cool language map of the day: how people say soda

From the Department of Cartography and Geography at East Central University.

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the trouble with garfinkel

John Levi Martin’s new book, The Explanation of Social Action, is a riot, meaning I’m thoroughly entertained and intellectually provoked at the same time. The ultimate aim of the book is to provide a new basis for judging the quality of social theory. I’ll say more later about how well he accomplishes this goal. For now I just want to draw attention to one of my favorite footnotes of all time. It appears early in the book when John is talking about theorists he is going to discuss and those he dismisses by their absence:

I might reasonably also be asked why no use is made here of the work of Garfinkel (e.g., 2002), which had many of the same influences and made many of the same critiques of conventional sociological explanation. The answer is simple: Garfinkel chose to write in gobbledy-gook, and although I do not begrudge him the enjoyment he so obviously received from this activity, I also see no reason to wade through the results to extract arguments that were made previously and more clearly by others. Finally, rather than indicate to his sociological readers that there was a wide range of inspiring and dissenting traditions from which they could draw (the approach of the current work), Garfinkel instead attempted to put his own formalizations in between his students and the phenomenological tradition, acting more like a cult leader than a scholar. Even did I not find this somewhat disappointing on a human level, it would make little scientific sense to reward such behavior.

This gives you a taste for the kind of book he has written. You may not agree with everything John writes in this book, but he certainly knows how to make punchy points.

sociology as a hard science major

Why don’t we offer a “hard science” sociology track? If you teach at a university with a lot of decent social science departments, it’s an easy major to implement. Except for math soc, all the courses are there already. My version:

• Intro soc
• Research methods
• Social theory
• Basic stats (hypothesis testing) + applied regression analysis
• Microeconomics
• Demography
• Social Network Analysis
• Mathematical Sociology/computational models
• Intro game theory
• Breadth: a few courses in qualitative topics; three courses of topics in sociology (like race, gender, education, etc.); a capstone course

The background that a student would need is about 1 year of calculus and some computer literacy. The only course that soc depts don’t already offer is math soc. But I think that could be offered, or made an elective. At a competitive R1 school, I’d imagine that you could get 3-4 majors per year. A minor could probably bag you 5-8 students per year. I bet a few hard science types would be happy to tack it on as a double major. And the cost would be zero.

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meet me in carbondale!!!

On Wednesday February 1,  I will be a guest of the Department of Sociology at SIU-Carbondale. I’ll be giving a talk on role of antiwar activism in the broader sphere of American activism. I’ll also be giving a grad skool rulz style chat.  Send me an email if you want to hang out. And of course, if you have an open slot in the seminar schedule, send me an email. I work cheap.

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sociology and management phd program admissions – comments and open thread

My Facebook news feed is filled with colleagues commenting on graduate program admissions. Let me take this opportunity to make a few comments and open it up for discussion.

1. If you are applying to IU, I am quite sorry. We probably won’t be offering you admissions. It’s just a fact. We reject the overwhelming majority of applicants, including many who will go on and have great careers in sociology.

2. The rest of my comments are directed at faculty who are serving on admissions committees. First, departments vary in their strategies and procedures. Here are IU, we read through every single application. Of course, some folders get more attention than others. The folks with rock bottom GRE’s and a 2.9 GPA won’t get more than a quick glance, if that.

We do read a lot of folders in detail because IU employs a sort of “Moneyball” strategy. We look for diamonds in the rough. A lot of our star students, who go on to dominate the job market, were high performers at relatively low status schools. So we don’t rely on a steady feed of polished applicants from the West Coast and Ivy League. We find the gems from the liberal arts and public schools of the Midwest and South. It’s a strategy that requires reading folders closely, but it pays off in spades. IU has great students.

3. It is hard to develop meaningful distinctions with a certain class of students. You might call them the stereotype sociology undergrads. The profile is that they major in sociology and have a decent GPA. They also have decent verbal scores, but bad to miserable math scores. Unless they can make the case that their math score is an aberration (e.g., they did well in freshman calculus), it’s hard for them to move to the top of the pile.

4. Admissions committees often have trouble interpreting applications from foreign countries. Sometimes it’s language, sometimes it’s simply a different grading system. Also, you have to work extra hard to distinguish between students who are more interested in migration than the academic career. Some regions have a reputation for less than trustworthy credentials. That’s why it’s good to consult with colleagues from those nations  if there’s a candidate who might be a good fit. If I were to advise foreign applicants, I’d insist that they show that they “get it” (i.e., understand academia) and have a credible signal of commitment to academia.

5. Letters of recommendation: My opinion of letters continues to slide over time. The more I do admissions, they more flaws I see. First, there is little variance among letter writers. Second, there is a double selection effect. Students only approach profs who like them and who have given them good grades. Third, a lot of letters are obviously lame. For example, I have read many letters that insisted the student was top notch (top 1% or 5%), yet the GRE’s and GPA were clearly atrocious. Fourth, a lot of students, especially those in low status schools or who have non-academic employment, have letter writers who are not in a position to write honest and thoughtful evaluations. I’ve seen a lot of letters by bosses, academic advisers, project supervisors, and so forth. I don’t count it against students, but it doesn’t help.

