culture

The Food and Drug Administration recently proposed a slew of changes to the nutrition labels on packaged foods. The first to be made in over 20 years, these changes will include placing a bigger emphasis on total calories and added sugars as well as highlighting certain nutrients, such as Vitamin D and potassium. They are also proposing to make changes to the serving size requirements, making them more “realistic” about what portions of a product people actually consume in a single sitting. The purported goal of these changes is to help consumers “make healthy food choices”, but sociologists show that these choices are not necessarily available to everyone.

The media, as well as most consumers, see diet and eating habits as a personal choice. However, research shows that not all consumers are financially, or even geographically, able to make conscientious decisions about the calories they consume.

• Flis Henwood, Roma Harris, and Philippa Spoel. 2011. “Informing Health? Negotiating the Logics of Choice and Care in Everyday Practices of ‘Healthy Living.’” Social Science & Medicine 72(12): 2026-2032
• Mark Winne. 2008. Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty. Beacon Press.

The choices made at the federal level about dietary guidelines and labeling are not just about making sure we all get the right amount of Vitamin D. The food industry is a profit-making business just like any other, and its influence on government nutrition policies runs deep.

• Marion Nestle. 2003. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University Of California Press.

The media coverage of this proposal is largely positive, framing it as a step towards curbing America’s “obesity epidemic”. This kind of media coverage furthers the intense stigmatization of obese people and reinforces norms that equate thinness with moral virtue and social worthiness.

• Abigail Saguy and Kjerstin Gruys. 2010. “Morality and Health: News Media Constructions of Overweight and Eating Disorders.” Social Problems 57(2): 231-250.
• Margaret Mead. 1971. “Why Do We Overeat?” in Food and Culture: A Reader. 2013. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (eds). Routledge.

For more on culture and obesity, check out Abigail Saguy’s “Office Hours” interview where she discusses her book What’s Wrong with Fat?

This season’s deluge of religious films—Noah, Son of God, and Heaven is Real—has us all on the lookout for the next Bible blockbuster and wondering if well-known productions like The Ten Commandments and The Passion of the Christ were just flashes in the pan. While the market doesn’t always sink religious films, they often face controversy while navigating complex social and religious identities.

Consumption of religious movies, television, and books isn’t just consumerism. It is a complex blend of religious identification and economic practice, which can both encourage and discourage consumption.

• Jerry Z. Park and Joseph Baker. 2007. “What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and Spiritual Material Goods.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(4): 501-517.

These films also have to nail down other identities to do well in the market. The portrayal of masculine figures like Jesus and Noah represents a key way society works through gender roles.

• Joey Eschrich. 2011. “Behold the Man!: Constructing the Masculinity of Jesus of Nazareth in Mainstream American Film, 1961-2004.” Men and Masculinities, 14(5): 520-541.

As e-cigarettes are fairly new to the market, there is little research on their long-term effects, but their recent popularity has sparked debates about their use and regulation—are they healthier than combustible tobacco, should they have the same restrictions in terms of age and public use, and are they a “gateway” to real tobacco for teen smokers? While a majority of the e-cigarette conversation focuses on whether they are better for you, the desire for healthy lungs is not the only factor contributing to these debates. The e-cigarette debates are the newest chapter in a long history of substance use regulation that is as much about social stigma as public health.

These debates are also influenced by social factors such as unemployment, youth populations, political battles for and against government regulation, and a much broader, but more subtle, process of stigmatization when cigarette smoking— which was once perfectly acceptable in society—slowly slides out of favor.

• Randall Collins. 2004. “Tobacco Ritual and Anti-Ritual” in Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Mike Vuolo. 2012. “Placing Deviance in a Legal and Local Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Cigarette Use in the European Union.” Social Forces Vol.90(4), p.1377-1402

As smoking loses favor in public opinion, so do smokers. While these debates are about health on the surface, the underlying message to smokers is that they are deviant. Research has found that smoking, and substance use in general, occurs in higher numbers among lower income and minority groups, revealing much deeper power dynamics influencing smoking policy and the public image of smokers.

• Justin Tuggle and Malcolm Holmes. 1997. “Blowing Smoke: Status Politics and the Shasta County Smoking Ban.” Deviant Behavior Vol.18(1), p.77-93
• Kellie Barr et al. 1993. “Race, Class, and Gender Differences in Substance Abuse: Evidence of Middle-class/Underclass Polarization among Black Males.” Social Problems Vol.40(3), pp.314-327

The recent collapse of Mt. Gox—a prominent exchange site for the internet currency Bitcoin—has sparked wide discussion about the future of “virtual” money and the social groups that create it. Some remain cautiously optimistic (though pointing out that Bitcoin may take itself a little too seriously), while others have said the currency amounts to a “Ponzi scheme” with “no store of value.” As a post from our friends at Cyborgology noted last year,

Calling Bitcoins “virtual currency” is nonsensical because all currencies are virtual in that they are “collective hallucinations” about measurement of worth.

