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Learning Objectives
• List the major types of social movements.
• Explain the micro and macro factors that lead to the rise of social movements.
• Describe the stages of the life cycle of social movements.
Social movements in the United States and other nations have been great forces for social change. At the same time, governments and other opponents have often tried to thwart the movements’ efforts. To understand how and why social change happens, we have to understand why movements begin, how they succeed and fail, and what impact they may have.
Understanding Social Movements
To begin this understanding, we first need to understand what social movements are. A social movement may be defined as an organized effort by a large number of people to bring about or impede social change. Defined in this way, social movements might sound similar to special-interest groups, and they do have some things in common. But a major difference between social movements and special-interest groups lies in the nature of their actions. Special-interest groups normally work within the system via conventional political activities such as lobbying and election campaigning. In contrast, social movements often work outside the system by engaging in various kinds of protest, including demonstrations, picket lines, sit-ins, and sometimes outright violence.
Figure 14.17
Social movements are organized efforts by large numbers of people to bring about or impede social change. Often they try to do so by engaging in various kinds of protest, such as the march depicted here.
© Thinkstock
Conceived in this way, the efforts of social movements amount to “politics by other means,” with these “other means” made necessary because movements lack the resources and access to the political system that interest groups typically enjoy (D. A. Snow & Soule, 2009).Snow, D. A., & Soule, S. A. (2009). A primer on social movements. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Types of Social Movements
Sociologists identify several types of social movements according to the nature and extent of the change they seek. This typology helps us understand the differences among the many kinds of social movements that existed in the past and continue to exist today (D. A. Snow & Soule, 2009).Snow, D. A., & Soule, S. A. (2009). A primer on social movements. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
One of the most common and important types of social movements is the reform movement, which seeks limited, though still significant, changes in some aspect of a nation’s political, economic, or social systems. It does not try to overthrow the existing government but rather works to improve conditions within the existing regime. Some of the most important social movements in U.S. history have been reform movements. These include the abolitionist movement preceding the Civil War, the woman suffrage movement that followed the Civil War, the labor movement, the Southern civil rights movement, the Vietnam antiwar movement, the contemporary women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental movement.
A revolutionary movement goes one large step further than a reform movement in seeking to overthrow the existing government and to bring about a new one and even a new way of life. Revolutionary movements were common in the past and were responsible for the world’s great revolutions in Russia, China, and several other nations. Reform and revolutionary movements are often referred to as political movements because the changes they seek are political in nature.
Another type of political movement is the reactionary movement, so named because it tries to block social change or to reverse social changes that have already been achieved. The antiabortion movement is a contemporary example of a reactionary movement, as it arose after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized most abortions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and seeks to limit or eliminate the legality of abortion.
Figure 14.18
One type of social movement is the self-help movement. As its name implies, the goal of a self-help movement is to help people improve their personal lives. These tokens are used at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is an example of a group involved in a self-help movement.
Source: Photo courtesy of Chris Yarzab, http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisyarzab/4687962584.
Two other types of movements are self-help movements and religiousmovements. As their name implies, self-help movements involve people trying to improve aspects of their personal lives; examples of self-help groups include Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers. Religious movements aim to reinforce religious beliefs among their members and to convert other people to these beliefs. Early Christianity was certainly a momentous religious movement, and other groups that are part of a more general religious movement today include the various religious cults discussed in Chapter 12. Sometimes self-help and religious movements are difficult to distinguish from each other because some self-help groups emphasize religious faith as a vehicle for achieving personal transformation.
The Origins of Social Movements
To understand how and why social movements begin, we need answers to two related questions. First, what are the social, economic, and political conditions that give rise to social movements? They do not arise in a vacuum, and certain macro problems in society must exist for movements to begin. Second, once social movements do begin, why are some individuals more likely than others to take part in them? Answers to this question usually focus on personality and other micro factors. We will start with these micro factors and then turn to the macro conditions that make movements possible in the first place.
Micro Factors: Emphasis on the Individual
Over the years social scientists have tried to explain why some individuals are more likely than others to join social movements. Their explanations center on several factors.
The Question of Irrationality
One issue is whether social movement involvement is rational or irrational. Early thinkers such as Gustave LeBon (1841–1931), a French intellectual, thought that social movement involvement and, more generally, crowd behavior were the product of irrational impulses. Writing in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, these thinkers worried that social order was breaking down. LeBon in particular blamed crowds for turning normally rational individuals into irrational and emotional actors who are virtually hypnotized by the crowd’s mind-set. American sociologists early in the 20th century adopted LeBon’s view. In so doing, they viewed social movement participation as more expressive, or emotional, than instrumental, or directed at achieving specific goals (Rule, 1988).Rule, J. B. (1988). Theories of civil violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Just after the mid-20th century, Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian (1957)Turner, R. H., & Killian, L. M. (1957). Collective behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. presented their emergent normview of collective behavior, which downplayed the irrationality emphasized in earlier formulations. According to Turner and Killian, when people start interacting in collective behavior, they are not sure initially how they are supposed to behave. As they discuss their potential behavior and other related matters, norms governing their behavior emerge, and social order and rationality then guide behavior. Adopting this view, most sociologists today feel that people taking part in social movements are indeed acting rationally and instrumentally, not just expressively. Although they have emotions, that does not mean their behavior is any less rational or political (D. A. Snow & Soule, 2009).Snow, D. A., & Soule, S. A. (2009). A primer on social movements. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Relative Deprivation
Another important line of thought has centered on relative deprivation, or the feeling by individuals that they are deprived relative to some other group or to some ideal state they have not reached. This view was popularized by James C. Davies (1962)Davies, J. C. (1962). Toward a theory of revolution. American Sociological Review, 27, 5–19. and Ted Robert Gurr (1970),Gurr, T. R. (1970). Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. both of whom built upon the earlier work of social psychologists who had studied frustration and aggression. When a deprived group perceives that social conditions are improving, wrote Davies, they become hopeful that their lives are getting better. But if these conditions stop improving, they become frustrated and more apt to turn to protest, collective violence, and other social movement activity. Both Davies and Gurr emphasized that people’s feelings of being relatively deprived were more important for their involvement in collective behavior than their level of actual deprivation.
Relative deprivation theory was initially very popular, but scholars later pointed out that frustration often does not lead to protest, as people can instead blame themselves for the deprivation they feel and thus not protest (Gurney & Tierney, 1982).Gurney, J. N., & Tierney, K. J. (1982). Relative deprivation and social movements: A critical look at twenty years of theory and research. Sociological Quarterly, 23, 33–47. Scholars who favor the theory point out that people will ordinarily not take part in social movements unless they feel deprived, even if many who do feel deprived do not take part (Snow & Oliver, 1995).Snow, D. E., & Oliver, P. E. (1995). Social movements and collective behavior: Social psychological dimensions and considerations. In K. S. Cook, G. A. Fine, & J. S. House (Eds.), Sociological perspectives on social psychology (pp. 571–599). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Social Isolation Versus Social Attachments
A final micro issue has been whether the individuals participating in social movements are isolated from society or very much a part of it. Are they loners, or are they involved in social networks of friends, coworkers, and others? In his influential book The Politics of Mass Society, William Kornhauser (1959)Kornhauser, W. (1959). The politics of mass society. New York, NY: Free Press.wrote that because modern societies are impersonal with weak social ties, individuals who are loners become involved in social movements to provide them the friendships and social bonding they otherwise lack. Kornhauser’s mass society theory was popular for a time, but much research finds that the people who join social movements are in fact very much a part of society instead of loners. They have many friends and belong to several organizations, and these friendship and organizational ties help “pull” them into social movements.
Macro Factors: Emphasis on Social Structure
Structural explanations of social movements try to understand why social movements are more likely to arise in some historical periods and locations than in others. In effect, they try to show how certain social, economic, and political conditions give rise to social movements. We discuss some of these explanations here.
Smelser’s Structural-Strain Theory
One of the most popular and influential structural explanations is Neil Smelser’s (1963)Smelser, N. J. (1963). Theory of collective behavior. New York, NY: Free Press. structural-strain theory. Smelser wrote that social movements and other collective behavior occur when several conditions are present. One of these conditions is structural strain, which refers to problems in society that cause people to be angry and frustrated. Without such structural strain, people would not have any reason to protest, and social movements do not arise. Another condition is generalized beliefs, which are people’s reasons for why conditions are so bad and their solutions to improve them. If people decide that the conditions they dislike are their own fault, they will decide not to protest. Similarly, if they decide that protest will not improve these conditions, they again will not protest. A third condition is the existence of precipitating factors, or sudden events that ignite collective behavior. In the 1960s, for example, several urban riots started when police were rumored to have unjustly arrested or beaten someone. Although conditions in inner cities were widely perceived as unfair and even oppressive, it took this type of police behavior to ignite people to riot.
Figure 14.19
During the 1960s, several urban riots began when police were rumored to have unjustly arrested or beaten someone.
Source: Photo courtesy of Anna Tesar, http://www.flickr.com/photos/spanner/3029425939.
Smelser’s theory became very popular because it pointed to several factors that must hold true before social movements and other forms of collective behavior occur. At the same time, collective behavior does not always occur when his factors do hold true. The theory has also been criticized for being a bit vague; for example, it does not say how much strain a society must have for collective behavior to take place (Rule, 1988).Rule, J. B. (1988). Theories of civil violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Resource Mobilization Theory
Resource mobilization theory is a general name given to several related views of social movements that arose in the 1970s (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Oberschall, 1973; Tilly, 1978).McCarthy, J. D., & Zald, M. N. (1977). Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 1212–1241; Oberschall, A. (1973). Social conflict and social movements. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; Tilly, C. (1978). From mobilization to revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. This theory assumes that social movement activity is a rational response to unsatisfactory conditions in society. Because these conditions always exist, so does discontent with them. Despite such constant discontent, people protest only rarely. If this is so, these conditions and associated discontent cannot easily explain why people turn to social movements. What is crucial instead are efforts by social movement leaders to mobilize the resources—most notably, time, money, and energy—of the population and to direct them into effective political action. Also important are political opportunitiesfor action that arise when, say, a government weakens because of an economic or foreign crisis (D. A. Snow & Soule, 2009).Snow, D. A., & Soule, S. A. (2009). A primer on social movements. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Resource mobilization theory has been very influential since its inception in the 1970s. However, critics say it underestimates the importance of harsh social conditions and discontent for the rise of social movement activity. Conditions can and do worsen, and when they do so, they prompt people to engage in collective behavior. As just one example, cuts in higher education spending and steep increases in tuition prompted students to protest on campuses in California and several other states in late 2009 and early 2010 (Rosenhall, 2010).Rosenhall, L. (2010, February 28). Education protests on tap this week in California. The Sacramento Bee, p. 1A. Critics also say that resource mobilization theory neglects the importance of emotions in social movement activity by depicting social movement actors as cold, calculated, and unemotional (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2004).Goodwin, J., Jasper, J. M., & Polletta, F. (2004). Emotional dimensions of social movements. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 413–432). Malden, MA: Blackwell. This picture is simply not true, critics say, and they further argue that social movement actors can be both emotional and rational at the same time, just as people are in many other kinds of pursuits.
The Life Cycle of Social Movements
Although the many past and present social movements around the world differ from each other in many ways, they all generally go through a life cycle marked by several stages that have long been recognized (Blumer, 1969).Blumer, H. (1969). Collective behavior. In A. M. Lee (Ed.), Principles of sociology (pp. 165–221). New York, NY: Barnes and Noble.
Stage 1 is emergence. This stage is obviously when social movements begin for one or more of the reasons indicated in the previous section. Stage 2 is coalescence. At this stage a movement and its leaders must decide how they will recruit new members and they must determine the strategies they will use to achieve their goals. They also may use the news media to win favorable publicity and to convince the public of the justness of their cause. Stage 3 is institutionalization or bureaucratization. As a movement grows, it often tends to become bureaucratized, as paid leaders and a paid staff replace the volunteers that began the movement. It also means that clear lines of authority develop, as they do in any bureaucracy. More attention is also devoted to fund-raising. As movement organizations bureaucratize, they may well reduce their effectiveness by turning from the disruptive activities that succeeded in the movement’s earlier stages to more conventional activity by working within the system instead of outside it (Piven & Cloward, 1979).Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1979). Poor people’s movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. New York, NY: Vintage Books. At the same time, if movements do not bureaucratize to at least some degree, they may lose their focus and not have enough money to keep on going.
Figure 14.20
Political repression sometimes leads a social movement to decline or end altogether. The mass slaughter by Chinese troops of students in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 ended a wave of student protests in that nation.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:200401-beijing-tianan-square-overview.jpg.
Stage 4 is the decline of a social movement. Social movements eventually decline for one or more of many reasons. Sometimes they achieve their goals and naturally cease because there is no more reason to continue. More often, however, they decline because they fail. Both the lack of money and loss of enthusiasm among a movement’s members may lead to a movement’s decline, and so might factionalism, or strong divisions of opinion within a movement. The government may also “co-opt” a movement by granting it small, mostly symbolic concessions that reduce people’s discontent but leave the conditions that originally motivated their activism largely intact. As noted earlier, movements also may decline because of government repression.
How Social Movements Make a Difference
By definition, social movements often operate outside of the political system by engaging in protest. Their rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, and silent vigils are often difficult to ignore. With the aid of news media coverage, these events often throw much attention on the problem or grievance at the center of the protest and bring pressure to bear on the government agencies, corporations, or other targets of the protest.
As noted earlier, there are many examples of profound changes brought about by social movements throughout U.S. history (Amenta, Caren, Chiarello, & Sue, 2010; Meyer, 2007; Piven, 2006).Amenta, E., Caren, N., Chiarello, E., & Sue, Y. (2010). The political consequences of social movements. Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 287–307; Meyer, D. S. (2007). The politics of protest: Social movements in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Piven, F. F. (2006). Challenging authority: How ordinary people change America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. The abolitionist movement called attention to the evils of slavery and increased public abhorrence for that “peculiar institution.” The woman suffrage movement after the Civil War eventually won women the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. The labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries established the minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, and the right to strike. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s ended legal segregation in the South, while the Vietnam antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s helped increase public opposition to that war and bring it to a close. The contemporary women’s movement has won many rights in social institutions throughout American society, while the gay rights movement has done the same for gays and lesbians. Another contemporary movement is the environmental movement, which has helped win legislation and other policies that have reduced air, water, and ground pollution.
Although it seems obvious that social movements have made a considerable difference, social movement scholars until recently have paid much more attention to the origins of social movements than to their consequences (Giugni, 2008).Giugni, M. (2008). Political, biographical, and cultural consequences of social movements. Sociology Compass, 2, 1582–1600. Recent work has begun to fill in this gap and has focused on the consequences of social movements for the political system (political consequences), for various aspects of the society’s culture (cultural consequences), and for the lives of the people who take part in movements (biographical consequences).
Regarding political consequences, scholars have considered such matters as whether movements are more successful when they use more protest or less protest, and when they focus on a single issue versus multiple issues. The use of a greater amount of protest seems to be more effective in this regard, as does a focus on a single issue. Research has also found that movements are more likely to succeed when the government against which they protest is weakened by economic or other problems. In another line of inquiry, movement scholars disagree over whether movements are more successful if their organizations are bureaucratic and centralized or if they remain decentralized and thus more likely to engage in protest (Piven & Cloward, 1979; Gamson, 1990).Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1979). Poor people’s movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. New York, NY: Vintage Books; Gamson, W. A. (1990). The strategy of social protest (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Regarding cultural consequences, movements often influence certain aspects of a society’s culture whether or not they intend to do so (Earl, 2004),Earl, J. (2004). The cultural consequences of social movements. In D. A. Snow, S. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 508–530). Malden, MA: Blackwell. and, as one scholar has said, “it is perhaps precisely in being able to alter their broader cultural environment that movements can have their deepest and lasting impact” (Giugni, 2008, p. 1591).Giugni, M. (2008). Political, biographical, and cultural consequences of social movements. Sociology Compass, 2, 1582–1600. Social movements can affect values and beliefs, and they can affect cultural practices such as music, literature, and even fashion.
Movements may also have biographical consequences. Several studies find that people who take part in social movements during their formative years (teens and early 20s) are often transformed by their participation. Their political views change or are at least reinforced, and they are more likely to continue to be involved in political activity and to enter social change occupations. In this manner, writes one scholar, “people who have been involved in social movement activities, even at a lower level of commitment, carry the consequences of that involvement throughout their life” (Giugni, 2008, p. 1590).Giugni, M. (2008). Political, biographical, and cultural consequences of social movements. Sociology Compass, 2, 1582–1600.
Conclusion
• The major types of social movements are reform movements, revolutionary movements, reactionary movements, self-help movements, and religious movements.
• Both micro and macro factors influence the rise of social movements. A key micro factor is social attachment, as social movement participants tend to have friendships and organizational ties that “pull” them into movements and promote their continued participation in a movement. Macro factors include certain social, economic, and political conditions in the larger social environment that generate interest in joining a movement and/or weaken the government as it attempts to deal with a social movement.
• Four major stages in the life cycle of a social movement include emergence, coalescence, institutionalization or bureaucratization, and decline.
• Social movements may have political, cultural, and biographical consequences. Political consequences seem most likely to occur when a movement engages in disruptive protest rather than conventional politics and when it has a single-issue focus. Involvement in movements is thought to influence participants’ later beliefs and career choices.
For Your Review
1. Have you ever taken part in a protest of some kind? If so, write a brief essay outlining what led you to take part in the protest and what effect, if any, it had on the target of the protest and on your own thinking. If you have not participated in a protest, write a brief essay discussing whether you can foresee yourself someday doing so.
2. Choose any U.S. social movement of the past half-century and write a brief essay that summarizes the various kinds of impacts this movement may have had on American society and culture.
Addressing Population and Urbanization Issues: What Sociology Suggests
The topics of population and urbanization raise many issues within the United States and also across the globe for which a sociological perspective is very relevant. We address of few of these issues here.
Population Issues
Perhaps the most serious population issue is world hunger. Both across the globe and within the United States, children and adults go hungry every day, and millions starve in the poorest nations in Africa and Asia. As the “Sociology Making a Difference” box in Section 14.2 discussed, sociological research indicates that it is mistaken to blame world hunger on a scarcity of food. Instead, this body of research attributes world hunger to various inequalities in access to, and in the distribution of, what is actually a sufficient amount of food to feed the world’s people. To effectively reduce world hunger, inequalities across the globe and within the United States based on income, ethnicity, and gender must be addressed; some ways of doing so have been offered in previous chapters.
Population growth in poor nations has slowed but remains a significant problem. Their poverty, low educational levels, and rural settings all contribute to high birth rates. More effective contraception is needed to reduce their population growth, and the United Nations and other international bodies must bolster their efforts, with the aid of increased funding from rich nations, to provide contraception to poor nations. But contraceptive efforts will not be sufficient by themselves. Rather, it is also necessary to raise these nations’ economic circumstances and educational levels, as birth rates are lower in nations that are wealthier and more educated. In particular, efforts that raise women’s educational levels are especially important if contraceptive use is to increase. In all of these respects, we once again see the importance of a sociological perspective centering on the significance of socioeconomic inequality.
Urbanization Issues
Many urban issues are not, strictly speaking, sociological ones. For example, traffic congestion is arguably more of an engineering issue than a sociological issue, even if traffic congestion has many social consequences. Other urban issues are issues discussed in previous chapters that disproportionately affect urban areas. For example, crime is more common in urban areas than elsewhere, and racial and ethnic inequality is much more of an issue in urban areas than rural areas because of the concentration of people of color in our cities. Previous chapters have discussed such issues in some detail, and the strategies suggested by a sociological perspective for addressing these issues need not be repeated here.
Still other urban issues exist that this chapter was the first to present. Two of these involve crowding and housing. Cities are obviously crowded, and some parts of cities are especially crowded. Housing is expensive, and many urban residents live in dilapidated, substandard housing. Here again a sociological perspective offers some insight, as it reminds us that these problems are intimately related to inequalities of social class, race and ethnicity, and gender. Although it is critical to provide adequate, affordable housing to city residents, it is also important to remember that these various social inequalities affect who is in most need of such housing. Ultimately, strategies aimed at providing affordable housing will not succeed unless they recognize the importance of these social inequalities and unless other efforts reduce or eliminate these inequalities. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology%3A_Understanding_and_Changing_the_Social_World_(Barkan)/14%3A_Social_Change_-_Population_Urbanization_and_Social_Movements/14.05%3A_Social_Movements.txt |
Summary
1. Social change involves the transformation of cultural norms and values, behavior, social institutions, and social structure. As societies become more modern, they become larger, more heterogeneous, and more impersonal, and their sense of community declines. Traditions decline as well, while individual freedom of thought and behavior increases. Some sociologists view modernization positively, while others view it negatively. Tönnies in particular lamented the shift from the Gemeinschaft of premodern societies to the Gesellschaft of modern societies. Durkheim also recognized the negative aspects of modernization but at the same time valued the freedom of modern societies and thought they retain a good amount of social solidarity from their division of labor.
2. A functionalist understanding of social change emphasizes that it’s both natural and inevitable. Talcott Parsons’s equilibrium model recognized that gradual change is desirable and ordinarily stems from such things as population growth and technological advances, but that any sudden social change disrupts society’s equilibrium. Taking a very different view, conflict theory stresses that sudden social change is often both necessary and desirable to reduce inequality and to address other problems in society. Such social change often stems from intentional efforts by social movements to correct perceived deficiencies in the social, economic, and political systems.
3. Several sources of social change exist. These include population growth and changes in population composition, changes in culture and technology, changes in the natural environment, and social and ethnic conflict.
4. Demography is the study of population. It encompasses three central concepts: fertility, mortality, and migration, which together determine population growth. Fertility and mortality vary by race and ethnicity, and they also vary around the world, with low-income nations having both higher fertility and higher mortality than high-income nations.
5. The world’s population is growing by about 80 million people annually. Population growth is greatest in the low-income nations of Africa and other regions, while in several industrial nations it’s actually on the decline because birth rates have become so low. The world’s population reached 6.8 billion by the beginning of the 21st century and is projected to grow to more than 9 billion by 2050, with most of this occurring in low-income nations. The annual rate of population growth will decline in the years ahead.
6. Thomas Malthus predicted that the earth’s population would greatly exceed the world’s food supply. Although his prediction did not come true, hunger remains a serious problem around the world. Although food supply is generally ample thanks to improved technology, the distribution of food is inadequate in low-income nations. Fresh water in these regions is also lacking. Demographic transition theory helps explain why population growth did not continue to rise as much as Malthus predicted. As societies become more technologically advanced, first death rates and then birth rates decline, leading eventually to little population growth.
7. Urbanization is a consequence of population growth. Cities first developed in ancient times after the rise of horticultural and pastoral societies and “took off” during the Industrial Revolution as people moved to be near factories. Urbanization led to many social changes then and continues today to affect society.
8. Sociologists have long been interested in the city and have both positive and negative views of urbanization and city life. Contemporary research supports Wirth’s hypothesis that tolerance for nontraditional beliefs and behaviors will be higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
9. Social movements have been important agents for social change. Common types of social movements include reform movements, revolutionary movements, reactionary movements, and self-help and religious movements.
10. Explanations of social movements address both micro and macro factors. Important issues at the micro level include the question of irrationality, the importance of relative deprivation, and the impact of social isolation. Macro theories address the social, economic, and political conditions underlying collective behavior. Two of the most important such theories are Smelser’s structural-strain theory and resource mobilization theory.
11. Most social movements go through a life cycle of four stages: emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline. Decline stems from several reasons, including internal divisions and repressive efforts by the state.
12. Social movements have political, cultural, and biographical consequences. Research finds that movements are more successful in the political arena when they use more rather than less protest and when they focus on a single issue rather than multiple issues.
Using Sociology
After graduating from college, you are now living in a working-class neighborhood in a fairly large city. You enjoy the excitement of the city, but you are also somewhat troubled by the conditions you have noticed in your neighborhood. One problem that has come to your attention is the existence of lead paint in some of the buildings on your street and adjoining streets. Despite being ordered some time ago to remove this paint and repaint their buildings, four landlords have not yet done so, and the issue is slowly making its way through the courts. Angered by the situation, a new group, Parents Concerned About Lead Paint (PCALP), has hung up flyers announcing a protest rally planned for Saturday of next week. Although your own building has no lead paint and you are not (yet) a parent, you sympathize with the goal of the protest, but you were also planning to visit a friend of yours out of town on the day of the protest. What do you decide to do? Why? | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology%3A_Understanding_and_Changing_the_Social_World_(Barkan)/14%3A_Social_Change_-_Population_Urbanization_and_Social_Movements/14.S%3A_Population_Urbanization_.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain what you have learned about the sociological perspective.
• Explain how sociology helps you know more about yourself.
Above all, you have learned the sociological perspective: the idea that our social backgrounds, broadly defined, profoundly influence our behavior, attitudes, and life chances. We discussed many examples of this in the early chapters, when we examined the effects of social processes such as culture, socialization, and roles and group membership; in the middle chapters, when we examined the consequences of inequalities based on social class, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and age; and in the final chapters, when we examined the importance of social institutions such as the family, education, religion, and medicine. In all of these respects, you have learned that people are not just individuals but rather are social beings and also that we can thus fully understand any one individual only by appreciating the influence of the person’s social background.
Because of all this learning, you now know more about yourself than you did before you took the course for which you read this book. You know that you are who you are in part because of your gender, social class, race and ethnicity, geographical location, and many other aspects of your social background and also because of socialization by your parents and by friends, teachers, and other “agents of socialization” throughout your life.
You have also learned the importance of social inequality. More than perhaps any other academic discipline, sociology emphasizes the importance of social inequality for understanding both society and the individual. American society and, indeed, the world itself cannot be adequately understood without first understanding the importance of inequality based on social class, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and age.
Next, you have learned about the nature and importance of social institutions. The family, economy, and polity are all essential parts of the fabric of social life, as are education, religion, and medicine. Because all of these institutions affect our behavior, attitudes, and life chances, they have long been, and will continue to be, sources of significant social controversies.
Finally, you have learned about sociology and social change. Hearkening back to the roots of U.S. sociology in social reform, you have read throughout this book about the relevance of sociological insights for attempts to benefit society. This relevance derives from the sociological imagination as conceived by C. Wright Mills. As Chapter 1 discussed, the sociological imagination involves the recognition that “private troubles,” as Mills called them, are rooted in the social structure, and especially in social inequality, and are thus better understood as “public issues.”
Mills considered this type of recognition important for two related reasons. First, efforts to benefit society that neglect this recognition—that is, that neglect the structural sources of private troubles and public issues—will ultimately prove ineffective. Second, this type of recognition enables us to better understand our own experiences and life chances as we become aware of the social forces affecting our lives and those of people in similar circumstances. This awareness and self-knowledge empower us to become more effective agents of social change in our immediate social environments and also in the larger society.
If sociological insights help to guide social change, the history of social reform in the United States also shows that social change most often happens when Americans unite in small groups or larger social movements to change some aspect of society. Chapter 14 discussed important features of social movements, including their origins and impact. As that discussion highlighted, many of the rights and freedoms Americans now enjoy were won by social movements struggling against great odds. Here an often cited comment by anthropologist Margaret Mead is worth remembering: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Conclusion
• Readers of this book learned about the sociological perspective: the influence of social backgrounds and the social environment on attitudes, behavior, and life chances. This knowledge should help readers understand more about themselves.
• Readers also learned about social inequality, social institutions, and social change.
• Acquiring an appreciation of the sociological imagination enables individuals to become more effective agents of social change.
For Your Review
1. What do you think is the most important thing you learned from this book and the course for which you read it? Explain your answer.
2. Provide one example of how an appreciation of the sociological imagination might help an individual to become a more effective social change agent. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology%3A_Understanding_and_Changing_the_Social_World_(Barkan)/15%3A_Conclusion_-_Understanding_and_Changing_the_Social_World/15.01%3A_What_Have_You_Learned_From_.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Describe what a sociological perspective suggests for efforts to reduce social inequality, to reduce crime, to help the family and schools, and to improve the nation’s health.
• Describe what a sociological perspective implies for strategies to improve the global society.
The sociological imagination and its underpinnings for social change lie at the heart of the recent emphasis on public sociology—the use of sociological insights and findings to address social issues and achieve social change—as discussed in Chapter 1. This emphasis was a key theme of sociology as it developed in the United States more than a century ago, and the public sociology movement aims at bringing sociology back to its roots in social reform. This book’s many chapters highlighted the importance of a sociological understanding for efforts to improve society. The remaining pages of this chapter summarize the insights these chapters offered for addressing various public issues affecting the United States and the poor nations of the world.
Reducing Social Inequality
We begin with what sociologists probably regard as the most important public issue, social inequality, which is significant for its own sake but also provides the underpinning for so many other social issues. The sociological understanding of social inequality based on social class, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and age was presented in Chapter 6 through Chapter 9. These four chapters emphasized that inequality is rooted far more in lack of opportunity from birth and in prejudice and discrimination than in culturally deficient habits or practices of the many people who find themselves at the bottom of society’s socioeconomic ladder. In this regard these chapters advocated a “blaming-the-system” argument over a “blaming-the-victim” argument, to recall some terms from Chapter 1. Accordingly, efforts to reduce the extent and impact of social inequality must ultimately focus on increasing opportunity and eradicating prejudice and discrimination.
Chapter 6 through Chapter 9 discussed many examples of such efforts favored by sociologists and other scholars and public policy advocates. The most notable efforts include the following: (a) adopting a national full employment policy for the poor, underemployed, and unemployed; this policy would involve federally funded job training and public-works programs and increased federal aid for workers having trouble making ends meet; (b) improving the schools that poor children attend and the schooling they receive; (c) providing better nutrition and health services for poor families, perhaps especially those with young children; (d) strengthening affirmative action programs within the limits imposed by court rulings; (e) strengthening efforts to reduce residential segregation and teenage pregnancies; (f) reducing socialization by parents and other adults of girls and boys into traditional gender roles; (g) increasing public consciousness of rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography; (h) increasing enforcement of laws forbidding gender-based employment discrimination and sexual harassment; (i) increasing funding of rape-crisis centers and other services for girls and women who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted; (j) increasing government funding of high-quality day-care options to enable parents, and especially mothers, to work outside the home if they so desire; (k) passing federal and state legislation that bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and allows same-sex couples to marry and enjoy all the rights and benefits of heterosexual married couples; (l) expanding Social Security to aid older Americans regardless of their earnings history, which is affected by their gender and race and ethnicity; and (m) expanding educational efforts to reduce stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes based on aging.