6. The 1% of letters:  Still, every once in a while, there’s a letter that makes a clear and compelling case for a student. The profile of the letter writer is that they are an active teacher and researcher. They provide some concrete evidence that the student is actually exceptional, or that they are better than the transcript. They often have extensive experience with the applicant, or they can explain why the performance in one course is remarkable. Sadly, I’ve read only four or five letters that fit this mold, out of hundreds. The rest are generic and uninformative.

7. Random thoughts: Statements are good for sorting students, but only broadly. If the applicant is interested in social work or activism, academic sociology isn’t a good fit. I read transcripts carefully to spot praiseworthy or suspicious behavior (e.g., lots of withdrawals, hard courses, upward trajectories). Writing samples are good measures on general writing, but still, I am reluctant to make a decision on a product that was often not originally intended to be research sociology (e.g., a term paper in history or a policy report).

Add your admissions questions and remarks in the comments.

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how to be a world class funk bass player in one e-z step

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matt yglesias kind of gets it right on science profs and science majors

Matt Yglesias has a short article at Slate about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). The article is called “Do STEM Faculties Want Undergraduates to Study STEM fields?” Yglesias focuses on different funding structures and TA’s.  I’d focus on faculty funding formulas. Faculty and graduate student funding in the sciences relies heavily on external income sources. In the social science and humanities, funding is mainly internal. Deans allocate FTEs (faculty lines) and graduate program class sizes (# of PhD students) based on a combination of merit and, more importantly, enrollments. Thus, you have an incentive to created bloated undergraduate majors, which leads to more grad students. It’s not the other way around – large grad students do not lead to more majors.

The incentives do not encourage strong teaching in the sciences. While people don’t intentionally teach bad, they do in practice because there is no reason to do otherwise. Consider the typical experience of a freshman in a big science department:

• They are a decent student in an American high school.
• They are thrown into a large lecture class with little supervision, except maybe the once a week lab or discussion section.
• The TA’s have no teaching experience. They often have bad language skills.
• Grading is often punitive – curves are often used. Students can still get crummy grades even if they learn a fair amount of material.

Adding insult to injury,  a lot of fields, like physics, have poor job prospects, especially for people with only a BA. Furthermore, graduate schools in law and medicine don’t give you credit for a low GPA just because it was in a hard major. STEM is a raw deal for marginal students. Why bother with this insanely hard major that is badly taught and will punish you with low grades? Switch to a different field, get decent grades, and have a real career.

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romney should take a chill pill

A lot of people will tell you that South Carolina creates a whole new ball game in the GOP primary. Voters have finally seen through the phoney Romney and are swarming to Newt Gingrich. Of course, this might be happening. Nothing is written in stone, but I have my doubts because people who get elite endorsements tend to be the winners.

So who is ahead in endorsements? Check out the web site 2012 National Endorsements at p2012.org. The endorsement winner, by a wide, wide margin is Mitt Romney. No Senator has endorsed Gingrich  – not a single one. Only the Texas and Georgia governors have endorsed Gingrich, and Romney is 54-12 in Representative endorsements.

So why is Romney tanking? First of all, he’s not. He won New Hampshire and came in second in two other states. Second, he’s got the backing of the party, which translates into money and other support. Third, he’s still in either first or second place national polls.

It bears noting that Romney is now battling in his weakest region – the South. If any region has Republican voters who insist on traditional Christianity from leaders, it’s the South. After Florida, you have a lot of Romney friendly states. In February, we have Nevada, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, and Washington. In theory, Michigan should be Romney central, but the Midwest can be tough to predict (see Iowa). On Super Tuesday in March, we have Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota.

Romney is the only guy with the cash to go national. If he can just stop the bleeding in the South, he’ll get the nomination by cobbling together the Northeast, the West and some of the Midwest. I can’t see any other candidate with the strategy, money, discipline, and “appeal” to simultaneously fight across the country.

My one caveat is that I might be underestimating the role of religion. I don’t buy the stories that voters turned off to Romney because of his wealth. Lots of wealth people have won nominations and the presidency, even those with slimy backgrounds. South Carolina Republicans just voted for a guy who took a million dollars in consulting fees from lending institutions. However, it is very easy for me to see how conservative Christian voters simply can’t stand to vote for a Mormon.

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self-publishing – winning!

Readers know that I decided to self-publish The Grad Skool Rulz ($2 – cheap!). It’s an advice manual for people in PhD programs. It also contains advice for assistant professors as well. I want to share what I have learned about self-publishing.

First, you need a decent plan if you want to succeed at self-publishing. Any decent editor will tell you that your book depends on getting the message out to the right people. So, when I decided to make the jump and self-publish, I only did so after realizing that the blog provided a great advertising for the book. The Grad Skool Rulz had a consistent following and three of them have been reprinted on the website “Inside  Higher Ed.” I had an audience and a product that people liked. As long as I gently reminded people about where to find the book, I knew I could get people to consider getting the book.

Second, if you are used to executing your own self-managed projects, self-publishing isn’t so bad. To publish the Rulz, I had to do the following: produce a text, edit it, format it, create a cover and open an account. This, it turns out, is a fair amount of work, but still way, way easier than getting tenure, writing my dissertation, or dealing with the crises that pop up in my life. In other words, if you can actually write and you have self-direction, it isn’t that bad. There are even books and websites that tell you how to do it. And of course, I had lots of help. A friend designed the cover, orgtheory fans helped me edit the text, and so forth.