Classic sociological theory investigated how society creates value, and came to similar conclusions. Gold and paper money needed a lot of collective social support to become valuable.

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 1867. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy Volume One London: Penguin, 1990.
• Georg Simmel. 1900. The Philosophy of Money. New York: Routledge, 2011.

What makes one currency more “valuable” than another is institutional support, but this wasn’t always guaranteed for the U.S. dollar, either.

• Bruce G. Carruthers and Sarah Babb. 1996. “The Color of Money and the Nature of Value: Greenbacks and Gold in Postbellum America.” American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1556–91.

Arthur Chu, an Asian American insurance analyst from Cleveland, recently became an overnight celebrity after amassing a small fortune with consecutive victories on the popular and long-running game show, Jeopardy! Unfortunately, the publicity Chu received was not all positive. Instead, Chu’s winning ways incited many angry Jeopardy! fans to tweet negatively about his unorthodox style of play, supposedly smug demeanor, and his penchant to interrupt the show’s longtime host, Alex Trebek.

Fan backlash toward Jeopardy! contestants is not completely unheard of. In an op-ed on Slate, 74 time-winner Ken Jennings, for example, noted that he was all too familiar with the public ire that Chu was receiving for his success on the show. More provocatively (and sociologically), Jennings went on to suggest a “racial angle” to the hostility leveled at Chu stemming from the fact he was a “bespectacled man with rumpled shirts and a bowl cut” who played into “every terrible Asian-nerd stereotype.” Is there truth to Jennings’ critique?

Asian American men have long been portrayed in the US media as sinister and conniving threats. This in turn has has affected the racialization of Asian American men in contemporary times:

• Robert G. Lee. 1999. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Even successful Asian American men such as professional basketball star, Jeremy Lin, have had to deal with unflattering stereotypes and racist caricatures from the media and general public:

• Stephen Suh, Kyle Green, Ben Carrington, Rosalind S. Chou, and C.N. Le. 2012. “Linsanity and the Model Minority Myth”, The Society Pages

All this connects back to what sociologists claim is the tendency for Asian Americans to be perceived as both racially inferior and culturally unassimilable:

• Jennifer Lee. 2013. “From Unassimilable to Exceptional.” The Society Pages
• Claire J. Kim. 1999. “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” Politics & Society 27(1): 105-138

Ukraine has faced turbulent times over the past few weeks. The current crisis began in November when President Yanukovych rejected financial stabilization talks with the European Union and instead took a bailout from Moscow. Weeks of protests have culminated in the deaths of many protesters and parliament ousting President Viktor Yanukovych, who has fled the capital in Kiev. Elections will likely occur in May, and Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution which toppled Yanukovych a decade ago, is a strong candidate.

While the media spins the protests as a pro-democracy and pro-EU push against a corrupt government, only 43% of Ukranians actually wanted the EU deal, and Yanukovych was actually acting in the favor of the majority. Ukraine has been deeply divided since its independence in 1991. In the country’s east, the majority speak Russian as their first language, where they also have historical and cultural links to Russia. In the west, the Ukrainian-speaking majority would rather see their country identify with Europe and the EU than with Russia.

The conflict in Ukraine is not just an isolated protest against the president or his decision, it may signal a much larger divide in national identity.

• Ararat Osipian and Alexandr Osipian. 2012. “Regional Diversity and Divided Memories in Ukraine: Contested Past as Electoral Resource, 2004-2010.” East European Politics & Societies. 26(3): 616-642.
• Volodymyr Kulyk. 2011. “Language identity, linguistic diversity and political cleavages: evidence from Ukraine” Nations and Nationalism. 17(3): 627-648.
• Rogers Brubaker. 2011. “Nationalizing states revisited: projects and processes of nationalization in post-Soviet states.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 34(11): 1785-1814.

Protest events don’t come out of nowhere. They serve as “switchmen” in the development of social movements, existing within a broader context shaped by culture and history.

• Doug McAdam and William Sewell, Jr. 2001. “It’s About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions.” in Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Ronald Aminzade, Jack Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth Perry, William Sewell, Jr., Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

For more on how sociologists study these kinds of social movements, check out this TSP roundtable.

After going years without an adequate form of gender recognition, Facebook users whose identities do not fit neatly into female-male binaries now have the option of selecting one of 50 options, including “androgynous,” “transgender,” “intersex” and “fluid.”  With an estimated 700,000 individuals in the US who identify as transgender, Facebook hopes that the expanded categories will help validate the gender identities of at least some of its users.

However, there is disagreement about the use of this kind of self-identification. Some seek broader public recognition while others view gender identification as futile.

• Katrina Roen. 2002. ““Either/Or” and “Both/Neither”: Discursive Tensions in Transgender Politics.” Signs 27(2):501-22.

Labeling categories of gender and sexual orientation may promote a “politics of containment” where society starts to decide who is and is not an “acceptable queer.”