Much theory and research strongly suggests that all of these policies and programs, if sufficiently funded and implemented, would greatly help reduce social inequality in the United States. As this book has pointed out from time to time, these strategies are already in place in many of the nations of Western Europe, which rank much higher than the United States on many social indicators. Although the United States has influenced the world in ways too numerous to mention, it ironically could significantly reduce social inequality if it adopted the policies and practices of other Western democracies. This great but flawed nation has much to learn from their example.
Enhancing Public Safety
A sociological perspective on street crime emphasizes that it is rooted in the social and physical characteristics of communities and in structured social inequality along the lines of social class, race and ethnicity, gender, and age. It is no accident and not very surprising that street criminals tend to come from the ranks of the poor or near-poor, even if most poor people do not commit street crime. Poverty weakens social bonds and social institutions, creates frustration and feelings of relative deprivation, and causes stress and otherwise impairs family functioning and socialization of children. Crime is also ultimately rooted in the socialization of males to be assertive and aggressive, as most street criminals are male.
This sociological understanding, coupled with other knowledge that the “get tough” approach to crime used by the United States has cost tens of billions of dollars with relatively little reduction in crime during the past few decades, suggests several strategies for crime reduction. As outlined in Chapter 5, these strategies include the following, among others: (a) establishing good-paying jobs for the poor in urban areas and improving living conditions in these areas in other respects; (b) socializing males from birth to be less assertive and aggressive; (c) establishing early childhood intervention programs to help high-risk families raise their children; and (d) providing better educational, vocational, and drug and alcohol abuse services for offenders while they are in prison and after their release from incarceration. White-collar crime also undermines public safety but certainly does not stem from poverty or family dysfunction. As Chapter 5 also discussed, more effective corporate regulation and harsher punishment of corporate criminals are needed to deter such crime.
Helping the Family and Schools
As two of our most important social institutions, the family and education arouse considerable and often heated debate over their status and prospects. Opponents in these debates all care passionately about families and/or schools but often take diametrically opposed views on the causes of these institutions’ problems and possible solutions to the issues they face. As presented in Chapter 11 and Chapter 12, a sociological perspective on the family and education emphasizes the social inequalities that lie at the heart of many of these issues, and it stresses that these two institutions reinforce and contribute to social inequalities.
Accordingly, efforts to address family and education issues should include the following strategies and policies, some of which were included in the previous section on reducing social inequality: (a) increasing financial support, vocational training, and financial aid for schooling for women who wish to return to the labor force or to increase their wages; (b) establishing and strengthening early childhood visitation programs and nutrition and medical care assistance for poor women and their children; (c) reducing the poverty and gender inequality that underlie much family violence; (d) allowing for same-sex marriage; (e) strengthening efforts to help preserve marriage while proceeding cautiously or not at all for marriages that are highly contentious; (f) increasing funding so that schools can be smaller and better equipped and in decent repair; and (g) strengthening antibullying programs and other efforts to reduce intimidation and violence within the schools.
Improving the Nation’s Health
While recognizing that people hurt their health through many bad habits including smoking and overeating, a sociological perspective on health and health care once again emphasizes the impact of social inequality. As discussed in Chapter 13, this impact stems from the stress and other problems facing the poor and near-poor, people of color, women, and seniors. It also stems from the general lack of access to affordable, high-quality health care. Accordingly, while educational efforts to encourage people to engage in healthy practices are certainly in order, a sociological perspective suggests additional strategies to improve Americans’ health. These efforts remain necessary even after the passage of federal health-care reform legislation in early 2010.
As outlined in Chapter 13, these strategies include the following: (a) reducing social inequalities as discussed in Chapter 6 through Chapter 9 and summarized in the section on social inequality and (b) moving toward the national health-care and health-insurance systems found in other Western nations such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and France.
Improving the Global Society
The issues facing the United States are considerable, but they pale in comparison with those confronting the poor and developing nations in the world today, where hunger, disease, and ethnic violence are rampant. The world is in peril in many ways. That is certainly bad news, but there is also good news. As discussed in Chapter 14, the earth actually has more than enough resources to end world hunger, providing that food-distribution systems were improved to provide access to the grain and other food that does exist.
Because of its nature, disease is more difficult to end, but here again there is potentially good news, as the disease found in poor nations is intimately linked with the very fact that these nations are poor. Better management and distribution of the world’s natural and economic resources and a more concerted effort by wealthy nations are all needed to end global poverty and the disease that inevitably accompanies it. Such efforts are possible, but until now there has not been the international will to undertake them to the extent they are needed. Much ethnic violence across the globe is also rooted in inequalities of wealth, power, and influence. Although the history of such violence indicates that it is not about to end in the near future, a sociological perspective suggests that efforts that successfully reduce global poverty and inequality will have the side benefit of also reducing global ethnic violence.
Conclusion
• Sociological insights have important implications for benefitting society in the following areas: reducing social inequality, enhancing public safety, helping the family and schools, improving the nation’s health, and improving the global society.
For Your Review
1. Of the many areas in which sociological insights might benefit society, which one area do you think is most important? Explain your answer.
2. Identify which of the following statements you most agree with: (a) It is most important for sociology as a discipline to provide knowledge for its own sake; (b) It is most important for sociology as a discipline to provide knowledge to benefit society; (c) It is equally important for sociology as a discipline to provide knowledge for its own sake and to benefit society. Explain your answer.
15.03: A Final Word
In addition to presenting the sociological perspective and showing you how our social backgrounds affect our attitudes, behavior, and life chances in so many ways, this book also discussed the many consequences of extensive social inequality in the United States and around the globe. We hoped to stimulate your sociological imagination to recognize the social forces affecting us all and to suggest what needs to be done to have a society where all people have equal opportunity to achieve their dreams. This is a society that, as Americans have heard since childhood, should be filled “with liberty and justice for all.” With your newfound sociological imagination, perhaps you will be better able to help achieve such a society.
C. Wright Mills (1959, p. 5)Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. London, England: Oxford University Press. wrote that the awareness accompanying the sociological imagination is “in many ways…a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one.” It is terrible because it makes us realize that many powerful social forces affect our fate and underlie public issues. Yet it is also magnificent because it gives us the knowledge we need to begin to change these forces so that we can have a better society.
This book has shown you both the terrible and the magnificent. It has emphasized social inequality and other social forces that affect us in so many ways, but it has also emphasized how knowledge of these forces points to effective strategies for changing society for the better. With such knowledge, we are better able to heed the urging of Horace Mann, 19th-century education reformer and the first president of Antioch College, who told his students, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity” (Mann, 1868, p. 575).Mann, M. T. P. (Ed.). (1868). Life and works of Horace Mann (Vol. 1). Boston, MA: Walker, Fuller, and Company. Whatever your life’s pursuits, I hope that your new sociological imagination will help you win some victories for humanity in the years ahead. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology%3A_Understanding_and_Changing_the_Social_World_(Barkan)/15%3A_Conclusion_-_Understanding_and_Changing_the_Social_World/15.02%3A_Public_Sociology_and_Improv.txt |
This New Science of Societies: Sociology
Sociology is a relatively new discipline in comparison to chemistry, math, biology, philosophy and other disciplines that trace back thousands of years. Sociology began as an intellectual/philosophical effort by a French man named Auguste Comte (born 1798 and died 1857). He is considered the founder of sociology and coined "Sociology." Comte's Definition of Sociology is the science of society. In his observation Comte believed that society's knowledge passed through 3 stages which he observed in France. His life came in what he called the positivism stage (science-based). Positivism is the objective and value-free observation, comparison, and experimentation applied to scientific inquiry. Positivism was Comte's way of describing the science needed for sociology to takes its place among the other scientific disciplines.
His core work, "The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte" was translated by a British-born philosopher named Harriet Martineau (1802-1876). She literally clarified Comte's original writing as she condensed it into a concise English language version. This expanded the interest in sociology to include English speakers. Martineau held values that are common today but were way before her time. She opposed oppression, especially of women and Black slaves in the US. Her own work about society which first addressed this, Society In America has been scanned and is free (public domain) to read at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=A...ummary_s&cad=0 .
Why did thinkers of the day find a need for a new science of sociology? Societies had change in unprecedented ways and had formed a new collective of social complexities that the world had never witnessed before. Western Europe was transformed by the Industrial Revolution, a technological development of knowledge and manufacturing that began in the late 1600s and continued until the early 1900s. The Industrial Revolution transformed society at every level. Look at Table 1 below to see pre and post-Industrial Revolution social patterns and how different they were.
Table 1. Pre-Industrial and Post-Industrial Revolution Social Patterns
Pre-Industrial Revolution Post-Industrial Revolution
Farm/ Cottage Factories
Family Work Breadwinners /Homemakers
Small Towns Large Cities
Large Families Small Families
Homogamous Towns Heterogamous Cities
Lower Standards of Living Higher Standards of Living
People Died Younger Peopled died older
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, families lived on smaller farms and every able member of the family did work to support and sustain the family economy. Towns were small and very similar (homogamy) and families were large (more children=more workers). There was a lower standard of living and because of poor sanitation people died earlier.
After the Industrial Revolution, farm work was replaced by factory work. Men left their homes and became breadwinners earning money to buy many of the goods that used to be made by hand at home (or bartered for by trading one's own homemade goods with another's). Women became the supervisors of home work. Much was still done by families to develop their own home goods while many women and children also went to the factories to work. Cities became larger and more diverse (heterogamy). Families became smaller (less farm work required fewer children). Eventually, standards of living increased and death rates declined.
It is important to note the value of women's work before and after the Industrial Revolution. Hard work was the norm and still is today for most women. Homemaking included much unpaid work. For example, my 93 year old Granny is an example of this. She worked hard her entire life both in a cotton factory and at home raising her children, grand-children, and at times great grand-children. When I was a boy, she taught me how to make lye soap by saving the fat from animals they ate. She'd take a metal bucket and poked holes in the bottom of it. Then she burned twigs and small branches until a pile of ashes built up in the bottom of the bucket. After that she filtered water from the well through the ashes and collected the lye water runoff in a can. She heated the animal fat and mixed it in the lye water from the can. When it cooled, it was cut up and used as lye soap. They'd also take that lye water runoff and soak dried white corn in it. The corn kernel shells would become loose and slip off after being soaked. They'd rinse this and use it for hominy. Or grind it up and make grits from it. We'll talk more about women and work in Chapter 10.
These pre and post-industrial changes impacted all of Western civilization because the Industrial Revolution hit all of these countries about the same way: Western Europe, United States, Canada, and later Japan and Australia. The Industrial Revolution brought some rather severe social conditions which included: deplorable city living conditions; crowding; crime; extensive poverty; inadequate water and sewage; early death, frequent accidents, and high illness rates. The new social problems required a new science that was unique from any scientific disciplines of the day. Comte wanted a strong scientific basis for sociology, but because of various distractions he never quite established it.
Core Founders of Sociology
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was the first to take a position in a university and because of the scientific journal he edited, L'AnnŽe Sociologique (the sociological year) and his scientific work, he was able to help sociology to become part of higher education's academic culture. He was also French and took the first position at a university as a sociology professor.
Durkheim discussed Social Facts, a phenomena within society that typically exists independent of individual choices and actions. Durkheim approached a subject that most thought of as being exclusively individualistic in nature-suicide. But, he defined suicide from a social fact perspective which helped him to establish the unique wisdom of sociological analysis.
To Durkheim, individual people don't cause suicide, suicide is a social fact that some members of society participate in for various social reason. Durkheim studied suicide among categories of people in various contexts in Western Europe. He found 4 distinct types of suicide that occur as social facts and that could be collectively remedied by adjusting social processes. Before we explain these let's look at 2 core sociological concepts.
Social Integration is the degree to which people are connected to their social groups. Let's check your own personal degree of social integration. On a piece of paper right down how many close family members you have. Then add in how many close friends and coworkers you have. Finally add in all others whose name you know and they know yours. This number is one measure of your social integration. But, to really get an idea you might evaluate these relationships. In other words list your top 6 closest relationships in order. Make a short list of the 6 closest relationships you have. Now, rank 1 for the closest, 2 for next closest and so on up to 6th. Durkheim realized from his suicide studies that the closer we are to others, the more socially integrated we are and the less likely we are to commit suicide. The second concept to understand is called anomie.
Anomie is a state of relative normlessness that comes from the disintegration of our routines and regulations. Anomie is common when we go through sudden changes in our lives or when we live in larger cities. Sudden changes bring stress and frustration. To illustrate this, I often tell my students to remember how they felt the day after high school graduation. They walk for graduation then wake up the next morning with very few demands on their time and energies. This sudden shift in demands from very intense to almost absent, leads many to feel extremely frustrated and lost. Add to that they are now adults and no longer students (children) and you get a prime formula for anomie (role shift + vague expectations about what is expected + sudden change=anomie).
One of my college students told me that at the end of last semester she had 4 finals, one paper, two presentations, and one lab project all due in the last 5 days of class. She finished it all, packed, and moved back home. The first morning she woke up at home she got out her planner and realized that all she had to do that day, in other words all the demands placed upon her were to eat and shower. She was not a full-time university student for now and was between significant roles. "It took a week to get my life back into a routine for the break," she explained.
As a larger social fact, anomie is a byproduct of large complex societies, especially around large cities. It's easier to get lost in the crowd, not be noticed, and to rarely receive praise or criticism for personal actions. Durkheim and others were aware that society impacted the life of the individual even if the individual had very little impact on society. By the way, Durkheim measured suicide rates and so do we in our day. Suicide is the purposeful ending of one's own life for any reason. Suicide Rate is the numbers of suicides per 100,000 people in a population.
Durkheim's first 2 types of suicide had to do with the degree of social integration of the individual into their groups. Altruistic Suicide is suicide which occurs when people are over involved and over committed to a group or society as a whole. This occurs when the needs of society as a whole override the needs of the individual. Soldiers often do this to protect their comrades.
Egoistic Suicide is suicide which occurs when people are under-involved or under-committed to groups. This is the loner-type suicide when an individual is disconnected (or never connected) to others. Certain social pressures isolate us more than others and suicide becomes more risky for the isolated. Certain social forces within society create this isolated state within us (TV viewing, video games, online time, and other solo activities that preoccupy us with our own interest and isolate us from our groups and relationships; see www.youtube.com and search "James at war Halo3" for a humorous example of technology isolating us from others).
Interestingly, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center gives a few suicide prevention strategies that relate to social integration:. "Strong connections to family and community supportÉcultural and religious beliefs that discourage suicide and support self-preservationsÉand various other types of social support are recommended" (retrieved 13 January, 2009 from www.sprc.org the "Risk and Protective Factors for Suicide," National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Goals and Objectives for Action, 2001). Interestingly Durkheim's work is quoted multiple times on this Website.
The next 2 types of suicide described by Durkheim have to do with the levels of social control and social regulation. Anomic Suicide is suicide which occurs when people are under-regulated by familiar norms that serve as anchors to their social reality. You'd expect this type of suicide in very large cities or when dramatic social changes have transpired (IE: 9-11 terrorist attacks or recent economic recessions).
Fatalistic Suicide is suicide which occurs when people are over regulated or over-constrained. This might happen in oppressive societies where people prefer to die rather than continue under the hopeless state of oppression (IE: prisoners of war, inmates, and refugees). The US Center for Disease Control list Suicide as the 11th most common form of death with about 32,000+ US suicides reported last year. That's a rate of 11 suicides per 100,000 living people (retrieved 23 April, 2009 from Suicide and Self-inflicted Injury at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm ).
In Durkheim's day he found highest suicide rates for Protestants, males, singles, and wealthy persons. He found lowest rates for Jews, Catholics, females, marrieds, and poor persons. Many of these are still common predictors of suicide today. The World Health Organization reported that worldwide the suicide rates show clear patterns being higher for males at all ages and especially higher for the elderly (retrieved 23 April, 2009 from http://www.who.int/violence_injury_p...n/en/chap7.pdf ). This report also noted that the highest suicide rates in the world were reported in: Lithuania 51.6; Russian Federation 43.1; and Belarus 41.5/100,000 population. Interesting isn't it at the 3 worst countries are geographically close together? Durkheim found geographic patterns within his researched countries, too. The countries with the 3 lowest suicide rates were: Azerbaijan 1.1; Kuwait 2.0; and Philippines 2.1/100,000 population (*retrieved 23 April 2009 from World Report on Violence and Health, Table 7.1, "Age-Adjusted suicide rates by country from www.UN.org English).
Look at Figure 1 below to see a recent pattern of suicide rates in the United States. Since 1950 male rates (red line) have gone down overall, but did experience a slight increase in the early 1990s. Male's rates are the highest. The blue line is the combination of males and females into the total and it parallels the other lines about mid-range. The green line represents females. Females typically commit less suicide than males in most countries of the world.
I use many figures and charts in this books so let me just point out a few tricks to reading them. Look at the legend on the side or bottom of the charts. It tells you which lines represent which categories. Also look at the title to make sure you read the details of what is being represented.
Figure 1. Suicide Rates per 100,000 United States, Various Categories 1950 to 2005*
*Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WWW.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
Now let's consider the US rates by age. Look at Figure 2 below. Ironic, isn't it that the older persons (persons with the most wisdom and experience) would have the highest suicide rates? The 75-84 and 85+ age categories have the highest suicide rates while the 15-24 years olds have the lowest. Durkheim would argue that these rates are social facts and that at the core of the problem lies social level processes that either facilitate or inhibit personal choices by exerting social pressures.
Figure 2. Suicide Rates per 100,000 United States, Age Categories 1990 to 2005*
*Retrieved 24 April, 2009 from Table 120. Death Rates From Suicide, by Selected Characteristics: 1990 to 2005, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus.htm
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was an influential person in the development of sociology as a strong academic discipline. He was not a sociologist. He was an economist, philosopher, and revolutionary. Marx was born in Germany and his writings on the class struggles that existed in society wherein the poor masses are exploited by the few wealthy elite still apply today (perhaps even more so than in his day). His philosophy and the timing of his writings helped early sociologists in the development of social theories and scientific approaches. We will talk more about Marx and Conflict Theory in Chapter 3.
Another key German founder of sociology was Max Weber (pronounced vey-bur) (1864-1920). He was a very intelligent person who strongly influenced the development of sociology and taught some of the other early sociologists of his day. Weber studied economics and his work gave balance to Karl Marx's extreme ideas. He studied religion and the economy and published a work called, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." He also studied bureaucracies and defined Ideal Type as the abstract description of a social phenomena by which actual social phenomena may be compared (You'll see an ideal type in Chapter 9 on caste versus class economic systems). Ideal Types are given as hypothetical examples and we can compare current economic systems to them.
Another early sociologist was a British man named Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Herbert is remembered for his failed ideas about survival of the fittest in society (not the animal kingdom). He is most remembered for the sociology that wasn't. In other words, he believed that survival of the fittest applied to classes within society and that the wealthy aristocrats were the fittest. Whatever the wealthy people did was in effect better for society in the long run. The problem with his philosophy is that it was not supported by scientific inquiry. In fact his complex ideas were interesting, but not a good explanation of social processes and their causes when put to scientific rigors.
Eventually scientists adopted sociology in the US. Lester Ward is considered the founder of US sociology (1841-1913). Ward saw sociology and its potential to better the society in the US as tool. He emphasized the scientific methodology in using sociology to solve real world social ills such as poverty. He, like Martineau felt that women had rights and should be treated as equals (most in his day thought he was wrong about women at the time because the prevailing belief was the inferiority of women). Ward is the founder of US sociology and first president of the American Sociological Association (see www.asanet.org ). His sociological principles and processes are still utilized by many who work in governmental and social service sectors today.
Another sociologist from the US was Talcott Parsons (1902-1979). Parsons was a Functional Theorist who did extensive work on Systems Theory (see Chapter 3). Parsons was also a president of the American Sociological Association and for a short period of time was the world's premier sociologist. His work at Harvard supported much of the professionalism sociology has today.
Sociology began in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, then the United States. Sociology waxed and waned in popularity outside of the US over its short history. Today, sociology has become a United States-centered scientific discipline with most sociologists living in the US. There is significant sociological work being done in various countries of the world, but most of the 14,000 members of the American Sociological Association (the world's largest professional sociology organization) live in the US.
During the 1920s and 1930s the Chicago School was a center for sociological research that focuses on urban and ecological sociological issues. Within the Chicago School were 2 other important US sociologists, Charles H. Cooley (1864-1929) and George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Their work together gave tremendous support to the Symbolic Interactionism Theory (Chapter 3). The construction of how we form the "I" and the "me", the self-concept, and the looking glass self (see Chapter 6) was crucial and is still widely used in today's scientific inquiry.
United States Sociology: A Career?
Other notable people who majored or made a career in sociology include: The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.; W. E. B. Du Bois; Georg Simmel, Alex de Tocqueville, Jorgen Habermas; Amati Etzioni; Ronald Reagan; Robin Williams and Dan Aykroyd; Anthony Giddens; and First Lady, Michelle Obama. Most people who take sociology take only 1 course (that's estimated to be 600,000 US students per year). But more and more are choosing it as a major. The next 3 figures, Figures 3, 4, and 5 show the numbers of sociology graduates from 1990 to 2004 at the Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral level.
In Figure 3 you can see that over 20,000 students graduate each year with a sociology Bachelor's degree. Many of them find work in government, social service, business, and other service-related sectors of the economy. Figure 4 shows that about 2,000 graduates earn their Master's degree in sociology each year. And in Figure 4 you can see that about 550 students graduate each year with their Doctorate in sociology. Of course the career with a doctorate pays the best, has the best career advancement opportunities, and is the most comprehensive training for research and theory that a student could acquire.
Figure 3. Numbers Graduating in Sociology-Bachelor's Degrees 1990 to 2004*
*U.S. Department of Education, National Center of Education Statistics , Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System,1990-2004 ( Washington, DC: NCES, 2006). www.caspar.nsf.gov. Retrieved 12 October 2008.
Figure 4. Numbers Graduating in Sociology-Master's Degrees 1990 to 2004*
*U.S. Department of Education, National Center of Education Statistics , Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System,1990-2004 ( Washington, DC: NCES, 2006). www.caspar.nsf.gov. Retrieved 12 October 2008.
Figure 5. Numbers Graduating in Sociology-Doctoral Degrees 1990 to 2004*
*U.S. Department of Education, National Center of Education Statistics , Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System,1990-2004 ( Washington, DC: NCES, 2006). www.caspar.nsf.gov. Retrieved 12 October 2008.
Sociology is a good 4-year program and also offers good career opportunities. Money Magazine often rates good jobs in the US. Sociologists had an average pay of \$68,724 with an estimated high range of about \$138,000 per year (retrieved 24 April, 2009 from http://money.cnn.com/magazines/money...shots/196.html
Best Jobs in America). This report also ranked college professors as the 2nd best job in America. Over half full-time doctoral-level sociologists are faculty at colleges and universities (www.asanet.org ).
If I'm right, you probably won't major in sociology and you likely just needed the 3 credits of social science elective. I admire you for being in higher education. I urge you to graduate with your four-year degree. This course and textbook will enhance your thinking, science, and writing skills and make you an overall better student. Enjoy it. Ask questions of your professor. Participate in the classroom discussion. If you do choose sociology as a major, then look me up at your next sociological conference meetings. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.01%3A_History_and_Introduction.txt |
Seeing the Social World in A New Light: Personal & Larger Social
The average person lives too narrow a life to get a clear and concise understanding of today’s complex social world. Our daily lives are spent among friends and family; at work and at play. We spend many hours watching TV and surfing the Internet. No way can one person grasp the big picture from their relatively isolated lives. There are thousands of communities, millions of interpersonal interactions, billions of Internet information sources, and countless trends that transpire without many of us even knowing they exist. What can we do to make sense of it all?
When I learned of the sociological imagination by Mills, I realized that it gives us a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) was a contemporary sociologist who brought tremendous insight into the daily lives of society’s members. Mills stated that “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both" (Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination page ii; Oxford U. Press). Mills identified “Troubles” (personal challenges) and "Issues" (Larger social challenges) that are key principles for providing us with a framework for really wrapping our minds around many of the hidden social processes that transpire in an almost invisible manner in today’s societies. Before we discuss personal troubles and larger social issues let’s define a social fact.
Social Facts are social processes rooted in society rather than in the individual. Émile Durkheim (1858-1917, France) studied the “science of social facts” in an effort to identify social correlations and ultimately social laws designed to make sense of how modern societies worked given that they became increasingly diverse and complex(see Émile Durkheim, The Rules of the Sociological Method, (Edited by Steven Lukes; translated by W.D. Halls). New York: Free Press, 1982, pp. 50-59). See the Sociological Imagination diagram below.
The national cost of a gallon of gas, the War in the Middle East, the repressed economy, the trend of having too few females in the 18-24 year old singles market, and the ever-increasing demand for plastic surgery are just a few of the social facts at play today. Social facts are typically outside of the control of average people. They occur in the complexities of modern society and impact us, but we rarely find a way to significantly impact them back. This is because, as Mills taught, we live much of our lives on the personal level and much of society happens at the larger social level. Without knowledge of the larger social and personal levels of social experiences, we live in what Mills called a False Social Conscious which is an ignorance of social facts and the larger social picture.
Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. Mills identified the fact that we function in our personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. A college student who parties 4 nights out of 7, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. On the other hand, when 50 percent of all college students in the country never graduate, we call that a larger social issue.
Larger Social Issues are those that lie beyond one's personal control and the range of one's inner life. These pertain to society's organizations and processes. These are rooted in society rather than in the individual. Nationwide, students come to college as freshmen ill-prepared to understand the rigors of college life. They haven’t often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed as college students. Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the net, plays video or online games, hangs out at the mall, watches tv and movies, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. Where and when would he or she get experience focusing attention on college studies and the rigors of self-discipline required to transition into college credits, a quarter or a semester, studying, papers, projects, field trips, group work, or test taking.
Figure 1. Diagram of the Seven Social Institutions and the Sociological Imagination
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
In a survey conducted each year by the US Census Bureau, findings suggest that, in 2006, the US had about 84 percent of the population who graduated high school. They also found that only 27 percent had a bachelors degree. Given the numbers of Freshmen students enrolling in college, the percentage with a bachelors degree should be closer to 50 percent.
The majority of college first year students drop out, because nationwide we have a deficit in the preparation and readiness of Freshmen attending college and a real disconnect in their ability to connect to college in such a way that they feel they belong to it. In fact, college dropouts are an example of both a larger social issue and personal trouble. Thousands of studies and millions of dollars have been spent on how to increase a Freshman student’s odds of success in college (graduating with a 4-year degree). There are millions of dollars worth of grant money awarded each year to help retain college students. Interestingly, almost all of the grants are targeted in such a way that a specific college can create a specific program to help each individual student stay in college and graduate.
The real power of the sociological imagination is found in how you and I learn to distinguish between the personal and social levels in our own lives. Once we do, we can make personal choices that serve us best, given the larger social forces that we face. In 1991, I graduated with my Ph.D. and found myself in a very competitive job market for University professor/researcher. positions. With hundreds of my own job applications out there, I kept finishing second or third and was losing out to 10 year veteran professors who applied for entry level jobs. I looked carefully at the job market, keeping in mind my deep interest in teaching, the struggling economy, and my sense of urgency in obtaining a salary and benefits. I came to the decision to switch my job search focus from university research to college teaching positions. Again, the competition was intense. On my 301st job application (that’s not an exaggeration),I interviewed and beat out 47 other candidates for my current position. In this case, knowing and seeing the larger social troubles that impacted my success or failure helped in finding a position. Because of the Sociological Imagination, I was empowered because I understood the larger social job market ,and was able to best situate myself within it.
Making Sense of Divorce Using the Sociological Imagination
Let’s apply the sociological imagination to something most students are deeply concerned about—divorce. Are there larger social and personal factors that will impact your own risk of divorce? Yes. In spite of the fact that 223,000,000 people are married in the U.S., divorce continues to be a very common occurrence (see http://www.Census.gov ). Divorce happens and since millions of us (me included) had our parent’s divorce, we are especially concerned about the success of our own marriage.
What’s in the larger social picture? Estimates for the U.S. suggest that 85 percent of us will marry (Popenoe, D. 2007 in 5 June, 2008 from marriage.rutgers.edu/Publicat...XTSOOU2007.htm ). Yet, so many of us feel tremendous anxiety about marriage. Consider the marriage and divorce rates in Table 1 below. The first thing you notice is that both have been declining since 1990. The second thing you notice is that the ratio of marriages to divorces is consistently 2 marriages to 1 divorce (2:1). To point out, the divorce and marriage rates in Table 1 are called Crude Divorce and Crude Marriage rates because they compare the divorces and marriages to everyone in the population for a given year, even though children and others have virtually no risk of either marrying or divorcing.
Table 1: Comparison of US Marriages/1,000 Persons to Divorces/1,000 Persons 1990, 2000, and 2005*
1990 Rates 2000 Rates 2005 Rates 3-year Average
US Marriages 9.8/1,000 8.3/1,000 7.5/1,000 8.5/1,000
US Divorces 4.7/1,000 4.1/1,000 3.6/1,000 4.1/1,000
US Ratio of Marriages to Divorces 2:1 2:1 2:1 2:1
*Statistical Abstracts online: Table 121. Marriages and Divorces—Number and Rate by State: 1990 to 2005 Taken from the Internet on 5 June, 2008 from www.census.gov/compendia/stat..._divorces.html
Does sociology provide personal and larger social insight into what we can do to have a good marriage and avoid divorce? Absolutely! However; before we discuss these, lets set the record straight. There never was a 1 in 2 chance of getting divorced in the U.S. ( see http://www.Rutgers.edu the National Marriage Project, 2004 “The State of Our Unions” or Kalman Heller “The Myth of the High Rate of Divorce taken from Internet 5 June, 2008 from http://www.isnare.com/?aid=217950&ca=Marriage ). Divorce rates peaked in the 1980’s and have steadily declined since then (See Figure 1 below). Even though all married people are at risk of divorce, most of them will not face this reality. Many studies have consistently shown exactly how our personal choices and behaviors can actually minimize our chances of divorce. Here’s a brief summary:
-Wait to marry until you reach your mid-20’s. Teens who marry have the highest risk of divorce (see Center for Disease Control “First Marriage Dissolution, Divorce, and Remarriage: United States taken from Internet 5 July, 2008 from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad323.pdf ).
