politics

‘Sociological Gobbledygook’ and Public Distrust of Social Science Experts

Isabel Arriagada on October 13, 2017
Photo by GotCredit, Flickr CC

In oral arguments during the Supreme Court’s recent case about partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin, political science research was presented to demonstrate the effects of redistricting plans on voting outcomes. In response, Chief Justice John Roberts commented that he was wary of  “sociological gobbledygook,” questioning the data presented. As public figures like Roberts question expert knowledge, social scientists are increasingly concerned about public perceptions of social science research and maintaining trust between the academy, the government, and the public. Examining the relationship between experts and the public helps us understand the role of social science in the public sphere.  

Some scholars have suggested that distrusting experts might be rooted in the American value of an open society that treats everyone equally. According to this explanation, people distrust social scientists –and experts in general– because they believe these experts belong to a privileged and disconnected  “intellectual class.”
Negative views of this intellectual class matter because they lead people to think experts have hidden political biases and that they use scientific knowledge to obtain self-interested political and economic advantages. These views also affect the way people evaluate political movements and politicians.
Social scientists are looking for strategies that could help them bridge the gap between their research and the public, and some recommend social scientists get involved in the public sphere. A study of academic credibility among college students found that students often view faculty who work in the public sphere as more credible because of their perceived personal commitment to the broader community.

Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be

Yagmur Karakaya and Jacqui Frost on October 3, 2017
Photo by Herry Lawford, Flickr CC

Worries about rapid technological change negatively affecting society abound — the advent of the internet, increased availability of smartphones, and ubiquity of social media have many concerned that people are constantly “plugged in” and, as a result, tuning out the world around them. These concerns were revitalized with the recent publication of psychologist Jennifer Twenge’s new research, which finds that a social media heavy diet is associated with depression and social isolation among teens. However, Twenge explains, “The aim of generational study is not to succumb to nostalgia for the way things used to be; it’s to understand how they are now. Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both.” Social science research on nostalgia warns against idealizing the past, but also points to varied uses and meanings of nostalgia over time.

Seen as a sickness when it first entered circulation centuries earlier, nostalgia became a common trope in the late 20th century, moving from the medical field to everyday life. Nostalgia is typically defined as a “sentimental longing for the past,” and is often associated with an idealized remembering of “how things used to be.” In this way, nostalgia can be viewed as reactionary and regressive — calls for returns to “traditional families” or “tight-knit communities” are often cast in a language that selectively highlights the positives of previous social forms and ignores the problems associated with them. For example, Stephanie Coontz finds that there has never been a “traditional family” that protects people from poverty or social disruption.
Nostalgia can also be exploited by those in power to further ideological ends. For example, think Trump’s electoral campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” or Brexit with its “Take back control” discourse — both imply a better past. This type of nostalgia is usually vague in terms of the era and place of longing, yet has an exclusionary vision of society that has strict rules about who belongs.
However, recent research complicates these negative connotations of nostalgia by exploring some of the different affective, sentimental, and ideational roles that various kinds of nostalgia practice perform. Research finds that nostalgia can be both a comfort and a catalyst for change, and some argue that nostalgia can be an important basis for thinking into the future. Sociologist Fred Davis recognizes nostalgia as a tool for identity construction and a lens through which people construct, maintain, and reconstruct their identities. He finds that nostalgia reduces insecurities and self-threat by keeping fears of insignificance at bay and reassuring us that our self “is as it was then.” Similarly, Katharina Niemeyer argues that the process of “nostalgizing” provides a sense of belonging that can increase solidarity and lessen loneliness.

Race and Reproductive Control

Allison Nobles and Amber Joy Powell on September 29, 2017
Photo by Frank de Kleine, Flickr CC

Several abortion providers have come under intense criticism for offering free abortions to women affected by Hurricane Harvey. While this criticism echoes decades of social and political debates regarding women’s reproductive rights, the control over women’s bodies extends far beyond the second-wave feminist movement during the mid-20th century. For example, recent calls for the removal of a statue honoring J. Marion Sims, a doctor known for medical contributions to the field of gynecology and who performed experimental surgeries on non-consenting enslaved black women without anesthesia, illustrate the historical links between reproductive control, gender, and race. Sociologists allow us to trace the long history of controlling black women’s reproduction.

