False Alarms and Copy Cats

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Crime and Deviance, Janis Prince Inniss, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change25 Comments

author_janis By Janis Prince Inniss

MoBull Messenger is the University of South Florida (USF) emergency text messaging system that faculty, staff, and students can register for, in order to receive emergency notices. As I mentioned in a previous post, on the principle of not wishing to further enrich my cell phone provider, I do not have a texting plan. Yet, on October 5 I received 7 MoBull texts on my cell phone.

I received the following text at 1:47 pm: “Alert Tampa Campus- EMERGENCY: Armed intruder on campus. Stay inside. Lock doors. Emergency personnel responding.” About 20 minutes later, the alert gave the location of the armed person as the library and warned to “avoid the area”.

Click here to see video about the USF lockdowns

Almost exactly an hour after the first alert, I got this message: “Tampa Campus—A separate report of a suspect on a Bullrunner (campus shuttle) in the Parking and Transportation Services possibly armed. Avoid area and entire campus on alert. “ At 3:19, I received a fourth text message and began to wonder whether this was a joke—of poor taste to be sure—because the description grew stranger : “Tampa campus—white male subject seen in the Cooper Hall area in black tank top, cowboy hat carrying black puppy and a large hunting knife. Officers en route.”

Four minutes later I received the fifth text message as “clarification regarding multiple alerts”. The last two messages said “all clear” and that the “emergency is over”. Had I been on campus I would have heard sirens wail and possibly glimpsed SWAT team members with assault rifles! The campus was shut down for almost three hours.

This was the third time this year that USF has locked down its campus as a precaution against widespread campus violence.

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The time before this—in July—I received a MoBull Messenger text as I dropped off a colleague at his office after lunch; the text said that there was a gunman on campus! Although I was right across the road from USF, I drove away from the campus after reading that text. I completed some errands while receiving additional texts warning us to stay away from the campus. I called my mother to let her know that I was not there, as I knew that she was at home and probably seeing a news ticker on her television and that news of a gunman on the campus would cause her some panic.

When I had no other errands and the campus was still on lockdown I headed home and continued my work there. In this case, a “gunman” called a crisis center, reporting that he was in a parking lot on the USF campus with a gun that he was willing to use. The man may never have been on the campus, but was apparently suicidal and was taken for a mental evaluation under the Baker Act.

The first incident of this nature occurred in June when there was a report of a man with a gun in the USF Greek Village which houses 13 sororities and fraternities. This one turned out to be a uniformed ROTC student with his practice rifle. MoBull messages were sent out; the all clear was issued only 16 minutes after the initial message.

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In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes a “contagious epidemic” of teen suicides in Micronesia. These suicides began with a high-profile one that received lots of attention and was widely copied. Indeed, sociologist David Phillips has found that national suicide rates increase significantly after one is highly publicized. In the Afterword of the book, Gladwell notes that after the Columbine High school shootings in 1999, there were several copy-cat incidents—Gladwell argues these teens were “infected” by the Columbine shootings.

Might the USF false alarms lockdowns be due to copy-cats as well? The first case with the ROTC cadet may have set the stage: a mistake garnered a big response from the campus police and local media. The second episode—that of a gunman saying he was willing to use a gun on the campus was met with an even bigger response—a campus lockdown. Although this person may not have even been on the campus, again there was a big news story about the university responding to what was thought to be an emergency.

The first perpetrator of the most recent USF case was very familiar with the previous reports of armed subjects on the camps as well as with the results. Markenson Innocent not only updated his Facebook page throughout the incident, but also mentioned the bomb threat before it was made saying: "I hope they get my good side!” According to police, using another name, Innocent called police and said that Markenson Innocent had a gun and bomb at the university library. I guess Innocent did not want to take the chance that he would not be discovered or that the wrong person would be arrested. On the same day, there was an alert about a man on the school shuttle; it turns out that Vincent Thomas-Perry McCoy was “joking”.

Since one student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 32 people in 2007 before turning the gun on himself, U.S. universities have implemented plans aimed at minimizing the likelihood that this mass murder would be copied. Perhaps we at USF are fortunate that the act being copied here is nothing more serious than a false alarm. Do you have a different theory to explain what has happened? What do you predict will happen regarding USF campus alarms based on my theory, or yours, if it differs?

War, Suicide, and Emotional Labor

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Crime and Deviance, Sally Raskoff, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Social Psychology31 Comments

author_sally By Sally Raskoff

Janis Prince Inniss recently blogged about the cost of warclip_image002 and mentioned the rising rate of military suicides. As the New York Times reported, the suicide rate within the military is higher than that in the general population. The graph on the right shows the “self-inflicted death” rates from the Department of Defense from 1980 through 2008. While the peak in 1995 is disturbing, it is clear that the rates have been increasing since 2001.

Military bases overseas and at home, including Fort Hood and Fort Bragg, have seen tremendous rates of – and been in the news for – suicides, domestic violence, and sexual violence. They have instituted many different programs to prevent and deal with the stresses of military life.

For example, Fort Hood instituted a "Resiliency Campus" on the base where soldiers and their families can get help coping with the emotional, financial, and mental health issues they face before, during, and after deployment.

However, the source the source of the stress has not abated. We are fighting two difficult wars and no one can predict when they will end.

The shootings at Fort Hood were allegedly carried out by an army psychiatrist about to deploy, whose job was to counsel soldiers coping with combat stresses. He was also apparently vocal about his objections to about the war. This event and other such mass shootings, including the workplace shooting in Orlando, Florida the day after the Fort Hood incident, remind me of a phenomenon familiar to law enforcement, “suicide by cop” in which a suicidal person attacks others as targets of their anger and frustration yet fully realizes they themselves will die as a result of that act.