-Avoid cohabitation if you plan to ever marry. While cohabitation is on the rise in the U.S., it is still associated with higher risks of divorce once one is married. Numerous studies have rigorously researched the impact of having cohabited on the odds of marital success. (see Lisa Mincieli and Kristin Moore, "The Relationship Context of Births Outside of Marriage: The Rise of Cohabitation," Child Trends Research Brief 2007-13 (May 2007); or Matthew D. Bramlett and William D. Mosher, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States, National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics, 23 (22), 2002; Or Larry Bumpass and Hsien-Hen Lu, "Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Children’s Family Contexts in the U. S.," Population Studies 54 (2000): 29-41; or Jay Teachman, "Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital Disruption among Women," Journal of Marriage and the Family 65 (2003): 444-455.
-Finish college. College graduates divorce less then dropouts or high school graduates (see mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11422/315/adu...divfactos.html ).
-Be aware of the three-strike issue: Strike 1, you are poor; Strike 2, you are a teenager when you marry; and Strike 3, you are pregnant when you marry. These issues could prove to be a terminal combination of risk factors as far as staying married is concerned. These three in combination with others listed below may increase your risk of divorce.
-Know which factors you can control that will likely impact your marital success odds. Other scientifically identified divorce risk factors include: high personal debt; falling out of love; not proactively maintaining your marital relationship; marrying someone who has little in common with you; infidelity; remaining mentally “on the marriage market…waiting for someone better to come along,” having parents who divorced; neither preparing for nor managing the stresses that come with raising children, and divorcing because the marriage appears unhappy and hopeless in terms of resolving negative issues ( see Glenn, N. 1991 “Recent trends in Marital Success in the US” May, J. of Marriage and the Family, pages 261-270). Often couples on the fringe of divorce later emerge from those states of unhappiness and hopelessness with renewed happiness and hope, by simply enduring the difficult years together.
In all of these factors listed above you can decide how to best situate yourself to deal with the certain issues before divorce becomes the ultimate outcome. But, as Mills taught, you must consider both personal and larger social issues simultaneously to fully benefit from the sociological imagination. It is true that divorce is still very common in the U.S. Notice the peak on this figure found in the 1980s, and the trend (at least up to the most recent 2005 data) shows a slightly decreased pattern since then.
Figure 2: United States Historical Data-Divorce Trends 1920-2005 *
*US. Bureau of the Census Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part 2; Washington, D.C., 1975Series B 216-220 “Divorce 1920-1970 and Statistical Abstracts of the United States 2001 Page 87 Table 117 and 2002 Page 88 Table 111.
What are some of the larger social factors that have historically contributed to these patterns of divorce? You’ll notice a brief spike in divorce after World War II. The post-war year, 1946, was a true anomaly as far as rates measuring the family are concerned. It was the highest rate of marriages, highest rate of births (The Baby Boom began in 1946), and the lowest median age at marriage in U.S. history. Divorce rates surged in 1946 as all the soldiers returned home having been changed by the trauma, isolation from their families, and challenges of the war. They were probably less compatible with their wives once they came back. Divorces tended to follow wars for marriages where one spouse is deployed into combat (WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Kuwait, and Iraq).
Other factors influencing this divorce pattern have to do with the economy, marriage market, and other factors. Divorces continue to be high during economic prosperity and often decline during economic hardships. Divorces tend to be higher if there is an abundance of single women in the society. And divorces tend to be more common in: urban rather than rural areas; the Western US than in the Eastern; among the poor, less educated, remarried, less religiously devout, and children of divorce. Please note that recession, war, secularism, and western US cultures don’t cause divorce. Scientists have never identified a “cause” for divorce. But, they have clearly identified risk factors.
Could there be larger social factors pressuring your marriage right now? Yes, but you are probably not enslaved to those forces. They still impact you, and you can follow Mill’s ideas and manage as best you can within your power concerning consequences of these forces. What can you do about it? Well, if you are single, you’d best situate yourself in terms of marital success by waiting to marry until you are in your 20’s, finishing and graduating from college, paying careful attention to finding the right person (especially one with common values similar to your own), and doing some sort of self-analysis to assess working proactively to nurture your marriage relationship on an ongoing basis. Finding counseling to help mediate the influence of your parents' divorce on your current marital relationship can also be helpful. If you are married and things appear to hit a wall, consider counseling, consulting with other couples, and reading self-help books. Often the insurmountable walls that couples face in marriage slowly collapse with time and concerted effort.
Years ago, a colleague and I wrote a self-assessment to help students identify the personal divorce risks so that they could strategize what to do when faced with those risks. Take 10 minutes and learn what you can about your own divorce risks. (also take the time to watch another example of the Sociological Imagination in the case of W. E. B. Du Bois below).
Divorce Risks Assessment Questionaire PDF
One last note about the Sociological Imagination. One of my personal heroes is W.E.B. Du Bois. He was the first black Harvard Graduate, the first to scientifically analyze U.S. blacks (See The Philadelphia Negro), and one of the most prolific Sociological writers ever. Watch my short lecture video on how the Sociological Imagination helps us to understand the personal lives of this hero, and think about the tragedy that could have been had he grown up in the U.S. Southern states instead of in Massachusetts. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.02%3A_Sociological_Imagination.txt |
Making Sense of Abstract Theories
Sociological theories are the core and underlying strength of the discipline. They guide researchers in their studies. They also guide practitioners in their intervention strategies. And they will provide you with a basic understanding of how to see the larger social picture in your own personal life. A Theory is a set of interrelated concepts used to describe, explain, and predict how society and its parts are related to each other. The metaphor I've used for many years to illustrate the usefulness of a theory is what I call the "goggles metaphor." Goggles are a set of inter-related parts that help us see things more clearly. Goggles work because the best scientific components work together to magnify, enlarge, clarify, and expand to our view of the thing we are studying.
Theories are sets of inter-related concepts and ideas that have been scientifically tested and combined to magnify, enlarge, clarify, and expand our understanding of people, their behaviors, and their societies. Without theories, science would be a futile exercise in statistics. In the diagram below you can see the process by which a theory leads sociologist to perform a certain type of study with certain types of questions that can test the assumptions of the theory. Once the study is administered the findings and generalizations can be considered to see if they support the theory. If they do, similar studies will be performed to repeat and fine-tune the process. If the findings and generalizations do not support the theory, the sociologist rethinks and revisits the assumptions they made.
Here's a real-life scientific example. In the 1960's two researchers named Cumming and Henry studied the processes of aging. They devised a theory on aging that had assumptions built into it. These were simply put, that all elderly people realize the inevitability of death and begin to systematically disengage from their previous youthful roles while at the same time society prepares to disengage from them (see Maddox et al. 1987 The Encyclopedia of Aging, Springer Pub. NY for much more detail. Cumming and Henry tested their theory on a large number of elderly persons. Findings and generalization consistently yielded a "no" in terms of support for this theory. For all intents and purposes this theory was abandoned and is only used in references such as these (for a more scientifically supported theory on aging Google "Activity Theory and/or Continuity Theory"). Theories have to be supported by research and they also provide a framework for how specific research should be conducted.
By the way, theories can be used to study society-millions of people in a state, country, or even at the world level. When theories are used at this level they are referred to as Macro Theories, theories which best fit the study of massive numbers of people (typically Conflict and Functional theories). When theories are used to study small groups or individuals, say a couple, family, or team, they are referred to as being Micro Theories, theories which best fit the study of small groups and their members (typically Symbolic Interactionism or Social Exchange theories). In many cases, any of the four main theories can be applied at either the macro or micro levels.
There are really two distinct types of theories: first, Grand Theory, which is a theory which deals with the universal aspects of social processes or problems and is based on abstract ideas and concepts rather than on case specific evidence. These include Conflict, Functionalism, Symbolic Interactionism, and Social Exchange Theories; second, Middle-Range Theory, which is a theory derived from specific scientific findings and focuses on the interrelation of two or more concepts applied to a very specific social process or problem. Robert K. Merton (1910-2003) was a functional theory-based sociologist who taught the value of using smaller more specifically precise theories in trying to explain smaller and more specific social phenomena. These theories include: Continuity, Activity, Differential Association, and Labeling theories. (see American Sociology Association, Theory http://www.asatheory.org/ ).
Let's consider the four grand theories one at a time. The Conflict Theory is a macro theory. A Macro Theory is a sociological theory designed to study the larger social, global, and societal level of sociological phenomena. This theory was founded by a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, and revolutionary (1818-1883). Marx was a witness to oppression perpetrated by society's elite members against the masses of poor. He had very little patience for the capitalistic ideals that undergirded these powerful acts of inhumane exploitation of the average person. To him struggle was innate to all human societies. Later another German named Max Weber (1864-1920; pronounced "Veybur") further developed this sociological theory and refined it to a more moderate position. Weber studied capitalism further but argued against Marx's outright rejection of it.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theory is especially useful in understanding: war, wealth and poverty, the haves and the have nots, revolutions, political strife, exploitation, divorce, ghettos, discrimination and prejudice, domestic violence, rape, child abuse, slavery, and more conflict-related social phenomena. Conflict Theory claims that society is in a state of perpetual conflict and competition for limited resources. Marx and Weber, were they alive today, would likely use Conflict Theory to study the unprecedented bail outs by the US government which have proven to be a rich-to-rich wealth transfer.
Conflict Theory assumes that those who have perpetually try to increase their wealth at the expense and suffering of those who have not. It is a power struggle which is most often won by wealthy elite and lost by the common person of common means. Power is the ability to get what one wants even in the presence of opposition. Authority is the institutionalized legitimate power. By far the Bourgeoisie, or wealthy elite (royalty, political, and corporate leaders), have the most power. Bourgeoisie are the "Goliaths" in society who often bully their wishes into outcomes. The Proletariat are the common working class, lower class, and poor members of society. According to Marx (see diagram below) the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat cannot both have it their way and in order to offset the wealth and power of the Bourgeoisie the proletariat often rise up and revolt against their oppressors (The French, Bolshevik, United States, Mexican, and other revolutions are examples).
In fact Marx and Weber realized long ago that society does have different classes and a similar pattern of relatively few rich persons in comparison to the majority who are poor. The rich call the shots. Look below at the photographic montage of homes in one US neighborhood which were run down, poor, trashy, and worth very little. They were on the West side of this gully and frustrated many who lived on the East side who were forced to drive through these "slums" to reach their own mansions.
Figure 3. Photo Montage of Haves and Have Nots in a US Neighborhood
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
The Conflict Theory has been repeatedly tested against scientifically derived data and it repeatedly proves to have a wide application among many different levels of sociological study. That is not to say that all sociological phenomena are conflict-based. But, most Conflict theorists would argue that more often than not Conflict assumptions do apply. Feminist theory is a theoretical perspective that is couched primarily in Conflict Theory assumptions.
Functionalism or Structural Functionalism Theory
The next grand theory is called Functionalism or Structural Functionalism. The Functionalist Theory claims that society is in a state of balance and kept that way through the function of society's component parts. This theory has underpinnings in biological and ecological concepts (see diagram below). Society can be studied the same way the human body can be studied - by analyzing what specific systems are working or not working, diagnosing problems, and devising solutions to restore balance. Socialization, religious involvement, friendship, health care, economic recovery, peace, justice and injustice, population growth or decline, community, romantic relationships, marriage and divorce, and normal and abnormal family experiences are just a few of the evidences of functional processes in our society.
Sure, Functionalists would agree with Conflict Theorists that things break down in society and that unfair treatment of others is common. These break downs are called Dysfunctions, which are breakdowns or disruptions in society and its parts that threaten social stability. Enron's collapse, the ruination of 14,000 employees' retirement funds, the loss of millions in shareholder investments, and the serious doubt it left in the mind of US investors about the Stock Market's credibility and reliability which lasted for nearly a decade are examples of dysfunctions in the economic sector of the economy. But, Functionalists also look at two types of functions: manifest and latent functions. Manifest Functions are the apparent and intended functions of institutions in society. Latent Functions are the less apparent, unintended, and often unrecognized functions in social institutions and processes.
Back to Enron, the government's manifest function includes regulation of investment rules and laws in the Stock market to ensure credibility and reliability. After the Enron collapse, every company offering stocks for trade underwent a government supervised audit of its accounting processes in order to restore the public trust. For the most part balance was restored in the Stock Market (to a certain degree at least). There are still many imbalances in the investment, mortgage, and banking sectors which have to be readjusted; but, that's the point - society does readjust and eventually recover some degree of function.
Does the government also provide latent or accidental functions to society? Yes. Take for example the US military bases. Of all the currently open US military bases, all are economic boons for the local communities surrounding them. All provide jobs, taxes, tourism, retail, and government contract monies that would otherwise go somewhere else. When the discussion about closing military bases comes up in Washington DC, Senators and members of Congress go to work trying to keep their community's bases open.
As you can already tell, Functionalism is more positive and optimistic that Conflict Theory (the basis for much criticism by many Conflict Theorists). Functionalists realize that just like the body, societies get "sick" or dysfunction. By studying society's parts and processes, Functionalists can better understand how society remains stable or adjust to destabilizing forces when unwanted change is threatened. According to this theory most societies find that healthy balance and maintain it (unless they don't and collapse as many have in the history of the world. Equilibrium is the state of balance maintained by social processes that help society adjust and compensate for forces that might tilt it onto a path of destruction.
Getting back to the Conflict example of the gully separating extremely wealthy and poor neighborhoods, look at this Habitat for Humanity picture below. I took this close to my own home, because it represents what Functional Theorists claim happens - component parts of society respond to dysfunctions in ways that help to resolve problems. In this house the foundation was dug, poured, and dried within a week. From the foundation to this point was three working days. This house is now finished and lived in, thanks mostly to the Habitat non-profit process and the work of many volunteers. From the Functionalism perspective, optimism is appropriate and fits the empirical data gathered in society.
Figure 2. Photo of a Recently Finished Habitat for Humanity Home
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Symbolic Interactionism Theory
Interactionism comes in two theoretical forms: Symbolic Interaction and Social Exchange. By far, my favorite sociological theory is Symbolic Interactionism. Symbolic Interaction claims that society is composed of ever-present interactions among individuals who share symbols and their meanings. This is a very useful theory for: understanding other people; improving communications; learning and teaching skills in cross-cultural relations; and generally speaking, "not doing harm to your roommates" as many of my students often say after understanding this theory. Values, communication, witch hunting, crisis management, fear from crime, fads, love and all that comes with it, "evil and sin," what's hot and what's not, alien abduction beliefs, "who I am," litigation, mate selection, arbitration, dating joys and woes, and both personal and national meanings and definitions (September 1, 2001-WTC) can all be better understood using Symbolic Interactionism.
Once you realize that individuals are, by their social natures, very symbolic with one another, then you begin to understand how to persuade your friends and family, how to understand others' points of view, and how to resolve misunderstandings. This theory magnifies the concepts of meanings. Think about these three words, LOVE, LUST, and LARD. Each letter is a symbol. When combined in specific order, each word can be defined. Because we memorize words and their meanings we know that there is a striking difference between LOVE and LUST. We also know that LARD has nothing to do with either of these two terms. Contrast these word pairs: hate versus hope; help versus hurt; advise versus abuse; and connect versus corrupt. These words, like many others carry immense meaning and when juxtaposed sound like the beginning of philosophical ideas.
Symbolic Interactionism makes it possible for you to be a college student. It makes it so you understand your professors' expectations and know how to step up to them. Our daily interactions are filled with symbols and an ongoing process of interactions with other people based on the meanings of these symbols. "How's it going?" Ever had anyone you've greeted actually answer that question? Most of us never have. It's a greeting, not a question in the US culture (see culture chapter).
If you want to surprise someone, answer them next time they say "How's it going?" If they have a sense of humor, they might get a kick out of it. If not, you may have to explain yourself. Symbolic Interactionism Theory explores the way we communicate and helps us to understand how we grow up with our self-concept (see socialization chapter). It helps you to know what the expectations of your roles are and if you perceive yourself as doing a good job or not in meeting those expectations.
There are many other Symbolic Interactionism concepts out there to study, let's just talk about one more-The Thomas Theorem or Definition of the Situation. The Thomas Theorem is often called the "Definition of the situation" which is basically if people perceive or define something as being real then it is real in its consequences. I give a few examples from the media: a woman was diagnosed as HIV positive. She made her funeral plans, made sure her children would be cared for then prepared to die. Two-years later she was retested. It turned out her first test results were a false positive, yet she acted as though she had AIDS and was certainly going to die soon from it.
In a hypothetical case, a famous athlete (you pick the sport) defines himself as invincible and too famous to be held legally accountable for his criminal behavior. He is subsequently found guilty. A politician (you pick the party and level of governance) believes that his/her constituents will tolerate anything. When he/she doesn't get reelected no one is surprised. The point is that when we define our situation as being real, we act as though it is real (regardless of the objective facts in the matter).
Symbolic Interactionism is very powerful in helping people to understand each other. Newlyweds, roommates, life-long friends, young adult children and their parents, and teammates can all utilize the principles to "walk a mile in the other's shoes;" "see the world through their glasses;" and/or simply "get it." One of the major realization that comes with Symbolic Interactionism is that you begin to understand the other people in your life and come to know that they are neither right nor wrong, just of a different point of view. They just define social symbols with varying meanings.
To understand the other person's symbols and meanings, is to approach common ground. Listen to this statement by Rosa Parks (1913-2005), "All I was doing was trying to get home from work." In 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus to a White person, it proved to be a spark for the Civil Rights Movement that involved the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and many other notable leaders. It was Rosa Parks' simple and honest statement that made her act of defiance so meaningful. The lion share of the nation was collectively tired and sick of the mistreatment of Blacks. Many Whites joined the protests while others quietly sympathized. After all that was written in the history books about it, a simple yet symbolic gesture by Rosa Parks symbolically started the healing process for the United States.
Social Exchange Theory
The remaining theory and second interactionist theory is Social Exchange. Social Exchange claims that society is composed of ever present interactions among individuals who attempt to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. Assumptions in this theory are similar to Conflict theory assumptions yet have their interactistic underpinnings. Basically, human beings are rational creatures, capable of making sound choices once the pros and cons of the choice are understood. This theory uses a formula to measure the choice making processes.
(REWARDS-COSTS)=OUTCOMES
or
("What I get out of it"-"What I lose by doing it")="My decision"
We look at the options available to us and weigh as best we can how to maximize our rewards and minimize our losses. Sometimes we get it right and other times we make a bad choice. One of the powerful aspects of this theory is the concept of Equity. Equity is a sense that the interactions are fair to us and fair to others involved by the consequences of our choices. For example, why is it that women who work 40 hours a week and have husbands who work 40 hours per week do not perform the same number of weekly hours of housework and childcare? Scientists have surveyed many couples to find the answer. Most often, it boils down to a sense of fairness or equity. Because she defines it as her role to do housework and childcare, while he doesn't; because they tend to fight when she does try to get him to perform housework, and because she may think he's incompetent, they live with an inequitable arrangement as though it were equitable (don't get me started on the evidence that supports men sharing the actual roles of housekeepers and childcare providers-see Joseph Pleck, "Working Wives/ Working Husbands" Sage Pub, CA).
Each of us tries constantly to weigh pros and cons and to maximize the outcomes of our choices. I often provide a rhetorical challenge to my students when I ask them to go down to the cafeteria, pick the least attractive person they can find, take them on a date where they drive and they pay for everything, then give the person a 7 second kiss at the end of the date. "Why would we do that?" they typically ask. "That's my point," I typically reply, having increased a bit of their understanding of the Social Exchange Theory.
Any of the four theories can be used to study any individual and collective behaviors. But, some do work better than others because their assumptions more precisely match the issue of interest. Divorce might be studied from the Conflict Theory to understand how things become adversarial and how and why contested divorces sometimes become violent. Divorce might be studied from the Functionalism Theory to understand how divorce is a means to resolving untenable social circumstance-it is a gesture designed to restore balance and equilibrium. Divorce might be studied using the Symbolic Interactionism Theory to identify how people define their roles before, during, and after the divorce and how they reestablish new roles as unmarried adults. Divorce might also be studied using the Social Exchange Theory to understand the processes and choices that lead to the final divorce decision, distribution of assets, child custody decrees and the final legal change of status (see Levinger and Moles, "Divorce and Separation: Context, Causes, and Consequences" 1979, Basic Books).
I've enclosed a simple summary sheet of the four basic theories used most by sociologists. It serves well as a reference guide, but can't really replace your efforts to study sociological theories in more detail. On the next page I've enclosed a self-assessment that may help you to assess your leanings towards these four main theories and two others that are often used by sociologists. On the self-assessment don't be surprised if you find that all four theories fit your world-view. Keep in mind they have been extensively studied for a very long time.
Comparing the Four Sociological Theories
Introduction to Sociology: 4 Basic Theories
Conflict Functionalism Symbolic Interactionism Social Exchange
Macro Macro Micro Micro
-Inequality lies at the core of society which leads to conflict
-Resources are limited
-Power is not evenly distributed
-Competition is inevitable (winners & losers)
-Negotiations based on influence, threats, promises, and consensus
-Threats and coercion
-Any resource can be used as tool of power or exploitation
-War is natural
-Haves and have nots
-Privileges are protected by haves
-Order is challenged by have nots
-Examples of:
Gender & Feminist
-Uses biological model (society is like a living organism)
-Society has interrelated parts
-What are functions or dysfunctions of parts
-Society finds balance and is stable
-Equilibrium
-Society adjusts to maintain balance
-How are parts integrated
-Manifest functions
-Latent functions and dysfunctions
-Example of: Systems Theory
-Society is an ongoing process of many social interactions
-Interactions based on symbolic context in which they occur
-Subjective perceptions are critical to how symbols are interpreted
-Communications
-Meanings
-Significant others
-Roles
-Relative deprivation
-Self
-Reality shaping in self and with others
-Key Ideas:
Social construction of reality
Thomas Theorem
Definition of situation
-Example of: theories of self
-Society is an ongoing series of exchanges which occur during interactions
-Interactions based on formula:
(Rewards- Costs)=Outcomes
Rewards
-Costs
-Profit/Loss
-Comparisons
-Limited resources
-Power
-Legitimacy
-Equity
-Negotiations
-Tradeoffs
-Example of:
Levinger=s model on divorce: (Attractions +/-
Barriers)=/-(Alternative Attractions)
Prepared by Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D. 20008 | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.03%3A_Social_Theories.txt |
One of the most remarkable traits that August Comte mandated for Sociology was a core of scientific rigor. He proposed the concept of Positivism is the scientifically-based sociological research that uses scientific tools such as survey, sampling, objective measurement, and cultural and historical analysis to study and understand society. Although the current definition of positivism expands far beyond Comte's original vision, Sociological scientific methodology is used through government and industry researchers and across higher education and the private sector. Comte was originally interested in why societies remain the same (social statics) and why societies change (social dynamics). Most sociological research today falls within these broad categories. Sociologists strive for Objectivity is the ability to study and observe without distortion or bias, especially personal bias. Bias-free research is an ideal that, if not present, will open the door to extreme misinterpretation of research findings.
Sociological science is both different and similar to other scientific principles. It differs from Chemistry, Biology, and Physics in that sociology does not manipulate the physical environment using established natural science theories and principles. It's similar to Chemistry, Biology, and Physics in that statistical principles guide the discovery and confirmation of data findings. Yet, Sociology has no universally social laws that resemble: gravity (E=MC2) or the speed of light. This is because Chemistry, Biology, and Physics have the luxury of studying phenomenon which are acted upon by laws of nature. Sociologist study people, groups, communities, and societies which are comprised of Agents are people who use their agency to make choices based on their varied motivations (Google Anthony Giddens-human agency, January 18, 1938 British Sociologist).
Sociologist Perform Survey Research
Sociologists study people who chose, decide, succeed, fail, harm others, harm themselves, and behave in rational and irrational ways. I've often explained to my students that if I took an ounce of gasoline and placed a burning match upon it, the gas would have to burn. The gas has no choice just as the flame has no choice. But, if someone placed a burning match on your arm, or the arm of your classmate, you or they might respond in any number of ways. Most would find the experience to be painful. Some might enjoy it, others might retaliate with violence, and yet others might feel an emotional bond to the one who burned them. Sociologist must focus on the subjective definitions and perceptions that people place in their choices and motivations. In fact, sociologists account for human subjectivity very well in their research studies. The most common form of Sociological research is survey research. Surveys are research instruments designed to obtain information from individuals who belong to a larger group, organization, or society. The information gathered is used to describe, explain, and at times predict attitudes, behaviors, aspirations, and intended behaviors. Types of surveys include: political polls, opinion surveys, national Censuses, paper surveys, verbal interviews, online surveys, and audience voting- call in (American Idol votes), and polls. Polls are typically surveys which collect opinions (such as who one might vote for in an election, how one feels about the outcome of a controversial issue, or how one evaluates a public official or organization. The Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/) by the Constitutional mandate must count its entire population every 10 years. A Population is the entire membership of a country, organization, group, or category of people to be surveyed (IE: US population=305,000,000). A Sample is some portion of the population but not all of it (IE: a US Census Bureau's American Community Survey of 35,000 US Citizens. See http://www.census.gov/acs/www/). Surveys can ask a certain category of people on a one-time basis; a Cross-Sectional Survey is a survey given once to a group of people. Surveys can also ask the same people to fill out a survey over an extended number of years. A Longitudinal Survey is a survey given to the same people more than once and typically over a set of years or decades.
Table 1. Hypothetical University Student Body Population ABC University with 10,000 students
Females= 5,000/50% Males=5,000/50%
African American=1,000/10% African American=1,000/10%
Hispanic=1,000/10% Hispanic=1,000/10%
Asian=1,000/10% Asian=1,000/10%
Caucasian=1,000/10% Caucasian=1,000/10%
Other Races=1,000/10% Other Races=1,000/10
Look above at the box and we'll use this hypothetical ABC university student body population to better understand sampling. One of the most important issues when doing survey research is to ensure a good scientific sample. A Random Sample is a portion of the population that is drawn in such a way that every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for the survey. (IE: ABC University Registrar's office uses their computer software to randomly select 1 out of every 10 students for a survey about student opinions in favor of or against getting a football team). A Representative Sample is a sample drawn from the population, the composition of which very much resembles that of the population. Typically this is obtained via a stratified random sample. A Stratified Random Sample is a portion of the population is drawn in such a way that every member of the population and important sub-categories of the population have an equal chance of being selected for the survey, yielding a sample that is demographically similar to population (IE: using the demographic table above, ABC U. would sample 1 out of 10 students or 1,000. They would also want half of those students to be female and half male. They would also want to select for the racial groups. The easiest strategy to do this would be for the Registrar to program the computer to select only the female student's files. Then they would have the computer select only the African American files and select 1 out of 10 students until they have 100 selected. They would repeat this for all other racial groups and then do the same for the males. Ideally, every student would respond to the request to take the survey and they would have a 1,000 student sample that was ½ female and ½ male; with all 5 racial groups represented equally (see box below for example). This is both ideal and hypothetical, but it's typical of the goal sample takers have of a stratified random and representative sample and the closer they get to this ideal the better the sample)
Table 2. The Hypothetical ABC U.Sample Composition of 10,000 students (this never happens in the real world)
Total Student Body Numbers/Proportions Sample Student Body Numbers Sample Student Body Proportions Percentage Comparison of Population and Sample Proportions
Females 5,000/50% 500 50% 100% representative
Males 5,000/50% 500 50% 100% representative
African American=2,000/20% 100 Females/100 Males 10% Females/ 10% Males 100% representative
Hispanic=2,000/20% 100 Females/100 Males 10% Females/ 10% Males 100% representative
Asian=2,000/20% 100 Females/100 Males 10% Females/ 10% Males 100% representative
Caucasian=2,000/20% 100 Females/100 Males 10% Females/ 10% Males 100% representative
Other Races=2,000/20% 100 Females/100 Males 10% Females/ 10% Males 100% representative
A Convenience Sample is a portion of the population that is NOT scientifically drawn, but is collected because they are easy to access (IE: a group of ABC U. students waiting at a bus stop; a group of ABC U. students who respond to a radio talk show web poll; or a group of ABC U. students walking around the Student Center). Convenience samples yield weak results. Or as one of my Mentors, Dr. Tim Heaton, BYU once said, "If you start the presentation of your research results with we didn't really do good science, but here's what we found...then few will stick around or care about what you found."
It is also important to consider a few other scientific principles when conducting survey research. You need an adequate number of respondents or Sample Size, which is the number of respondents who are designated to take the survey (30 minimum in order to establish statistical confidence in the findings).You also have to obtain a relatively high Response Rate, which is the percentage of the original sample who successfully completed the survey. For example, at ABC university if we set out to survey 1,000 out of the student body of 10,000 students, but only got 200 to take the survey then our response rate risk being too low. One would say that 200/1,000=20 percent response rate. While 750/1,000=75 percent response rate. A sample of only 200 would likely not yield enough diversity in responses to get a broad understanding of the entire student body's reaction to the football team issue.
With a high enough response rate and a good scientific sample, one could feel comfortable comparing the sample's results to what the entire student body population might have said, had they all been surveyed. Generalizability means that the results from the sample can be assumed to apply to the population with confidence (as though the population itself had been studied). Also important is the quality of the survey itself as a scientific instrument. Valid Survey Questions are questions that are accurate and measure what they claim they'll measure (IE: If the football survey asked "Every campus needs a football team" versus "This campus would benefit from a football team." The first lacks validity because it isn't really getting the answer needed for the study, it's seeking an opinion about campuses and football teams in general). Reliable Survey Questions are survey questions that are relatively free from bias errors which might taint the findings. In other words, reliable survey questions are consistent.
