politics

This week’s Supreme Court decision to uphold Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in college and university admissions stirred up a lot of legal controversy, and will likely lead to more court cases about these policies in other states. In the wake of conversations about constitutionality, however, it is often easy to miss the problems that affirmative action is meant to be correcting.

Racial inequality, especially in the workplace, is very real. Employers regularly make decisions based on race which clash with existing civil rights law.

•  John D. Skrentny. 2014. After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Most Americans tend to think of diversity in very general, open and optimistic terms, but this “happy talk” often makes it difficult to directly address underlying racial attitudes—and the inequalities they produce—with policy changes.

•  Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann. 2007. “Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The Cultural Ambiguities and Consequences of ‘Happy Talk.’” American Sociological Review 72(6): 895-914

Beginning on April 6, 1994, the Rwandan genocide lasted nearly 100 days leaving an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 dead.  While the campaign to exterminate the Tutsi-minority was led by Hutu extremists, it would be a mistake to hold a single group responsible for this mass atrocity.  Comparative studies of other conflicts show that it would also be a mistake to consider genocide an anomaly.

While we often see the conflict as a clash of racial or ethnic groups, the cycle of violence is often part of larger structural forces that form political identities through privileged rule.

• Mahmood Mamdani.  2001.  When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Sexual and racialized violence are some of the most well-known parts of genocide, but conflicts over property and the political construction of difference are also elements which occur earlier and may act as warning signs.

• John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond. 2009. Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comparative studies of atrocities in other contexts can also show how societies remember suffering.

•  Robyn Autry. 2010. “Memory, Materiality, and the Apartheid Past.” Contexts 9(3): 46-51
•  Barbara Sutton. 2010. “Situating Memory in Argentina.” Contexts 9(3): 52-57

For further reading, check out this TSP feature on The Crime of Genocide.

These days, if kids learn all they really need to know in kindergarten, it means they’re a year behind their preschool-educated peers. Fortunately for children in NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio managed to secure $300 million in state funding to provide free prekindergarten citywide. Although the mayor’s pre-K proposal carried the day, the public education debates in New York echo nationwide controversy over which policies promise the best long-term outcomes. Sociologists wonder, who benefits most from programs like Head Start?

Though policy debates continue, the positive impacts of preschool have been known for a long time. These programs prevent learning difficulties, promote healthy development, and decrease the likelihood of incarceration for urban and low-income kids.

• Richard K. Caputo. 2003. “Head Start, Other Preschool Programs, & Life Success in a Youth Cohort.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 30(2): 105-22.
• Arthur J. Reynolds, Judy A. Temple, Dylan L. Robertson, and Emily A. Mann. 2001. “Long-term Effects of an Early Childhood Intervention on Educational Achievement and Juvenile Arrest: A 15-year Follow-up of Low-Income Children in Public Schools.” Jama, 285(18), 2339-2346.
• John R. Berrueta-Clement. 1984. “Changed Lives: The Effects of the Perry Preschool Program on Youths through Age 19. Monographs of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, Number Eight”. Monograph Series, High/Scope Foundation.

One caveat to this trend, though: a rapid expansion in pre-K access might also mean increased misdiagnoses of ADHD in young children.

• Steven Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler. 2014.  The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance. New York: Oxford University Press.

For more on how children’s mental health labels change when institutions change, check out this recent TSP Reading List post on autism.

Last month Comcast announced its plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, and internet subscribers may have to choose Comcast as their broadband provider even if they don’t want cable in the near future. With rising cable rates, the merger is stoking fears and outrage among the public, and politicians like Senator Al Franken. The deal has yet to be finalized and the FCC may instruct Comcast and Time-Warner to pump their brakes before merging.  If the deal succeeds, however, the nation’s two largest cable and broadband providers are sure to become a behemoth on the information superhighway.

While profit is a big motive for acquisitions and takeovers, companies also try to take over close members of their social networks to reduce competition. Monopolies and oligopolies are especially likely in industries with only a few major players and close ties.

• Donald Palmer, Xueguang Zhou, Brad M. Barber, and Yasemin Soysal. 1995. “The Friendly and Predatory Acquisition of Large U.S. Corporations in the 1960s: The Other Contested Terrain,” American Sociological Review 60(4): 469-499.
• Marshall Barron Clinard, Peter C. Yeager, and Ruth Blackburn Clinard. 1980. Corporate Crime. New York: Free Press

What does this mean for women, people of color, and low income communities? Rising prices for internet access would expand an already-large “digital divide” in who can use the web and who gets represented on it.