Third, self-publishing can be profitable. Once I realized that the Rulz had a notable audience, then all I needed to be profitable was for a small handful of people to shell out $2 a pop. Orgtheory links really help there. It adds up.

Fourth, self-publishing can be more successful than regular publishing. At the current rate, which is much lower than the weeks after initial release, my self-published e-book will likely sell more copies in one year than my physical book has in almost five years. Some of it is due to content. An academic monograph has a much more limited audience than an advice manual, but it shows that with the right product and strategy I can get a better outcome from self-publishing than traditional publishing.

Five, this is a format for retaining control over the content. The Grad Skool Rulz are opinionated and not suitable for peer review, but I knew from reader response that the Rulz were valuable, Thus, self-publishing is a good choice.

I don’t recommend it for everyone and it isn’t suitable for all texts, but I can say from personal experience that self-publishing works.

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blog spotlight: souciant

My good friend, Charlie Bertsch, has an excellent web site called Souciant. It’s high quality essay writing – personal observations, politics, and modern culture. The site has a great crew of writers. A few recent examples:

• Death of a Promise Keeper by Charlie Bertsch- a tasteful reflection on having a neighbor who is very different than you.
• Withering Away of the State(s) by Mitchell Plitnick – what happened to the two state solution?
• The Supreme Leader’s Muzak by Cameron McDonald – what tyrants listen to.

Check it out – I know you’ll find something that you like.

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why blacks spend more time in jail

If you look at the range of penalties, most of the black-white gaps in criminal sentences disappear when you include initial charges. Source: Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences by Rehavi and Starr.

It’s long been known by researchers that American blacks are more likely to spend time in jail than whites and they serve longer prison sentences. However, it’s not known exactly why that is. Do blacks commit more serious crimes? Are courts handing out tougher sentences to black defendants? Are different laws applied to them? Since a lot of evidence in this areas focuses on the terminal stages of prosecution (e.g., pleas bargaining), it’s hard to to tell.

A new paper by Marit Rehavi (UBC econ) and Sonja Starr (Michigan Law) uses some excellent new data on Federal sentencing behavior to come up with a striking and simple answer. Blacks receive longer sentences because prosecutors are more likely to charge them with crimes that require minimum sentences. From the paper:

This study provides robust evidence that black arrestees in the federal system—particularly black men—experience moderately but significantly worse case outcomes than do white defendants arrested for the same crimes and with the same criminal history.  Most of that disparity appears to be introduced at the initial charging stage, which has previously been overlooked by the literature on racial disparity in criminal justice.  Other factors equal, we estimate conservatively[1] that, compared to white men, black men face charges that are on average about seven to ten percent more severe on various severity scales, and are more than twice as likely to face charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences.  These disparities persist after charge bargaining and, ultimately, are a major contributor to the large black-white disparities in prison sentence length.   Indeed, sentence disparities (at the mean and at almost all deciles in the sentence-length distribution) can be almost completely explained by three factors: the original arrest offense, the defendant’s criminal history, and the prosecutor’s initial choice of charges.

In other words, in the modern system, prosecutors often have the option of charging you  with crimes that require that you serve some minimal amount of time. Blacks are more likely to be charged with violations carrying minimal sentences and this accounts for most of the black-white gap in sentencing. According to some estimates, like Table 1 (p. 22), the odds double that a prosecutor will charge a black male with a minimum sentence offense. Depending on who you measure it, this results in a punishment that’s about 7-10% more severe.

The strength of the paper is that the authors have access to Federal data bases that provide data from arrest to conviction. That way, the authors can account for issues like prior criminal record and the severity of the offense, as recorded by law enforcement at the time of the arrest. There are some limits to the analysis. Certain types of crimes are excluded because relevant data doesn’t exist. For example, one important class of crimes, drug offenses, are excluded because amount of drugs is not reported in the data base. Regardless, it’s a massive data set that covers an important portion of the legal system. Bottom line: no matter how you look at it, prosecutors are being more harsh on black defendants.

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links and ironies of anonymous and megaupload

Here are some more Anonymous links:

• The group has big plans for 2012, here’s the announcement (watch the video).
• You can follow Anonymous on twitter, @Anon_Central.
• There’s a new documentary, We are legion: the story of hacktivists (it’s now playing at Slamdance Film Festival, the alternative to Sundance).

Also, Anonymous has recently retaliated against the shutdown of the filesharing site Megaupload (wiki site here) and the arrest of its Finnish-German hacker-founder Kim DotCom.  Here’s the NYT story about the arrest.  This fella is a piece of work: he was arrested at his $30 million dollar mansion in New Zealand (yes, with Finnish flag flying), and apparently about $6 million worth of vehicles were also confiscated.  Yes, he made his money via illegal filesharing (of music, movies etc) – about 50 million people visited the site daily.  Anonymous retaliated by hacking various sites, including the DOJ, MPAA, Universal. Interesting issue: free filesharing, important to the Anonymous ethos, has now created the type of concentration of wealth that the movement is fighting against.  Robin Hood got rich.

Kim Dotcom managed, just last month, to get some music celebs (Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, etc) to endorse Megaupload:

Needless to say, Universal did not like the song or video.

interview with jenn lena – music sociologist!