Components of Good Surveys
There are 2 types of survey questions. Open Survey Questions are questions designed to get respondents to answer in their own words (IE: "what might be the benefits of having a football team?"________________________________ or "what might be a negative consequence of having a football team?"________________________________). Closed Survey Questions are questions designed to get respondents to choose from a list of responses you provide to them (IE: About how many college football games have you ever attended? __1 __2 __3 __4 __5 __6 __7 __8 __9 __10+). Likert Scale Questions are the most common response scale used in surveys and questionnaires. These questions are statements which respondents are asked to agree or disagree with (IE: Our campus would be deeply hurt by a football team). The respondents choose from the scale below for their answer:
1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Neither agree nor disagree 4. Agree 5. Strongly agree
Demographic Questions are questions which provide the basic categorical information about your respondent including: age, sex, race, education level, marital status, birth date, birth place, income, etc. In order to run statistical analysis on survey results, one must enter the data into Excel, Statistical Packages for the Social Science (SPSS), or Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) in order to run analysis. Most statistics are run on numbers. By converting responses into numbers, most results can be analyzed. For example on the Disagree...Agree scale above one would use the number 1 in lieu of Strongly Disagree. Words can be analyzed using content analysis software. Content Analysis is the counting and tabulating of words, sentences, and themes from written, audio, video, and other forms of communication. The goal of content analysis is to find common themes among the words. For example if an open ended question such as this were asked, "what might be a negative consequence of having a football team?" then the results would be carefully read with tabulations of common responses. When we asked this question to our university students in a random sample, the worry about the high expenses required to fund the team and program was one of the most common negative consequence reported.
There are a few specific types of data that can be analyzed using statistical measures. Nominal Data is data with no standard numerical values. This is often referred to as categorical data (IE: what is your favorite type of pet? __Reptile __Canine __Feline __Bird __Other). There is no numerical value associated with reptile that makes it more or less valuable than a canine or other type pet. Other examples include favorite color, street addresses, town you grew up in, or ice cream flavor. Ordinal Data is rank ordered data which has standard numerical values. This is often referred to as numerical data. (IE: How many movies have you seen in the last two weeks? __0 __1 __2 __3 __4 __5). Ordinal data has the assumption that seeing 2 movies took twice as much effort than seeing just 1 movie and seeing 4 movies was twice the effort of seeing just 2. The values are equally weighted. The same could be said about how many A's you earned last semester, how much you get paid per hour at work, or how many cars your family drives; they are numerical values that can be compared and contrasted. Ratio Data is data that is shown in comparison to other data. For example, the Sex Ratio is the number of males per 100 females in a society. The sex ratio in the US is reported as follows on 5 February, 2009: Alaska 107/100; US Total 97.1/100; Rhode Island 93.6/100 (these were 2006 estimates from factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTable?_bm=y&-_box_head_nbr=R0102&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-_lang=en&-format=US-30) Ratios provide comparative information and we can see that in 2006 Alaska had more males than females, 7 extra per 100 females. Rhode Island had nearly 7 fewer males per 100 females.
All of the examples above of football team related questions are considered variables. Variables are survey questions that measure some characteristic of the population (IE: if married students were more financially strapped than single students, one might find that they were more or less supportive of a football team based on their perception of how adding a football team might hinder or support their personal needs. Marital status as a consideration when comparing the findings of the survey becomes a variable in its own right). Two types of variables are measured: dependent and independent variables. Dependent Variables are survey variables that change in response to the influence of independent variables. The dependent variable would be desire or opposition for a football team and Independent Variables are survey variables that when manipulated will stimulate a change upon the dependent variables (IE: by considering married, widowed, divorced, separated, cohabiting, and never married students, one might find differing support/opposition to an ABC U. football team).
When basic statistics are performed on data, we often call theme measures of central tendency (Mean, Median, or Mode). Consider this list of numbers which represents the number of movies that 9 separate ABC U. students had seen in the last 2 weeks:
0
1 1 1 3 4 4 5 8 9
The Mean is the arithmetic score of all the numbers divided by the total number of students (IE: 27÷9=3). The Median is the exact mid-point value in the ranked list of scores (IE:0, 1, 1, & 1 fall below and 4, 4, 5, & 8 fall above the number 3 thus 3 is the median). The Mode is the number which occurs the most in a list of numbers (IE:1 occurs the most, so the mode is 1). The Extreme Value is the especially low or high number in the series (IE: 8 movies in 2 weeks takes an inordinate amount of time for an average student). Notice that if you removed the 9th student's score and averaged only the remaining scores the mean=2.375. Extreme values can throw the mean way off. If you'd like to learn more about survey research, then take a research methods class. Chances are you will enjoy taking on the role of statistical detective. Here is an overview of simple questions to see if you are building a good survey.
1. What do you want to accomplish in this survey?
2. Who will your survey serve?
3. Who is the target audience for the survey?
4. How will the survey be designed?
5. How will you obtain a sample for the survey?
6. How will the survey be administered?
7. How big should your response rate be to give your results credibility?
8. How will the data be analyzed?
9. How will the results be presented?
10. Are humans or animals going to be at risk of harm in the survey?
Components of a good survey include: clear purpose for taking the survey; clear understanding of desired outcomes of survey; good research supporting development and design of survey; appropriate sampling technique when collecting survey; reliability and validity in survey and its question and design; and clear and accurate presentation of survey findings that are appropriate for the type of survey used.
Can You Figure Out What Might Be Wrong With These Survey Questions?
1. Have you ever attended a college football or basketball game? __Yes __No
2. Are you in favor of spending all of ABC U's money on an expensive football program? __Yes __No
3. Are you not opposed to supporting a football program? __Yes __No
4. I think the ABC U's administration pays too much attention to community service. 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Donít know 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree
5. It would be fiducially incompetent to initiate the cost-to-benefit ratio projections for a football team. 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Donít know 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree
1. Double barreled question...it asks two questions in one and you canít clearly answer.
2. Biased question...uses emotionally laden language which might change the response.
3. Double negative...creates confusion.
4. Irrelevant question for the survey about student interest in a football team.
5. Too many technical words that the average person would not understand...creates confusion.
Better Versions of the Same Questions
1. Have you ever attended a college football game? __Yes __No
2. Have you ever attended a college basketball game? __Yes __No
3. Are you in favor of ABC U. spending student fees on a football program? __Yes __No
4. Are you in favor of a football program? __Yes __No
5. I think the ABC U.'s administration should hold forums with students about the issue of a future football program. 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Don't know 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree
6. I am concerned about a new football program being too expensive. 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Don't know 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree
It Depends on the Question!
1. 1 ___Yes 0___No
2. 4 Excellent 3 Good 2 Fair 1 Poor
3. 5 Very Likely 4 Somewhat Likely 3 No Preference 2 Unlikely 1 Very Unlikely
4. 0 Never 1 Seldom 2 Often 3 Regularly
5. 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Don't know 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree
6. 1 Strongly Disapprove 2 Disapprove 3 Don't know 4 Approve 5 Strongly Approve
7. 3 Better 2 About the Same 1 Worse
When doing sociological research it helps if you understand the SMART Paradigm
• Samples
• Methods
• Attitude of skepticism
• Researcher bias
• Thorough understanding of literature
Samples have to be random and representative. If not the results are fairly worthless. Remember that you shouldn't start a conversation about your data by saying "We didn't really do good scientific sampling, but here's what we've found..." Most people won't care about your findings after they know your science was weak. I compare it to this hypothetical incident. Your car is broken down late at night in a dangerous part of town. A passerby stops to help and says, "I don't know how to fix cars, but I'll go ask those people hanging out at the bus stop. He returns 10 minutes later and explains that 3 of the people there once had their cars break down and every time it was their spark plugs. So I'd recommend you change your spark plugs." Believe me, I know this is a cheesy example, but it conveys the point. Asking three people at a bus stop is a convenience sample of people (not even mechanics). True, it does look and feel like a survey, but it is a terrible sample.
I watch this all the time on TV news stories where a few people on the street give their opinions; Internet polls where people who visit certain Websites give their opinions; and radio talk shows where votes are counted among those who are selected to comment on the air are treated as though they somehow represent all people everywhere. Smart people always check the sample for representativeness and random selection.
Methods typically include: experiments, participant observations, non-participant observations, surveys, and secondary analysis. Experiments are studies in which researchers can observe phenomena while holding other variables constant or controlling them. In experiments, the experimental group gets the treatment and the Control group does not get the treatment. Even though Sociologists rarely perform experimental surveys, it is important to understand the rigors required to execute this type of research. In this example let's assume that researchers are testing the affect of a drug called XYZ. Among Herpes sufferers, XYZ may help to completely repel an outbreak. But, how can you discern if it was the medicine or simply that patient improvement came because they were in the study? We'd need some form of control/controls. In the diagram below you can see how scientists might administer an experimental study. If they took 300 patients and randomly assign them to: Group A which was an inert gum-only control; Group B which was the gum and sugar control (yes, sometimes 2 control groups are needed); or Group B which is the experimental XYZ laced gum.
Figure 1. Experimental Research Design
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Let's assume that the patients chewed their respective chewing gums for 11 months then the medical results were gathered. Look at the next diagram below to see a set of hypothetical results. Group A was the control-gum only group and they showed a 5 percent improvement. Group B was the control-gum and sugar group and they showed a 7 percent improvement. Group C was the experimental/treatment group and they showed a whopping 27 percent improvement. Now one study like this does not an FDA approved drug make. But, the results are promising. Interestingly, this is a pharmaceutical, medical study...not a sociology study. Almost all experiments are very tightly controlled and many transpire in laboratories or under professional clinical supervision. Sociologists rarely study in laboratories. Scientists who do perform experiments can make causal conclusions. In order to establish cause there must be 3 criteria that are met: a correlation, time ordering (one preceded the other); and no spurious correlations. In the case of education and crime these 3 are not met. Causation means that a change in one variable leads to or causes a change in another variable, or XYZ chewing gum causes less Herpes outbreaks.
Figure 2. Example of a Drug-Related Experimental Research Design
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Sociologists do perform studies that allow for correlation research conclusions. There are three types of correlations. Direct Correlation means that the variables change in the same direction (IE: the more education you have the more money you make). Inverse Correlation means that the variables change in opposite directions (IE: the more education you have the less criminal activity you get caught doing). Spurious Correlation is an apparent relationship between two variables which indicates their relationship to a third variable and not to each other (IE: the more education you have, the higher your family's standard of living and the lower your likelihood of participating in criminal activities). In other words, there are other correlated factors that influence criminal behavior which are simultaneously at play.
Sometimes Sociologists perform Field Experiments - studies which utilize experimental design but are initiated in everyday settings and non-laboratory environments. For example, a sociologist might manipulate the levels of lighting to study how factory work performance is impacted (Google Hawthorn Effect). A few other methods are sometimes used by Sociologists. Participant Observation=a research method where the researcher participates in activities and more or less assumes membership in the group she studies. Content Analysis is when the researcher systematically and quantitatively describes the contents of some form of media. Secondary Analysis= the analysis of data that have already been gathered by others.
Just for fun I've added an interesting survey my students and I developed to study dating patterns here at UVU in 2006. Some of my students were interested in why we are drawn to those we date and which factors lead us toward staying together or breaking up. In this survey we are trying to establish some of the top reasons people are breaking off their relationships. We have established three influential categories: safety, economics, and attractiveness. This focus group will help us to organize our concerns about why individuals and their partners are "breaking up." Please take a few moments to answer the questions below and please be ready to discuss some of your comments or concerns.
Please respond to the questions below using this response scale:
1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Don't know 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree or __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
1. Safety
2. I consider sexual security more important than Emotional security __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
3. I have a fear of date rape when I am out on a date __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
4. I feel that while on a date I am aware of the other person's safety __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
5. When confronted with a potentially dangerous situation in a date setting I am likely to suggest a safer alternative __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
6. Adventure is more important to me then safety __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
7. Abstinence before marriage is an important attribute to me __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
8. Economics
9. Love is more important to me then money __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
10. Education in someone I am dating is important to me in my economic security __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
11. I am attracted to the leader type __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
12. It is important in my future for the other person to be financially supportive __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
13. I expect my date to be willing to pay for my dating expenses __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
14. At the end of the date I expect some sort of physical assurance __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
15. I am more attracted to physical appearance then I am to money __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
16. Attraction
17. I am more drawn to physical appearance then I am to personality __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
18. I am more drawn to a potential girlfriend/boyfriend if they express the same interests as me __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
19. I am more drawn to a potential girlfriend/boyfriend if they express the same spiritual interests as me __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
20. I am attracted to skill over charm __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
21. I am drawn to someone in control over someone who is sensitive __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
22. I am drawn to someone who is capable over someone who is needy __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
23. I prefer to date someone my age or younger. __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
24. I agree with the statement: "Once a cheater, always a cheater?" __1 __2 __3 __4 __5
25. I feel that my chances of potential marriage are diminished after ages __19-22 __23-25 __26-29 ____30+
26. My age in years:____
27. My sex: __Female __Male
28. My class standing: __Freshmen __Sophomore __Junior __Senior
29. My Marital Status: __Never Married __Live with someone (cohabit) __Divorced/Sep. __Widowed __Married
30. My race: __Native American __Asian __Hispanic __African American __Caucasian __Mixed
31. I consider the home I grew up in to be: __Upper class __Middle class __Lower class __Working poor
32. I'd like to find someone with whom I can live: __Upper class __Middle class __Lower class __Working poor
33. About how many dates have you had to this point in your life: ___Lots __Average __Few __None | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.04%3A_Scientific_Sociology.txt |
It is estimated by the Encyclopedia of World Cultures that there are about 500+ unique cultures on the earth in our modern world (Gall, T. L. 1997 Gale Pub). This reference manual addresses the following uniquenesses of these cultures: historical origins; location; language; folklore; religion; major holidays; rites of passage; interpersonal relations; living conditions; family; clothing; food; education; heritage; work; sports; entertainment ; crafts and hobbies; and social problems. It is obvious that cultures are complex and require focused efforts to be properly understood.
What Paints The Cultural Canvas of Our World Today?
To better understand the diversity of the world we live in I have enclosed a summary from the CIA World Factbook (see Tables 1-5). This shows you a quick snapshot of the social structures that underlie our very populated world and the 500+ cultures in it. In Table 1 you can see that collectively Christians make up about one-third of the world populations. But, for the first time ever, Muslims at 21 percent represent the largest religion having surpassed the Roman Catholic Church. The Muslim faith (Islam) grows rapidly because Muslims often practice polygamy and have a higher birthrate than parents in other religions.
Table 1: Religions of the World 2007 (Estimated by CIA)
• Christians all combined 33.32%
• Roman Catholics 16.99%
• Protestants 11.55%
• Orthodox 3.53%
• Anglicans 1.25%
• Muslims 21.01%
• Hindus 13.26%
• Buddhists 5.84%
• Sikhs 0.35%
• Jews 0.23%
• Baha’is 0.12%
• Other 11.78%
• Non-religious 11.77%
• Atheists 2.32
2009 www.CIA.gov
In Table 2 you can see the commonality of Chinese, Spanish, and English. Although the 13.22 percent does not appear to be very high, keep in mind that it’s 13.22 percent of 6.7+ billion. China has 1.3 billion inhabitants and comprises roughly 1 out of 6 people on the planet (India has about 1 billion and almost the same percentage of the world population). Many languages are not listed because there are thousands of dialects and local variations on these major languages. China with 1.3 billion has two forms of Chinese language: Mandarin and Cantonese. Sheer massive numbers in populations speaking Chinese explain part of the data below.
Table 2: Languages of the World 2005 (Estimated by CIA)
• Mandarin Chinese 13.22%
• Spanish 4.88%
• English 4.68%
• Arabic 3.12%
• Hindi 2.74%
• Portuguese 2.69%
• Bengali 2.59%
• Russian 2.20%
• Japanese 1.85%
• Standard German 1.44%
• Wu Chinese 1.17%
NEE2009 www.CIA.gov
Table 3 shows that the world’s population has exploded in the last century and continues to grow rapidly. Never in the history of this world have so many numbers of people lived at the same time with so many co-existing and equally valid cultural heritages. World Population Grows 19.97 births per 1,000 - 8.32 deaths per 1,000= 11.65 natural increase (net growth) and you can see simulated real-time population growth chart at http://www.worldometers.info/ . The world’s population is continuing to grow. I’d like to live long enough to see the year 2050. Many scientists have predicted the population growth to reach 9 billion worldwide by 2050 (see http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf ). This implies a continuation of increasing numbers of people belonging to the cultures of the world from this point forward.
Table 3: World Population Estimate (Estimated by CIA for July 2008)
• Total world population grew from:
• 1820=1 billion
• 1930=2 billion
• 1960=3 billion
• 1974=4 billion
• 1988=5 billion
• 2000=6 billion
• 2008 July= 6,677,563,921 (The US has only 1/16th of the world’s size with 305 million people)
2009 www.CIA.gov
Table 4 shows that the males and females are not equally distributed throughout the world’s population. In the childhood years there are more males (about 56 million more). In the working years of 15-64 there are 53 million more males. But, in the 65 and older age group, there are far more females with 62 million more. By the time people age into the later years males have died off sooner than females and we find that the worldwide aging experience is dominated more by the female rather than male experience.
Table 4: The World by Age (Estimated by CIA)
• 0-14=27% (Male 933,716,943/877,734,429 female)
• 15-64=65% (Male 2,205,342,972/ 2,153,959,605 female)
• 65+=8% (Male 222,346,221/ 284,463,751 female)
• Median Age 27.4 years-Male 28.7 years –Female
2009 www.CIA.gov
Table 5 shows more detail of gender differences in the world by showing the Sex Ratio, the number of males per 100 females. Again the sex ratio is highest for newborns, children, and working ages. Yet, the older the age group the lower the sex ratio.
Table 5: The World by Sex Ratios (Estimated by CIA)
• At birth=107 males/100 females
• Under =15 106 males/100 females
• 15-64=102 males/ 100 females
• 65+=78 males/100 females
• Total of all ages 101 males/100 females
Tables 1-5 were taken from Internet on 22 May, 2008 from https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/xx.html
I hope that you can see some of the global picture in terms of who lives in the world today and which cultures they are a part of in their daily lives. In order to truly understand these varying cultures you must first understand the concept of one’s World-taken-for-granted, which is all of the assumptions about our fit into our social and physical environment. Each of us has a unique world-taken-for granted. Each has myriad interactions, experiences, interactions, and life course progressions that are too numerable to calculate. So, our world-taken-for-granted is unique, even though we may grow up in a society with 305 million others. The assumptions is that our world-taken-for-granted works much the same way corrective lenses work on our vision—subtle; barely noticeable unless you are not wearing them; invisible unless your attention is focused to them; and since you’ve worn them for a while, hidden to your conscious mind.
Can We Learn To Appreciate Cultures?
I sometimes bring all my students who wear glasses down to the front of the room and have them rotate their glasses to the person on the left, rotate them again, and again until eventually they get their own pair back. Rarely does one student’s pair of glasses work for another. I ask them this rhetorical question, “What’s the last thing a fish would ever notice?” After a brief discussion, someone suggest, “The water they swim in.” For humans the last thing we pay attention to is air. This is true for us and our world-taken-for-granted. It is so subtle to us, that it is often the last thing we notice until we travel and find ourselves in a foreign place where we encounter diverse cultures.
Cultures are part of the human social experience. They are comparable to ice-cream flavors, each tends to be sweet and desirable while still having a vast variety of ingredients and textures. To help my students understand the value of cultures, I often ask them to go to Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors and chose which flavor is the “Good” flavor and “which flavor is the ‘bad or evil” flavor. They tend to be confused because we typically don’t judge ice cream flavors.
Yet, even though cultures tend to be universal and desirable, we often judge cultures as being “good, bad, or evil,” with our own culture typically being judged good. We have to consider our perspective when engaging people from different cultures. Are we ethnocentric or culturally relativistic?
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge others based on our own experiences. In this perspective our culture is right while cultures which differ from our own are wrong. I once visited a beautiful Catholic cathedral, Cathédrale St. Jean in Lyon, France. I fell in love with this beautiful and historic monument to the religious devotion of generations of builders. I learned that it took about 300 years to build, that England’s King Henry the VIII married his Italian bride there, and that a few families had 9 generations of builders working on it. I left with such a deep sense of appreciation for it all. On the bus back to our hotel, we met some American tourists who were angry about their vacation in France. The gentleman said, “these people will eat anything that crawls under the front porch, they never bathe, they dress funny, and they can’t speak one *#&@ word of English!”
I tried to redirect the conversation back to the cathedral and the things I really enjoyed in France. He was too frustrated to listen. If a person harbors these negative and judgmental feeling after considerable time has passed in the culture, then he may be ethnocentric. It’s not ethnocentric to need time for adjustment to a new and different culture. If he had just arrived and was transitioning to the diversity we call it culture shock. Culture Shock is the disoriented feeling which occurs in the context of being in a new culture. It tends to leave over a few days or weeks and the greater the familiarity with the culture the less the shock.
Another more valuable and helpful perspective about differing cultures is the perspective called Cultural Relativism, or the tendency to look for the cultural context in which differences in cultures occur. Cultural relativists like all the ice-cream flavors, if you will. They respect and appreciate cultural differences even if only from the spectators’ point of view. They tend to be teachable, child-like, and open-minded. They tend to enjoy or learn to enjoy the many varieties of the human experience.
An ethnocentric thinks on the level of carrot soup: peel carrots, and water, and boil. The cultural relativist tends to think on the level of a complex stew: peel and prepare carrots, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, broth, tofu, and 10 secret herbs and spices and simmer for 2 hours. The diversity of the human experience is what makes it rich and flavorful.
But, do cultural relativists have to accept all versions of morality, ethics, values, and traditions in order to be teachable? No, of course not. Anyone who is planning a trip to another community, state, or country would be wise to do their cultural homework and prepare in advance how they will immerse themselves into the parts of the culture that fit their value system. They can begin their homework at: www.cia.gov/library/publicat...orld-factbook/ and look up their destination and as many of the details that will help prepare them; or by studying on the Brigham Young University Culturegram Website at kennedy.byu.edu/travelsmart/six.php). Always do you cultural homework before you travel even if you are just spending time across the state for a day. Remember that your best cultural skills may be antagonistic to those from other cultures (see box below)
Understanding the Nature of Culture
Also before traveling consider your own values and stereotypes. A Stereotype is a broad generalization about groups based solely on the group affiliation. Although it will be discussed more in the Race chapter, stereotypes have to be managed, especially among ethnocentric persons.
Culture is the shared values, norms, symbols, language, objects, and way of life that is passed on from one generation to the next. Culture is what we learn from our parents, family, friends, peers, and schools. It is shared, not biologically determined. In other words, you are only born with drives, not culture.
Humans have Biological Needs, which are the innate urges that require some action on our part if we are to survive. These include the need to urinate, breath, eat, drink, and sleep or else we eventually collapse and die. If we urinate in enclosed bathrooms, behind a tree, or in an open air urinal depends as much on our cultural traditions as it does on our biology. Likewise, we may eat ground beef, snails, worms, fermented cabbage, fish eggs, or animal lard depending on our cultural assumptions.
Values are defined standards of what is good, bad, desirable, or undesirable for ourselves and others. Typical American values—considered for the entire nation and described by Williams, 1970 were: achievement and success ; equality; individualism; racism and group superiority; activity and work ; education; efficiency and practicality; religiosity; progress; romantic love/monogamy; science and technology; equal opportunity; material comfort; nationalism/patriotism; humanitarianism; external conformity; freedom; and democracy and free enterprise (see Williams, R. M. (1970). American Society: A Sociological Interpretation, 3rd Ed. NY; Knopf). Do these collective values apply to your own personal values? It helps to do your homework about your country and your own personal values before you experience another culture. After you’ve researched the cultures you will visit, compare them to your own using this continuum :
Not Very Extremely
Morally ←-------------------------------------------------------------------------------→Morally
Significant Significant
Key Point: You should never, ever be required to forfeit your own values in the pursuit of teachability, cultural relativism, and skilled cross-cultural relationships. If the typical US culture is more like your world-taken-for-granted and you travel to an equatorial country where they behave in a different manner, then your enthusiastic hand shaking, personal questioning, and space intrusions might land you in hot water (see Table 6 below). It’s best not to assume that a polite American also makes a polite Costa Rican and vice versa.
Table 6: Aren’t My Best Cultural Skills (the ones that work so well for me at Home) Good Enough to Interact Successfully in Another Culture? Perhaps not.
Typical Mainstream US Cultural traits Typical Equatorial Cultural Traits
-Shake hands -Bow, Nod, or Gesture
-Ask personal questions about family, friends, and health -Ask only general questions about weather and business
-Speak informally by first names -Speak formally by titles and last names
-Stand close to the other person -Stand at a distance
-Pat other on back, shoulder, or arm -No touching at all
-Men and/or women may speak to anyone -Men speak to men and women to women
(C) 2008 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
At a very personal level, you might better understand your own values if you knew that most younger college students today share very similar values to others their age. In fact, you may be a “Generation Y” or “Millennial” aka “Millennials.” This generation of today’s US and Canadian youth were born in the 1980s and 1990s. They are also called “Screenagers” as opposed to teenagers because they grew up with: Cell phones, TV’s, computers, and video games. Collectively, Millennials are much better with computer-based technology than any generation that came before them. Odds are, that your children will be much better than you at a technology that has not yet emerged onto the market.
Millennials hold somewhat unique values in comparison to older members of our society. They tend to: seek for sense of purpose in what they have to do; desire a clear work-life balance; have a relatively short attention span; really enjoy having fun; enjoy variety; respect others; feel unlimited ambition; can be more demanding and will question everything; won’t do something they’re asked if they don’t see a good reason for it; want to make a difference; may quit what they committed to if some or all of these expectations are not met; and are very loyal to families, friends, and themselves (from Hira, N. A. May 15, 2007 Fortune).
One recent survey of Millennials found that: 97% own a computer; 94% own a cell phone; 76% can instant message; 15% are logged on to Instant messaging 24/7; 75% who are college students already have a Facebook account; and 60% have a portable music player (see Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa Connecting to the Net.Generation: What higher education professionals need to know about today's students, NASPA; First edition (March 29, 2007)).
Interestingly your parents and perhaps your grandparents are probably Baby Boomers (Born between 1946-1964). They represent a huge segment of the US population today. The American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) created a report on them. They are people 50 years and older who are more than a third of the population, but … they own 80 percent of financial assets; and dispose of 50 percent of discretionary income; and the 50+ population is going to double in the next 35 years. AARP also reported that “We know a lot about the Boomers: They love choice: set up the smorgasbord and let them help themselves. They will. They want information-and the more sources the better because… …They are not afraid to make decisions-but only on their own clock and in their own terms. They want many things and they want them now. The ideal for typical Baby Boomers is to have something delivered before they even knew they wanted it… yesterday would be just fine. They lean more to independence than blending in to the crowd. They are usually fairly sophisticated buyers… of anything and everything. They love bells and whistles because they are bells and whistles” (See AARP taken from the Internet on 29 May 2008 from http://www.aarp.org/about_aarp/aarp_..._in_place.html ).
In understanding cultures (ours and others) you must realize how crucial values are to the overall culture. Our values are the basis of norms, which in turn are the basis for folkways and morés and eventually laws. It flows like this:
Values→ Norms → Folkways/Morés → Laws
Norms are shared expectations or rules of behavior. Norms are what are normal in a given social circumstance. For example, I lived in France for a year or so as a young man. The beaches were filled with completely naked swimmers (this is common in many places throughout the world). In France, nude beaches are normal. In the US, that would still be considered not normal, or deviant, as will be discussed later. In the 1990’s a young Berkley U. student attended about half of his 4-year degree program with not much more than a bandana around his waist (Google “Berkley Naked Guy” for more information). Even at a very liberal university like Berkley, a male nude student was eventually ruled unacceptable.
Norms guide our countless interactions on a day to day basis. All the subtleties of everyday life, what we expect for ourselves and others, are found in our commonly shared norms. George Simmel claimed that outsiders (you in another culture or someone else new in our culture) appear “remote” to locals because they respond differently, having different norms (see Simmel, G. (1950). “The Stranger” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed by Wolff, K. H.; NY Free Press).
Some norms are the basis of a Folkway, which is a traditional or customary norm governing everyday social behaviors. Folkways are the simple things in society such as how we eat our soup (with a spoon, chopsticks, or sipped from the edge of the bowl). They also include our greetings, clothing, rules of politeness, and hand gestures. Norms are also the basis for Morés, which are deeply held, informal norms that are strictly enforced.
Morés are much more important to people than folkways. They might include a strongly held belief against sexual exploitation of women and children; respect for religious edifices; abstaining from using street drugs; and in the cultures of millions of Muslims the clear boundaries between males and females which often prohibits average men from talking to women who are not their wives or in seeing the hands, feet, and face of women who are not their wives. Not following folkways may lead to ridicule while not following morés may lead to harsh punishments.
From our Values, Norms, Folkways, and Morés we derive our laws. Laws are codified norms or norms written and recorded from which the behavior of society’s members can be judged. The US Law Code is available on the Internet and can be downloaded free from uscode.house.gov/download/download.shtml . Your state laws are probably not as large, but are also on the Internet for you to study if so desired. Laws come in two varieties: Prescriptive Laws are laws that state what must be done and Proscriptive Laws are laws which state what is forbidden. If you want to drive, set up a small business, or not be in trouble with the IRS for failing to file taxes, then you must follow prescriptive laws. They tell you the rules of how things must be done.
Proscriptive laws tell us what we cannot do such as murder, rape, steal, etc. Violating these laws brings negative sanctions. A Negative Sanction is a punishment or negative reaction toward breaking codified norms (laws). Jail time, criminal record, fines, and penalties are just of few of the sanctions available to law breakers. Remember that folkways rarely become laws while many morés are codified.
Why are city, state, and national laws so different? The answer is simply that values vary from city, to city; state to state, and country to country. Because values change over time, laws change with them. Go to www.dumblaws.com/ and see if you can find a city which gives a \$500 dollar fine for detonating a nuclear weapon within city limits; a city which made it illegal to carry an ice-cream cone in one’s pocket; or a city which made it illegal to have sex in the back of an ambulance while it’s on a rescue call.
Older laws prohibiting women from voting, driving, and owning businesses have been changed over the last century because our values today find such oppressive laws unreasonable and unacceptable. The values are socially agreed upon and are communicated via language.
Another interesting and indirect measure of cultural values, norms, folkways, and morés can be found on http://www.google.com/trends . Go there and search the phrase “family history”. Type it then hit search trends. Now go to the first box on the bar and select United States as a region. As of 12 March 2009, Utah was the state with the highest search of this phrase with Salt Lake City being the highest city.
Search the following phrases and see which states and cities score in the top 10: Ice cream; Pepsi; American idol; Mohammed; Jesus Christ; Dali Lama; Face Book; My Space, and dirt bikes. Indirectly you can measure the values and norms of a state or city by identifying their common search phrases.