• Eszter Hargittai. 2004. “Internet Access and Use in Context.”  New Media Society 6(1): 137-143.

Also, check out Eszter Hargittai’s “Office Hours” interview where she discusses the expanding gaps and inequalities in the level of internet skills possessed by so-called “digital natives.”

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.

Despite being struck down in Kansas and vetoed in Arizona, proposed legislation granting businesses the right to refuse service to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation has been spreading across a number of states this week. As victories for gay rights leave conservative citizens looking for novel ways to fight back, the meaning of religious freedom is called into question. While the line between religious freedom and civil rights often seems like a matter of public opinion, both the enforcement of these laws—if any pass—and the fight against them face a number of institutional hurdles.

Religious and political factors have historically influenced attitudes towards gay marriage. Here’s how:

• Darren E. Sherkat, Melissa Powell-Williams, Gregory Maddox, & Kylan Mattias de Vries. 2011. “Religion, politics, and support for same-sex marriage in the United States 1988–2008.” Social Science Research, 40(1):167-180.

Public opinion may not be enough to change this kind of legislation, but controversy helps. State governments rely more on public conflict and issue salience as motives to act, and may be bad at protecting the LGBT population from job and housing discrimination “even when the public supports the pro-minority position.”

• Jeffrey Lax and Justin H. Phillips. 2009. “Gay rights in the states: Public opinion and policy responsiveness.” American Political Science Review 103(3):367-386.

Moreover, how good is the “gaydar” at these religiously inclined businesses? Sexuality is learned and performed in a wide variety of social situations, and identifying patrons’ sexual orientation might pose more of a challenge than lawmakers think.

• John H. Gagnon and William Simon. 2005. Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Transaction Publishers.

Controversy continues to rage over the alleged “job-killing” effects of the Affordable Care Act and potential increases in the federal minimum wage. Kathleen Sebelius recently weighed in on the Congressional Budget Office’s report about the ACA, reminding us that the CBO’s “2 million jobs lost by 2017” figure comes from Americans cutting their work hours, not employers cutting their jobs to cover healthcare costs. With a new poll showing Americans think the job market is the number-one problem today, however, why would we see these trends? The ACA and a higher minimum wage may not be a job-killers—instead they remind us that employees can demand better working conditions.

We shouldn’t necessarily think of coverage programs in terms of “jobs lost.” Instead, giving employees affordable health coverage may actually free them from “job lock.” Economic research shows that benefit programs can give low-income workers the security and potential mobility to seek out better jobs.

• Cynthia Bansak and Steven Raphael. 2008. “The state children’s health insurance program and job mobility: Identifying job lock among working parents in near-poor households.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61(4): 564-579

While benefits can give employees the opportunity to quit, organizational characteristics like group job satisfaction and flexibility in the workplace also affect the likelihood that employees will want to quit.

• Phyllis Moen, Erin Kelly, and Rachelle Hill. 2011. “Does enhancing work-time control and flexibility reduce turnover? A naturally occurring experiment.” Social problems 58(1): 69-98.
• Kimberly Jinnett and Jeffrey Alan Alexander. 1999. “The influence of organizational context on quitting intention an examination of treatment staff in long-term mental health care settings.” Research on Aging 21(2): 176-204.

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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Why would people experiencing homelessness refuse shelters in some cases? They are often trapped between policies which treat them as criminals for making their own shelter and sick if they seek help.

Despite all the news about an icy “polar vortex” currently gripping the United States, debates over climate change were quite heated at the United Nations Climate Summit.  In a recent interview addressing the protests at this year’s conference, Greenpeace Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo said, “Our message to our political leaders is that nature does not negotiate…You can’t change the science — we have to change political will.”  Recent figures indicate that greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are at an all-time high, and The World Meteorological Organization projects greenhouse gas emissions will be 12 billion tons higher in 2020.  Such an increase will likely result in a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius.  As greenhouse gas emissions rise, so are anxieties among many social scientists.

Sociological research suggests that the culture of organizations within the environmental movement itself is responsible for the lack of traction on addressing climate change.

• Brulle, Robert and Jenkins, J. C.  2008, Spring. “Fixing the Bungled U.S. Environmental Movement.” Contexts. 7: 14-19.

Which countries are more likely to take a seat at the negotiating table? The following study offers some predictions based on a macro-level analysis of global inequalities between rich and poor countries.

• Roberts, J. T. 1996.  “Predicting Participation in Environmental Treaties: A World-System Analysis.” Sociological Inquiry. 66(1): 38-57.