While historical accounts of reproductive rights rhetoric in the 19th century point to the gendered issue of men’s control over women’s bodies and the valorization of traditional motherhood, they neglect how political rhetoric also drew on ideas of white superiority. As more immigrants migrated to the U.S., Anglo-Saxon political elites worried that greater migrant representation would quickly dismantle their political power, and so American physicians encouraged Anglo-Saxon women to bear children for the sake of continued political power among whites.
Even though white women were subjected to political rhetoric that sought to control their reproduction, their capacity to reproduce the white race meant they were privileged relative to black women. This privilege was shaken when white women gave birth to mixed-race children, however, and these women were sometimes forced into indentured servitude. On the other hand, racially mixed children born to black women during slavery were not threatening to a white racial order. Instead, they were viewed as symbols of white men’s social and economic control over black women.
During and after slavery, black women were commonly depicted as sexually deviant, hypersexual and promiscuous. State-sanctioned practices to control black women’s reproduction–like coercive birth control and mass sterilization campaigns where doctors performed hysterectomies on black women that were not medically necessary–reflected these cultural images. When black women did have children, restrictive welfare policies limited the state support they could receive, further drawing on racialized constructions of black women as lazy, ignorant, “welfare queens.” Both sets of state practices reflect the attempt to control black women’s sexuality, reproduction, and families.

For more on the ways mothers are controlled and policed, check out this TROT on morality and maybe-moms.

Propaganda and Atrocity in Myanmar

Brooke Chambers on September 21, 2017
Photo by Mathias Eick, EU/ECHO, Rakhine State, Myanmar/Burma, September 2013. Flickr CC

The Rohingya, a Muslim minority group, have been the target of violence for years in Myanmar, also known as Burma. But in recent weeks, international media coverage has surged following a spike in violence that has led to over 120,000 Rohingya fleeing their homes. The increased media attention, however, has also provided a platform for an anti-Rohingya propaganda campaign that argues the Rohingya are “terrorists” and deserve the violence that befalls them. Sociologists have brought new insight into how propaganda enables the acceptance of atrocities and how it can directly impact rates of violence.

Propaganda campaigns often demonize a group by characterizing them as less-than-human. Refugee communities, for example, are often treated with fear and suspicion by members of their host nation. This can also negatively impact individual-level interactions with the mistrusted group, such as higher rates of expressed aggression and contempt. Studies show that when a group is dehumanized, those outside of the group find it easier to exclude them and assume that they are more deserving of problems in their lives.
Scholars have also examined patterns of violence and how perpetrators make decisions through the use of propaganda. Radio propaganda played a key role in the Rwandan genocide; on hills where radio reception was better, the rate of killing was higher than in areas where reception was limited. Groups such as ISIS use social media to motivate and recruit individuals. With the increasing prominence of social media, understanding how these mechanisms enable the acceptance and perpetration of violence is essential. They also indicate that positive social media campaigns could help to counter propaganda.

 

Backtracking on Title IX?

Evan Stewart on September 13, 2017
Photo by Hamza Butt, Flickr CC

As students return to school, colleges and universities across the country are increasingly concerned about their role in preventing and disciplining sexual misconduct, harassment, and assault. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently announced changes to the Obama administration’s guidelines for Title IX investigations of sexual harassment in higher education. DeVos drew criticism this past summer in hearings about Title IX for limiting the participation of student survivors and receiving testimony from advocates for accused students regarding harassment and assault. Others criticize campus investigations of sexual misconduct for a lack of transparency and due process. Social science research can help us understand the institutional and cultural forces that shape this serious problem.

The Institutional Story

Rather than focusing on sexual misconduct, U.S. law tends to categorize it as a kind of sex discrimination. The difference matters — it means that colleges, universities, and the Department of Education have taken a set of legal guidelines originally meant to fight sex discrimination in education and sport (Title IX) and use them as the basis for investigations of sexual misconduct. This improvised solution makes it easier to overlook the fact that sexual harassment happens when institutions provide power to harassers, not just when they explicitly discriminate.

The Cultural Story

Then again, the Board of Regents isn’t in the bedroom. Hookup culture on college campuses creates an environment in which sexual activity is separated from relationships. Some students, both men and women, find this empowering and liberating. The trouble is that others find it makes for emotionally confusing and unfulfilling sexual situations where violence and coercion can arise.

Political Protest and the Call for Law and Order

Amber Joy Powell on August 3, 2017
Photo by Elvert Barnes, Flickr CC

“They use their media to assassinate real news…all to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism, and sexism, and xenophobia, and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding, until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.”