Does Language Shape our Cultural Understandings?
One very powerful tool used by human beings is our capacity for language. Language is a complex set of symbols which allow us to communicate verbally, nonverbally, and in written form. Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Standard German, and Wu Chinese comprise about 40 percent of the spoken languages in the world. How you view the world around you, your social construction of reality, and your world-taken-for-granted all stem in part from the language you learn to speak. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis claims that when we learn a language, we also learn a framework for understanding and interpreting our social reality and environment. That means that your rules of conjugation, sentence structure, math, etc. shape your thought patterns. For example, in English (a language which descended from German) we describe our physical condition using the “to be” verb of “I am.”
We say “I am: cold, hot, hungry, tired, 22 years old, or fat.” In many Latin-derived languages such as Spanish and French, they describe their physical condition using the “to have” verb. “I have: cold, hot, hunger, fatigue, 22 years, or extra weight.” Given the enormous pressure felt by women to be thin and to conform to unrealistic beauty standards, the “To have” verb is much more palatable. Since the language is the vehicle that facilitates socialization of the culture, it becomes a crucial factor in either the survival or eventual death of a culture—if the language disappears, so does the culture (Google search “Dalmatian language” for an example).
In Quebec, Canada the French language was suppressed after Napoleon agreed to the Louisiana Purchase. The British systematically deported the Arcadian French speakers to Baton Rouge, Louisiana (they later became known as the “Cajuns”). The French speakers who remained in Quebec found themselves oppressed by the dominant English speaking rulers. For decades the French struggled to keep their language alive—and thereby keep their cultural traditions alive. In the 1960’s social conditions lead to the formation of a political terrorist group which used terror to advance the cause of the French language and culture in Quebec.
The Quebec Sovereignty Movement (French: Mouvement souverainiste du Québec) was in full swing and efforts were being made to formally create an independent nation state in Quebec. A series of legislative pieces and referendum ballots on the succession of Quebec (and therefore sovereignty of Quebec) ultimately lead to a 1995 vote in which only 50.56% voted "No" and a close 49.44% voted "YES" out of 94% of the 5 million registered voters voting ( see Wiki at http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_...ignty_movement ).
What was the big deal? The big deal was that if a political body wants to eliminate a sub-culture, it can effectively do so by eliminating the language spoken by members of the sub-culture. Likewise members of the sub-culture can unite their efforts in preserving their heritage as the French speakers did in Quebec.
You see, in each society you have the Main Stream Culture, or the culture shared by the dominant groups, coinciding with the culture shared in the main social institutions (government, education, religion, family, technology, media, and the economy). Then within a larger society there are always sub- and counter-cultures. A Subculture is one in which groups which have different folkways, mores, and norms, exist within but are not completely a part of the larger society. Whereas a Counterculture occurs when a group's values, norms, and beliefs are in conflict or opposition to those of the larger society and mainstream culture.
The Amish are an example of a sub-culture while the Branch Davidians are an example of a counter-culture. Counter-cultural groups often come into conflict with authority and typically one dominates the other. But, sometimes, authority is misused against sub-cultural groups. This was the case in Japan with the Ainu people.
On the Japanese island of Hokkaido a group of indigenous people named the Ainu once flourished in their traditional culture (Ainu people called themselves “Utari” which means comrade since Ainu has negative connotations for them; see also Navajo and Diné for similar cultural rejection of dominant group imposed negative labels). The Ainu are a historical component of the early history of Japan, but few live the traditional cultural, tribal, and religious traditions of this formally noble civilization.
What diffused this culture? Japan forced all its citizens claiming to be Japanese to attend public schools. Tremendous pressure came to bear on the Ainu people and many continue to hide their ethnicity to this day because of fear of racism. Even though some Ainu lived in Russia, the average Japanese Ainu seeks invisibility among other Japanese citizens (see http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2244.html or http://www.japanforum.com/ ).
It is very common for sub-cultural and main stream cultural groups to co-exists. Often their cultural traits and traditions spread back and forth between one another. Cultural Diffusion is when certain aspects of one culture are spread to another culture. An example in the US is the consumption of salsa. According to Wolfe and Ferland (2000), salsa was rarely consumed in the US, but in the mid 1990’s salsa consumption surpassed ketchup consumption and remains in the lead today with over \$1 billion in annual sales (see www.agecon.uga.edu/~caed/SalsaIndustry.pdf ). Salsa is a food traditional to the Spanish and Portuguese speaking nations of the Americas. It’s move northward coincided with shifts in immigration patterns including more Mexican, Central, and South American immigrants to the US.
Interestingly ketchup is still consumed as much as it was in the past. Salsa was added to the American diet, rather than adopted as a replacement to ketchup. Food is only one area where cultural diffusion can be readily observed. Clothing, music, television shows, movies, cars, technologies and many other aspects of cultures spread throughout the world today, diffusing cultures to a great extent. Cultural Leveling is the process in which cultures of the world become similar. As yet, we do not have a world-wide mainstream culture; however, there are those who’ve argued that oil is one aspect of our daily lives that is leveled throughout much of the world.
Culture In the Larger Social Context
What happens when people have grown into adulthood in their own cultures outside of the US then later migrate here? Can they hold onto their culture of their homeland? Before we answer this let’s dispel one very entrenched myth that the US has a melting pot of cultures. The Melting Pot Theory is an ideology which suggested that all the diverse people coming to the U.S. as immigrants would blend biologically and culturally in order to form a new unique breed of "Americans." The US has never had a melting pot. Those who’ve migrated here (numbering 10s of millions) have found themselves pressured to accept the Anglo-Saxon (British) version of the main stream culture. Acculturation is the process by which immigrant people adjust and adapt their way of life to the host culture. The map below shows the major migratory routes of many immigrants to the US over the course of US history.
Figure 1. How Do Immigrants Experience the Mainstream Culture Once Here?
© 2009 UVU & Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Once in the US they realize that they have to make some adjustments in order to experience success in their daily interactions with members of the mainstream society. Assimilation is the process by which people from different cultures are acculturated and ultimately absorbed into the mainstream culture. In much of the US history of immigration throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th Centuries assimilation was more or less forced toward the deeply British-influenced mainstream culture.
Forced Assimilation is where those in power in the mainstream refuse to allow immigrants to maintain their various cultures. Since the US immigration policy switched in favor of more non-European immigrants being allowed to migrate here, much of the assimilation is voluntary and considered permissible. Permissible Assimilation permits newcomers to adapt to the mainstream culture naturally.
It is fascinating to observe the assimilation and acculturation of adult migrants to the US who have children born here and who have children enrolled in public school systems. Many adult immigrants hold dear their homeland cultures and adapt as little as possible to the main-stream US cultural norms. Because of this they experience marginalization. Marginalization is the tendency for adult immigrants to be rendered powerless in comparison to native-born adults because they live as a half citizen not fully capable of realizing the individual opportunities often found available to average native-born adults.
Their US born children find themselves living in a culturally transitioning family structure. Their parents are more like permanent tourists here while they become fully “Americanized” (for better or for worse) because public schools are tremendous socialization agencies which effectively acculturate most children into the main-stream. These children often serve as cultural liaisons to their parents and the main-stream culture.
There are three other levels of consideration for assimilation for adults who immigrate to the US: Cultural (acculturation into the host culture); Marital (vast intermarriage between mainstream members and newcomers); and Structural (large scale entrance into the various parts of the social structure including clubs, religions, workplace, schools, etc...).
Regardless of which culture a person grows up in, there are cultural universals which are for the most part common to all cultures. Cultural Universals are certain aspects of cultures which are found among peoples of all cultures throughout the world. All societies have universal social tasks which include the meeting of basic human needs such as breathing, eating, sleeping, drinking, having sex, and remaining safe. These universals include: adapting to and coping with physical environment; assigning of roles; controlling reproduction and relations between the sexes; communicating; maintaining some form of authorized government; and socializing Children .
In the history of sociology, there were early scientists who applied evolutionary thought to the evaluation of cultures. Sociobiology claims that human behavior is the result of natural selection. Suffice it to say here that most studies do not support this approach—specifically, human agency proves to be much more potent than genetic determinism. Also, genes are not grouped neatly with the various cultures in such a way as to biologically distinguish one culture’s members from another.
One final issue for discussion is the fact that technology moves and advances so quickly that often our values, norms, folkways, and morés evolve at a much slower pace. Cultural Lag is the process whereby one part of culture changes faster than another part to which it is related. Thus we find ourselves collectively having the scientifically-developed: euthanasia, congenital birth defect detection, and other scientific procedures that were available to us before the ethics and values of how we place importance upon the many complex issues surrounding these and other procedures.
What might happen if in our day and age a small group of people lived isolated from the rest of the world? Seems impossible, huh? It’s not. Today there are an estimated 100 “uncontacted tribes” of people living in various remote corners of the world (see http://survival-international.org/home ). They have no cell phones, TV’s, Internet, cars, sinks, toilets, or beds as we know them. And they have no idea that such technologies even exist. An Uncontacted Tribe is a native tribe, typically a small group of people, living in a remote and isolated place who have not yet had contact with members of a technologically advanced society.
On 30th May, 2008 CNN News reported that an uncontacted tribe of Brazilian Indians were photographed from a small airplane and the news story spread quickly around the world (see http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americ...bes/index.html ). The Website, “Survival: The Movement of Tribal People” reported that these tribal people had to be photographed in order to deter illegal loggers from Peru and Brazil from coming into contact with them and chasing them away in armed conflict (which always ends with modern guns winning out over traditional spears and arrows; See http://www.survival-international.org/ ).
Brazil constantly monitors its 200 tribal communities and keeps track of all their tribal people via their governmental agency FUNAI. The government has to make efforts to protect them from opportunists looking to obtain immense national resources located near their villages (see www.brazilsf.org/culture_indian_eng.htm ). Previous encounters between tribal people and main stream civilization has left vast numbers of tribal people dead or exploited from diseases, slave labor, prostitution, racism and discrimination, or lost armed conflicts.
The irony about the news story mentioned above is that the men of this tribe shot arrows at the plane and threatened the plane with spears…they now have been exposed to contact with more civilized societies and therefore not technically uncontacted anymore. One of my students wondered what they must have thought about the small airplane that threatened their safety. It must have looked like a dragon, evil spirit, or omen of some sort. Yet, had the photos not been taken and the loggers allowed to run these people off, the results certainly would have ended in lost lives. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.05%3A_Culture.txt |
How Do We Become Human?
Socialization is simply the process by which we become human social beings. George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley (from the “Chicago School”) contributed the Symbolic Interactionism perspective-most widely used today by sociologists. Mead and Cooley focused on how all the symbol-based interactions we have with others shape and form our self, our roles, our becoming “human,” and ultimately our experiencing socialization throughout our life stages. Socialization is the process by which people learn characteristics of their group’s norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors.
Newborns are not born human—at least not in the social or emotional sense of being human. They have to learn all the nuances of proper behavior, how to meet expectations for what is expected of them, and everything else needed to become a member of society. A newborn in the presence of others, interacting with family and friends typically acquires their socialization by the time they reach young adulthood.
From the first moments of life, children begin a process of socialization wherein parents, family, and friends establish an infant’s Social Construction of Reality, or what people define as real because of their background assumptions and life experiences with others. An average US child’s social construction of reality includes: knowledge that he or she belongs, can depend on others to meet their needs, and has privileges and obligations that accompany membership in their family and community. In a typical set of social circumstances, children grow up through a predictable set of life stages: infancy, preschool, K-12 school years, young adulthood, adulthood, middle adulthood, and finally later-life adulthood. Most will leave home as young adults, find a spouse or life partner in their mid-to late 20s and work in a job for pay. To expect that of the average US Child is normal.
Three Levels of Socialization
Also when discussing the average US child, it’s safe to say that the most important socialization takes place early in life and in identifiable levels. Primary socialization typically begins at birth and moves forward until the beginning of the school years. Primary Socialization includes all the ways the newborn is molded into a social being capable of interacting in and meeting the expectations of society. Most primary socialization is facilitated by the family, friends, day care, and to a certain degree various forms of media. Children watch about 3 hours of TV per day (by the time the average child attends kindergarten she has watched about 5,000 hours of TV). They also play video games, surf the Internet, play with friends, and read.
Children learn how to talk, interact with others, share, manage frustrations, follow the “rules”, and grow up to be like older family and friends they know. When they live up to expectations they are “big boys and girls,” when they don’t they are naughty. In the early years, tremendous attention is required in the safety and nurturance of infants. As they begin to walk and talk they learn to communicate their needs and wants and to feed and clothe themselves. Younger children do not have strong abstract reasoning skills until adolescence, so they rely heavily on the judgment of their caregivers. Most importantly, they form significant attachments to the older people who care for them.
Around age 4-5 pre-school and kindergarten are presented as expectations for the children. Once they begin their schooling, they begin another different level of socialization. Secondary Socialization occurs in later childhood and adolescence when children go to school and come under the influence of non-family members. This level runs concurrently with primary socialization. Children realize at school that they are judged for their performance now and are no longer accepted unconditionally. In fact, to obtain approval from teachers and school employees a tremendous amount of conformity is required—this is in contrast to having been accepted at home for being “mommy’s little man or woman.” Now, as students, children have to learn to belong and cooperate in large groups. They learn a new culture that extends beyond their narrow family culture and that has complexities and challenges that require effort on their part and that create stressors for the children. By the time of graduation from high school the average US child has attended 15,000 hours of school away from home. They’ve also probably watched 15,000 hours of TV, and spent 5-10,000 playing (video games, friends, Internet, text messaging, etc.).
Friends, class mates, and peers become increasingly important in the lives of children in their secondary educational stage of socialization. Most 0-5 year olds yearn for their parents and family member’s affection and approval. By the time of pre-teen years, the desire for family diminishes and the yearning now becomes for friends and peers. Parents often lament the loss of influence over their children once the teen years arrive. Studies show that parents preserve at least some of their influence over their children by influencing their children’s peers. Parents who host parties, excursions, and get-togethers find that their relationship with their children’s friends keeps them better connected to their children. They learn that they can persuade their children at times through the peers.
The K-12 schooling years are brutal in terms of peer pressures. Often, people live much of their adult lives under the labels they were given in high school. Then it happens. You’ve probably already done this—graduation! Many new high school graduates face the strikingly harsh realities of adulthood shortly after graduation. Anomie often follows and it takes months and years at times for young adults to discover new regulating norms which ground them back into expectable routines of life.
The third level of socialization includes college, work, marriage/significant relationships, and a variety of adult roles and adventures. Adult Socialization occurs as we assume adult roles such as wife/husband/employee/etc. We adapt to new roles which meet our needs and wants throughout the adult life course. Freshmen in college, new recruits in the military, volunteers for Peace Corps and Vista, employees, missionaries, travelers, and others find themselves following the same game plan that lead to their success during their primary and secondary socialization years—find out what’s expected and strive to reach those expectations.
Though we articulate an average life course as follows: infancy, preschool, K-12 school years, young adulthood, adulthood, middle adulthood, and finally later-life adulthood; few life paths conform perfectly to it. People die of heart disease, cancer, brain and lung diseases, and accidents. People marry and divorce, become parents, or finish raising their children. They start a career and change after 5-10 years to another, and later even another. They go bankrupt, win lotteries, or simply pay off their mortgages. In each change that comes into their life, they find themselves adapting to new roles, new expectations, and new limitations. Socialization is an ongoing process for everyone until the day they die.
What if Your Social Construction of Reality Is Not Average?
Life is full of diversity and surprises. Not every socialization experience is normal, typical, or otherwise universally identical. A few groups of religious extremists were exposed in the manner in which they socialized their children. Once it hit the national news, many were shocked by it.
Imagine a commune where 13-15 year old girls are married to men over twice their age, where 15-16 year old boys are kicked out, and where the average man has 3-6 wives. Who was the group? The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) which is a splinter group from the Mormons that has a history dating back to the 1890’s after Mormons stopped the practice of polygamy. The FLDS were originally excommunicated from the Mormon Church (officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), placing the word “Fundamentalist” in front of the Mormon Church’s name. Much of the FLDS is a mimicry of the Mormon Church’s practices during the mid-1800’s. There are tens of Mormon splinter groups, most of which have splintered over polygamy or claims to original priesthood authority. The Mormon Church has made concerted efforts to distance themselves from these splinter groups and their extreme behaviors.
I have a close personal friend who left a group formerly affiliated with the FLDS sect. They do not hold the current leader in a very high regard. Warren Jeffs is the FLDS leader in the news today. He followed in the role of his late father, Rulon Jeffs. Their version of polygamy and isolated communal living is open knowledge now. But that was not always the case. In 1890, polygamists who left the Mormon faith lived private lives, taught their own children, and created a sub-culture that was different, but rarely at odds with the main-stream culture.
The Short Creek raid of 1953 was a major turning point for American polygamists. The federal and state law enforcement agencies raided Short Creek, Utah taking custody of children and putting husbands in Jail. After the mothers were shown by national media as being martyr-like, all charges were dropped and the children were returned to their homes. Short Creek eventually became known as Hilldale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona (the current head quarters of FLDS members church; see Carter, M. Associated Press, 1998 at www.skeptictank.org/mormnut2.htm ). This raid proved to be the precipitating event in the eventual ultra-seclusion of the FLDS members. Most Americans are very leery of secretive actions by groups of people.
Because of an inability among FLDS members to agree upon the next prophet, they split into two groups. By 1968 Rulon Jeff’s (Warren’s father) became the self-declared and agreed upon FLDS prophet. At the time Rulon taught a strong anti-black theology that persists today. The FLDS group is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Laws Center (www.splcenter.org/index.jsp). Rulon Jeffs prophesied that he would live to be 350 years old and would turn the world over to God on his 350th birthday. The last decade of his life, Rulon became increasingly ill and died in 2002 (3 May, 2005, NPR.org at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4629320).
His son Warren became extremely controlling and dissolved the 7-member priesthood leadership council, assuming sole control and bringing changes that have led to most of the current clashes with authority faced by the FLDS. Warren became even more extreme and isolationistic in his leadership including: the excommunication of nearly hundreds of teenage “lost boys” (Leaders claimed the inherent need to keep a 3-1 female to male ratio and the boys were inconvenient (because a man can’t get to heaven without 3 wives); excommunication of men from their wives, children, and faith with their families being given to other men; the marriage of very young girls to men in their mid-life stages of adulthood; and ultimately, the building of a receptacle for God’s coming to earth in the Yearning for Zion Ranch (YFZ) in Eldorado, Texas (about half of teen girls taken into custody in 2008 from the YFZ ranch were already mothers and polygamist wives: Google Search Warren Jeffs Images/Photos to see wedding photos of him with some very young brides). This extreme isolation of church members from the main stream of society has included no outside contact, no newspapers or TV, no Internet, and a deeply held belief that Jesus Christ would return and rescue them from a fallen world (see Messianic Movement in the Collective Behaviors chapter).
Jeffs went onto the FBI’s most wanted list. After fleeing custody for a series of months, Warren was arrested on 28 August, 2006 on I-15 North of Vegas. The official media report was that good law enforcement lead to his arrest (in fact the officer did practice remarkable calm and professionalism during the arrest). On a personal note, living in Utah for 20 plus years, I have interviewed a number of polygamist family members and have a few inside contacts today. Among them, the rumor is that Jeffs was “turned over to the justice of the land…and to God for all that he had done.” In other words, among themselves, polygamists discuss the high probability that law enforcement received inside information about Jeff’s whereabouts from Polygamists themselves.
In September, 2007 Jeffs was convicted on 2 counts of rape as an accomplice for the forced marriage of a 16 year old girl to her relative. More charges and civil suits are pending in Arizona and Utah for similar allegations and many of the FLDS Lost Boys, who were put onto the streets, depended on welfare and the criminal justice system for sustenance. (20 May, 2008 from http://www.apologeticsindex.org/f/f39ae.html).
In fact, Jeffs prophesized the end of the world 3 times (April 6, 2005 was the most recent; see 20 May, 2008 from http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl19.htm). On 27, March, 2007 Jeffs was recorded as admitting he was not a prophet and was not worthy of serving in that role since he’d had sex with his sister (taken 20 May, 2008 from http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=508...&comments=true). But his followers continue forward in much of the same path that their socialization leads them. They see themselves as members of an elite religious group, following God’s will. Even when their leaders fall. Such devotion is rare unless group members are raised in social isolation from TV, media, and interactions with “outsiders.” But for Rulon and Warren Jeffs this was accomplished by design not by accident.
Now that you’ve read a brief history of the YFZ, FLDS culture and socialization and recent history, contrast the average US child’s socialization into their life stages to an average FLDS Child’s. FLDS children might follow this course for females: infancy, preschool, home school years, teen marriage as second or third wife to middle-aged man, motherhood, 7-12 children by age 40, adulthood, middle adulthood, and finally later-life adulthood—with years as a widow since she might have been 16 when she married her 40 year-old husband and he would likely die 25 years later, leaving her a widow at 41. The life stages for males would be infancy, home school years, adolescences, and excommunication (from family, friends, church, and world taken from granted around age 15-16), abrupt dislocation from a familiar world-taken-for-granted into a strange, and at times dangerous, work, then who knows after that.
Is It Nature or Nurture?
There has been much said and written and said about how important the socialization is to our eventual human adult natures. Historically, there has also been much research into the biological influence of who we eventually become. Think about this question, “how much of our socialization is influenced by our genetics and biology and how much is influenced by the social environment we are born into and in which we are raised?” Heritability is the proportion of our personality, self, and biological traits which stem from our genetic or socialization environmental factors. Nature versus Nurture is the debate over the influence of biological versus social influences in socialization.
In the history of social science the Blank Slate Theory was widely accepted. Tabula Rasa is Latin for Blank Slate. It was a theoretical claim that humans are born with no mental or intellectual capacities and all that they learn is written upon them by those who provide their primary and secondary socialization (this claim was for 100% nurture in how we become human). Most social scientist reject any notion of 100 percent nurture, simply because the research does not support the theory. Socialization alone does not explain adult outcomes.
But, is our socialization 100 percent biology? Not really. In the biological sciences, geneticists have regal position on the nature argument. Their studies of heritability have yielded overriding conclusion that biological factors alone do not explain socialization outcomes. Biological and socialization factors are both influential, yet neither are deterministic. In 2004, Steven Pinker argued that the brain is the core issue in understanding how biology and social environment interact in the process of how we become human. He argues that current scientific knowledge has articulated much of the biological factor and some of the sociological factor, but fail to consider the brain’s influence in how a child becomes an adult wherever she grows up in this world. He states in his conclusion:
“The human brain has been called the most complex object in the known universe.
No doubt hypotheses that pit nature against nurture as a dichotomy or that correlate genes or environment with behavior without looking at the intervening brain will turn out to be simplistic or wrong. But that complexity does not mean we should fuzz up the issues by saying that it’s all just too complicated to think about, or that some hypotheses should be treated a priori as obviously true, obviously false, or too dangerous to mention. As with inflation, cancer, and global warming, we have no choice but to try to disentangle the multiple causes (“Why Nature and Nurture Won’t Go Away” in Dædalus, Fall 2004, pages 1-13).” Musical talents, genius intelligence levels, athletic abilities, various forms of intelligence, homosexuality, heterosexuality, conformity, and other traits have been correlated with biological and environmental factors. Most scientists can conclude at this time that the biological factors are only correlated to, not causally deterministic to any adult outcomes. From the sociological perspective, the focus is heavily on environmental factors which account for conflict, functional, symbolic interactionism, and social exchange theoretical underpinnings of nature versus nurture studies. In other words, it’s very important to consider socialization (nurture) because biologists have yet to find any causal factors in our human natures that can be applied to raising children into adults in a society that will manifest desired traits.
“DJBirth” is a photo of his first few seconds of life. In this picture he has not yet taken his first breath. His bluish color is there because he still getting oxygen through the umbilical cord. In “DJwithDad” this is me as a new father, lying beside him. Not only is his primary socialization in full swing, his father is experiencing rather dramatic adult socialization in terms of becoming a good Father. In “DJwithsis” he is shown on the first day of first grade with his little sister (kindergartner).
Secondary socialization was on when this picture was taken. Both have graduated high school and are in college now. In “DJearnsbike” he is shown with a bike he earned over three months at 25 cents per chore. He earned half and we paid the other half. He not only learned to work but he learned to be a consumer and he learned how crime can occur to him. This bike was stolen twice and destroyed on the second theft (he earned another one). In “DJGoldminingwithDad” he is shown in Fairbanks Alaska at a tourist gold mining camp. When our children turn 12 years old we take them on a trip somewhere in the country. DJ and I panned about ½ an ounce of gold together and made awesome memories. In “DJwatchesUncleflirt” we were visiting the Alaska pipeline when DJ’s uncle started flirting with a college student who was working in Alaska to save money for college. DJ observed and later imitated his Uncle’s flirting skills. In “DJsnowboarding” and “DJ4wheeler” we see him in his adult roles where he is self-taught in snowboarding and in 4-wheeling in the Utah sand dunes. He holds a solid job, attends college, and has a hectic social life (like most of you). His adult socialization has been varied and ongoing.
As was mentioned, part of the socialization is the development of self-concept in each of us. It begins at birth and continues dramatic development through the school years, with slight modifications throughout the adult years. Your Self is at the core of your personality, representing your conscious experience of having a separate and unique identity. Your Self-Concept is the sum total of your perceptions and beliefs about yourself. It is crucial to note that your self-concept is based heavily on your social construction of reality—that means others influence your perception of your self-worth and definition.
Wild Human Children/Animals
We need to discuss one extremely rare and harsh environment children grow up in—feral childhood. Feral Children are wild or untamed children who grow up without typical adult socialization influences. They are rare because most human newborns will not typically survive if they are not cared for by an older individual. One of the earliest documented sociological studies of an isolated feral child was reported on by Kingsley Davis in 1940. He discussed two similar cases of Anna and Isabelle. Anna was a five year old girl when she was discovered. She lived for years isolated in an attic and kept barely alive. Anna only learned a few basic life skills before she died at age 10. Isabelle was also isolated, but in her case she had the company of her deaf and mute mother. When Isabelle was discovered at age six she quickly learned the basic human social skills needed and was able to eventually attend school. Davis attributes the difference in outcome to nutrition and the fact that Isabelle had at least some social interaction with her mother. (See Davis, K. 1940 “Extreme Social Isolation of A Child” in The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Jan., 1940), pp. 554-565 Published by: The University of Chicago Press; Davis, K. 1949 “Human Society by McMillan Pub. New York; and Davis, K. (1993, “Final Note on a Case of extreme Isolation” Irvington Pub. CA.)
In rare cases, human feral children have survived and documentation of their feral childhood is available. See Feral Children.com or http://www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php . This website discusses three categories of feral children: 1) Children raised in isolation; 2) children raised in confinement; and 3) children raised by animals (much less common). They also refute hoaxes of feral children which are not true. To grow up feral is perhaps the cruelest version of child abuse because the crucial primary socialization does not occur. This means that pubescent feral children lack a sense of self-concept; a pattern of multiple attachments and significant others; probable lack of awareness of self, others, groups, and society; and ultimately a void where socialization and acculturation should be.
A few movies are available that portray the complications of being a feral child, especially when he or she tries to interact with socialized members of society. Nell is based on a true story about a Girl who grew up alone in the Carolina back woods after her mother and sister died. The Young Savage of Aveyron (France), is a true story about a French boy discovered in the woods and taken into the care of a physician. Tarzan and Jungle Book is believed to be inspired by true accounts of feral children raised by animals. For example, Amala (8 years old) and Kamala (1 ½ years old) were discovered living with wolves (I know it sounds fantastic, but go with me on this) in Mindapore, India in 1920. Photographs are available in various text and Websites. I’ve included an artist sketch below.
Figure 3. Artist Caricature of Amala (8 years old) and Kamala (1 ½ years old)
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
You already know that most humans can’t co-exist with wolves and other carnivorous animals. It is rare to survive such an encounter, especially for 18 month old children. Yet, cross-species nurturing has been documented from time to time (e.g., dogs nurtured kittens and pigs).
As a side note on human-carnivorous animal co-habitation in the wild, there’s a true account of a heart-rending story of a naturalist and Grizzly activist, Timothy Treadwell and his partner Amie Huguenard who moved to Alaska and lived with Grizzly Bears, as though he’d become one of them. It has been made into a documentary and TV Series. Timothy documented his success in living among and with the bears. However, he was killed in 2003 by a rogue Grizzly. (movie called “Grizzly Man”, 2005).
Another Feral child was discovered in 1970 in a Los Angeles suburb. A neighbor reported that a child was locked in the back of a house. Police discovered a girl that was eventually nicknamed “Genie” (a genie pops out of a bottle and emerges into society without having really been raised in society). Genie was about 12. Nova created a documentary on her called “Genie, Anatomy of a Wild Child.” In it you see what Feral really means in the deprivation of acting, understanding, experiencing, and living without having been socialized. I’ve included an artist sketch of Genie.
Genie’s hair was cut short to keep her from eating it. Even though she was chained to a potty chair her entire life, she needed to wear diapers. She spat, clawed, rubbed, and self-groomed more like an animal than a human. She had to be taught the basics of everything and she did learn, but nowhere near at the capacity of an average child.
George Herbert Mead argued that the Self emerged out of social interactions as a result of countless symbolic interactions with other human beings. To Mead, play and playful interactions laid the foundation of becoming human and gaining our sense of self. Knowing that, how troubling must it be for children kept in isolation to play, gain the experiences through interaction, and come to know their Self?
To better understand “Feral” by contrasting it to the animal kingdom, check out the American Humane Society where they address the issue of feral animals www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer. They assist in the rescue of hundreds of thousands of animals each year, many of which were born without families or owners and therefore behave more instinctively than trained.
Self-Concept: Who Are You?
Feral children lack a sense of self, in part because they’ve not had interactions with others with whom they could distinguish themselves. They also have not had feedback on their value, performance, talents, strengths, and weaknesses. Sociologists using concepts from Cooley and Mead have identified an insightful way of understanding our self-concept. The Looking-Glass Self is the reflection of who we think we see by observing the treatment and behaviors of others towards us.