Some news coverage has focused on how Major Hasan’s interpretation of his Muslim faith may have been a primary factor motive for his behavior. However, there are many Muslim soldiers who have not acted violently toward themselves or their peers. Further, there are soldiers of many different faiths whose personal opinions about the war are not positive. Some of the soldiers who have acted violently towards themselves and their peers may have said a prayer before their violent acts, but religion is not the main issue here.

To understand this act of violence, I’d like to go back to basics: basic training, actually. Sociologically, the high and increasing rates of violence within the military, violence focused on loved ones and on oneself, can be traced to basic military training and culture.

In basic training, your identity is stripped away, literally. When you arrive, your clothing and personal items are locked away, not to be seen again until you’re heading for home or for your training base. You are given new clothes to wear, identical to everyone else. If you are male, you lose all your hair; if you’re female, you have strict guidelines as to how your hair can appear. You wear no jewelry, or embellishment of any kind. If your clothes have buttons or zippers, they need to be buttoned or zipped up. Your classes teach you how and whom to salute, the customs and courtesies of the service branch you’ve joined, including ranks and insignia.

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You rise in the morning with everyone else, dress quickly, and get in formation to march to breakfast, march to physical training, march to classes, march to your other meals, and march to anywhere else your training instructors want to take you. You look like everyone else and you must act like everyone else. Any individualistic expression is not encouraged.

These are my memories of basic training. Although I’ve been out of the Air Force for almost 30 years, I still remember much of that six-week period. I still eat meals too fast because of basic training!

At mealtime, we filed into the mess hall, picked up our trays, and filled them with food as we went through the line, much as anyone would in a cafeteria. You had to be sure not to take food you weren’t going to eat since you cannot throw any food away. When you approach a table, no one could sit down until there was a person at all four chairs. When your peers who were seated at the first table get up from their meal, people at the last table only have minutes to exit – with all food eaten – and the entire group gets into formation outside the mess hall. The first people cannot linger to allow the others more time since the training instructors are also in the room making sure that these rules are followed.

These rituals and restriction reshapes people into soldiers. You learn to finish what you start. You learn to work together with the other people in your unit to get the job done and get it done the right way. (The “right” way is the Army way, or the Air Force way, or the Marine way, or the Navy way, you get the picture.) You learn to suppress any emotion or feelings about what you are doing since you took an oath to do the job and your peers depend on you. You learn to respect the hierarchy of authority even if you don’t agree with the details.

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People who serve in the military can hold whatever personal opinions they want about political issues. However, they must do the job that they hold no matter if they agree with it or not.

In the military, to acknowledge emotional issues is to appear weak. To acknowledge emotional problems is to appear unable to do one’s job. To appear weak and not do one’s job, you leave your unit to do the job without you and that is not an acceptable alternative.

If one gets physically injured, that can be a tolerable way to leave the front and/or your unit and not suffer any stigma. But psychological injuries have not traditionally been considered within military culture.

We are now paying a lot of attention to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to explain the high rates of suicide and interpersonal violence within the service. Vietna
m-era veterans experience more depression, anxiety, and PTSD compared to pre-Vietnam era veterans and their rates of deaths from suicide, drugs, accidents, and homicide continue to be high many years after that conflict ended.

The military has created new programs to deal with PTSD, including public talks by high-ranking members on their own family losses or their own experiences of PTSD. They have also pointed out that PTSD affects brain structure and has physical causes, attempting to re-categorize it as a physical problem, not just an emotional one.

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Sometimes when boys and men are socially isolated they turn to violence. Social isolation is an important factor in explaining aspects of suicidal behavior, yet the gender distinction is important. The typical military context involves a combination of suppressed emotion, dangerous situations, and a competitive environment and this is the very definition of a masculine culture.

Sociologically, what is happening is that soldiers may use the tools of this culture – aggression and violence – when they experience high levels of prolonged stress and are unable to adequately deal with the situation due to the suppression of their emotions.

The bigger issue is that the masculine and patriarchal culture of the military undercuts its ability to effectively deal with issues of stress in prolonged times of war and deployments. The military features that make good soldiers can also create troubled and damaged people.

Those who do emotional labor, such as flight attendants and service workers, often have a backstage where they can vent or let down their performance of managed emotions. There is no backstage in the military since soldiers must control those emotions while in combat, with their units away from the front, and even with their families.

To limit wartime stresses we could include end war or decommission the entire military. Most would agree that these are not likely or optimal options. Changing the culture of the military is another logical option, but intentionally changing culture of any kind is not an easy task. How would military culture change to allow the full range of expression for human emotions yet still create soldiers who can effectively protect the country?

As long as the military is defined by aggression and emotional suppression, we have to expect that there will be a toll on service members (and their families), especially when there are prolonged exposures to wartime stresses. What might be a solution to this problem of increased violence within the service?

Sociology & Tiaras

On By econnellIn Popular Culture and Consumption, Theory47 Comments

By Hilary Levey

Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in Health Policy

Every Wednesday night at 9 pm I sit down in front of the TV, put on TLC, pull out my notebook, and do research for two hours. Yes, that’s right—watching the pageant shows Toddlers & Tiaras and the new show, King of the Crown, is part of my research. Back in 1999, when I was a sophomore in college, I did a research paper on child beauty pageants for a required sociology class. Little did I know that a decade later I would still be writing about pageants, but now as a professional sociologist!