• Ana Cristina Santos. 2013.  “Are we there yet? Queer sexual encounters, legal recognition and homonormativity.” Journal of Gender Studies. 22(1): 54-64.

On the other hand, by providing alternative options for gender identification state agencies and community-based service providers can expand access to services for people in poverty.

• Dean Spade. 2006. “Compliance Is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy” in Transgender Rights edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

For more on the recognition of gender categories on Facebook and beyond, check out these recent pieces from Cyborgology and Contexts.

Love is in the air this week, but not everyone in the music world has been feeling it lately. Macklemore’s performance of “Same Love” at the Grammy’s last month—as well as his win for best hip hop album and subsequent apology to Kendrick Lamar— drew a slew of comments from pop culture bloggers. For some, his music represents everything wrong with the privileged cultural appropriation of hip hop, but others thought the performance was an important illustration of how allies can contribute to movements for social justice.

So where is the proper place for allies in the world of identity politics? Should they spread the love, or stop hogging the spotlight?

When individuals speak from a position of privilege, they don’t risk a lot by advocating for change. Their perspectives may crowd out the voices of marginalized groups, or risk appropriating identities in a way that maintains privilege instead of challenging it.

• C.J. Pascoe. 2003. “Multiple masculinities? Teenage boys talk about jocks and gender.” American Behavioral Scientist 46(10): 1423-1438.
• 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): 95-119.

On the other hand, allies can be an important strategic resource for marginalized groups at the social level, both by contributing material resources and changing the surrounding culture.

• Doug McAdam. 2010. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. University of Chicago Press.
• Herbert H. Haines. 1984. “Black radicalization and the funding of civil rights: 1957-1970.“ Social Problems 32(1):31-43.

Either way, we have to realize that social movements are going to build up and break down identities, and thinking about allies helps us reflect critically on what it means to belong to a movement.

• Joshua Gamson. 1995. “Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma.” Social Problems 42(3):390–407.

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Security breaches can be slippery slopes. Fortunately, Friday’s failed planejacking ended with the containment of a Ukranian passenger who, claiming there was a bomb on board, attempted to reroute a Pegasus Airlines flight to land in Sochi during the Olympic Opening Ceremony. This success corroborates the findings of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism:  given that there have been no consistent changes in number of terror attacks during the past five Games, efforts to reinforce Olympic security have generally been effective. However, with the number of terrorist attacks striking Russia skyrocketing from 50 in 2003 to 250 in 2010, public safety at the Sochi Olympics continues to be a top priority. Safety and surveillance measures taken by Olympic officials have been largely successful at mitigating increased risks, but we’re left wondering why sport mega events are targeted in the first place.

Does the “spectacularization” of the Olympics make the games an ideal arena for terror? A historical look at terrorist attacks on the Olympics sheds some light on potential risks facing host cities.

• Richard Pringle. 2012. “Debunking Olympic sized myths: government investment in Olympism in the context of terror and the risk society.” Educational Review,64(3), 303-316.

Social forces—such as  global economic conditions and professional network structures—shape the security and surveillance strategies at sport mega events. How do these strategies change as both security concerns and expenditure rise?

• Richard Giulianotti and Francisco Klauser. 2011. Special Issue: Security and Surveillance at Sport Mega Events. Urban Studies, 48, 3157-3168.

Saturday Night Live has recently been criticized for lacking racial and gender diversity in both cast and crew. This is not a new problem, but the debate was reignited when Kenan Thompson, one of only two black cast members, stated in an interview that there were currently no black women on the show because “they never find ones that are ready”. Always quick to turn controversy into a joke, a recent SNL sketch had actress Kerry Washington playing a range of black women, mocking their own lack of diversity. Then, a little over a month ago, SNL hired Sasheer Zamata, the first black female cast member in five years. While the speed at which the show is addressing their lack of diversity is commendable, SNL’s diversity problem cannot be solved by a single hire, and the controversy illustrates that what gets deemed “entertaining” or “funny” is about more than the quality of the joke. In reality, deep-seated assumptions about race and gender strongly influence who shows up on your television screen every night.

Women face ongoing inequality in film and television production jobs, and while the rates of occupational segregation for women of color have fallen since the 1940s, their decline has stagnated since 2000.

• Denise D. Bielby. 2009. “Gender Inequality in Culture Industries: Women and Men Writers in Film and Television.” Sociologie du Travail 51(2):237–52.
• Olga Alonso-Villar and Coral Del Río. 2013. “The Occupational Segregation of Black Women in the United States: A Look at Its Evolution from 1940 to 2010.” Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

However, even as minorities gain access to white-dominated mediums, they struggle to control the way their culture is portrayed and perceived, as the media often perpetuates inaccurate representations of minority groups.

• Herman Gray. 2005. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

The SNL controversy is one example of the much larger cultural norm of marginalizing and stereotyping black women, whose misrepresentation in American society is a problem that runs much deeper than their perceived sense of humor.

• Patricia Hill Collins. 2004. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. Taylor & Francis.