The metaphor used in this concept is a mirror—we see ourselves reflected in the actions and behaviors of those around us (like we see ourselves in a mirror). The Looking Glass Self has three distinct steps to it:
Steps to the Looking-glass self:
1. We imagine how we appear to others
2. We imagine and interpret their judgment of us
3. We react positively or negatively to that perceived judgment while developing a self-concept
Yes, we do watch how others react to us and how they might judge us. But, not everyone in our lives is equal in their potency of evaluation and how we respond to them. Let me show you what I mean. Make a list of the 10 closest people to you in your life. Once you’ve made the list then put a star beside the 3 with whom you feel the closest bond—you really value their opinion and are connected to them and vice versa. These top ten and top three represent your significant others.
Significant Others are those other people whose evaluations of the individual are important and regularly considered during interactions. Strangers you see on campus and in the grocery store do not have the same importance as roommates, close friends, parents, and others you listed. And not all significant others are valued equally. Your fraternity brothers’ or sorority sisters’ opinion of your Halloween costume probably means more than your younger sibling’s opinion.
The process leading up to a self-concept is easy to grasp. I’ve taught my students for decades to think of how they get feedback from others and watch others to get an idea of their expectations in a given role as though they were a weight lifter. The key to understanding self-concept is to understand that balanced self-concept works the same way as balanced weights. Ever try to lift a set of weight with 30 pounds on one side and only 20 pounds on the other? Please don’t! This would prove to be destructive to your physical health.
The same can be said of those who try to balance too high of an “Ideal” expectation in a role, because they’re most likely to perform less than expected in their “Actual” performance in this role. Again, the balance between “Ideal” and “Actual” is crucial. In this example, imagine that you are looking at the self-concept formed by a young female college graduate. She has been accepted into a prestigious corporate internship role and has actually been labeled the “Intern.”
Figure 5. Self-Concept and the New College Graduate—Corporate Intern
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Once on the job she asked her supervisors, co-workers, and former interns what was expected of her—this information provided the “Ideal” side of the weights. She wrote down her ideal expectations and decided that to perform well and later be considered for full-time employment she should: be on time; be prepared for every meeting; be zealous about doing specifically what her direct supervisor requested; and try to solve at least one lingering corporate problem related to her tasks.
By the end of her first year, she had established a strong pattern of being on time; had come to meetings prepared with additional information to supplement the agenda of the meeting; had accomplished every assignment given to her by her supervisor; but had not solved any lingering corporate problem. She did though discuss a lingering problem with her supervisor and volunteered for an inter-departmental ad hoc committee to study the issue and look for solutions. Because her ideals closely matched with her actual performance, she had a fairly balanced perception of her self-concept. Regardless of the corporation decision to hire or not hire her, she finished her internship and felt good about herself in the process (a balanced self-concept). Another intern might have set far too low of goals for her expectations or far too high. She might also have given herself little credit and under-evaluated her own performance based on comparisons of other interns who’ve worked there. In either case the imbalance typically shows up in imbalanced self-concept.
In the next example, a Freshmen student who desperately wanted to fit in and be accepted into a fraternity set way to high of goals in his college student expectations.
Once on campus he registered for pre-law. He wanted to be a lawyer like his father. He also pledged into a fraternity. Being young, and not knowing his own limitations, he took very tough GE courses yet spent over half his waking time supporting fraternity activities. By the end of his first term he failed 4 out of 5 classes. But, he was a member of the fraternity. His father and he had a long talk over the winter holiday break. In either case, assessing too high or low of ideals or too high or low of actual performance leaves a person imbalanced in their self-concept.
Please notice I have not spoken about a high self-esteem. Self-Esteem is pride in oneself, a positive self-regard, an inordinately high positive self-regard, or a high self-respect. This concept originated in psychological research and has lost popularity among psychologists and sociologists because a high-self esteem is often found among individuals who misbehave in their communities and relationships. Search self-esteem and narcissism on the Internet for more information about the complexities of self-esteem.
As far as our self-concept is concerned we learn early on that we must perform to a certain level if we are to receive the much desired approval from others. As children grow up and into adolescence they begin to develop their abstract reasoning skills. Eventually they develop the ability to sympathize with others. Taking the Role of Other is when children put themselves in someone else's shoes, understand how he/she feels, and anticipate how he/she will act. This happens frequently when children hear sad news about other children. They can put themselves in those circumstances to a certain degree.
George Herbert Mead’s "Mind Self, and Society" discusses the fact that we do take the role of others and by so doing begin to see the “other” within our own selves. By doing so, we conform, fit in, and criticize ourselves when we fall short of the expectations we perceive in the “other” (see Mind, Self, and Society, ed. C.W. Morris; University of Chicago 1934; and Blumer, Herbert. "Sociological Implications of the Thought of G.H. Mead," American J. of Sociology, 71 (1966): 535-44 or Blumer, Herbert. "Mead & Blumer: Social Behaviorism & Symbolic Interactionism," American Sociological Review, 45 (1980): 409-19).
In the Symbolic Interactionism perspective, the average person has a common perspective on what they think other members of society expect, do, and think. When we imagine what an average person would do in a situation we take on the perspective of the generalized other. The Generalized Other are classes of people with whom a person interacts on the basis of generalized roles rather than individualized characteristics. Mead also believed that it is through role playing as children that we learn to take on the role of other. This helps us to imagine and visualize the perspective of others in various groups. In other words, without really becoming a terrorist, we can imagine their point of view—like the role of fundamentalism with religious terrorists who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma or the World Trade Towers in New York (see Mead, G. H. and C. W. Morris (1934) Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, University of Chicago Press, Chicago).
As children grow into young adulthood they prepare for significant roles. They may focus heavily on their athletic talents and grades so they can attend college on a scholarship. They might join the Junior ROTC so they can become a military officer. They might volunteer for Peace Corps (see http://www.peacecorps.gov/) or some other charitable service mission. In either case, they are practicing anticipatory socialization. Anticipatory Socialization is practice in advance for some future role.
Larger Social Issues
Let’s shift the focus of attention away from the socialization of individuals and towards the larger socialization picture. In every society in the world today, there are both agents and agencies of socialization. In the US our agents include parents, other family, friends, day care employees, teachers, religious leaders, bosses, and peers. Our agencies include the family, religion, daycare, schools, and employment. The cultures vary dramatically between the US and Darfur, but the structure of agents and agencies is very similar. In Darfur, “Homeland of the Peasants,” agents are parents, other family, friends, Sheppard’s, farmers, military leaders, religious leaders, and tribal leaders. The agencies also include the family, religion, clan or tribe, military, and political structures. In general, Agents are people involved in our socialization while Agencies represent the organizations involved in our socialization.
Many members of society experience a total institution and the intense socialization that come with them. A Total Institution is an institution that controls almost all aspects of its members' lives and all aspects of the individual life is controlled by those in authority in the institution. Boarding schools, orphanages, military branches, juvenile detention, and prisons are examples of total institutions. To a certain degree sororities and fraternities mimic the nature of a total institution in their strict rules and regulations required if members choose to remain members. A core difference among these total institutions is the fact that some are voluntary while others are mandated.
Erving Goffman was a well-published Canadian Sociologist who lived from 1922-1982. Among his many studies of society was a monograph entitled, “Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and other Inmates” (1961’ NY Doubleday). Goffman defines total institutions as places where “like-situated individuals are cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life…(page xiii).” He also suggested that total institutions have a method of depriving individuals of their former life. The recruit comes into the establishment with a conception of himself made possible by certain stable social arrangements in his home world. Upon entrance, he is immediately stripped of the support provided by these arrangements. In the accurate language of some of our oldest total institutions, he begins a series of abasements, degradations, humiliations and profanations of self. His self systematically, if often unintentionally, mortified…(Page 14).”
Do fraternity orientation rituals fit the definition of what Goffman described above? True enough, fraternities often strip down pledges emotionally, physically, and at times sexually to degrade and humiliate them. Many force pledges to eat and drink disgusting things, while all the time testing their loyalty to the fraternity. But, keep in mind that few if any fraternities incarcerate their pledges, have total control of every aspect of their lives for extended periods of time (“rounds of life” as Goffman put it), and rarely attempt to deprive pledges of their former life. Yet, urban legends abound about how institutionalized fraternities and their rituals have become. Many pledges are misinformed to believe that the US Library of Congress has almost all orientation rituals in writing in their collection. Not true says Rousey, E.L. Kappa Alpha Order, “The Library of Congress Fraternity Ritual Myth” (Taken form Internet on 27 May 2008 from www.phigam.org/history/ritualmyth.pdf ). | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.06%3A_Socialization.txt |
Understanding Past and Current Societies
Society is defined as a population of people which shares the same geographic territory and culture. In sociology this typically refers to an entire country or community. Average people tend to use the word society differently than do sociologists. You might be thinking about the difference in the American Human Society (The Humane Society of the United States at http://www.hsus.org/ ); the American Cancer Society (at http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp ); or the Society of Plastics Engineers (at www.4spe.org/ ) and US main stream society.
For sociologists a society is defined in terms of its functions. There are five:
1. reproduction;
2. sustenance;
3. shelter;
4. management of its membership;
5. defense.
In the sociological definition of society, these three organizations listed above with their URL’s are not societies. They are Voluntary Organizations - formalized groups of individuals who work toward a common organizational (and often personal) set of goals. These voluntary organizations typically only concern themselves with 1 of the 5 functions—management of its membership.
There are three other types of organizations:
1. Normative Organizations are organizations that people join because they perceive their goals as being socially or morally worthwhile (IE: Greenpeace);
2. Coercive Organizations are organizations that people typically are forced into against their will (prison);
3. Utilitarian Organizations are organizations that people typically join because of some tangible benefit which they expect to receive (Girl Scouts, PTA, or a political party).
All organizations exist in the structures of broader society.
Societies have been around for many thousands of years. Technological availability greatly influenced the size and durability of these societies. Rocks, sticks, spears, axes, bows and arrows, darts, plows, hand tools, dowels and nails, steam engines, electricity, factories, watches, computer chips, and other technological advances have greatly changed the nature of societies over these many years.
Early on, Hunting and Gathering Societies, those whose economies which are based on hunting animals and gathering vegetation, were very common throughout the history of the world. Eventually, Horticultural and Pastoral Societies, those characterized by domestication of animals and the use of hand tools to cultivate plants, developed and have also endured for centuries. In the last few centuries the Agricultural Society developed. Agricultural Societies utilize advanced technologies to support crops and livestock (plow) and in Western societies became the mainstay which enabled the Industrial Revolution to transpire by feeding society’s members.
Industrial Societies utilize machinery and energy sources (steam engine) rather than humans and animals for production. There was a time in the US when almost all the jobs were factory, production, or otherwise labor intensive jobs. Then came the computer chip which initiated
Postindustrial Societies, where societal production is based on creating, processing, and storing information. This is the modern society we live in today in the United States.
Why Do Societies Change or Remain Stable?
As far back in Sociology’s history as its founder, Auguste Comte, Sociologists wanted to understand why societies changed or remained the same (Comte’s full name was Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Compte 17 January 1798-5 September 1857). Comte referred to Social Statics, or the study of social structure and how it influences social stability; and Social Dynamics, or the study of social structure and how it influences social change. A modern example of social statics might be the official governmental intervention of US economic recovery efforts; while social dynamics might be the new “government bailout” manipulation of the economy to establish economic security in volatile markets.
Emile Durkheim’s concept of Anomie focused on how daily norms (or the relative lack thereof) influenced the daily expectations and obligations of society’s members. In the village with an agricultural society, most people knew what everyone else did for a living and most shared in common similar daily life patterns.
Mechanical Solidarity is a shared conscious among society's members who each has a similar form of livelihood. As industrialization emerged and transformed the rural communities while enlarging the urban-factory based, highly populated cities, norms became much more ambiguous. Durkheim called this Organic Solidarity, which is a sense of interdependence on the specializations of occupations in modern society. Those in larger cities had less daily regulated and organized patterns and could no longer provide the majority of their own needs—they became much more dependent on each other’s specializations. As Durkheim witnessed rapid social change that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, he attributed much of the personal challenge that came with it to Anomie and the difficult and often fuzzy normative regulation.
This brings us to an important and related issue—how a society functions and dysfunctions impacts the individual. Karl Marx argued the concept of Alienation, which is the resulting influence of industrialization on society’s members where they feel disconnected and powerless in the final direction of their destinies. To Marx, the social systems people created in turn controlled the pattern of their social life.
A later German Sociologist named Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) wrote about two types of community experiences that were polar opposites. Gemeinschaft (Guh-mine-shoft) means "intimate community" and Gesellschaft (Guh-zell-shoft) means" impersonal associations." His observations, like Durkheim’s and Marx’s were based in the transition form rural to urban, agricultural to industrial, and small to large societies.
Gemeinschaft comes with a feeling of community togetherness and inter-relational mutual bonds where individuals and families are independent and for the most part self-sufficient. Whereas, Gesellschaft comes with a feeling of individuality in the context of large urban populations and a heavy dependence upon the specialties of others (mutual inter-dependence) to meet all one’s needs.
For people living in both large and smaller cities, there is a social connection they have with others called Social Cohesion - the degree to which members of a group or a society feel united by shared values and other social bonds. The study of social cohesion has become much more complex as societies have grown in number, diversity, and technological sophistry. Social Structure refers to the recurring patterns of behavior in society which people create through their interactions and relationships. Social structure of course can be literally considered (like the anatomy of a human body specifically defines parts and how they are related to one another) or figuratively considered where social institutions, laws, processes, and cultures shape the actions of we who live in these societies.
What Are Society’s Component Parts?
What are core parts of our social structure? The first and most important unit of measure in sociology is the Group, which is a set of two or more people who share common identity, interact regularly, and have shared expectations (roles), and function in their mutually agreed upon roles. Most people use the word, “group” differently from the sociological use. Non sociologists also use “group” differently from sociologists. They say group even if the cluster of people they are referring to don’t even know each other (like 6 people standing at the same bus stop). Sociologists use Aggregates, or the number of people in the same place at the same time. So people in the same movie theater, people at the same bus stop, and even people at a university football game are considered in aggregates, not groups.
The sociologists discuss categories. A Category is a number of people who share common characteristics. Brown-eyed people, people who wear hats, and people who vote independent are categories—they don’t necessarily share the same space, nor do they have shared expectations.
Figure 1. Photo of the Semi-Annual UVU Behavioral Science Poster Symposium
© 2007 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
In the photo above, the professor on the left, Dr. Bret Breton posed for this photo with two of our undergraduate students. Twice a year we hold student research symposia where students present findings from their research studies. For 6 hours their posters are displayed and they answer questions and discuss their findings with any of the 26,000 students who attend Utah Valley University (a category of student). Throughout the day, clusters of students stand around tables (aggregates) while research team members (groups) teach passerby students what they did and what they learned while doing it.
Figure 2. Photo of the 2007 Winning AACS Student Problem Solving Competition
© 2007 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.DIn the photo above you can see the 2007 UVU student problem solving team (common identity) who competed in the 2007 Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology’s (See AACS at http://www.aacsnet.org/wp/?page_id=59 ) Student Problem Solving Competition. I’m with my wife (matching black T-shirts on the back left) and next to us on the left was a Social Worker we met while visiting the Ypsilanti, Michigan SOS Community Services headquarters. Trista (Pink blouse in the middle) was the student competition research team leader (specific role). She coordinated all the student team member’s efforts and created subcommittees with committee chairs who reported directly back to her (shared expectations).
The problem solving challenge faced by this group of students was to create a proposal which improved the employment opportunities of single mothers who came to SOS for help in finding jobs. You need to be aware that there were very difficult financial challenges facing these single mothers: the economy was severely depressed, the labor-intensive jobs had all but left the region, there were very few service jobs that fit the skill set of these mothers; and finally even the busses had stopped running because of fuel costs and other concerns. It was nearly impossible for a single mother to find a job! Since there are about 15,000 single mothers who come for help each year, this proposal took on a life of its own in terms of how important it would be. It transformed from a competition to a cause in the mind of my students.
This team met twice with SOS personnel; created inter-state networks between social service agencies in Utah, Michigan, and North Carolina; and held a banquet for local community service directors to brainstorm how they might approach a resolution to these issues. Many other efforts lead to a 3-pronged proposal which articulated specific strategies: first, the creation of a shuttle service where the SOS Community Center obtains a small fleet of shuttle vans which will be driven by the single mothers, exclusively for the single mothers who would pay a modest fare to get back and forth about town; second, the connection of the Sunshine Ladies Foundations Scholarship Program with the Washtenaw Community College—also in Ypsilanti (Google Doris Buffet’s charitable foundation WISP); and Third, the networking of the local Marriott resort to the SOS Community Services Agency.
Once the proposal was submitted, this group disbanded and focused their energies in other life pursuits. Their proposal did win the competition, but the experience in itself is considered more valuable because they feel liked they made a small difference for single mothers (and it enhanced their graduate school applications).
Why Are Groups Crucial to Society?
Groups come in varying sizes—Dyads are a group of two people and Triads are a group of three people. The number of people in a group plays an important structural role in the nature of the group’s functioning. Dyads are the simplest groups because 2 people have only 1 relationship between them. Triads have three relationships. A group of 4 has 6 relationships; 5 has 10; 6 has 15; 7 has 21; and one of my students from Brazil has 10 brothers and sisters and she counts 91 relationships just in her immediate family (not counting the brothers and sisters in law).
When triads form it looks much like a triangle and these typically take much more energy than dyads. A newly married couple experience great freedoms and opportunities to nurture their marital relationship. A triad forms when their first child is born, they experience a tremendous incursion upon their marital relationship from the child and the care demanded by the child—As Bill Cosby Said in his book “Fatherhood” “Children by their very nature are designed to ruin your marriage (see 1987, Doubleday Publisher, NY).”
Two of my Introduction to Sociology students told me a true story about how they were BFF’s since elementary school and had similar last names and even been in the same homerooms until they graduated high school. They then came to college together and majored in the same major. They told me and the other students in the class about what stressed their friendship when one fell in love and dated a young man.
The other felt a great deal of pressure to get along with her best friend’s boyfriend. She did and they all three were friends although each explained that the guy put more pressure on their own friendship. When the boyfriend-girlfriend relationship finally ended it put the other girl in an awkward position with the guy. They had established their own friendship, but since her best friend broke up with the guy she felt like she had to end her friendship with him too. She did.
You can begin to see how the Functional approach to studying groups gives you insight into how group structure, function, and dysfunction affect the everyday lives of group members. Sociometry is the study of groups and their structures (Google Jacob L. Moreno for its founder). To simply study it for the sake of creating more knowledge about it does not help groups directly. To solve problems you might be hired to come into an organization, examine the organization’s groups and functions or dysfunctions , then eventually create strategies for enhancing the quality of the groups’ interactions or expanding the groups social network in a beneficial way.
As sociologists further study the nature of the group’s relationships they realize that there are two broad types of groups: Primary Groups tend to be smaller, less formal, and more intimate (family and friends); whereas Secondary Groups tend to be larger, more formal, and much less personal (you and your doctor, mechanic, or accountant). Look at the diagram below. Typically with your primary groups, say with your roommates, you can be much more spontaneous and informal. On Friday night you can hang out where ever you want, change your plans as you want, and experience the fun as much as you want.
Contrast that to the relationship with your doctor. You have to call someone else to get an appointment, you have to wait if the doctor is behind, you typically call her or him “Doctor,” once the diagnoses and co-pay are made you leave and have to make another formal appointment if you need another visit. Your Introduction to Sociology class is most likely large and secondary. Your friends tend to be few and primary (see Figure 3 below).
With your friends, have you noticed that one or two tend to be informally in charge of the details? You might be the one who calls everyone and makes reservations or buys the tickets for the others. If so, you would have the informal role of “organizer.” Status is what you do in a role or otherwise stated, Status=is a socially defined position. There are three types of status considerations: Ascribed Status is present at birth (race, sex, or class); Achieved Status is attained through one's choices and efforts (college student, movie star, teacher, or athlete); and Master Status is a status which stands out above our other statuses and which distracts others from really seeing who we are.
Another consideration about groups and our roles in them is the fact that one single role can place a rather heavy burden on you (IE: student). Role Strain is the burden one feels within any given role. And when one role comes into direct conflict another or other roles you might experience Role Conflict, or the conflict and burdens one feels because the expectations of one role compete with the expectations of another role. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.07%3A_Society_and_Groups.txt |
What’s the Big Deal About Deviance?
As was mentioned in the culture chapter a Norm is a set of expected behaviors for a given role and social status. In most societies, the majority of people conform to the most important norms most of the time. For example, wearing casual clothes to class is normal on many campuses. Attending class in your European Bikini might not be normal for some. Yet, I witnessed this back in 1982 as a student in the newly accredited West Georgia University. Many of the female students wore Bikinis to classes. It was a striking departure from what I had experienced while in high school. But, I wondered back then if swimsuits were in fact deviant given that so many students at WGU wore them to class. Deviance is not as easily defined and established as some might think (especially if you are sensitive to cultural relativism and ethnocentrism). Deviance is a violation of norms or rules of behavior that are typically outside of the norms (see figure below).
A typical dictionary definition of deviance sounds something like this: “one that does not conform to the norm;” “one who behaves in sharply different ways from customs;” or “one who ignores the common and behaves in unique ways.” A thesaurus might also list: “abnormal; aberration, anomaly, weird, irregular, and even unnatural” as similarly related words. Most references attest to the nature of deviance as being something that violates normal behaviors, thoughts, or actions. But, is deviance weird/cool, positive/negative, desirable/undesirable, or good/bad?
For Sociologists the answer is found by considering exactly who has the power and authority to define the behavior as being normal or deviant. Throughout the history if the United States governments, religions, education, media , and family types have influenced and shaped what is considered “normal” or “deviant” on subjects as insignificant as swimsuits on beaches and as significant as women having the same rights that men have. You see, deviance is considered at both of C. Wright Mills’ larger social and personal levels.
A personal level example might be considered with the swimsuit on campus issue. Students back then did not need to look at university, governmental, or media for approval on how they dressed for class. They typically considered a source much more valuable to teenagers and young adults—their peers. Friends who also wear swimsuits to class may have defined the swim suit issue as being normal among students who were their friends, yet deviant among students who run in different crowds. Since they value their own peer evaluations the most they defer to peer-based norms.
But, would it be acceptable to wear nothing at all to class? On Wikipedia there is an interesting article about Andrew Martinez who attended naked at Berkley for a few years. Berkley is considered to be a very liberal campus in comparison to most US campuses. A controversy developed and eventually his nakedness came before the university leaders and the City of Berkley leaders (he often walked about town naked). He was eventually asked to leave Berkley and both the City and University of Berkley passed anti-nudity laws and policies to prevent nudity (taken from Internet en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Martinez 15 September, 2008). Martinez would often find himself being labeled “deviant” throughout the remainder of his life(he died in jail May 18 2006 from an apparent suicide).
Can Deviance Be Functional?
Let’s pause here to consider Emile Durkheim’s observations about deviance (original text from “The Division of Labour in Society” 1893).Durkheim argued that deviance, especially extreme forms are functional in that they challenge and offend the established norms in the larger collective conscience. In other words extreme deviance pushes things enough to make members of society reconsider why they even consider some behaviors as being deviant. Building on this idea, Functionalists often argue that: deviance reaffirms norms when the deviants are punished; deviance promotes solidarity among those who support and those who oppose the deviance; deviance provides a clear contrasting point of comparison for society’s members; and deviance often stimulates social change.
In Martinez’s naked guy case, both the City and University had to take a serious look at why and how they defined public nudity and which formal norms they would develop to support their position. Similar formal evaluations of deviance occurred after Dr “Death” Kevorkian assisted severely ill persons in taking their own lives; after September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US (Twin Towers, Pentagon, and flight crash in Pennsylvania) killed about 3,000 people; and more recently after major US corporations which have been mismanaged and have deeply shaken markets, investments, and economic stability. Extreme deviance does make us consider “normal” behavior on the personal and larger social level.
As a sociologist, you should strive for an objective stance when studying deviance. It take practice but is truly rewarding because of the clarity it brings to your evaluation. It’s like you try to see society and people the same way statisticians see things. Look at the diagram below. Here you see a distribution of numbers. From a statistical point of view you can see that the mean lowest score is 0, the mean is 80, and the highest score is 100. Is a mean of 80 good or desirable? That depends on what these scores represent. If these are test scores from your first sociology test then a mean of 80 indicates that most students did well on the test. The grey area of the diagram indicates the First Standard Deviation is the area in the distribution where about two-thirds of the scores fall (1/3 above and 1/3 below the mean).
Figure 2. Example of Distribution of Test Scores: Standard Deviations
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
A mean of 80 indicates that about two-thirds of the other scores where between 70 and 90 in this distribution. By the way, even though they are not indicated in the diagram, the Second Standard Deviation has the next 28 percent of the scores (13.6% above and 13.6% below); the Third Standard Deviation has the next 4 percent (2.1% above and below); and the Fourth Standard Deviation has the last 0.2 percent (0.1% above and below). You’ll learn more about deviations when you take your statistics classes.
Back to the test scores, a higher score way above the mean is good and desirable to most students. If the highest student score was 99 and the lowest was 3, both would statistically be considered deviant scores. In a sense, you’d want to deviate as high above the mean as possible, right?
But, what if this distribution was not an indicat8ion of test scores, but rather the frequency of times potential roommates stole food from the private stashes of previous roommates? You’d clearly want a score closer to 0 than 80. Likewise, what if this distribution was an indication of how many times your boyfriend or girlfriend flirted with others while they were dating you? Again 0 would be good and desirable. Finally, what if this distribution indicated the number of times during a student’s college career that they performed a “random act of senseless kindness” for others? I hope the point makes sense—the value placed upon the deviance depends greatly on how the deviance conforms to or violates the norms of the community and society you live in.
Let’s consider a sensitive and sometimes controversial issue — Homosexuality, or a sexual preference for persons of the same sex. I often ask my student to consider this simple question, “is homosexuality deviant or normal?” I am surprised at how passionate my students argue that it is normal or that it is deviant. Eventually when the discussion runs out of energy a student will ask me what I think. I answer like this. National studies indicate that less than 5 percent of the United States population considers itself to be exclusively homosexual.
“Does that make it more or less common and therefore more or less deviant?” I ask.
“It’s less common,” they reply.
“Yet, every society in the history of the world has typically had homosexuality among its members. That includes almost all societies with recorded histories and almost every society in the world today,” I continue. “Is it common or uncommon, deviant or normal?”
“Common and normal,” they reply. “But, how can something be deviant and normal at the same time?”
The answer is found in the complexity of modern societies. Not all members of society agree on the same issue in the same way. We rarely have total agreement on what’s normal. In the US we have over 300 million people, hundreds of religions, thousands of voluntary organizations, thousands of political interest groups, and thousands of personal interest groups, many of which are in striking opposition to other groups (IE: White supremacists vs. Nation of Islam).
Many sociologists have argued that it is normal to have deviance in a healthy society. If you regard homosexuality as being normal or deviant, as a sociologist you can step into a more objective role and understand the larger social level of consideration. It allows you to become more of an analyst and less of an advocate when understanding deviance. To build upon this idea, let’s consider how sociologists strive for objectivity when considering cross-cultural issues of deviance. Remember that ethnocentrism tends to burn cross-cultural bridges while cultural relativism tends to build them. Can we study deviance without becoming ethnocentric? Absolutely!
Deviance tends to vary on three major levels: across time; across cultures, and from group to group. When considering deviance we must realize that collectively people experience social levels of shifting values. In one example, contrast the I Love Lucy show which aired in the 1950’s to the Sex and The City show which aired 1988-2004. As a child I wondered how Little Ricky was born given that Lucy and her real-life and TV-life husband, Dezi slept in different beds on the TV show. Their kisses were controversial to some at the time.
Today, Sex and the City is an in-depth story line which follows the sexuality of four New York City women. As you read in the culture chapter, values shape norms, which in turn shape morés and folkways, which in turn shape laws. As values shift and change over time, so eventually do laws. Check out a fun Website called http://www.dumblaws.com/ to see if your home state had some rather bizarre laws (values) back in the day.
How Does Culture Influence Deviance?
Deviance varies between cultures because values vary between cultures. In Washington D.C. there is a non-profit research organization that performs international studies (see http://pewglobal.org/about/). On their Website they discuss their mission statement and organizational purpose.
“The project provides to journalists, academics, policymakers and the public a unique, comprehensive, internationally comparable series of surveys. Since its inception in 2001, the Pew Global Attitudes Project has released 21 major reports, as well as numerous commentaries and other releases, on topics including attitudes toward the U.S. and American foreign policy, globalization, terrorism, and democratization (taken from Internet 16 September, 2008).”
One such study is called the “Pew Global Attitudes Project” which is a series of worldwide public opinion surveys that encompasses a broad array of subjects ranging from people's assessments of their own lives to their views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day. More than 175,000 interviews in 54 countries have been conducted as part of the project's work.”
Based on 91,000 of these surveys from 50 different countries, Kohut and Stokes (2007) wrote an insightful book comparing US to other cultures and explaining how we are perceived. America Against the World: How We are Different and Why We Are Disliked (Holt Publishing, 2007). These authors talk about the perception of non-Americans about the United States. In this book American values, culture, economic influence, and military activities have lead to a singular notion about what America does to the world. Many have misguided ideas from TV and news reports. Most see the need for another superpower to keep the US in check. In sum, the average non-American views Americans much differently from how they view themselves.
How might a value compare between countries of the world? Pew also studied the concept of trust between countries and found that Eastern Europe has lower levels of Trust than did the US when asked “Most People in Society are Trustworthy” (See Table 1).
Table 1. Pew Study: Percent who Agreed with Statement (Rank Ordered)
China 79%
Sweden 78%
Canada 71%
Britain 65%
United States 58%
Germany 56%
Russia 50%
Poland 48%
Ukraine 47%
Mexico 46%
Kuwait 27%
Kenya 25%
(Taken from Internet on 17 September, 2008 from “Since Communism’s Fall, Social Trust Has Fallen in Eastern Europe”, originally released 15 April, 2008). http://pewresearch.org/pubs/799/global-social-trust-crime-corruption)
Among the 47 countries included in this survey, wars, famine, economic downturns, street and organized crime, and other local social influences have contributed to higher or lower levels of trust over time.