Ever since the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, Americans have been simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by child beauty pageants. Many people didn’t know about these events until the death of JonBenét, in late 1996, but I have found that child beauty pageants have existed in the United States in one form or another since the 1800s. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the growth and development of a variety of events that are precursors to the child beauty pageants of today, including May Day festivals, baby parades, and beautiful and healthy baby contests.

All of these festivals, parades, and contests started at about the same historical moment. Such child-centered contests were part of a larger movement that began to socially value children in new ways. It was during this time period, from roughly the 1870s to the 1930s, that child labor was eradicated, compulsory education began, and children came to be valued as “economically ‘worthless’ but emotionally ‘priceless,’” according to sociologist Viviana A. Zelizer.. This re-evaluation of childhood helped contribute to the development of distinct children’s spheres, like clothing designed especially for children (see Daniel Thomas Cook’s work on kids’ clothes).

The Asbury Park baby parade was arguably the most famous of the baby parades and contests that started at the turn of the twentieth century, rewarding children for their looks and their costumes. In its heyday, in 1893, it drew 30,000 spectators; in fact, it was so popular that Thomas Edison made one of his first movies of the event, on September 12, 1904.

As the popularity of parades and contests declined at the turn of the twentieth century, modern beauty pageants, for adult women, began to hit their stride. The first “live” beauty contest is said to have occurred in Reheboth Beach, Delaware in 1880. After that, pageants began springing up at carnivals and fairs and on beaches along both coasts, with pageants available for every age and body type.

The most famous, successful, and enduring of all of these is the Miss America Pageant , founded by a group of Atlantic City businessmen in 1921. These men wanted to keep visitors on the shore after Labor Day, the traditional end of the summer season, so they came up with the idea of a bathing beauty contest. They held the first Miss America contest on September 6, 1921 (though it didn’t come to be known by that name until 1941) with only seven “bathing beauties.” By the next year there were 57 contestants, and from there the Pageant continued to grow.

After the Miss America Pageant first appeared on television in 1954—breaking all previous viewing records with twenty seven million viewers—child pageants as we know them today started to develop in the void left by the closure of the parades and contests (which was mainly because of fears of polio in the 1950s). If you’ve seen Little Miss Sunshine, then you have a pretty good idea of how these pageants work.

One the biggest questions the public usually has after watching Little Miss Sunshine or one of the TLC shows is: Why do people, almost always mothers, put their little kids in these pageants? I’ve given you a bit of historical background, but I want to suggest a few explanations from other academic disciplines, before turning to my sociological analysis. Psychological explanations usually draw on the idea that many parents vicariously live through their children. Pageant moms are looking for self-affirmation when they are told their child is beautiful; they may be frustrated with their own lives and appearances and push their daughters to succeed in ways that they have not.

Economists focus more on the investment these moms are making in their children. Here the idea is that someday, their children will grow up to be successful (perhaps related to their participation in these events), and they will then have more resources to take care of the parents when they are elderly. Or, for some families, the pageants provide the possibility of a financial windfall. For example, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears both did child beauty pageants. On a smaller fame-scale, some pageant contestants can earn money in other ways. Remember the cringe-worthy final answer of Miss South Carolina Teen a few years ago?

Caitlin has now parlayed that “answer” into TV appearances, highlighted on TLC’s King of the Crown, and a recent commercial. Other pageant contestants use the scholarship money awarded to pageant winners. For all its faults, some of which I write about here, the Miss America Pageant remains the largest source of college scholarship money for women in the world.

And this leads me to part of my sociological analysis o
f why mothers enroll their very young daughters in child beauty pageants, like those shown on TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras (for a more complete analysis of participation in child beauty pageants, check out a paper I recently published in the journal Childhood). The majority of the pageant moms I met explain that they have their children involved to help ensure that they will be successful later in life.

One pageant mom explains, “I just want to see my daughters go somewhere—go somewhere in life. I didn’t. I ended up having kids right away. I’m stuck at home now. I’m doing this for them.” The idea that pageants can teach children specific skills that will help girls be successful was brought up literally hundreds of times in interviews with pageant mothers. There are eight major skills mentioned by moms (in decreasing order of frequency): learning confidence, learning to be comfortable on stage and in front of strangers, learning poise, learning how to present the self and dress appropriately, learning to practice, learning good sportsmanship, learning how to be more outgoing, and learning to listen. Of course, these are lessons and skills the moms want their children to learn and the children may not actually be learning them…But that’s a subject for another blog entry!

What do you think—can you think of other sociological explanations that explain participation in child beauty pageants? What might some “big name” sociological theorists, like Pierre Bourdieu and Thorstein Veblen, offer as explanations? Have you ever thought about doing a beauty pageant, perhaps even to help cover the costs of college?

Everyday Sociology Talk: A Minute at a Sociology Conference

On By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Video: Everyday Sociology TalkLeave a comment

Ever wonder what a sociology conference is really like? Karen Sternheimer narrates a one minute tour from the 2009 American Sociological Association (ASA) meeting in San Francisco. To learn more about sociology conferences, click here or visit the following sites to learn more about upcoming meetings.

Eastern Sociological Society

Mid-South Sociological Association

Midwest Sociological Society

New England Sociological Association

North Central Sociological Association

Pacific Sociological Association

Southern Sociological Society

Southwestern Social Science Association

Canadian Sociological Association

International Sociology Association

Postmodern Theory and the Balloon Boy Hoax

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Crime and Deviance, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Theory7 Comments

author_karen By Karen Sternheimer

By now you have probably heard that the runaway balloon supposedly containing a six-year-old boy was a hoax, according to his mother's admission. The story received hours of “breaking news” coverage on October 15, and has since consumed countless hours of news coverage about the scam perpetrated on the news networks and concerned viewers.