Our good friend Jenn Lena has a new book called “Banding Together.” It’s about rise of music scenes and the creation of culture. In the youtube clip, she is interviewed by Eric Schwartz, editor at the Princeton University Press. Spring book forum, anyone?

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new martin luther king virtual archive

The King Center, in collaboration with JP Morgan Chase, Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, the King Family, and volunteers from the US Veterans Curatorial Programs, have established an online website with papers from the Martin Luther King, Jr. collection. These are actual reproductions of documents.

Some interesting documents that I found:

• Planning memo for direct action in Montgomery and Birmingham.
• A knock at midnight – sermon on nonviolence.
• Why I am opposed to the War in Vietnam

Just use the search bar at the top. Vital for anyone in interested in Civil Rights history or American social movements.

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keep the internet uncensored – call your representative today

Dear orgtheory readers:

As Teppo noted today, there is now a proposal in Congress that attempts to curb online privacy (“Stop Online Piracy Act”). The goal of fighting piracy is admirable. As a self-publisher of e-content, I enjoy being paid for my work. However, as written, SOPA requires providers to actively monitor all links and be responsible for user behavior. Furthermore, SOPA and a related bill, PIPA, gives various private and public groups the power to essentially censor the internet on the pretext of fighting pirated content. Read the summaries at Wikipedia here and here.

If you agree that the current bills create dangerous opportunities for censorship, please call your representative. The Elecrtonic Freedom Foundation has a website that tells you how to do it. All you need to do is make a quick phone call and tell the staff member that you oppose these bills. It takes less than a minute. I have already called Rep. Todd Young and Senator Dick Lugar and I have urged them to vote against these bills.  Elected representatives do respond to public pressure.

Fighting online piracy is important and we all benefit from an Internet where businesses can make a profit, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of giving various groups the power to censor the Internet through litigation and state fiat.

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wikipedia blackout and SOPA

Despite its many problems, I use wikipedia, a lot.  Too much.  Sure enough, just now I tried to dig something up – and got the wikipedia blackout page.  Given the blackout-  where will we quickly read up on SOPA (or whatever else)?

The SOPA thing is a complicated matter – a fascinating tension between protecting intellectual property and free speech.  At the extreme – should online sites like Pirate Bay (free movies, music and books) be allowed to operate freely?  Few people say “yes” to that one (including Jimmy Wales), so the questions emerge in the gray areas. But SOPA itself is a mess, no question.

contradictions and confirmation bias

I don’t envy these people who are tasked with coming up with a memorial quote that is simultaneously pithy and meaningful.  Hendrick Hertzberg, among others, is criticizing the architect of Martin Luther King’s memorial for failing to take the context of King’s speech into account when he decided to use this truncated quote on the side of King’s statue:

If you read the sermon, it becomes clear that, not only did the architect commit a hatched job,  the paragraph he pulled actually contradicts the whole point King was trying to get across.

King’s point was to rail against the “drum major instinct”; the drive in each of us that says “hey look at me!”  But then, toward the end, he sort of makes a verbal personal foul and says: if you want to call me a drum major then at least say I am doing it for the good of mankind because that is not… er… quite as megalomaniacal as… uh… I mean… anyway back to what I was saying….

My take is that the quote came from a moment in which King started down an unfortunate verbal path and was trying to get out of it to get back to his main point.  Oops.

Last April, Caroline Alexander brought up the same question of context regarding the use of a quote on the 9/11 Memorial.  In that case, the quote “No day shall erase you from the memory of time,” actually came from a longer sentence in which the poet Virgil was lauding his own role as a poet recording history in venerating the memory of an amorous pair of soldiers who died in midst of battle.  Virgil is basically saying: it’s a good thing I know what you two were up to, because otherwise you would die in obscurity like every other piker… or something like that.

What is the common thread?  

elite research in sociology

Shamus Khan’s book, Privilege, makes an excellent point. Elites get relatively little attention in sociology. However, I think this needs an important qualification. Elites get little attention from non-organizational sociology. Folks in stratification, political sociology, and other areas love the little guy. The situation in organizational sociology is the reverse. Elite organizations get tons of attention. Think about how much attention has been paid to firms like GM. Now, think about how much attention is paid to the local auto repair shop.

Why is that? I think it goes something like this…

• Regular people are easy to find and highly accessible. Many are even excited when university researchers contact them. If you ask enough people to be part of your research, you’ll get enough. In contrast, elite people are highly secretive.  First, there are fewer of them. More importantly, they highly value their privacy. They also, in my experience, are more guarded and like to give canned answers. So: commoners – all over and open to discussion; elites – few and they hide in the Bohemian Grove.  There are a few exceptions – celebrities and politicians have a lot of public data about them. But your average hedge fund managers is harder to track down.
• Regular organizations are often hard to find and they don’t like outsiders. Small businesses may be numerous, but they don’t have a lot of time to talk to you. They don’t have a lot of public data about them. In contrast, elite organizations often generate tons of public information through litigation, journalism written about them, public filings, and high profile leaders. If they are publicly traded firms, they disclose a lot. If they are government organizations, there is also tons of information in public archives. And don’t forget disgruntled employees and customers – they’ll talk to no end about the inner workings of their organizations.

