VMAs, while fleeting, may have some positive impact on social perceptions of homelessness.

• Joseph Gusfield. 1989. “Constructing the Ownership of Social Problems: Fun and Profit in the Welfare State.” Social Problems. 36(5).
• James Forte. 2002. “Not in My Social World: A Cultural Analysis of Media Representations, Contested Spaces, and Sympathy for the Homeless.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. 29(4).

However, raising awareness of what many see as a deserving segment of the homeless population—white, healthy, homeless youth—may also detract from what many sociologists call the “undeserving poor.” This equally important group of minority populations and welfare recipients will have a much harder time finding its way into an awards show.

• Michael Katz. 2013. The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press.

Last week the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints drew media attention for the public excommunication of Kate Kelly, a prominent member of the church working for the ordination of women. Women are not permitted to hold the priesthood in the LDS church, meaning that they do not have the authority to act in god’s name, nor can they lead congregations or perform particular sacraments. This is not the first instance of high profile excommunications from the church—in September 1993, six Mormon professors and feminists were excommunicated after church court trials in Utah. These progressive scholars, coined the “September Six” by news media, had published research contradicting official church history, or publicly advocated a feminist position. Al Jazeera interviewed Professor Jan Shipps on the issue, who said this was one instance of the church practicing “boundary maintenance,” but how do these scandals help keep the church together?

Mormonism didn’t necessarily always exclude women from high-profile involvement with the church. Instead, the development of formal institutions and bureaucracies tended to erase historical arrangements where women had a more equal role to male priests.

• Marie Cornwall. 2001. “The Institutional Role of Mormon Women” in Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives. Edited by Marie Cornwall, Tim B. Heaton, and Lawrence Alfred Young
• Jennifer Huss Basquiat. 2001. “Reproducing Patriarchy and Erasing Feminism: The Selective Construction of History within the Mormon Community.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17(2):5–37.

Excommunicating individuals who speak out for these alternative perspectives seems extreme, but it fits a pattern we often find in organizations. Sociology shows us how punishments for individuals—like excommunications, expulsions, or other public shaming—quickly turn into an “institutional morality tale” about how the group works.

• Joshua Gamson. 2001. “Normal Sins: Sex Scandal Narratives as Institutional Morality Tales.” Social problems 48(2):185–205.
• Mike Owen Benediktsson. 2010. “The Deviant Organization and the Bad Apple CEO: Ideology and Accountability in Media Coverage of Corporate Scandals.” Social Forces 88(5):2189–2216.

Allegra Smith is a master’s student in rhetoric and writing at Michigan State University. Her research interests include digital communities, queer and feminist rhetorics, women in world religions, and pornography and sexuality.

Mila Kunis recently announced that she will be giving birth naturally, saying “I did this to myself – I might as well do it right.” By “natural,” Kunis means that she will be using a midwife when she gives birth and opting out of the hospitalized, medically-induced birthing experience that dominates in American society today. Kunis is just one, albeit highly publicized, instance in a larger move away from the hospitalized birthing experience to “home birth.” However, this shift is not without its conflicts, and Kunis’ statement that natural birth is “doing it right” points to deeper societal perceptions of the right way to give birth and how those perceptions of what is “natural” might be changing.

The media often frames this increase in home births as potentially dangerous and problematic, but women were giving birth at home long before they started going to hospitals. The medicalized model of childbirth is a fairly recent product of a larger shift in societal acceptance of professional science over local knowledge.

• Charlotte Borst. 1995. Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Robbie E. Davis-Floyd. 2003. Birth as an American Rite of Passage. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

This “medicalization of childbirth” has huge impacts on how society, and women themselves, see women’s bodies and safety. Sociologists argue that this increased medical monitoring during pregnancy is a form of social control that constrains women both physically and emotionally.

• Katherine Beckett and Bruce Hoffman. 2005. “Challenging Medicine: Law, Resistance, and the Cultural Politics of Childbirth.” Law and Society Review 39(1): 125-170
• Kerreen Reiger and Rhea Dempsey. 2006. “Performing Birth in a Culture of Fear: An Embodied Crisis of Late Modernity.” Health Sociology Review 15(4).
• Karin Martin. 2003. “Giving Birth Like a Girl.” Gender and Society 17(1): 54-72.

For a great history of homebirth and the reproductive rights movement, check out Christa Craven’s 2010 book Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement.

Recently, CollegeHumor released a video clip illustrating the symptoms of being a basic bitch, which they define as “an extra regular female.” Other references to this term within popular culture are plenty: many cite loanthony’s youtube video for popularizing the whispered insult “you’re basic,” and additional uses throughout the past several years. How can we sociologically understand this phenomenon? Is it okay for the term bitches to be used casually within popular culture? What’s the harm?

A term derogatory to all women can be difficult to “reclaim” or use ironically. Instead, when women use “bitch” to refer to themselves or their friends (as in, “what’s up my bitches”) they are experiencing false power. They may feel included by using popular terminology, but they’re actually reinforcing gender essentialism and inequality by doing so.

Emily M. Boyd is an Associate Professor in the Sociology and Corrections department at Minnesota State University-Mankato. She studies gender, social interaction and popular culture.