If French sociologist Jean Baudrillard were still alive, I dare say he would not be surprised that a father would allegedly cook up such a scheme, or that he contacted the local news, the police, or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He might even say he’s surprised it took so long for something like this to happen.

As I recently blogged, Baudrillard described our contemporary mediated age as one where the boundary between image and reality has blurred to the point where they can no longer be neatly separated. Where once we might have had clearer distinctions between entertainment and reality, the two have fused, and the 24-hour news cycles and the Internet have helped them come together.

It has never been easier to enter into what was once a rarified space of celebrity: with YouTube and “reality” television, fame is increasingly based on promoting one’s private life rather than on professional achievements. It’s not that there weren’t people who were “famous for being famous” in the past, but we have so many more avenues to achieve instant celebrity now. There are more celebrities and they get famous faster. We likely forget about them more quickly now too.

Cable news is a big part of this equation. In competing for viewers of “fictional” programming and the myriad of other entertainment choices we have now, the news has morphed into infotainment: a hybrid that is a perfect example of Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality.

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Baudrillard suggests that hypperreality creates a uniquely entertaining experience, what he called the “thrill of the real.” This thrill is something we might experience when that “Breaking News” banner unfurls on the screen. But the thrill constantly weakens and extinguishes itself unless something even newer happens. So news becomes more about live action excitement than analysis and investigation.

Perhaps that’s why the same networks that pre-empted their regular programming to cover this story for hours later turned on the family by trotting out angry commentators condemning the family and talking with legal analysts about the charges they should face. The news networks sent reporters to dig up dirt on the family and reported that they couldn’t find evidence that the parents worked steadily, and interviewed neighbors and other acquaintances on camera to malign the father’s character.

Let’s face it, the news networks that covered this event got Punk'd (another example of postmodernity where celebrities thought they were living their private lives but were in fact part of a television show) but seem reluctant to admit it. Maybe behind the scenes news directors will see this as a wake-up call about the folly of chasing shiny objects—literally in this case—during a time when they could be covering other more meaningful stories in greater depth. I’d like to think that the next time a story like this “breaks”—and you know there will be a next time—news directors will think carefully about how much attention it really deserves.

Yes, the Heene parents deserve the bulk of blame for breaking the law, and for using their children to fulfill their own dreams of fame. They took advantage of our fascination with the real, the private, and the exciting. While they might not reap the financial rewards for diving into the fishbowl for the rest of us to watch, many clearly have (I believe their names are Jon and Kate).

All of this recalls the 1998 movie, The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey’s character finds out that his entire life is actually a television show, and that everyone in his life has been cast by the producers. Truman is devastated to find out that his whole world is a set.

Fast forward a decade later, and many people clamor to turn their lives into a television set, to convert their friends and family members into cast mates. Yes, money and attention are huge motivators. Baudrillard might add that the “real world” and the “television set” can no longer be distinguished from one another. It could be that many of us feel like life might be more thrilling if someone was watching, and that to matter in the twenty-first century is to be observed by others, a character in our own Truman Show. What other sociological theories do you think might help explain this phenomenon?

Drawing Lines in the Sand for Interracial Dating

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Janis Prince Inniss, Race and Ethnicity, Relationships, Marriage and Family, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change44 Comments

author_janis By Janis Prince Inniss

Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl decide to wed. Boy (Terence McKay) and girl (Beth Humphrey) decide to marry. Girl calls justice of the peace to arrange for them to seal the deal.

And that’s when what may be a fairy tale romance came to a screeching halt: The justice of the peace was Keith Bardwell who refused to marry the pair because McKay is black and Humphrey is white. Bardwell said his refusal to marry the pair was not due to racism, but because of his concerns for children that the union might provide According to Bardwell, neither group accepts such children.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/living/2009/10/16/wafb.no.interracial.marriage.wafbEmbedded video from CNN Video

Boy and girl did marry, but no thanks to Justice Bardwell.

What do you think of the justice of the peace’s decision? Even if we agree with Bardwell, how would we decide who should get married? I take it that this justice of the peace would not have married President Barack Obama’s parents: The president’s mother was S. Ann Dunham, a white woman from the American Midwest, while his father was a black Kenyan, Barack Obama Sr. (Click here to have a look at some of the President’s family tree in pictures.)

The president self-identifies as African American and to most of us probably “looks” black, so I take it that if President Obama showed up at this justice of the peace’s with a woman who was the same color his mother was, the justice of the peace would refuse to perform such a marriage.

But what about Malia and Sasha Obama, the daughters of the President and his wife? Only looking at their recent paternal genealogy, we know that one of their grandparents and two of their great-grandparents were white. What if one or even both of the Dunhams was really “passing” for white?

Hmm, to simplify our thinking, let’s put aside the idea that one or both was really of mixed race. So going ahead with the idea that their paternal great-grandparents were white, would a prohibition against interracial marriage mean that neither girl should marry a white person?

Now factor in their maternal ancestry. The New York Times recently published a family tree of First Lady Michelle Obama. Included among the First Lady’s ancestors are Dolphus T. Shields, Michelle Obama’s great-great grandfather whose mother was an enslaved African. Perhaps that’s not surprising given that Michelle Obama is African American. However, Mr. Shields’ father was white!