Also, there is a professional incentive. It’s glamorous (in sociology at least) to talk about the poor, but less glamorous to talk about the 1%. In organization studies, we care a lot about market leaders and innovators, so we focus on the elites. Shamus’ excellent book and the work of Lauren Rivera shows an important change among younger researchers.  I hope it continues.

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the different bourdieus

Bourdieu is everywhere in social theory these days. Ranging from practice theory to studies of taste and consumption, you can find Bourdieu lurking in the background and quite often taking center stage. Bourdieu may be the most blogged-about theorist here on orgtheory. He’s so easily transportable because of the generality of his concepts and because he wrote extensively on so many different things during his career. Given the expanse of his theoretical contributions, it can sometimes be hard to pin down Bourdieu as a theorist. The reason for this, suggests my prolific co-blogger Omar Lizardo in this commentary forthcoming in Sociological Forum, is that Bourdieu’s contributions to American sociology have occurred over various stages, creating multiple clusters of Bourdieuian-influenced theorists. Depending on which cluster you’re a part of, you’re getting a slightly different angle on the Bourdieuian perspective.  I highly recommend reading Omar’s commentary for anyone who thinks they know (or would like to get to know) Bourdieu’s work. It helps put Bourdieu in historical context.

The final stage of Bourdieuian influence, which is an emerging trend Omar admits, is focused on embodiment, cognition, and action. Although he doesn’t mention it in the essay, I have noticed that a strong community in institutional theory has really grabbed on to this this aspect of Bourdieu. Institutional theory in the late 80s through the mid-90s was heavily influenced by Bourdieu’s field theory (Omar’s stage 2 of Bourdieuian influence), but in recent years institutional theorists have become less interested in the constraining aspects of field forces and more interested in how institutional change bubbles up from below, which places more emphasis on agency and reflexive cognition. Scholars interested in institutional entrepreneurship and institutional work (for example, read Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca), in particular, seem to be drawing more and more from Bourdieu’s theory of practice.  The attractiveness of practice theory is that you don’t have to completely shed your structural view of institutions and fields to develop an endogenous explanations for how people create local worlds of resistance and novelty. Although I think it’s fair to question how well executed many of these studies are, I’ve noticed that a large portion of institutional theory has moved from stage 2 in Omar’s depiction of Bourdieu to stage 3.

Perhaps this is the reason why I’ve heard so many grumblings from people in the institutional theory world about Fligstein’s and McAdam’s work on “strategic action fields.” The F&M conceptualization of institutions and change is still very stage 2 in its understanding of how actors are situated in a field and how fields evolve over time. But this no longer resonates with many institutional theorists, who have already moved beyond this conceptualization of institutions to a stage 3 model in which actors are embedded in multiple fields and possess more agency than the actors of a fixed field world. While the former view is more structural and deterministic, the latter view is more cognitive and stochastic. F&M do very little to bridge stage 2 with stage 3 Bourdieu (although one could argue, but they don’t, that the concept of “social skill” derives from practice theory).

For more orgtheory commentary on Fligstein’s and McAdam’s SAF, see here and here.

mlk’s last speech

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the huntsman lesson

According to the NY Times, Jim Huntsman will drop out soon. Some might say that being moderate sank him, even though he’s fairly conservative. My lesson is different and much simpler: candidates who refuse to seriously run in the first primary and reject the base’s rhetoric do badly. Unless the first state is going to be won by a local, you must try. See also: Rudy, Fred.

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should social scientists stop reading the news?

A long time ago, in graduate school, my television was stolen and it changed my life. I now had lots of free time. I never understood on a gut level what I was missing until my tv was gone. There was a whole world beyond my living room low rent studio apartment. Jacob Levy once told me during a party, “Fabio, if you don’t watch tv, you had better be very well read.” Indeed, fair ranger, I am now quite well read.

I learned a second lesson. Most television is garbage. Once you unplug and then start watching later, you are immediately confronted with this truth. Ever since childhood, I was accustomed to watching whatever came on. Sure, I had preferences. Some shows are better than others, but I was letting someone throw rubbish at my face every night for hours at a time. For free!

Later, I realized that the issue wasn’t drama or comedy. Ultimately, there’s no harm in having an abnormally thorough knowledge of the Jeffersons and its catchy theme song. There real issue is television news.  As a social scientist in training, I began to believe that I am seeking the truth about social life. It’s my calling. It is what I have decided to dedicate my life to at  the expense of more remunerative careers. Therefore, it is unethical for me to consume or support cultural products that are misleading depictions on the social world.

You don’t need to be a die hard Chomskian who believes that the media is a mere tool of corporate and state interests, although that does happen to fair degree. Rather, you need to compare social science 101 to what happens on the news.

Example 1: Local television news is driven by “if it bleeds, it leads.” That gives the impression that crime is ubiquitous. Instead, much evidence shows a long term decrease in criminal violence in Western society. Steven Pinker’s recent book on violence merely documents what historical criminologists have known for a while.

Example 2: Election coverage is highly misleading. Journalists (and many historians) will regale you with stories about how this debate or that scandal totally changed the election. A common finding among political scientists is that speeches, scandals, media buys, and other electioneering events don’t affect a lot of elections. National elections are driven by the economy and war casualties. Smaller elections are run on somewhat different principles, but on the average, not affected by daily electioneering. Brendan Nyhan uses his twitter feed to point readers to political science research that corrects the non-stop misleading coverage of elections.

