Category: Jonathan Wynn

College Campuses as Lifestyle Centers

On By econnellIn Class and Stratification, Jonathan Wynn1 Comment

Jonathan Wynn author photoBy Jonathan Wynn

“Welcome to our newly rebranded Lifestyle Spa and University! We aim to make sure that your stay as…” [Needle scratch]

Okay, college marketing is not quite like that. But, what is it that helped you make your decision to attend your college or university? Maybe it was the graduation rates, the faculty/student ratio, study aboard, or the financial aid? Was it because your parents were alumni?

What about the collegiate lifestyle?

A 2012 national study, The American Freshman found that 40% of students said that social life was part of their consideration.

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Canopies and Contact Zones

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Jonathan Wynn, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change2 Comments

Jonathan WynnBy Jonathan Wynn

Last month, the Speaker of the House for Ohio, a Republican named Larry Householder, was upset by a local library story time hosted by a drag queen. He said, “Taxpayers aren’t interested in seeing their hard earned dollars being used to teach teenage boys how to become drag queens.” But taxpayers should absolutely be interested in the idea that a public space like a library can be places where people who are different from one another can meet and engage with each other. In fact, State Rep. Householder should visit a few places like that.

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg recently published a wonderful book on this very topic, called Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. The idea is as simple an idea as it is profound: societies need public places for people to engage with others in meaningful ways. Parks, libraries, public places of all sorts are where people from different places can come together. This idea has really taken off in the last few months, and I know that librarians are happy to have Klinenberg write in a New York Times op-ed that the effort should start with libraries!

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The Sociology Everyone Knows: Meritocracy and Gentrification

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Jonathan Wynn, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change1 Comment

Jonathan Wynn author photoBy Jonathan Wynn

Perhaps you’ve heard that sociology just explains the things we already know about in the everyday world just in less accessible ways. But what if I told you that the everyday world already had a couple of very sociological ideas already in circulation? In my last blog post I wrote about a term that is used in everyday language that is sociological in origin: the self-fulfilling prophecy. For this post I want to write about two more everyday terms we don’t think of as sociological in origin: meritocracy and gentrification.

You have likely heard and even used the term meritocracy, believing that it is part of the foundation of the American education system. The term has certainly been in the news lately due to the college admissions scandal. (Todd Schoepflin recently wrote an Everyday Sociology blog post about it.)

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The Sociology Everyone Knows: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Social Psychology, TheoryLeave a comment

Jonathan Wynn author photoBy Jonathan Wynn

This month Yale economics professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller posited that the next recession could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I read about it, thought about how common a term it is. You, perhaps, have used this term in your everyday lives but haven’t realized that it’s a sociological term in origin. (Unless you read this Everyday Sociology blog post from almost ten years ago!)

According to Robert K. Merton, the self-fulfilling prophecy is a “false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true.” The subject of an article by Robert K. Merton, he builds on the “Thomas Theorem” (coined by W.I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas): when a situation is defined as real, it is real in its consequences. The self-fulfilling prophecy is when a prediction is stated, no matter how incorrect, the resultant series of actions will be what he calls, brilliantly, a “reign of error.” He then states that everything that happens can be used ex post facto, as proof of the initial incorrect prediction.

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A Sociological Road Trip (with Podcasts)

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Jonathan Wynn, Social Problems, Politics, and Social ChangeLeave a comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

My family just finished a long road trip from Massachusetts to Texas, and we listened to a lot of podcasts. (I’ll be a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin.) I realized that the podcasts we listened to on the way, served as a kind of sociological road trip—a tour of a series of sociological topics: urban development, race, politics, cultural history, music, technology, and the criminal justice system. I think a sociology instructor could assign any of these series and have students connect their readings and lecture notes to their content. They are rich in description, and most are begging for some sociological analysis.

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The Political Power of Sports and Music

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Cities and Urbanization, Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change4 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

As the NFL settled with Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, who had claimed that the league colluded against them, I’ve marveled at how sports have been such a political lightening rod. (Peter Kaufman wrote about it for Everyday Sociology in 2016.)

In the opening weeks of the 2017 football season, NFL players, coaches, owners, commentators, and fans expressed outrage over the president’s insistence that players shouldn’t protest the national anthem. While Colin Kaepernick’s protests over police brutality were the start, momentum brewed. (An important point: U.S. Soccer star Megan Rapinoe was the first white professional athlete to join him by kneeling during the national anthem last year.)

Individual athletes can wield considerable symbolic power, from John Carlos and Tommie Smith to Muhammad Ali. NFL players are largely acting on their own. (Peter Kaufman wrote about this a few years ago as well.) The NFL as a league, however, has much greater power and, as an organization, it has been covertly political: from dealing with issues of domestic violence backstage to agreeing to have the U.S. military stage patriotic displays before games. Similarly, NBA players voicing their support for Black Lives Matter has been effective, but when the NBA as a league decided to move its All-Star game to New Orleans to target funding for flood relief and rebuilding efforts in the city it infused $45 million into the city’s economy.

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Emotional Intelligence and Sociology

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Psychology2 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

There is a secret piece of your college education that I think we could talk more about. Despite its importance, I am only now I am realizing that it’s perhaps one of the most important skill sets you need to develop as an undergraduate. It is tucked into the classes and the general requirements, hidden between the lines. It’s called emotional intelligence, and I think it can be a profoundly sociological—not just psychological—phenomenon.

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The Social Construction of Geography

On By econnellIn Cities and Urbanization, Jonathan WynnLeave a comment

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

Ever since I was a kid I loved maps. How are maps sociological? They seem to just be objective reality, right; elevations, physical roads, and directions from point A to point B.

You might be surprised at just how much of a social construction our human geography is. I used to pore over maps, looking at the street systems, all the neighborhoods. Where did that name come from? Mapmaking—or, cartography—might seem to be an objective science. But it is not the mere reporting of the names of towns and directions of streets. Mapping is a social science!

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Clue: A Center of Knowledge, 15 Letters

On By econnellIn Jonathan Wynn, Popular Culture and Consumption6 Comments

Jonathan Wynn (1)By Jonathan Wynn

This weekend I carved out a little time to do The New York Times crossword. I love puzzling over the clues, watching a quadrant emerge, and the satisfaction of finishing. As I sipped my coffee, I thought about how social life is a lot like a crossword puzzle.

Here is one clue from the July 28 puzzle: “What you might charge for a ride.” My mind cast about for a five-letter word. It couldn’t be TOKEN or TICKET. But then I remembered that puzzle masters love word play, and realized that “charge” has multiple meanings. The answer was TESLA—the name for Elon Musk’s electric car.

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