And how would the “American Indian” strands of the First Lady’s ancestry that the The York Times mentions factor in to the equation? Exactly how much ”white blood” would the younger Obamas need to have to marry someone white?

Going back to the case of boy and girl being asked to wed elsewhere by the justice of the peace in Louisiana, a look at the video of the groom being interviewed about this dust-up suggests to me that the new husband, McKay, is “mixed”. (Given our tangled ancestries, such terms really should have “recently” as a prefix.) Suppose McKay has white ancestors, how recent would they need to be for his marriage to Humphrey not to be considered interracial and therefore problematic?

President Obama once would have been considered mulatto (of one white and one black parent) —a term formerly employed by the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, in 1890 the Census Bureau tried to be more specific by adding the terms quadroon (one-fourth black blood) and octoroon (one eight black blood) to mulatto and black.

What ”portion” black are Malia and Sasha? Are you dizzy with the amount of math this way of thinking requires? More dizzying to me is that all of these terms and prohibitions (such as those from the justice of the peace) suggest that we know who is “fully” white or black or whichever race. In the context of trading enslaved Africans, the desire and need to “measure” black blood makes sense, at least economically and politically.

But given that we often don’t have to look very far to find “race mixing” in America, how can we make even attempt to regulate such unions? (Have you heard of Strom Thurmond? Thurmond was the longest serving Senator in U.S. history at the time of his death in 2003. He vehemently opposed Civil Rights but after his death, the daughter he had with a black woman revealed he was her father.)

As you might imagine, the Louisiana case has attracted lots of attention, including a call by the state’s Governor for Bardwell’s removal. Interracial marriage has long controversial, enough so to gain a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court: In the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, the Court struck down state laws against interracial marriage. The ruling reads in part: “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state." Just as well…unless you have a bright idea of how we could, with great efficiency and clarity, actually define someone’s race. This case and others like it highlight that race is not as clear-cut of a concept as many of us might think. While we often view race as a biological construct, it is a social construct that we constantly struggle to define and make meaning of, often with serious consequences.

Dichotomous Thinking: Structure and Agency, Nature and Nurture

On By econnellIn Sally Raskoff, Theory8 Comments

author_sally By Sally Raskoff

There are many basic sociological concepts that we all use to help us explain the dynamics of humans in groups.

Social structure is a core sociological concept that explains how societies (and other entities) take shape and maintain a particular form. Social institutions are part of that structure—institutions like education, politics, families, media, and religion all maintain and challenge societal norms. Those norms (guidelines for expected behaviors) exist to create social order – which is also a primary function of those institutions. Take all those institutions and their impact on norms, add in the actual physical structures in which they exist, and you have many different levels of societal structures that maintain that society.

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Families produce and socialize children who are further socialized within religious and educational organizations. Those religious and educational organizations tend to reinforce the societal practices that support the power structure in that society. The media reflects the power dynamics in society and typically reinforces the accepted practices.

While the media (and other institutions) may also challenge the status quo, it’s often co-opted by it. Notice how the Internet can be used to share any information across space and time yet as time passes, it has become more commercialized and its uses have been circumscribed and diminished – and more regulated.

We spend a lot of time in sociology classes talking about how societal structures limit opportunities and life chances for people in disadvantaged positions. We also discuss the societal dysfunctions that occur when the larger structures (institutions) of society don’t work as they should, thus signaling an imbalance that needs correction.

Structures may also propel people to behave in ways that are outside the society’s dominant norms. When a large number of people face barriers, they often create new structures that can help them navigate through or around those barriers. The Underground Railroad that facilitated escape from slavery created networks and communication techniques in the form of quilts (which provided coded directions to freedom) that operated below the surface of the dominant society.

Agency is the flip side of the structure coin. Individuals do have the freedom to act on our own choices. Commonly referred to as free will, it is true that people can make a decision to do something or they may just do it no matter what societal norms had been guiding them. No matter how many norms may exist in a society, people often behave in ways that deviate from those norms. Even when norms are written into the legal code, people break laws. Whatever barriers society may place in the path of people to reinforce the social class or caste system, some people may either break through those systems or operate completely outside them.

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People are not robots programmed to perform certain functions, no matter what science fiction says about it. (Donna Haraway has written some fascinating work about cyborgs if you’d like some dense and abstract feminist/post-modern theory to read.) () Even if we do move toward more bionic implants than we could have imagined, whether or not they can control our behavior to be entirely predictable will remain to be seen.

Sociology exists because people in groups create patterns that we can analyze scientifically. There is much variation in those patterns because of the diversity of factors and that thing called agency. Yes, people in groups create patterns (as do individuals) even as there is tremendous complexity and difference within those patterns. Both structure and agency are at work in all of the data we analyze.

The terms nature and nurture are often bandied about. Are these the same as structure and agency or are they parallel yet different issues? Nature implies that certain features or dynamics are innate or inevitably present while nurture links to the impact of treatment and social interaction in creating various features or dynamics. Nature seems a lot like structure as it exists as a given and seems impervious to change. Nurture seems more like agency since it suggests that people have some File:TwinGirls.jpg‘say in how they affect and are affected by others.

In their book The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann discuss how people create societies and then consider them as existing outside themselves and hence beyond their control. But social structure doesn’t just emerge from nowhere, it is built and maintained by the people in that society who conveniently forget or ignore that they created it. In this sense, nature could just be a term we use for phenomenon that seems given and unchangeable.