Values also vary between groups (group to group). When I was a research professor at Case Western Reserve University, I arranged for a former Folks gang member to come and speak to my Social Problems class. He was a larger man, 6 foot 3, about 275 pounds, and also a black belt in martial arts. He explained that when he was much younger he had to go through an initiation ritual called a beat down in order to be admitted to the gang. He eventually converted to Christianity and chose to leave the gang (he qualified his comments by saying “no one ever leaves the gang”). Typically to go on an inactive status with the gang there is another beat down. Because of his stature and fighting skills it was decided to forego his beat down for the overall benefit of everyone involved. The point of this story is that in most social groups a beat down would be considered deviant. In a gang it’s very much normal. Yet, in this situation, not beating him down was deviant within his gang, yet a wise choice.
Not only do values vary over time, between cultures, and between groups, it also varies a great deal between individuals. If you interviewed 11 people you personally know and asked them when abortion should be available to American women, you’d probably find some very strong opinions that change from person to person. If you polled the entire country, as did CBS and the New York Times in 2003, you would begin to see patterns that gave you a global understanding of US attitudes about abortion. In the CBS and NYT survey only 1 in 4 felt that abortion should not be permitted under any circumstances (see http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Public_Opinion Taken 17 September, 2008 from “Abortion in the United States”). These trends are very similar across political parties and gender.
But how does one person feel about abortion? It can be best understood by looking at one of three perspectives that typically frame an individual’s perspective on an issue.
The Absolutist Perspective claims that deviance resides in the very nature of an act and is wrong at all times and in all places.
The Normative Perspective claims that deviance is only a violation of a specific group's or society's rules at a specific point in time.
The Reactive Perspective claims that behavior does not become deviant unless it is disapproved of by those in authority (laws).
For more, Google “Moral Relativism.”
Perspectives on Deviance
An absolutists would probably fall among the 1 in 4 who feel that abortion is always wrong, because it is an unacceptable act. A normative individual would consider the circumstances (rape, incest, diagnoses, or health of mother) while a reactive would consider the legality of abortion.
In every society when deviance is considered it is most often controlled. Social Control is formal and informal attempts at enforcing norms. There are a few basic concepts that help to understand social control. The Pluralistic Theory of Social Control claims that society is made up of many competing groups whose diverse interests are continuously balanced. Social Order is the customary and typical social arrangements which society's members use to base their daily lives on. Control is easier if attachments, commitment, involvement, and beliefs are stronger.
• Attachments: strong social mutual bonds that encourage society's members to conform
• Commitment: the stronger our loyalty to legitimate opportunity, the greater the advantages of conforming
• Involvement: the more a person participates in legitimate activities, the greater the inhibition towards deviance
• Belief: strong understanding in values of conventional morality promote conformity
Society’s members use informal and formal sanctions to reinforce control efforts. Negative Sanctions are punishments or negative reactions toward deviance. Positive Sanctions are rewards for conforming behavior (see Table 2).
Table 2: Types of Groups and Their Sanctions
Group Sanctions
Negative Positive
Family Spanking Praise
Religious Excommunication Recognition
Work Fired Pay raise
School Expulsion Award
Finally one of the harshest forms of controls comes when intense labels are given to a person because of their actions. A Stigma is an attribute which is deeply discrediting and that reduces the person from a whole and usual person to a tainted or discredited one. I know of an individual who was in prison for 5 years, falsely incarcerated for child molestation and even captured on Americas Most Wanted. His charge was child abuse. Eventually he was acquitted of the charge and awarded 16 million dollars in damages for having his civil rights violated when it was revealed that his former wife and the investigating detective had an affair, eventually married, and perhaps fabricated the entire case together (see http://www.innocenceprojectmidwest.org/index.php or Google Free Ted White). A charge and conviction of child abuse are very permanent and harsh stigmas to deal with, even if you are exonerated later on.
In sum, deviance is a violation of a norm, simply not behaving in expected ways given the social circumstances. But what is the difference in conformity, crime, deviance, and both deviance and crime combined? Look at the matrix in Table 3 below:
Robert Merton On Deviance
Table 4: Robert Merton’s Deviant and Criminal Behaviors
Actor complies with legal code Actor violates legal code
Actor complies with group norms Conforming behaviors Criminal behaviors
Actor violates group norms Deviant behaviors Deviant and criminal behaviors
See Merton’s structural-functional typology of deviance
When an actor complies with group norms and the law it’s called Conformity, or an adherence to the normative and legal standards of a group in society. An example might be the clothes you wore to class today—legal and normal. When an actor violates group norms but complies with the law, it is deviance. An example might be if you wore your Halloween costume to class…in July. If an actor complies with group norms yet breaks the law, it’s called crime. Crime is behavior which violates laws and to which governments can apply negative sanctions. An example of this might be when you drove 10 miles over the speed limit just to avoid being rear-ended on the freeway today. If everybody speeds and you do too, it’s still “normal crime.” Over–reporting deductions and under-reporting income is also “normal crime.” Finally, if the actor violates norms and breaks the law, then it’s Deviant and Criminal behavior. An example might be when our neighbor in a middle class neighborhood started a meth lab and got busted while their 2 children watched, crying on the porch (this happened to our across-the-street neighbors during the mid-1990s).
Like deviance, crime is often found in every society. Why? Functionalist point out that: crime exist because members of society find it very difficult to reach total agreement on rules of behavior; no society can force total conformity to its rules or laws; people are normative, we continuously categorize behaviors into "right" or "wrong"; crime/deviance function as a warning light indicating an area that needs attention or consideration; crime/deviance often brings about solidarity or togetherness in society ; and there is a vital relationship between crime/deviance and societal progress. As mentioned, deviants and criminals make us reassess our values and make new rules and laws (Google search Emile Durkheim or Robert K. Merton with functionality of deviance).
Robert Merton was a Functionalist who studied why people conform or deviate (see Merton, Robert K. (1938). "Social Structure and Anomie", American Sociological Review, Vol 3 No 5, October 1938). Using Durkheim’s concept of anomie (remember that Anomie is a state of social normlessness which occurs when our lives or society has vague norms). Merton devised a theory of deviance that brings in the concept of materialism. The average American sees the “American Dream” as a goal of monetary success. They typically desire to have the dream but realize that they often lack the means to attain it. How do they respond to this goal---means gap? Merton claimed in 1 of 5 ways (see Table ).
Table 5. Robert Merton’s Five Goal—Means Gap Coping Strategies***
1. Conformity
people live with what they have and get by (they accept and pursue their goals with socially accepted means—Average US Citizen)
2. Innovation
people commit crime to attain their goals (they accept and pursue their goals by replacing legitimate with deviant/criminal means to attain them—Criminals)
3. Ritualism
people try but fail and lower their goals (they appear to pursue goals but confuse means and goal—Someone who focuses on following rules, fitting in, or conforming instead of attaining the dream)
4. Retreatism
people withdraw and reject most of the goals (they reject and don’t pursue their goals—Street people, bag ladies, and hoboes)
5. Rebellion
people reject both the goals and the means to attain them (They reject socially approved goals and replace with deviant goals—Terrorists and freedom fighters)
Theories of Deviance and Crime
Conflict theories of deviance and criminality of course focus on issues of power and powerlessness. It’s about who has the power and how they attempt to force their values and rules upon those who don’t have it. The wealthier, more educated, and elite of society typically have the most power. The Power Elite are the political, corporate, and military leaders of a society are uniquely positioned to commit Elite Crimes, or crimes of insider nature that typically are difficult to punish and have broad social consequences upon the masses. A few recent examples of this might include corporate mismanagement, embezzlement, and fraud which lead to massive Federal bailouts and prosecutions.
Another key conflict issue in studying crime is the disproportionately high level of non-whites who ended up among the 2006 1,570,861 incarcerated members of society (that’s about 1 in 300 for the US) about 35 percent are White (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p06.pdf “Prisoners in the United States 2006” taken 17 September, 2008).
Among Symbolic Interactionists who study crime and deviance a few core theoretical approaches are used. The Labeling Theory claims that the labels people are given affect their perceptions and channel their behaviors into deviance or conformity. Perhaps people grow up and self-fulfill the expectations others have for them…they grow down to low expectations. Edward Lemert studied deviant identity formation and identified Primary Deviance (when an individual violates a norm), becomes identified by others as being deviant while maintaining a self-definition of being a conformist; and Secondary Deviance - when the individual internalizes the deviant identity others have placed upon him/her. In the Movie, Boyz n the Hood (1991 film directed by John Singleton), Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character, Tre is faced with a tremendous amount of pressure when his best friend is gunned down by street gang members and he has a profound urge to retaliate. Tre is deeply supported by his father who helps him to reject both the opportunity and label of street thug and to remember his own potential. This film was nominated for an Academy Award and was listed on the National Film Registry.
One final consideration is when someone is given a Master Status, or a social position that is so intense it becomes the primary characteristic of the individual (ex-con, gang banger, etc.). Understanding how powerful a master status can be as a labeling influence helps to understand why so many criminals reoffend and end up incarcerated again. Recidivism is being arrested again after having served a sentence for another crime. Recidivism rates indicate that the majority of US prisoners have been in prison before (perhaps 60-80% depending on the studies and how they were taken).
Social Learning is an approach that studies how people learn behaviors through interactions with others. In studying crime Edwin Sutherland taught the concept of Differential Association, or the process of learning deviance from others in your close relationships who provide role models of and opportunities for deviance. There’s a useful formula to remember:
I used this theory to understand the neighbors who started the Meth lab. They were young, high school drop outs who had: a sports boat, Ski Doos, jet skis, new truck and car, all new furniture. The only catch is that his brother’s best friend had them employed in the Meth business. Both men served time in prison, but the wife who was expecting their next child was not charged. It was a group of family and friends who saw criminal behavior as being worth the risks and acceptable given the tough economy.
During the 1800’s various scientists attempted to explain deviant and criminal behavior by searching for common patterns of shapes and bumps on the skull. Phrenology is an outdated scientific approach of studying the shape and characteristics of the skull. Of course the scientific data did not support the assumptions of phrenology. Other biological attempts have included body shape and size, racial-group membership, and most recently genetic factors. To date no branch of science has been able to identify universal biological predictors of unwanted behavior.
There are three classifications that need to be made about crime types: White-Collar Crimes are crimes committed by persons of respectable and high social status committed in the course of their occupations. These types of crime are rampant and increasing, and they are the underlying cause of the economic crises of the years 1998-present. In white-collar crime, crimes are committed in the elite suites of corporate offices. These could include insider trading, safety violations where employees are injured or killed, environmental destruction, deception and fraud, and inappropriate use of corporate funds. To commit a white-collar offense one would have to be very well educated, wealthy, and somewhat powerful—a position most in society cannot claim for themselves. When caught, laws (which were created by society’s elite) rarely punish the elite criminal with the same type of justice street criminals face. One inmate said, “I walk into a bank with a gun and get 50 years. I go to college and do my stealing using a computer or some secret technique that I can’t be caught with, I get 15 months in a cushy security prison with nuptial visitation rights (my interview with ex-con who spoke to my Introduction to Sociology students).
Street Crimes are crimes committed by average persons against members, groups, and organizations. Hate Crimes are acts of racial, religious, anti-immigration, sexual orientation, gender, and disability motivated violence. Street crimes typically fall into a few sub-categories—misdemeanors tend to be less severe and have less-severe punishments associated with them; felonies tend to be very serious and often change the standing of a citizen, permanently denying rights such as voting, owning a gun, and having social interactions with other felons. The Federal Bureau of Investigations classifies two types of crimes: Violent and Property. Violent crimes include: forcible rape, murder, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. In 2007 there were 1,408,377 violent crimes reported to police or 467 crimes/100,000 population. Property crimes include: burglary, larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, shoplifting, and vandalism. The table from the US Department of Justice below shows the trend in increasing violent crimes in comparison to property crimes.
Figure 3. US Department of Justice Crime Trend Data 1980-2004
(Taken from www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corrtyp.htm on 17 September, 2008, US Department of Justice)
Hate crimes have become much more concerning in the US over the last decade. These numbers give the impression that not many occur each year, but the FBI emphasizes that not all hate crimes are reported to police agencies and therefore are excluded from this table. Race, religion, and sexual orientation continue to dominate the reported hate crime categories (see Table 6 Below).
Table 6. Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders by Bias Motivation
Bias motivation Incidents Offenses Victims¹ Known offenders²
Total 7,722 9,080 9,652 7,330
Single-Bias Incidents 7,720 9,076 9,642 7,324
Race: 4,000 4,737 5,020 3,957
Anti-White 890 1,008 1,054 1,074
Anti-Black 2,640 3,136 3,332 2,437
Anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native 60 72 75 72
Anti-Asian/Pacific Islander 181 230 239 181
Anti-Multiple Races, Group 229 291 320 193
Religion: 1,462 1,597 1,750 705
Anti-Jewish 967 1,027 1,144 362
Anti-Catholic 76 81 86 44
Anti-Protestant 59 62 65 35
Anti-Islamic 156 191 208 147
Anti-Other Religion 124 140 147 63
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 73 88 92 49
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 7 8 8 5
Sexual Orientation: 1,195 1,415 1,472 1,380
Anti-Male Homosexual 747 881 913 914
Anti-Female Homosexual 163 192 202 154
Anti-Homosexual 238 293 307 268
Anti-Heterosexual 26 28 29 26
Anti-Bisexual 21 21 21 18
Ethnicity/National Origin: 984 1,233 1,305 1,209
Anti-Hispanic 576 770 819 802
Anti-Other Ethnicity/National Origin 408 463 486 407
Disability: 79 94 95 73
Anti-Physical 17 20 21 17
Anti-Mental 63 74 74 56
Multiple-Bias Incidents³ 2 4 10 6
¹The term victim may refer to a person, business, institution, or society as a whole.
²The term known offender does not imply that the identity of the suspect is known, but only that an attribute of the suspect has been identified, which distinguishes him/her from an unknown offender.
³In a multiple-bias incident, two conditions must be met: (a) more than one offense type must occur in the incident and (b) at least two offense types must be motivated by different biases. , 2006 From 17 Sept 2008 http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/table1.html
Finally a word about Organized Crime, or crime perpetrated by covert organizations which are extremely secretive and organized, devoted to criminal activity. The core principle behind organized crime venture is the pursuit of wealth using socially approved and disapproved of means, that allow murder, rape, extortion, assault, street, White-collar, and even hate crime activities if profitable. Organized crime includes: 1) a complex hierarchy; 2) territorial division of authority and practice; 3) tendency towards violence at any degree; and 4) capacity to corrupt public officials at any level of government. The reason organized crime works so well is that it typically: 1) is highly organized; 2) deals with services in high demand; 3) involves lots of political corruption; 4) very little organized opposition; and 5) uses lots of violence and intimidation. Organized crime has become rooted on every continent and in almost every country of the world. It undermined the former USSR; it brought the world super power to its knees and left only a skeleton of a powerful nation in the current Russian Federation.
Organized crime-type of economic pillaging is developing dramatically with the mainstream US economy. Unlike formally organized crime types such as Mafia, national Biker gangs, yakuza, Dugan Hands Bank, Triads, etc. current organized crime is more “mom and pop” small time operator such as Madoff and others like him that, even though small, can render tremendous devastation to a national economic system. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.08%3A_Deviance_and_Crime.txt |
Stratification and the Three P's
Did you ever live in a home where the basement was really cold and the upstairs was hot? I did while growing up; we had cold layers of air in the basement and warmer layers upstairs. I didn't know it at the time but when layers occur in nature it is called stratification. Layers occur almost everywhere in nature: in tissues of the human body, rock formations in the ground, atmospheres around the earth, and in societies of every nation on the earth. We call these layers strata and the process of layering stratification. Societies have stratification, too.
Social Stratification is the socio-economic layering of society's members according to property, power, and prestige. Property is all the wealth, investments, deeded and titled properties, and other tangible sources of income. Power is the ability to get one's way even in the face of opposition to one's goals. Prestige is the degree of social honor attached with your position in society. As things go, those with lots of property tend to also have lots of power and social prestige. Those with less property tend to have less power and prestige.
The key concept of this chapter is that there are layers of social stratification in every society, nation, and even at the global level-there are the "haves" who coexist with the masses or "Have nots." Does this remind you of Karl Marx and Max Weber? It should. They focused heavily on wealth and poverty in the complex social systems of their day. In our current social world there are a very few who are extremely wealthy.
At www.Forbes.com they reported that even the richest in the world got poorer between 2008-2009, "just like the rest of us." I'm not sure about that. The richest billionaires lost 23 percent of their wealth; they are still billionaires! In fact in 2008 there were 1,125 billionaires worldwide, now they are only hundreds of millionaires (I'll feel sad about that later). In March 2009 there were only 793 billionaires who had an average wealth of 3 billion US dollars with Bill Gates III leading the list (retrieved 21 April, 2009 from http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/wor...ires_land.html ).
The GNI PPP Index Score
In spite of the rare and isolated wealth of these 793 people, billions of other people still experience hunger, poverty, preventable illness, early deaths, and famines and wars. In a reference we use often in this textbook, you will find the Population Reference Bureau's World Population Data Sheet can be very enlightening in this discussion (www.PRB.org ). The PRB uses a measure of relative economic well being called the GNI PPP. The GNI PPP is the gross national income of a country converted to international dollars using a factor called the purchasing power parity. In other words this lets you understand how much a person could buy in the US with a given amount of money, regardless of the country's currency. It lets the United Nation and Population Reference Bureau have a common value to compare countries with when they look at international stratification issues. The 2008 estimates include key information from the World Bank.
The higher the GNI PPP the better off the average person in that country. Look at Table 1 below to see GNI PPP values for selected countries and regions of the world. The US ranks high \$45, 840 per capita (per person) but is the 6th wealthiest behind Luxembourg, Norway, Kuwait, Brunei, and Singapore. Contrast that to Liberia's score of just \$290 per year. The only other nation as poor as Liberia is the Democratic Republic of the Congo also at \$290. You can already see that there is clear evidence of stratification at a global level. The average cell phone owner in the US spends more on their annual bill than the average Liberian makes in a year. The developed world is over 6 times wealthier than the less developed world. More Developed Nations are nations with comparably higher wealth than most countries of the world including: Western Europe; Canada, United States, Japan, and Australia-these are also called Now Rich Countries. Less Developed Nations are nations located near to or south of the Equator which have less wealth and more of the world's population of inhabitants including: Africa, India, Central and South America, most island nations, and most of Asia (Excluding China)-these are also called Now Poor Countries. Africa is the poorest region with the average person making less than 1/10th of what the average US person makes.
Table 1. Selected GNI PPPs for Countries and Regions of the World, 2008*
Country or Region GNI PPP
More developed \$ 31,200
Less Developed \$ 4,760
Africa \$ 2,430
Latin America/Caribbean \$ 9,080
Asia (Excluding China) \$ 5,780
China \$ 5,370
Liberia \$ 290
Canada \$34,310
Mexico \$12,580
United States \$45,840
Italy \$29,900
Japan \$34,600
World \$ 9,600
*From 2008 World Population Data Sheet: Demographic Data and Estimates for the Countries and Regions of the World.
Look at Figure 1 which shows the top 5 GNI PPP countries of the world. Again Luxembourg at \$64,400 has a score over 20 times higher than Africa's; 11 times higher than Asia (Excl. China); and 7 times higher than Latin America. The other top 4 countries scores follow: Norway-\$53,690; Kuwait-\$49,970; Brunei-\$49,900; and Singapore-\$48,520. Figure 2 shows a comparison of the bottom 5 lowest scoring nations in the world. Their respective incomes are as follows: Liberia-\$290; Dem. Rep. of Congo-\$290; Burundi-\$330; Djibouti-\$400; and Guinea-Bissau-\$470. The average GNI PPP score for the top five was \$53,296 and for the bottom 5 it was \$356. That means the stratification difference between the world's top five countries is over 149 times higher than the bottom 5 countries.
Figure 1. A Comparison of the Top 5 GNI PPP Country's Scores in 2008*
*From 2008 World Population Data Sheet: Demographic Data and Estimates for the Countries and Regions of the World.
Figure 2. A Comparison of the Top 5 GNI PPP Country's Scores in 2008*
*From 2008 World Population Data Sheet: Demographic Data and Estimates for the Countries and Regions of the World.
United States Layers-Strata
There is similar stratification in the United States. Look at Figure 3 to see two line charts comparing the following All Races---red line, White---yellow line, Black---green line, Asian---blue line, and Hispanic---purple line. The chart on the left is of US males and the one on the right is of US females. The first thing you notice is visual stratification in both charts. Females made much less income than males in all categories. The Hispanic category is lowest for males and females. Among males Hispanics and Blacks are similarly low and are far below the White and even further below the Asian category. Asians had the highest personal income for both sexes (Data for Asians was not reported prior to 2004). Also notice that among females the income levels grouped closer together-in other words, males had more disparity between categories while females were collectively more similar. Data were not available for Native Americans.
Figure 3. A Comparison of the US Personal Income by Race and Between Males and Females 2006*
*Asian data not available before 2004. Retrieved 21 April 2009 from www.census.gov Table 679. Median Income of people with Income in Constant 2006 Dollars by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1990 to 2006
Table 2 shows some of the actual dollar difference in income levels presented in Figure 3. For every single race, males make more than females. In fact if you subtract male-female (all races combined) income it equals \$13,751 more income for males over these years. White males make \$14,914 more than White females. Black males make \$7,036; Asian males make \$8,306; and Hispanic males make \$7,986 more than females in the same respective categories. Based on the data in Figure 3 and Table 2 we've already seen that in the US there is race and ethnicity-based stratification (in Chapter 11 you'll learn more about race and ethnicity issues in society) along with sex-based stratification (in Chapter 10 you'll learn more about the gender issues in a society).
Table 2. A Comparison of the US Personal Income by Race and Between Males and Females in Constant 2006 US Dollars*
Race Mean Male Income 1990 to 2006 Mean Female Income 1990 to 2006 Difference
All \$32,134 \$18,383 \$-13,751
White \$33,416 \$18,502 \$-14,914
Black \$35,999 \$28,963 \$- 7,036
Asian \$21,599 \$13,293 \$- 8,306
Hispanic \$22,449 \$14,463 \$- 7,986
*Asian data not available before 2004. Retrieved 21 April 2009 from www.census.gov Table 679. Median Income of people with Income in Constant 2006 Dollars by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1990 to 2006
Figure 4 also shows stratification by marital status between married and single households. The data are presented in constant 2006 US dollars which simply means they are adjusted for cost of living changes for each year. The first thing you see is that dual-earner marrieds (both husband and wife work in labor force) by far have the highest income levels between 1990 and 2006. Sole-earner married (husband only in labor force) comes in next followed closely by single males. Single females reported the lowest income. In sum, the females with the highest income are married. The male with a co-breadwinner wife has the highest combined income of all. We'll discuss some family-related issues in Chapter 13.
Table 4. A Comparison of the US Personal Income by Marital Status (includes duel versus sole breadwinner homes) in Constant 2006 US Dollars*
*Retrieved 21 April 2009 from www.census.gov Table 677. Median Income of Families by Type of Family in Current and Constant (2006) Dollars: 1990 to 2006
Figure 5 shows the stratification in our US society by educational levels. Basically, the higher the education, the higher the annual income in 2007. This is typically true every year. The income levels are again higher for Whites and Asians followed by Blacks and Hispanics. But, the layers are clearly visible by education level. That's what is so cool about studying stratification. Official data begin to tell you the story about how the layers look in a society.
Figure 5. A Comparison of the US Personal Income of Full-Time Workers by Education Level 2007*
*Retrieved 21 April 2009 from ÒEducational Attainment in the United States: 2007 from www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p20-560.pdf
Figure 6 begins to show you why the layers look the way they do in society. As we will discuss later in Chapter 14 on education, dropping out of high school hurts your income and overall socio-economic well-being. Asians had the lowest dropout rates followed closely by Whites. Over 40 percent of Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans dropped out. Dropping out is a dead end personal income buster that hurts the individual, community, and society at large. Dropping out is a very bad economic choice.
But, not all economic disadvantage results from our choices. In the US, non-Whites, non-Asians, and non-males are more likely to be found in the lower layers. Figure 7 portrays what the layering of society might look like if the US population were divided into 3 groups, the top 10 percent extremely wealthy, the next 20 percent wealthy, and the remaining 70 percent of middle and lower classes. The top 10 percent of our country owns the lion share of all the wealth available to be owned in the US. They own as much as 100 times the average US person's wealth. For a relative few they make more in a year than most of us make in a lifetime. Theirs' is the life of high levels of the 3 Ps. Among the next 20 percent Upper-class, they hold the high ranking jobs, run for elected office, and run the major corporations in CEO-level positions. These types of jobs: pay more; require more education; require more abstract thought; and allow for more self-directed, autonomy in their daily activities. The blue or largest category includes the remainder of us. We fall in some layer between upper middle class, middle class, working class, labor class, and/or poor.
Figure 6. Percentage of United States High School Dropouts by Race for 2007*
*Extracted from Jason Amos, (August 2008) Dropouts, Diplomas, and Dollars: US High Schools and the Nation's Economy taken from Internet on 24 March 2009 from http://www.all4ed.org/files/Econ2008.pdf All4edu funded by Bill and Malinda gates Foundation.
Understanding Poverty and Near Poverty
The US has an official definition of being poor or in poverty. The Poverty Line is the official measure of those whose incomes are less than three times a lower cost food budget. This definition has been the US 's official poverty definition since the 1930s with only a few adjustments. Near Poverty is when one earns up to 25% above the poverty line. We would say that a person near poverty has an income below 125% of the current poverty line.
In Table 2 below you can see the US Health and Human Services 2009 poverty guidelines with estimates of near poverty levels. Most who qualify as living below poverty also qualify for state and federal welfare which typically include health care benefits, food assistance, housing and utility assistance, and some cash aid. Those near poverty may or may not qualify depending upon current state and federal regulations.
Do you remember up above where www.Forbes.com reported that the world's 793 billionaires lost about 23 percent of their wealth (they also were worth about \$3 billion each)? If they suffered that same 23 percent loss today they'd still be worth \$2,310,000,000. You take your highest range of poverty line (\$37,010 for a family of 10) and take 23 percent of a loss on that you see real economic hurting with only \$28,478 for 10 people in the family. We've all lost during these economic downturns and we've all gained something in the upswings. But, the losses hurt the lower layers of the economic strata sometimes to the point that they fall below the ability to sustain their families. Absolute Poverty is the level of poverty where individuals and families cannot sustain food, shelter, warmth, and safety needs. Those below poverty are already in a bind. For example, the average home where I live in Utah cost way more than the average poor family of 10 could afford. A family that big could not find an apartment to rent. They might find a mobile home or might even on a real lucky break find some government subsidized housing assistance. Not being able to find suitable housing is correlated with many other social challenges for families.
Table 2. US Poverty Guidelines 2009 With Near Poverty Estimates*
Number of People in Family Poverty Line Near Poverty Estimates <125% of Poverty Line
1 \$10,830 \$13,536
2 \$14,570 \$18,211
3 \$18,310 \$22,886
4 \$22,050 \$27,561
5 \$25,790 \$32,236
6 \$29,530 \$36,911
7 \$33,270 \$41,586
8 \$37,010 \$46,261
Retrieved 22 April 2009 The 2009 HHS Poverty Guidelines from http://aspe.hhs.gov/POVERTY/09poverty.shtml
In Figure 8 you can see the poverty and near poverty rates for various racial groups in the Unites States 1980 to 2006. The thick black line represents the sum of the percent in poverty and below 125 percent of the poverty line (near poverty) for each year. The line ranges about 25 percent or just below 1 in 4 being in or near poverty for the US. Whites (the redline) have the lowest rate of persons in poverty but make up the largest numbers of persons in poverty because Whites represent about 75 percent of the US population. Asians are slightly higher than Whites. The blue line represents the percent in poverty for all races. It's much lower than the high rates of poverty for Blacks and Hispanics because Whites are such a larger portion of the population that it pulls the overall average downward for all race. The near poverty line is tan. Hispanic is second worst and Black is the worst for percent in poverty. We see that the layers in the strata have racial factors for both poverty and near poverty levels (we'll discuss race issues more in Chapter 11). There are also layers in the strata based on education (we'll discuss this more in Chapter 14).
Figure 8. Poverty and Near Poverty (<125 Percent of Poverty Line) for US by Race and Hispanic for 1980 to 2006*
*Asian data not available until 1990Retrieved 22 April, 2009 from Table 693. Families Below poverty Level and Below 125 Percent of Poverty Level by Race and Hispanic Origin: 1980 to 2006 from www.census.gov/compendia/stat...es/09s0693.pdf
The US with such a high GNI PPP score has relatively high level of a standard of living. Outside the US in the poorer regions of the world a GNI PPP income of \$1.25 or less per day is considered below poverty (retrieved 22 April, 2009 from www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb...inequality.asp Statistical Yearbook 17. Poverty-and-inequality).
There are differences among economic systems in which people live and have opportunities. This brings up a very important concept from Max Weber. Life Chances are an individual's access to basic opportunities and resources in the marketplace. Not all of us have the same life chances as others. For example, one of my best friends in high school came from a wealthy family. Her father was a neurosurgeon and they had many resources that myself and others like me didn't have. When I went to college, I was the first ever on either my mother or father's side to go to college. I had no financial aid, no family support, and such bad high school grades that I had no scholarship funding. My friend on the other hand had a new car, new Apple computer, all expenses paid apartment and living costs. She and I had very different life chances from one another. She earned her Master's degree and I earned my Ph.D. I only received help once from my father with a car repair bill (he gave me this as a graduation present). I worked numerous part-time jobs and eventually got my GPA high enough to earn a scholarship, and later graduate assistantship. I also had to take out thousands in student loans.
But, even I had far greater life chances than most people in the world today. So do you. We have K-12 education, access to college, and the possibility of a career of our choosing. In many less developed countries low to no formal education is common fare. The United Nations has the 2015 Millennium Development Goal and the Education For All initiative (see Table 12.1 from www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb...-education.asp ). It is simply that all children of the world will have access to a primary education by the year 2015.
This goal equates to them receiving K-6 education. In 2006, the world average was 83.4 percent of children getting some k-6 education with an expected number of 10.6 years for males and 11.1 years for females worldwide. In Africa many children get no formal education and in 2006, only 72.6 percent got K-6 with an expected 9.1 years for males 7.6 for females. As you can see, life chances vary from house to house, state to state, region to region, and nation to nation. It also clarifies your understanding of stratification to look to the nation's economic system.