Example 3: Let’s stick one of my research areas – higher education. Every year, we get horror stories about how it is impossible it is to get into college. This is a false. Most institutions of higher education have an acceptance rate of over 50%. This finding goes back decades (e.g., economists William Manski and David Wise covered this in their great1982 book “College Choice in America”). There’s only about 50-100 schools (out of thousands) that might be considered competitive. These schools are the ones you expect – Ivy League, flagships, the service academies, about 20-30 of the liberal arts schools, plus a few others (e.g., Duke or Stanford). Basically, unless you want to go to a really elite school, just about any high school graduate in America can find a legitimate college that will accept them.

The news is rife with stories that are at best misleading and at worst factually incorrect. I can’t blame the journalists because sensationalism and short deadlines drive their salaries. I can’t blame viewers because most aren’t trained in research and it isn’t their job to care. However, social scientists should know better. If it is your job to search for truth, then turn off the tv during the news hour.

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artist spotlight: maria martin

                 

“Warrior” and “Solitude” by Maria Martin

My good friend Maria Martin is an up and coming artist and cultural entrepreneur in Los Angeles. In addition to running film festivals in Los Angeles, Maria is a dedicated photographer. She started in a more representational vein, but has moved into a more textural mode that emphasizes a playful use of luminescence. Her work has been featured in shows at LA’s art hub, the Bergamot Station. If you are in LA, check it out.

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children of same sex parents

Indiana’s Brian Powell discusses children in families with same sex parents.

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the unified theory of the GOP primary

Over at American Spectator, James Antle is worried that the GOP race is now a symbolic battle for second place. Antle writes:

That’s how you end up with a candidate who can’t seem to reliably get much more than 25 percent of the vote outside of New Hampshire looking like an unstoppable juggernaut. The fight to be the anti-Romney has driven down the numbers of each conservative aspirant, with Santorum likely to be the next target. Can Republicans break this cycle?

The deeper question is why the GOP fight has turned into a battle for the silver medal, as Andrew Sullivan put it.

Here’s my perspective on this year’s 2012 battle. First, as noted by many folks, the modern GOP rarely nominates first timers. Nominees tend to be on their second, or third in Reagan’s case, run for the presidency. Only a handful of people have run serious presidential campaigns before – Romney and Huckabee. Palin is given a pass because of the VP nomination. For various reasons, Palin and Huckabee drop out.

Second, as shown in recent political science research, nomination contest winners tend to be people who have a lead in endorsements, which are a public signal that the party elites support the candidate. Only Romney and Perry have more than a handful of elite endorsements.

My argument is simple. Since Perry imploded in August, professional politicians (and social scientists who know the literature) have a very well justified belief that Romney is the only candidate with a chance of winning the nomination. That doesn’t mean everyone else should drop out. Rather, they have different goals. In addition to keeping the hope of a miracle alive, most candidates are interested in their message (Paul, Santorum) or their personal careers (Bachmann). From that point of view, the GOP primary makes a lot of sense. Romeny is probably the winner, so don’t make him angry. Instead, fight for the spot light.

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ron paul may not be racist, but racists sure like ron paul

Let’s start with a thumbnail sketch of libertarian theory: laissez-faire – hands-off, as long as it’s voluntary, it’s ok. Now, there’s two sides to this coin. You have the right to do good and bad. With regard to race, the libertarian position implies that we should be equally tolerant, for example, of people who want to live in mixed race neighborhoods and those who wish to live in segregated neighborhoods. As long as force isn’t used, we should tolerate it, even if we don’t approve of it.

That brings me to Ron Paul. He’s been dogged for years by inflammatory racial articles in his newsletters. If you read them, you’ll see that they are disgusting. The puzzling part is that there is not much to indicate that Paul himself hates Blacks. In fact, some of his arguments about policy might have been written by the most bleeding heart liberals. For example, he has publicly argued that the drug war disproportionately hurts minorities and has racist origins. Most observers have guessed that the inflammatory articles have been written by someone else who is very racist.

The problem with a philosophy of hyper-tolerance is that you attract repulsive people, like Paul’s racist associates. That’s doesn’t always happen. ACLU style free speech activists rarely share beds with the neo-Nazis whose rights they defend. But sometimes it is a problem. Since libertarian philosophy dictates a tolerance, but not an endorsement, of people who dislike other racial groups, hyper-tolerance may come off as a signal of approval for racism. Furthermore, followers of a hyper-tolerant philosophy, like libertarianism, may seek short term political gain by building coalitions with repulsive people. And of course, truly evil people, like hard core racists, may dress up their views with a sheen of tolerance. The result? The philosophy of tolerance  co-mingles with the repulsive.

That’s a problem for libertarianism as a social practice. For it to become more mainstream, it will have to move beyond policy and come up with a more serious theory of social practice. It has to be a philosophy that breaks out of utilitarian arguments over economic policy, and provide an ethic beyond minimalist tolerance. Otherwise, libertarians who care, like Paul does, about the drug war, foreign wars, and other issues of wide appeal will be left explaining why their room mate has a David Duke poster on the wall.