From scientific studies, we also know that our culture has a distinct fondness for dichotomous thinking. Moving between two extremes, our thoughts and discussions oscillate between right and wrong, good and bad, rich and poor, black and white, men and women. While being able to consider two things at a time may be a limitation of the human brain, a simplifying strategy, or a practice that society advocates to reinforce the amnesia that we create our society’s structures, the world is so much more complex than two opposing categories.

Use your sociology education as an opportunity to explore these issues, to peel the onion of society. As you consider the issues behind societal features we take for granted using sociological perspectives, your critical thinking skills will deepen and you will understand much more about how society really works.

Sex: It’s Not What it Used to be

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Karen Sternheimer, Sex and Gender, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change21 Comments

author_karen By Karen Sternheimer

As Sally Raskoff recently blogged about, the news of Roman Polanski’s arrest has sparked a conversation about how we think about rape and sexual assault of children. If Polanski loses his extradition fight and returns to the United States, he will return to a very different country than the one he fled. In 1978, the year he became a fugitive, the Rams still played in Los Angeles, Jimmy Carter was president, and the average price of a gallon of gas was 61 cents.

And as the New York Times recently noted, Polanski would also return to an America that has decidedly different mores about sex than we did during the 1970s. While in some ways we might have more liberal attitudes about sex, we are much more likely to condemn sexual assault today than we were in the 1970s, especially if children are involved.

Much of the sexual openness we attribute to the 1960s actually took place in the following decade, after birth control became more widely available. Oral contraceptives only became legal for unmarried women in all 50 states after the 1972 Supreme Court decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, which effectively legalized sex between unmarried men and women. Sex outside of marriage was technically illegal in many states, although these laws were not enforced often, but they remained on the books in some states until the Supreme Court ruling struck them down.

By the 1980s, sex was no longer viewed as an expression of freedom—with the discovery of AIDS, it was potentially dangerous. Ideas about recreational sex began to shift during the late 1980s and early 1990s as the disease spread and teen pregnancy rates rose.

Adults’ attitudes about teen sex are less lenient today too. In 1986 the General Social Survey, a nationally representative household survey, first asked respondents about their attitudes about teen sex (defined in the survey as sex between fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds). That year 67 percent of respondents answered that it was “always wrong,” compared with 73 percent in 2006, the most recent year for which we have data.

Just as concerns about consensual sex began to rise, legal responses to rape became more serious in the 1980s. For example, spousal rape was often considered an oxymoron, and it wasn’t until 1993 that all 50 states recognized it as a crime.

Acquaintance rape, or sexual assault committed by someone one knows, (and frequently called “date rape”) had barely entered everyday language in the 1970s, and states only began passing rape-shield laws – which made a victim’s sexual history and physical appearance inadmissible in court – in the 1970s. Michigan was the first state to pass a statute in 1974, with most states passing their own by the early 1980s.

Awareness about sexual violence had been increasing during the 1970s, thanks to small conscious raising groups and books published by feminist authors like Andrea Dworkin (Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality, 1974) and Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, 1975). These books were influential in literary and academic circles, but with the explosion of confessional daytime talk shows on national television in the 1980s, such as Oprah (which debuted in 1986), a much larger swath of the population heard stories from survivors of rape and child sexual abuse further opened the eyes of the public to sexual violence and led to calls for tougher punishment for sexual offenders. Allegations of sexual abuse at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California made for scandalous headlines in the 1980s, though all involved were acquitted in 1990.

Also drawing media attention were celebrity accounts of abuse. Former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur spoke publically about being sexually abused by her father in 1991. That same year, 1960s teen star Sandra Dee spoke of similar victimization from her step father.

In response to the increasing awareness about sexual abuse, social workers, medical professionals, and educators were expected to be on the lookout for tell-tale signs in children they encountered. Dramatic headlines kept sexual abuse in the news: Ellie Nesler famously shot her son’s accused molester in court in 1993, the same year that Polly Klaas was abducted from her bedroom by a stranger, and later found dead, causing national outrage and later prompting the passage of California's Three Strikes law, which mandates life in prison for an individual’s third felony conviction.

Public contempt for those that harm children—especially if the harm is sexual—rose to a fever pitch in the 1990s. Celebrities such as Woody Allen and Michael Jackson were accused of sexual abuse. (Allen was never charged; Jackson was charged in 2003 and later acquitted). Widespread allegations of sexual abuse by priests rocked the Catholic Church. Reports of sexual abuse allegations against teachers, coaches, and others became regular news stories, and from the coverage it seemed that children were under constant sexual threat.

Perhaps because of our increased awareness and concern about sexual violence, rates of rape have declined significantly since 1977. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Justice, respondents in 1977 aged twelve and older were almost three times more likely to have been raped than those who completed the survey in 2008.

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Child sexual abuse cases have been declining along with reductions in rape. A study conducted at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire found a 50 percent reduction in national sexual abuse rates between 1992 and 2006. While accurate measures of all cases of sexual abuse are impossible, this decline is still important, particularly at a time when awareness about abuse might encourage more reporting.

But concern about sexual violence against children has not subsided. If anything, it has increased. The public is seldom aware of decreases in crime. Add to that fears about new media, like social networking sites on the Internet and anxiety about sexual imagery in pop culture, and concerns about young people and sex only increase.

Polanski would have been better off dealing with his case—and f
ighting alleged prosecutorial misconduct—in the 1970s. Not only would attitudes about sex and acquaintance rape have been more favorable to him in the 70s, it would have been the right thing to do, given his admission of guilt.

Institutional Review Boards: Why Do We Need Them?