Last month, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch spoke these words in a new video campaign targeting progressive political protesters. The ad features black and white media footage of protest signs with the words “RESIST” and shows protesters looting, breaking windows, and starting fires in the street. Loesch and the NRA have since received widespread criticism for the advertisement’s seemingly pro-violence rhetoric, even evoking a video response from BlackLivesMatter. While the NRA maintains that the advertisement is not intended to encourage violence against progressive political protest, the black and white imagery depicting protesters as criminals is eerily reminiscent of political campaigns (e.g. the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s) that used political action as a call for criminalization and law and order.

In times of spiraling economic instability, political divisiveness, and social inequality — such as the Great Depression or the Civil Rights Movement, the result is often public unrest and widespread protest. In order to quell state criticisms, elite political actors on both sides of the political spectrum develop campaigns that heighten public anxiety of crime by conflating political dissent with criminal activity. President Nixon, for example, ran on a campaign of “law and order” and called himself part of the “silent majority” on this issue. Regardless of actual fluctuations in crime rates, the public often accepts these messages of criminalization and tough on crime policies. This law and order rhetoric then legitimizes police and military aggressive surveillance – and at times, physical confrontation – against protesters.
We can link the current tide of mass incarceration to these types of campaigns in the 1960s and ’70s. Though the Johnson administration is lauded for taking important legislative steps in welfare reform, Elizabeth Hinton’s recent work argues that the administration simultaneously developed legislation, like the Law Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAA), that expanded police control through federal funding and toughened criminal sanctions amid a time of sit-ins, boycotts, and marches by (young) black advocates against Jim Crow practices. The Johnson administration helped create the “War on Crime,” and their political rhetoric rested upon the notions of black urban pathology and individual (as opposed to structural) economic failure.

How Geography Structures Punishment

Veronica Horowitz on June 27, 2017
Cartogram of Total Disenfranchisement Rates by State, 2016. The Sentencing Project.

Amy Bach, a lawyer and criminal justice journalist, built a free public tool titled “Measures for Justice” that contains data on over 300 county court systems in 6 states. The nonprofit has received funding from the burgeoning activism of the tech community — Google gave Measures for Justice a grant for $1.5 million dollars and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative recently announced they would be awarding the nonprofit $6.5 million. Due to the fragmented nature of the criminal justice system, the Measures for Justice research team frequently had to travel to individual counties in order to request records.

Sociologists who study punishment have long recognized the importance of geography in structuring disadvantage, at multiple levels. For instance, there are tremendous differences between states in the scope and impact of felon voting restrictions. Florida, for instance, contains 27% of all disenfranchised felons in the United States—in large part due to its policy of disenfranchising people after they have completed their sentences.. On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont and Maine allow even prisoners to vote.  Another way that geography structures punishment is through children’s experiences of parental incarceration, which varies substantially by region. Moreover, the extent of racial disparity also varies regionally, with African American children experiencing the highest risks in all regions, and Latinos experiencing the most disadvantage in the West and Northeast.   
In a similar vein, even new forms of cybercrime are structured by geography. Sociologists have recently started to explore how these new types of crimes, such as cyber-victimization, are shaped by state-level characteristics.
These efforts could prove useful for scholars and for the public. For example, Measures for Justice developed a “Fair Process” indicator, which is closely tied to the social science concept of procedural justice — the idea that citizens will be more likely to comply with the law and requests of law enforcement if they perceive the system as fair. Recently, reforms and police training based on procedural justice have begun to be widely implemented.

Veronica Horowitz is a Ph.D Candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota who studies punishment, mercy, and gender in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Sex Ed and its Discontents

Allison Nobles on June 8, 2017
Photo by The People Speak!, Flickr CC

Sex education is a contentious subject in U.S. politics. Before Obama’s presidency, the federal government only funded abstinence education, but in 2009 Obama created the Office of Adolescent Health and diverted some of these funds to create an approved list of practices shown to prevent teen pregnancy (several sources show abstinence-only education does not) through research. With Trump as president, the future of sex ed is an open question, but sociologists can offer some insight regarding what we already know.