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fligstein/mcadam vs. goldstone/useem – a theoretical heavyweight fight forthcoming in Sociological Theory

A little while ago, Omar blogged about a new article co-authored by Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam. It’s called “Towards a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields.” The article presents a common framework for organizational analysis and social movement theory. F&M do so by translating everything into a field theory, a la Bourdieu. In essence, F&M claim, like Armstrong and Bernstein, that society is composed of distinct, but overlapping, fields (strategic action fields – SAF’s) where people fight over control. The main variables of the theory are Fligsteinian – social skill and other field specific resources are used to maintain the status quo. The theory is a description of the cycle of field formation, disruption, and stabilization. If you are familiar with either McAdam or Fligstein’s work, you’ll see how the article is a synthesis of the two research streams generated by these scholars. Much like how Dynamics of Contention was a synthesis of Tarrow, Tilly, and McAdam.

Then, last month, I learned that there’s a commentary (here) and rejoinder (here ) that is forthcoming in Sociological Theory. The critique is authored by Jack Goldstone and Bert Useem. Click here and here for orgtheory’s review of Useem and Piehl’s book on prisons. The authors and the folks at Soc Theory gave me permission to post the exchange and comment. As I read it, the critique focuses on the following issues:

• Don’t reduce everything to incumbent-challenger dynamics. States, and other governing units,* are more autonomous than it appears.
• All fields do not look the same. There is more to life than a one dimensional distribution allocation of authority between challengers and incumbents.
• There’s more to life than distribution of social skills and exogenous shocks. Social systems can crumble for many reasons.
• Cognitive dimensions of social life are ignored. Isn’t it weird that one of the leaders of neo-institutional sociology doesn’t discuss values?
• G&U claim that the propositions of F&M are too vague to adequately test.

In the rejoinder, there are some plausible responses. For example, F&M just disagree about whether the theory is testable. On another count, they claim that the article doesn’t address values, but their forthcoming book does.** I don’t think that F&M quite grok the importance of G&U’s point about the autonomy of  the state or that field dissolution can be caused by elite actions.

After reading the exchange, and the original article and other works by M, F, G, and U, my gut feeling is that SAF theory represents an assimilation of movement theory and political sociology into neo-institutional theory. Neo-institutional theory is our modern functionalism where all is subsumed into social stability. If Parsons had system maintenance, F&M have “SAF stability.” The theory produced by F&M bears many similarities to that produced by the late Parsons in texts like The Evolution of Societies, which described human communities as cybernetic systems where exogenous shocks shift society into a new equilibrium. What separates SAF’s version of functionalism from the structural functionalism of the 1960s, and its descendants, is a much higher tolerance of conflict and contention, which allows a modern sociologist to discuss the relationship between conflict and stability.

This is an ironic state of affairs. The whole point of post-1970s American sociological theory was ditching functionalism. By swallowing the social movement vocabulary, the new synthesis seems to be functionalism plus conflict minus mindless conformity. I don’t think that’s a necessarily bad thing. It’s actually a substantial improvement. By throwing Parsons under the bus, I think a lot of sociologists forgot that social groups have a temporal continuity that needs to be explained. The down side is that we’ve swapped out “pattern maintenance” for “field stabilization,” which can be a constraining way of viewing things.

Overall, I’m glad that this debate is happening. It signals to me that 1970s post-Parsons sociology has now reached a point of deep maturity in that it can provide a language that’s deep and flexible enough to address multiple areas of sociology, even if that synthesis is amenable to critique. At the same time, it signals that a boundary has been reached. If you have a description of X and Y (e.g., stability and conflict), then saying “X and Y” is an end point. There is something beyond X and Y that hasn’t been articulated yet. Some other process that explains both X and Y. That means that there’s an enterprising young sociologist who is hatching some new variables. Can’t wait to read their paper.

* How Althusserian!! Coming to a structural Marxist position? But I digress…

** Book forum, anyone? Free copy? Puleeeeze!!

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free dinner @ ASA?

The Kickstarter project for the antiwar movie has almost completed its goal, but we’re about $400 short. Free dinner @ ASA on me to the first person who provides that sum. Just send me the receipt. Here’s the URL:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/melofilms/the-activists-war-peace-and-politics-in-the-street

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where your iphone comes from

The latest episode of This American Life is a breathtaking first-person account of a Mac aficionado’s visit to an electronics manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, China. Here he meets some of the workers who put iPhones together and discovers that the entire manufacturing process is done by hand! He learns of the incredible toll this process of constructing little electronics goods has on their health and lives. The account, partly due to Mike Daisey’s engaging monologue style, is really unforgettable and disturbing. One of my favorite lines from Daisy’s account:

How often do we wish more things were hand-made? Oh, we talk about that all the time, don’t we? I wish it was like the old days. I wish things had that human touch. But that’s not true. There are more hand-made things now than there have ever been in the history of the world. Everything is hand-made. I know, I have been there. I have seen the workers laying in parts thinner than human hair, one after another after another. Everything is hand-made.