On By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Statistics and Methods24 Comments

author_janis By Janis Prince Inniss

So you’ve been reading about various sociological theories and ideas. And about some sociological studies. But have you given any thought to some of the ethical issues sociologists might face as we conduct research? Have you learned anything about the issues that we face in dealing with human subjects?

Much of the research that I have conducted has involved interviews and other qualitative methods. And I have found that people love to talk when they’re being listened to. Think about it, how many people in your life really listen to you? And pay you to tell your story?

This means that sometimes I learn intimate details about people’s lives. One such example is a study I worked on to identify strategies to improve the mental health care of children in the child welfare system. Our goal with this research project was to identify individual, family, and systems-level factors and circumstances that impact the psychotropic medications and services that children in the child welfare system receive. To conduct the study we used a mixed-methods approach that included analyses of some Medicaid databases and in-depth case studies of children in the child welfare system who received mental health care.

clip_image002Of course, the Medicaid database had lots of billing information, which is not the kind of information any of us would want displayed publicly if it were ours. The database has the type of services children received, their mental health diagnosis, date of birth, dates and length of service, sex, and race among other variables. Because I was working on the qualitative aspect of the study, I saw none of this raw data; someone else on the research team who was conducting the quantitative analyses and whose computer met extensive university-set security standards was allowed access to the data and would give the results to the rest of the research team.

clip_image004The case studies included a small sample of children, reviews of their child welfare charts, and interviews with the children and their families, child welfare workers, and other service providers. As we reviewed the charts, we learned very personal details about these children and their families. Because the focus of the study was children in the child welfare system, all of these children had been removed from their homes because of allegations of neglect and/or abuse.

Their charts (oftentimes boxes and boxes of documents pertain to one child because of the length of time they remain in the system) chronicle police reports, child protection investigations, assessments, treatment plans, and home visits by child welfare workers. And of course, during the course of the interviews we learned more about these families –and given our focus on mental health care, we learned about psychotropic medications—exactly what was being taken, for how long, with what results, as well as other mental health care.

What if in this post, I told you about one of the youth in this study? What if I decided to give you a child’s name and told you about the abuse that child suffered and the remedies taken? What if I did that to help you understand how to treat the same condition? Would that be ethical?

Have you heard of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)? Universities and other research institutions have them to ensure that research is conducted in an ethnical manner. There have been some atrocities committed in the name of research. The syphilis study at Tuskegee Institute began in 1932 and allowed African American men to die from syphilis more than 20 years after researchers knew that there was a cure for this disease; these study participants had been mislead about the true nature of the study. Perhaps you have learned about sociologist Laud Humphreys’ book Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Humphreys 1960s ethnographic research on anonymous sex acts between men in public bathrooms is often noted as unethical because his “subjects” had no idea that he was conducting research as he acted as a lookout for them.

clip_image006Given that these men were in public spaces, would you argue that Humphreys’ description of their behavior was ethnical? What about the fact that later, in disguise, he went to their homes? How did he know where they lived? He noted license numbers of some of their cars and with the aid of an accomplice (a friend who worked at the Department of Motor Vehicles) learned about their family lives.

Today, research participants are protected by IRBs. Researchers must undergo IRB training and take refresher courses annually. And before we can conduct any research, we must apply to our university IRB. The application includes a description of the study and explains in detail what we want to do with participants. The IRB has to have full knowledge of each proposed study: how many participants will there be, of what ages, how will they be contacted, for how much time will they be involvement, will deception be used, how much they would be paid. Risks and benefits of participant involvement must be detailed and if special populations are involved the stakes are even higher. (Can you think of why prisoners, children, and pregnant women might be considered special populations and subject to additional oversight by review boards?)

With all of this information, the IRB decides whether a study can be implemented as proposed. As you read about sociological studies, think about the ethical considerations that researchers must consider and take to IRBs.

Equality in Justice: Cognitive Dissonance and Fame

On By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Crime and Deviance, Sally Raskoff, Sex and Gender, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change14 Comments

author_sally By Sally Raskoff

Two cases involving the rape of a young girl have been in the news: one involving Roman Polanski's arrest and the other about Elizabeth Smart's court testimony. While these cases have the “adult male-minor female” rapes as their basic similarity, most other things have been very different, especially in news reports and public reactions.

The “Polanski” case actually involves this Academy Award winning director’s flight from sentencing after his guilty plea and conviction in the rape of the 13-year-old girl. After 32 years, he was arrested recently in Switzerland to await extradition back to the United States for sentencing and additional charges of evading justice. The news reports focus on what a terrible time he’s had in life, from his family’s losses in the Holocaust to the murder of his pregnant wife by the Manson “family”, and on the fabulous movies he’s produced since living in Europe after he fled Los Angeles.

Until recently, little had been mentioned of the rape survivor, who is now an adult woman. A recent article fully identifies her and discusses the apparent civil settlement in which Polanski allegedly was to pay her half a million dollars, although no public documentation can confirm that she received those funds. Her lawyers’ requests to the court for him to pay the settlement past its due date ceased about the time she wrote a public letter stating that she thinks he should be able to return to the country, ostensibly to attend the Academy Awards show when he was nominated in 2002.

The "Smart" case involves the nine month long abduction of Utahan Elizabeth Smart. Her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, subjected her to a “plural marriage” ceremony and according to Smart repeatedly raped her. She is now 21 and gave her testimony at the mental competency hearing of Mitchell just before leaving on her religious mission to France. Mitchell is cast as a religious fanatic who told her that he was doing what the lord wanted him to do. As of this writing, he has not yet been convicted of the crime as it has not yet been established if he is mentally competent to stand trial.