Public sex education or “social hygiene” appeared in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century in response to concerns about increasing urbanization and growing sexual temptations. During the 1960s and 70s, sexual cultures in the U.S. underwent further shifts, influenced by feminism, youth culture, and the gay rights movement. However, anxieties about sex, especially for youth in the U.S., remained. Debates about what kind of sex education to provide for youth seemed to occur between two poles — sexual liberals who supported a comprehensive sex education in schools and sexual conservatives who supported abstinence-only education. 
No matter which type of sex education is implemented, sex ed is ultimately about regulating youth sexuality. Political actors and popular conversations alike frame youth sex as a social problem that requires intervention. Much of this discourse focuses on sex as a danger for children and young adults. Thus, sex education in the U.S. draws on an assumption of risk, relying on prevention-based education.
However, sex educators and the curriculum they use do not assume all children are equally innocent or at risk. Scholars show that sex education often draws on racial stereotypes of youth of color as sexually deviant. Youth of color are “adultified” and thus perceived as more sexual than their white peers. For instance, teachers often characterize African American girls as sexually opportunistic and assume Latina teens are inherently at risk of teen pregnancy. Further, boys are assumed to be sexually aggressive, and girls are held responsible for dealing with boys’ desires.

Conservative College Students as a Campus Minority?

Cena Loffredo, Eleanor Miller, and Melody Goodin on June 1, 2017
Photo by Jirka Matousek, Flickr CC

Today we are featuring a guest post by students at Oberlin College, who submitted a #TROT post as part of an active learning exercise for their political sociology class, taught by Professor Christi Smith. If you or your students would like to submit a post, please email tsp@thesocietypages.org.    

In today’s contentious political climate, campus political environments have become hotbeds of activism. In addition to the recent slew of (sometimes violent) demonstrations protesting conservative speakers on campuses, some conservative students report that they feel physically endangered by the fervor of their liberal peers. This is leading many to keep a low profile about their political views, or some to even transfer. Others, however, are becoming highly defensive, polarizing, and contrarian in their political views, and are more likely to become a “firebrand” of conservatism as a result of their experience. Sociological research shows how these trends are not entirely new, and a college’s institutional culture can shape conservatives’ attitudes and activism.

We traditionally assume that young adults tend to be more liberal, and then grow more conservative as they get older. Yet political views are more contingent on the act of rebelling versus conforming. Classic sociological research shows that conservative students  in the 60s often followed the views of their parents, while more liberal students said they were actively rebelling against theirs.
More recent studies focus on mobilization in college conservative movements, finding that institutional features of different schools can change how these groups express their beliefs. College professors tend to be more liberal, due to their advanced educational backgrounds, the disparity between their level of education and their income, and their demographic trend towards identifying with more liberal religious chapters. Some schools foster a culture of dialogue where conservative students can engage these ideas as equals, while other, often larger, schools create an environment where confrontational activism is the best way to be heard.

The Meaning and Measurement of Secularization

Jacqui Frost on May 25, 2017
Secular Hall Lamp, Leicester. Photo by Chris Hoare, Flickr CC

President Trump recently signed an executive order that removes the financial threat churches face when their leaders publicly support a political candidate. While many argue that the order is largely symbolic and too narrow to mean any real change, others think it went too far, and the order has sparked discussions about the proper place of religion in what many see as an increasingly secular country. Long-standing discussions among social scientists about the meaning and measurement of “secularization” help put Trump’s order in context and reveals the complexity of religion’s role in American society.

At its most general, secularization is defined as the process whereby the political and/or societal significance of religion and its institutions wane slowly and religion becomes differentiated from the secular public spheres of social and political life. But the way religiosity is measured in studies of secularization matters. For example, while many have pointed to a decline in church attendance, or behavior, in both the U.S. and Britain as indicators of secularization, others argue that this trend has not resulted in a loss of religious beliefs.
Social scientists typically measure religiosity using the “3 Bs” approach — belief, belonging, and behavior. This approach accounts for the different ways that religious individuals hold religious beliefs, belong to and identify with specific religious belief systems and denominations, and enact those beliefs and belongings through behaviors like prayer, religious service attendance, and fasting. Individuals can combine the “3 Bs” in a multitude of ways, and while some “believe but don’t belong,” and others “belong but don’t believe,” an increasing number of individuals eschew religious beliefs, belongings, and behaviors entirely.
Similarly, scholars have identified multiple “levels” of secularization: religious decline, differentiation of secular and religious spheres, and the privatization of religion. While the traditional conceptualization of secularization assumes that each level is linked, some argue that each is a distinct process and that one does not necessarily lead to the other. Trump’s recent executive order is a step towards the deprivatization of religion in the U.S, where religious groups are stepping back into public life and engaging in political and social debates more than they have in the past. But this deprivatization can and is happening alongside trends of religious decline, as the U.S is also seeing increased religious disaffiliation among younger generations.