In typical TAL style, they try to get the other side of the story and the last ten minutes of the episode really grapple with the effects of sweatshop labor on economic mobility. Still, the voices that will remain in your head after the podcast are those of the mistreated workers whose bodies are souls are slowly being sacrificed on the factory line.

musical pain

Aurus Apothecary is “a not-for-profit micro-label hailing from Bloomington, IN which embraces obscure formats, innovative packaging and do-it-yourself ethics.” So of course, I trot on down to Landlocked Music and check it out. I’m that kind of music snob. And, of course, I like what I hear and it’s affordable. Aurus Apothecary is run by hipsters with good taste.

I bought the most recent release: Glass Torn and War Shortage: The Purposeful Poisoning of a Shardless Society, an “anti-cassette” by Mike IX Williams. What is an “anti-cassette?” Well, I think the concept is that the act of playing the music results in a permanent alteration and potential destruction of the cassette. But Mike IX takes it a step further. The cassette is coated in glass shards. Popping it into the tape deck will destroy it. You may cut your fingers just by picking it up.

Not only does Mike IX promise to ruin my fingers and tape deck, he wants to  assault me with the power of music. According to the package, “The enclosed cassette holds the potential to harm the purchaser physically, mentally and spiritually. It has been sealed shut for protection to guarantee that the only bloodshed is that of the interacting listener.” At least Mike IX spares the innocent. A seal on the box says: “… containing spoken word over destructive audio. Harsh sounds with an even harsher message.” This’ll have to wait til I’m done with  my Chuck Mangione marathon.

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PS. The picture is from the Aurus Apothecary website. I’m too afraid to open my copy.

common as air: the commons snare

There’s lots of scholarly interest in the commons these days.  The free software movement has led many to call for the broadening of the commons from software to all information and culture-based production: music, movies, books, journals, and so forth.  Many argue that intellectual property can’t meaningfully be treated as “property” – it should be free.  I disagree (with lots of qualifications: e.g., it’s up to authors and outlets) – though I think this is a fascinating topic (and I’ll follow up with a future post).

So, one of my pet peeves is when an author strongly advocates for the information commons (e.g., that the peer-to-peer sharing of all music is perfectly reasonable) but then their own book itself is not in the commons.  Here’s one example (there are many others):  Hyde, Lewis, 2010.  Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership. Farrar, Straus, Giroux.  Here’s an interview with the author a few years ago (where the commons are discussed).  A review of the book.  A Creative Commons interview.  Here’s the book talk at the Berkman Center (watch the first five-six minutes and you’ll get a sense).

(I may well be wrong, perhaps the above book indeed is out there in the commons somewhere. If so, I need to pull this post.)

Here’s also Lewis Hyde’s 1979 book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property.  This book inspired the organizers of Burning Man.

Thankfully some of the commons advocates, like James Boyle, also walk the talk and post their books into the commons.  Here’s his The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. Yale University Press.

Bottom line: if your book advocates the commons (for others), then it should be in the commons. Seems reasonable.  (Sorry for the rant.)

hipster sociology

The media is picking up a new study of Facebook data that examines hipsterism – demonstrating cultural tastes that are different than your friends. From Livescience:

A person’s pattern of “likes” and “friends” on Facebook may betray their hipster tendencies, suggests a new study that found when more of your friends like the same alternative and indie bands as you, you are more likely to stop liking the bands.

The opposite was found on classical music tastes, which seem to be contagious between friends. Overall, however, the research found that most tastes aren’t spread among friends, with most people seeking out Facebook friends who are already similar in their tastes.

“In the past three years we’ve been pounded over the head with the idea that everything spreads and everything is contagious, and your peers can influence you in so many ways,” study researcher Kevin Lewis of Harvard University said, referring to recent studies, including one that suggested obesity is socially contagious. “Once you disentangle these things, you find that peer influence plays a minimal role,” at least in the Facebook setting.

This shows the subtly of networks – contagion (peer effects), as opposed to homophily (self selection), appears to be context dependent.

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the iowa cuacus in republican politics

Now that the dust has settled on the 2012 cycle, I’d like to speculate on the different roles that the Iowa caucuses have in the Democratic and Republican parties. The observation is that Iowa often picks Democratic winners, but GOP losers. mike3550 writes:

 What impresses me about your list, Fabio, is how many of those people (former IA GOP winners), while not winning the nomination in the year they ran well, ended up shaping the Republican party in the future. Huckabee started a pipeline to opinion-making on Fox News, Dole ended up the Republican nominee in ’96, Bush I was VP and then President and Robertson is now a widely known “non-establishment” voice among conservatives. In other words, doing well in Iowa gives one a national platform to help influence conservative policy or politics in the future.

I think this is correct. For reasons of geography and history, Iowa republicans are probably atypical. They’re likely more evangelical than the average GOP voter in the country. That means they probably are more conservative ideologically and have somewhat different preferences than the national GOP electorate. The downside is that their candidates in the short term lose the nomination. The upside is that they are motivated and well organized. Thus, GOP Iowa winners are likely to have stronger networks and more dedicated followers, which gives them a boost down the line.

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the diffusion of….whatever

I just can’t stop chuckling about the graph in this cartoon.

From Pictures for Sad Children (HT: Tastefully Offensive)

punching-bag disciplines

Bill Gross says – “Philosophy, sociology and liberal arts agendas will no longer suffice” – “skill-based education is a must, as is science and math.”

Virginia Postrel comes to the defense of the “punching bag disciplines” -”How Art History Majors Power the US Economy.”