Let’s look at these cases sociologically.

Note the language used in the reporting of each case. Is it clear who the victim is in each case?

Many news reports and editorials about the Polanski case lament his treatment by the justice system, and some even suggest that he is the victim. Some articles discuss the cost of bringing him back to court, which makes the taxpayers the victim. Some articles focus on how the rape survivor, the actual victim, image said that he should be free to live his life and if she says that, well, we should let her decide, which reinforces the idea that he is the victim.

The Smart articles focus on her as the rape survivor and certainly do not cast Mitchell as a victim. They cast him as crazy or as a crafty rapist who acts like a religious fanatic so as not to take the blame for his actions.

The headlines use “Polanski” and “Smart”, not “Mitchell” or “Geimer”.

Polanski’s name is certainly a familiar one since he is famous. Smart has become famous as an icon of parental fear – the girl who was abducted from her bedroom at night. As is typical in rape cases, Samantha Geimer’s name was withheld when she was a minor yet she herself went public when she wrote the letter in support of Polanski. Mitchell is not a name familiar to people even though most know that some man abducted and raped Elizabeth Smart.

From this point forward, I will refer to the “Smart” case as the Mitchell case.

Note the basic features of each case: an adult man raped a young girl.

Is this contested in either case? Yes and no. Mitchell has been in a mental institution since his arrest in 2003 and the recent hearing was to establish whether or not he could stand trial. Polanski testified that he did the crime (although in his plea agreement he plead guilty to “unlawful sex with a minor”) and his latest issues revolve around his flight from the justice system to escape sentencing and serving more time. Mitchell has not been convicted yet Polanski has. However, in the news articles, Polanski’s guilt is downplayed and Mitchell’s is assumed.

Note the social class differences in each case.

While Polanski is clearly a member of the upper socioeconomic strata, Mitchell and his co-defendant wife are in the lower strata. Polanski was able to flee to Europe, continuing to make his films and generate his substantial income. While the social class status of Ms. Geimer is not fully apparent, it is likely that she and her family live a middle class life, even if she did not receive the settlement. The Smart family are firmly in the upper middle class of suburban Salt Lake City, while the Mitchell couple were basically homeless and firmly ensconced in the lower echelon of society’s social class levels.

Social class alone can explain much of the dynamics of these cases. Those with the higher class status tend to gain more favorable coverage in the press. Polanski received more favorable coverage than his victim did, and Smart certainly received more media attention than her abductor did.

One might hope that people who have been victimized would receive more careful and supportive press coverage, this certainly didn’t happen in the Polanski case.

Note the issues of fame and social power in each case

Social power derives from social class but also from fame. Smart was featured on America's Most Wanted and has spoken in public and to Congress about sexual image predator issues and legislation.

Most particularly in the Polanski case, fame insulates the perpetrator from paying his full debt to the justice system. So much so that some even call into question his guilt even though that had been firmly established in court. (See Harvey Weinstein’s quote about the “so-called crime” in the Los Angeles Times). Reaction to the Polanski case avoids discussion of his guilt in this crime of rape and focuses on other issues that are not salient. Consider how Mr. Weinstein might react if a female family member of his had been the victim in this case – might he advocate the release of that person as he does Polanski?

The exploitation of women in the entertainment industry is a related topic— some may not see why having sex with someone at a photo shoot was wrong – even if she was underage and under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Some also point to the mother who dropped her off at the house where the rape took place as culpable.

However, only the rapist is responsib
le for the rape, no matter what bad decisions others might have made.

What isn’t being talked about?

In the Polanski case, the exploitation of women is not a topic that many are choosing to discuss. How many other girls and women have been raped by people with power over them? We’ll never know, especially if those powerful people are not held to the legal standards that govern our society.

Absent from the discussion of the Mitchell case are the cultural underpinnings of how religion played a role in the abduction and rapes. The “plural marriage” as it was called when she was first rescued, was code for rape yet the word "rape" was not uttered for some time after she was freed. That this particular crime took place in a specific religious and cultural environment with a history of patriarchy (and, decades ago, of plural marriage) isn’t a coincidence. Elizabeth Smart was raised, as most of us are, in a culture of male dominance and female obedience.

It is also likely that Smart, like Patty Hearst and many other children abducted by sexual predators, was experiencing something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome. When she was first discovered, she did not readily identify herself. When held long enough under certain circumstances, people may “go along” with their captors and not escape when they might have had the chance.

So, how can we explain the different ways that we are reacting to these cases?

While both cases have at their core the rape of a 13- or 14-year-old girl by an adult man, public discussion and reaction to these cases is notably different. Social class, power, and fame all have their influences yet cognitive dissonance is also taking place.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when people have to reconcile two conflicting ideas at the same time. We often try and alter one of the ideas to be consistent with the other. For instance, people generally want to like and respect people with fame and power. When those people do bad things, we can react in many different ways but in the Polanski case, so many years after the event, some want to believe he paid his debt to society by having lived such a troubled life. Thinking of someone as both a good person and a rapist is very difficult to reconcile. Normally we decide that someone who commits rape is no longer a good person. In this example, many people, especially many in the entertainment industry, have chosen to downplay his actions to maintain the idea that their conflicting image of him as a good person.

But the justice system doesn’t see it this way, and after all, time spent living in a Swiss chalet isn’t the same as “doing time”. How do you think we would talk about the case if Elizabeth Smart’s alleged rapist had fled the country for more than three decades and evaded justice?