Measuring Economic Systems: Class and Caste
The United States has an open class system of life chances and opportunities in the market place.
An Open Class System is an economic system that has upward mobility, is achievement-based, and allows social relations between the classes. India has a closed caste system. A Closed Caste System is an economic system that allows no mobility between caste levels: you are born into the caste you stay in your entire life, and you can't have social relations between the castes. India has a highly structured caste system which has 5 distinct cast layers called: Brahman (Priests or scholars); Kshatriya (Nobles and warriors); Vaishva (Merchants and skilled artisans); Shudra (Common laborers); and Harijan (Outcast/dirty workers).
In India you typically are born into a caste and that is your destiny for life. This was basically true up until the 1980s when multi-national corporations began to set up various types of business enterprises in India. Western corporations hired thousands and thousands based upon their personal skills and achievements (a class trait in the West). The Indians have experienced cultural disruptions because talented individuals have worked their way above higher caste members in the organizational structure. We find similar violations of caste rules here in the US where Indians who migrate here find themselves with many opportunities. Their life chances increase by virtue of their being able to shift residence from a caste to a class society.
Sociologists like to study how people improve, diminish, or leave unchanged their economic status-we call this Social Mobility=the movement between economic strata in a society's system. There are a few key types of mobility. Upward Mobility=moving from a lower to higher class. Downward Mobility is moving from a higher to a lower class. Horizontal Mobility is remaining in the same class. We can compare mobility between or within generations of family members. Inter-generational Mobility is the research of mobility between generations (IE: grandparents to parents to grandchildren to great-grandchildren). Just list the occupation your grandparents, parents, and you have and rank them by property, power, and prestige. This is a measure of inter-generational mobility at your personal level. Intra-generational Mobility is the research of mobility within a generation. Just compare your property, power, and prestige between you and your brothers and sisters (this might even work for comparisons between you and your cousins).
Structural Mobility is mobility in social class which is attributable to changes in social structure of a society at the larger social, not personal level. The United States has experienced collective upward social mobility for the entire nation over the last 40 plus years. Figure 9 shows the median household income in 2006 dollars from 1967 to 2006.
Figure 9. United States Median Household Income in 2006 Dollars from 1967 to 2006.
*Source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1968 to 2007 Annual Social and Economic Supplements. Note: Median household incomes were not calculated for the US before 1967. Retrieved 22 April, 2009 from www.census.gov/population/www...oneyIncome.pdf
It is clear that there has been upward structural social mobility. In other words, the median household income has gone up nation-wide from 1967 to 2006. Remember these are inflation adjusted 2006 constant dollars so they can be compared between years. Notice that most of the declines were seasonal and came soon after a recessionary time in the economy. Overall, this represents one measure of upward structural mobility in the US.
Sociologists who focus on stratification typically use official data to measure the layers. This is what is called the Objective Method, where researchers set up categories and rank people according to preset objective criteria (such as median household income). Sociologists also talk to people or ask their opinions about the layers and how they perceive their fit into the economic strata. The Reputational Method is where researchers look to people who know the individual and subjectively report on his/her class. We ask them to answer a survey question such as "which class best fits your current economic situation? __Rich, __Middle, __Working, or __Poverty Class". Notice the absence of numbers in the reputational method.
Another measure of economic well-being is health care coverage. The US Census Bureau reported that in 2007 about 15.3 percent or over 45 million in the US had no health care coverage (retrieved 22 April, 2009 from www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf ).
Table 3. US Percent of Uninsured by Selected Characteristics 2007*
Category % Uninsured
White 14.3%
Black 19.5%
Asian 16.8%
Hispanic 32.1%
< 6 years old 10.5%
6-11 years old 10.3%
12-17 years old 12.0%
<18 years old 11.0%
18-24 years old 28.1%
25-34 years old 25.7%
35-44 years old 18.3%
45-64 years old 14.0%
65+ years old 1.9%
Children in Poverty 17.6%
<\$25,000 per year income 24.5%
\$25-49,999 per year income 21.1%
\$50-74,999 per year income 14.5%
\$75,000+ per year income 7.8%
Worked Full-time 17.0%
Worked Part-time 23.4%
Did Not Work 25.4%
*Retrieved 22 April, 2009 from Table 6. People Without Health Insurance Coverage by Selected Characteristics: 2006 and 2007& Figure 8. Uninsured Children by Poverty Status, Age, and Race and Hispanic Origin: 2007 from www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf
Health care coverage is a major economic resource. Again, White and Asian categories are in the higher strata on this resource. They have the lowest uninsured rates. Blacks are closer to Asians than are Hispanics. Hispanics have the highest level of uninsurance by racial group and it's over twice as high as for Whites. Since nearly 60 percent of insurance is provided by employers, it makes sense that the young adult 18-34 year olds would have less insurance, because they are still getting their formal educations and establishing their careers. But, what about the nearly 11 percent of children without insurance or the nearly 18 percent of children in poverty without it?
This is difficult to justify in today's modern society. Every country that the US compares itself to as being a similarly more developed nation offers health insurance as a right to all, not just a privilege to the wealthier people in the higher strata. The less income one has per year the higher the uninsurance rates. About 1 in 4 who worked part-time or did not work at all have no insurance, while only 17 percent of full-time workers went without.
Yes, there are layers in society. Through sociology's theories and statistical style you can begin to better understand how they develop and how they are perpetuated in various forms both within and between countries. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.09%3A_Stratification.txt |
What Is The Difference Between Sex and Gender?
By far, sex and gender have been two of the most socially significant factors in the history of the world and the United States. Sex is one's biological classification as male or female which is set into motion at the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg. Sex can be precisely defined at the genetic level with XX being female and XY being male. Believe it or not, there are very few sex differences based on biological factors. Does this surprise you? Many of my students say “but what about that whole opposite sex argument?” Truth is, biologically there is no opposite sex. Look at table 1 below to see sex differences. For the sake of argument, ignore the reproductive differences and you basically see taller, stronger, and faster males. The real difference is the reproductive body parts, their function, and corresponding hormones. The average US woman has about 2 children in her lifetime. She also experiences a monthly period. Other than that and a few more related issues listed in Table 1, reproductive roles are a minor difference in the overall daily lives of women, yet so very much importance has been placed on these differences throughout history.
Table 1: Known Biological Sex Differences
Females Males
REPRODUCTIVE
Vagina Penis
Uterus Testicles
Ovaries Scrotum
Breast development Breast dorman
Cyclical hormones
Shorter Taller
Less aggression-Testosterone More aggression-Testosterone
Runs a bit slower Runs a bit faster
Less upper body strength More upper body strength
Live years longer(7 years in developed countries) Live shorter lives- (3 years shorter worldwide)
See www.prb.org World Population Data Sheet 2008
We have much more in common than differences. In table 2 you see a vast list of similarities common to both men and women. Every major system of the human body functions in very similar ways to the point that health guidelines, disease prevention and maintenance, and even organ transplants are very similar and guided under a large umbrella of shared guidelines. True, there are medical specialists in treating men and women, but again the similarities outweigh the differences. Today you probably ate breakfast, took a shower, walked in the sunlight, sweated, slept, used the bathroom, was exposed to germs and pathogens, grew more hair and finger nails, exerted your muscles to the point that they became stronger, and felt and managed stress. So did every man and woman you know and in very similar ways.
Table 2: Known Biological Sex Similarities
• Digestive System
• Respiratory System
• Circulatory System
• Lymphatic System
• Urinary System
• Musculoskeletal System
• Nervous System
• Endocrine System
• Sensory System (your 5 senses)
• Immune System
• Integumentary System- Skin, Hair, and Nails
• Excretory System
Answer this question, which sex has: Estrogen, Follicle Stimulating Hormone, Luteinizing Hormone, Prolactin, mammary glands, nipples, and even Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (at times)? Yes, you probably guessed correctly. Both males and females have all these hormones, plus many others including testosterone.
Not only are males and females very similar, but science has shown that we truly are more female than male in biological terms. So, why the big debate of the battle of the sexes? Perhaps it’s because of the impact of Gender - the cultural definition of what it means to be a man or a woman. Gender is cultural-based and varies in a thousand subtle ways across the many diverse cultures of the world. Gender has been shaped by political, religious, philosophical, linguistic, traditional and other cultural forces for many years. To this day, in most countries of the world women are still oppressed and denied access to opportunities more often than men and boys. This can be seen through many diverse historical documents.
When reading these documents, the most common theme of how women were historically oppressed in the world’s societies is the omission of women as being legally, biologically, economically, and even spiritually on par with men. The second most common theme is the assumption that women were somehow broken versions of men (Google: Aristotle’s The Generation of Animals, Sigmund Freud’s Penis Envy, or John Grey’s Mars and Venus work).
Biology has disproven the belief that women are broken versions of men. In fact, the 23rd chromosome looks like XX in females and XY in males and the Y looks more like an X with a missing leg than a Y. Ironically, science has shown that males are broken or variant versions of females and the more X traits males have the better their health and longevity.
Debunking Myths about Women
In Table 1 you saw how females carry the lion share of the biological reproduction of the human race. Since history assumed that women were impaired because of their reproductive roles (men were not), societies have defined much of these reproductive traits as hindrances to activities. I found an old home health guide at an antique store in Ohio. I bought it and was fascinated that in 1898 the country’s best physicians had very inaccurate information and knowledge about the human body and how it worked (See, if you can find one, The Book of Health A Practical Family Physician, 1898, by Robert W. Patton).
Interestingly, pregnancy was considered “normal” within most circumstances while menstruation was seen as at type of disease process that had to be treated (back then most physicians were men and still are today). On pages 892-909 it refers to menstrual problems as being “unnatural” and normal only if “painless” and thus the patient should be treated rather than the “disease.” Indeed from a male scientific perspective in 1898, females and their natural reproductive cycles were problematic.
But, to the author, females were more fragile and vulnerable and should be treated more carefully than males especially during puberty. Patton states, “The fact is that the girl has a much greater physical and a more intense mental development to accomplish than the boy…” As for public education, he states that “The boy can do it; the girl can—sometimes…” He attributes most of the female sexual and reproductive problems to public school which is a byproduct of “women’s rights, so called.”
He’d probably be stunned to see modern medicine’s discoveries today. In our day, women are not defined as being inferior in comparison to men. But, in 1898, a physician (source of authority and scientific knowledge) had no reservations about stating the cultural norm in print, that women were considered broken in contrast to men.
Gender Socialization is the shaping of individual behavior and perceptions in such a way that the individual conforms to the socially prescribed expectations for males and females. One has to wonder what might have been different if all women were born into societies that valued their uniqueness and similarities in comparison to men. How much further might civilizations have progressed? It is wisdom to avoid the exclusion of any category of people—based on biological or other traits—from full participation in the development of knowledge and progress in society. In the history of the world, such wisdom has been ignored far too often.
Gender Roles as a Social Force
One can better understand the historical oppression of women by considering three social factors throughout the world’s history: religion, tradition, and labor-based economic supply and demand. In almost all of the world’s major religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and many others) very clear distinctions have been made about Gender Roles, or socialized expectations of what is normal, desirable, acceptable, and conforming for males and females in specific jobs or positions in groups and organizations over the life course. These gender roles have very specific meanings for the daily lives and activities of males and females who live under the religious cultures in nations throughout history and even in our day. The Book of Leviticus in the Judeao-Christian Old Testament has many biological rituals based specifically on Womens’ hygiene.
A close friend of mine performed her Master’s thesis in Ancient Near East Studies on the reproductive hygiene rituals described in the book of Leviticus (see Is God a Respecter of Persons? : another look at the purity laws in Leviticus / Anne M. Adams , 2000 in BYU Library Holdings). In brief, she found no modern-day scientific support for these religious rituals on female’s health nor on their reproduction. Her conclusion was that these were religious codes of conduct, not biologically-based scientifically beneficial codes.
Many ancient writings in religions refer to the flaws of females, their reproductive disadvantages, their temperament, and the rules that should govern them in the religious community. Please don’t get me wrong, if it sounds like I’m bashing religious beliefs, I’m not. In fact many current religious doctrines have transformed as society’s values of gender equality have emerged. I am also a fan of religious worship and participation in whatsoever religion a person chooses to follow. My point is that throughout history, religions were a dominant social force in many nations and the religious doctrines, like the cultural values, often placed women in a subjugated role to men at a number of different levels.
The second social force is tradition. Traditions can be and have been very harsh toward women. Look at Table 3 below which shows a scale of the outcomes of oppression toward women that have and currently do exist somewhere in the world. I have always found it remarkable that even though the average woman outlives the average man by 3 years worldwide and 7 years in developed countries, there are still a few countries where cultural and social oppression literally translates into shorter life expectancies for women.
Table 3: Outcomes of the 10 Worse Forms of Oppression of Women-Worst to Least
10-Death from cultural and social oppression (Various Countries)
9-Sexual and other forms of slavery (Western Africa and Thailand)
8-Maternal deaths (Sub-Sahara Africa and developing nations)
7-Female Genital Mutilation (Mid-Africa about 120 million victims)
6-Rape and sexual abuse (South Africa and United States are worst countries)
5-Wage disparity (worldwide)
4-No/low education for females (various degrees in most countries of the world)
3-Denial of access to jobs and careers (many developing nations)
2-Mandatory covering of females’ bodies head to toe (Traditional countries, Muslim)
1-Public demeaning of women (still practiced, public and private)
www.prb.org World Population Data Sheet2008; pages 7-15. http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf (Niger, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia have lower death rates for women while Kenya, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Micronesia have a tie between men and women’s life expectancy—this even though in developing nations the average woman outlives the average man by 3 years)
Some cultural traditions are so harsh that females are biologically trumped by males—this by withholding nutrition, abandoning wife and daughters, abuse, neglect, violence, refugee status, diseases, and complications of childbirth unsupported by the government. If you study this online looking at the Population Reference Bureau’s many links and reports, you will find a worldwide concerted effort to persuade government, religious, and cultural leaders to shift their focus and efforts to nurture and protect women/females (www.PRB.org see also United Nations www.un.org ). Progress has already been made to some degree, but much change is still warranted because life, health and well-being are at stake for billions of women worldwide.
One of the most repugnant traditions in our world has been and is the sale of children/women into sexual and other forms of slavery. Countless civilizations that are still influential in our modern thought and tradition have sold girls and women the same way one might sell a horse or cow. It’s estimated by a variety of organizations and sources that about 1 million women are currently forced into the sex slavery industry (boys are also sold and bought into slavery). India, Western Africa, and Thailand are some of the most notorious regions for this atrocity (Google amnesty International, Sexual Slavery, PRB.org, United Nations, and search Wikipedia.org). Governments fail at 2 levels in the sexual slavery trade: First, they allow it to occur as in the case of Thailand where it’s a major draw of male tourists; and second, they fail to police sexual slavery which is often criminal and/or organized crime in nature. The consequences to these girls and women are harsh at every level of human existence and is often connected to the spread of HIV and other communicable diseases.
Although pregnancy is not a disease it carries with it many health risks when governments fail to provide resources to expecting mothers before, during, and after delivery of their baby. Maternal Death is the death of a pregnant woman resulting from pregnancy, delivery, or recovery complications. Maternal deaths number in the hundreds of thousands and are estimated by the United Nations to be around ½ million per year worldwide (See www.UN.org ). Typically very little medical attention is required to prevent infection, mediate complications, and assist in complications to mothers. To answer this problem one must approach it at the larger social level with government, health care systems, economy, family, and other institutional efforts. The Population Reference Bureau puts a woman’s risk of dying from maternal causes at 1 in 92 worldwide with it being as low as 1 in 6,000 in developed countries and as high as 1 in 22 for the least developed regions of the world (See www.prb.org World Population Data Sheet 2008). The PRB reports “little improvement in maternal mortality in developing countries" (see page 3 of the Data Sheet).
Female Genital Mutilation is the traditional cutting, circumcision, and removal of most or all external genitalia of women for the end result of closing off some or part of the vagina until such time that the woman is married and cut open. In some traditions, there are religious underpinnings. In others, there are customs and rituals that have been passed down. In no way does the main body of any world religion condone or mandate this practice—many countries where this takes place are predominantly Muslim—yet local traditions have corrupted the purer form of the religion and its beliefs and female genital mutilation predates Islam (see Obermeyer, C.M. March 1999, Female Genital Surgeries: The Known and the Unknowable. Medical Anthropology Quaterly13, pages 79-106;p retrieved 5 December from www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/...q.1999.13.1.79 ).
An analogy can be drawn from the Taliban which was extreme in comparison to most Muslims worldwide and which literally practiced homicide toward its females to enforce conformity. It should also be explained that there are no medical therapeutic benefits from female genital mutilation. Quite the contrary, there are many adverse medical consequence that result from it, ranging from pain, difficulty in childbirth, illness, and even death.
Many human rights groups, the United Nations, scientists, advocates, the United States, the World Health Organization, and other organizations have made aggressive efforts to influence the cessation of this practice worldwide. But, progress has come very slowly. Part of the problem is that women often perform the ritual and carry on the tradition as it was perpetrated upon them. In other words, many cases have women preparing the next generation for it and at times performing it on them.
As is mentioned in the chapter on rape and sexual assault, rape is not the same as sex. Rape is violence, motivated by men with power, anger, selfishness, and sadistic issues. Rape is dangerous and destructive and more likely to happen in the United States than in most other countries of the world. There are 195 countries in the world today. The US typically is among the worst 5 percent in terms of rape (Yes,that means 95% of the world’s countries are safer for women than the US). Consecutive studies performed by the United Nations Surveys on crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems confirm that South Africa is the most dangerous, crime-ridden nation on the planet in all crimes including rape.(see http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-a...e-Systems.html).
The world’s histories with very few exceptions have recorded the pattern of sexually abusing boys, girls, and women. Slavery, conquest of war, kidnapping, assault, and other circumstances are the context of these violent practices. Online there is a Website at www.rainn.org which is a tremendous resources for knowledge and information especially about rape, assault, incest and issues relating to the United States. The United Nations reported that, “Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data. (Retrieved 5 December, 2008 from www.un.org/women/endviolence/docs/VAW.pdf , UNite To End Violence Against Women, Feb. 2008).
The UN calls for a criminal Justice System response and for increased prioritization and awareness. Anything might help since almost every country of the world is struggling to prevent sexual violence and rape against its females.
Opportunities
Wage disparities between males and females is both traditional and labor-based economic supply and demand. Statistics show past and current discrepancies in lower pay for women. Diane White, during a 1997 presentation to the United Nations General Assembly, stated that “Today the wage disparity gap cost American women \$250,000 over the course of their lives”. (Retrieved 5 December from http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/s...ne%20White.pdf)
Indeed evidence supports her claim that women are paid less in comparison to men and their cumulative losses add up to staggering figures. The US Census Bureau reported in 2008 that US women earn 77 cents for every US man’s \$1 (See : American Community Survey) . They also reported that in some places (Washington DC) and in certain fields (Computers and mathematical) women earn as much as 98 cents per a man’s \$1. At the worldwide level, “as employees, women are still seeking equal pay with men. Closing the gap between women’s and men’s pay continues to be a major challenge in most parts of the world”. (retrieved 5 Dec., 2008 from the UNstats.org from The World’s Women 2005: Progress and Statistics http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demograph..._4_Work_BW.pdf ; page 54).
The report also discussed the fact that about 60 countries have begun to keep statistics on informal (unpaid) work by women. Needless to say even though measuring paid and unpaid work of women is not as accurate as needed for world considerations, “Women contribute to development not only through remunerated work but also through a great deal of non-remunerated work (page 47).”
Why the lower wages for women? The traditional definition of the reproductive roles of women as being “broken, diseased, or flawed” is part of the answer of wage disparity. The idea that reproductive roles interfere with the continuity of the workplace and the idea that women cannot be depended on plays heavily into the maltreatment of women. The argument can be made that traditional and economic factors have led to the existing patterns of paying women less for their same education, experience, and efforts compared to men.
Efforts to provide formal education to females worldwide have escalated over the last few decades. The 2002 Kids Count International Data Sheet estimated rates as low as 11 percent of females in primary school in Somalia. A 1993 World Bank report made it very clear that females throughout the world were being neglected in receiving their formal educations when compared to males (see Subbarro, K. and Raney, L. 1993, “Social Gains from Female Education: A Cross-National Study”. World Bank Discussion Papers 194; retried from Eric ED 363542 on 8 December, 2008).
In 1998 another example is found in efforts specific to Africa via the Forum of African Women Educationalists which focuses on governmental policies and practices for female education across the continent (retrieved 8 Dec 2008 from www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/...x/114sped3.htm ). Literally hundreds of studies have since focused on other regions around and below the equator where education levels for females are much lower.
In 1999 it was reported by UNICEF that 1 billion people would never learn to read as children with 130 million school aged children (73 million girls) without access to basic education (retrieved, 8 Dec 2008 from http://www.unicef.org/sowc99/ ). Another UNICEF 2008 report clearly identifies the importance of educating girls who grow up to be mothers because of the tremendous odds that those educated mothers will ensure that their children are also formally educated ( see http://www.unicef.org/sowc08/docs/sowc08.pdf ). In its statistical tables it shows that Somalia is now up to 22 percent for boys and girls in primary schools, yet in most countries females are still less likely to be educated ( see www.unicef.org/sowc08/docs/sowc08_table_1.pdf ). The main point from UNICEF and many other formal reports is that higher formal education for females is associated with life, health, protection from crime and sexual exploitation, and countless other benefits, especially to females in the poorer regions of the world.
In the United States most females and males attend some form of formal education. After high school, many go to college. Even though the US numbers of 18-24 year old men are higher than women (www.USCensus.gov ) women are more likely to attend college based on percentages (57%) from a short article in the USA Today paper on the 19 of October, 2005, titled "College Gender Gap Widens: 57% are Women" (retrieved 8 December 2008 from www.usatoday.com/news/educati...ege-cover_xhtm).
A projection from the National Center for Education Statistics projects a continuing trend up and through the year 2016 where about 58 percent of US college students will be female (retrieved 8 December, 2008 from “Projections of Education Statistics to 2016” nces.ed.gov/programs/projecti...2016/sec2c.asp ). By 2016 about 60 percent of graduated students will be females (see nces.ed.gov/programs/projecti...2016/sec4b.asp). These numbers reflect a strong and concerted push toward equality of opportunity for females in formal education that dates back over a century. The challenge is to avoid defining progress for US females in public and private education as having been made at the expense of males. That’s much too simplistic.
They also reflect a change in the culture of bread winning and the adult roles of males. Males and/or females who don’t pursue a college degree will make less money than those who did. To make sense of this trend, many males have been identified as having: a prolonged adolescence (even into their 30’s); video game playing mentality; and a live with your parents indefinitely strategy until their shot at the labor force has passed them by. Others have pointed out the higher rates of learning disabilities in K-12, the relatively low percentage of K-5 teachers who are males, and the higher rate of male dropouts. Still others blame attention deficit and hyperactivity as part of the problem.
Here is a truism about education in the US: Higher education=higher pay=higher social prestige=higher income=higher quality of life. Many countries of the world have neutralized the traditional, religious, and labor-force based biases against women and have moved to a merit-based system. Even in the US, there have been “men" wages, then women and childrens wages (1/10th to 2/3rd of a man’s). In a sense, any hard working, talented person can pursue and obtain a high-end job, including women. Communism broke some of these barriers early on in the 20th century, but the relatively low wages afforded those pursuing these careers somewhat offset the advances women could have made. In the US progress has come more slowly. Physicians are some of the brightest and best paid specialists in the world. Salaries tend to begin in the \$100,000 range and can easily reach \$500,000 depending on the specialty (see www.allied-physicians.com/sal...n-salaries.htm ). Prior to 1970 most physicians were white and male, but things are slowly changing. See Table 4 for trends between 1970 and 2006.
Table 4: The Percentage of Physicians who are Male and Female
Year %Male %Female
1970 92.4% 7.6%
1980 88.4% 11.6%
1990 83.1% 16.9%
2000 76.3% 24.0%
2002 74.8% 25.2%
2003 74.2% 25.8%
2006 72.2% 27.8%
Retrieved from the American Medical Association 8 December, 2008 from “Table 1- Physicians By Gender (Excludes Students)” www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/12912.html]
The upward trend shows a concerted effort to provide equal opportunity for females and males. Engineers have also seen a concerted effort to facilitate females into the profession. The Society of Women Engineers is a non-profit organization which helps support and recognize women as engineers (see http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/index.php ). Look at Figure 1 below. Computer-based careers are seeing striking gains in some areas for women who will be hired competitively based on merit. The same cannot be said for doctoral level employment in the more prestigious fields. In Figure 2 you can see 2005 estimates from the US National Science Foundation.
The first 6 fields are the highest paying fields to work in while social and psychological sciences are among the least paying. Women clearly dominate Psychology and nearly tie in social sciences and biology. True, at the doctoral level pay is higher than at the masters and bachelors levels, but the difference in engineering and psychology is remarkable at every level of education (see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#b00-0000 ).
The mandatory covering of females’ bodies head to toe has been opposed by some and applauded by others. Christians, Hindus, and many other religious groups have the practice of covering or veiling in their histories. Yet, over the last 30 years, as fundamentalist Muslim nations and cultures have returned to their much more traditional way of life, Hijab which is the Arabic word that means to cover or veil has become more common (ħijāb or حجاب,). Often Hijab means modest and private in the day to day interpretations of the practice. For some countries it is a personal choice, while for others it becomes a crime not to comply. The former Taliban punished such a crime with death (they also punished formal schooling of females and the use of makeup by death).
Many womens rights groups have brought public attention to this trend, not so much because the mandated covering of females is that oppressive, but because the veiling and covering is symbolic of the religious, traditional, and labor-forced patterns of oppression that have caused so many problems for women and continue to do so today.
I interviewed a retired OBGYN nurse who served as a training nurse for a mission in Saudi Arabia on a volunteer basis. She taught other local nurses from her 30 years of experience. Each and every day she was guarded by machine gun toting security forces everywhere she went. She was asked to cover and veil and did so. I asked her how she felt about that, given that her US culture was so relaxed on this issue.
“I wanted to teach those women and knew that they would benefit from my experience. I just had to do what I was told by the authorities,” she said.
“What would have happened if you had tried to leave the compound without your veil?” I asked.
“I suspect, I would have been arrested and shot.” She chuckles. “Not shot, perhaps, but If I did not comply, my training efforts would have been stopped and I would have been sent home.”
“So, you complied because of your desire to train the nurses?”
“That and the mothers and babies,” she answered.(Interview with HB, 12June, 2005)
The public demeaning of women has been acceptable throughout various cultures because publicly demeaning members of society who are privately devalued and/or considered flawed fits the reality of most day-to-day interactions. Misogyny is the physical or verbal abuse and mistreatment of women. Verbal misogyny is unacceptable in public in most Western Nations today. With the ever present technology found in cell phones, video cameras, and security devices a person’s private and public misogynistic language could be easily recorded and posted for millions to see on any number of Websites.
Perhaps, this fear of being found out as a woman-hater is not the ideal motivation for creating cultural values of respect and even admiration of women and men. As was mentioned above, most of the world historical leaders assumed that women were not as valuable as men and it has been a few decades since changes have begun. Yet, an even more sinister assumption has and does persist today: that women were the totality of their reproductive role, or Sex=Gender (Biology=Culture). If this were true then women would ultimately just be breeders of the species, rather than valued human beings they are throughout the world today.
An early pioneer and one of my personal heroines is an anthropologist named Margaret Mead (1901-1978). Dr. Mead earned her Ph.D. under the direction of some of the best anthropologists of her day. But she was a woman in a mostly male-dominated academic field. In my own readings of her works—her works are regularly quoted in many different disciplines today—I marvel that she successfully challenged the sexist and misogynistic notions established in academics at the time.
Bold Research on Gender
Mead’s work entitled, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) became a major seminal work in the womens liberation movement and thereby in the redefinition of women in many Western Societies. Her observations of gender in three tribes: Arapesh, Mundugamor, and Tchambuli created a national discussion which lead many to reconsider the established Sex-Gender assumption. In these tribes she found the following:
Arapesh: both men and women displayed what we typically call feminine traits: sensitivity, cooperation, and low levels of aggression
Mundugamor: both men and women were: insensitive, uncooperative, and very aggressive. These were typical masculine traits at the time.
Tchambuli: women were aggressive, rational and capable and were also socially dominant. Men were passive assuming artistic and leisure roles.
Why then, Mead argued, if our reproductive roles determined our cultural and social opportunities were the gender definitions varied and unique among less civilized peoples? Were we not less civilized ourselves at one point in history and have we not progressed on a similar path the tribal people take? Could it be that tradition (culture) was the stronger social force rather than biology? Mead’s work and her public influence helped to establish the belief that biology is only a part of the Sex and Gender question (albeit an important part). Mead established that Sex≠Gender. But, even with the harshest criticism launched against her works, her critics supported and even inadvertently reinforced the idea that biology shapes but cultures are more salient in how women and men are treated by those with power.
Misogyny is easier to perpetrate if one assumes the weakness, biological frailty, and perhaps even diminished capacity that women were claimed to have had. I personally witnessed the rise and fall of some who tried to persist in the traditional definition of women. Andrew Clay Silverstein (1957-present) was a nationally successful comedian who also played in a movie and TV show (although he recently appeared on Celebrity Apprentice). His career ended abruptly because of his harsh sexist themes which were being performed in an age of clarity and understanding about gender values. Mister Clay failed to recognize the social change which surrounded him. We often overlook the change and the continuing problems ourselves. It is advantageous to you and I not to make the same mistake in our own career paths.
Professional and volunteer organizations have made concerted efforts to raise awareness of the English language and its demeaning vocabulary toward females. English as a derivative of German has many linguistic biases against women, non-whites, poor, and non-royalty. Raising awareness and discussing the assumptions within English or any other language has been part of the social transformation toward cultural and biological fairness and equality. If we understand how the words we use influence the culture we live in and how the value of that culture influence the way we treat one another, then we begin to see the importance of language on the quality of life.
The quality of life for women is of importance at many different levels in the world. As you’ve read through this chapter, you’ve probably noticed that much is yet to be accomplished worldwide. The United States has seen much progress. But, other nations continually rank the “world’s best nation for women”. Many European countries far outrank the US for quality of women's lives. In Fact, in 2008 the US ranked number 27th (retrieved 9 December, 2008 from www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...omen-to-live/1).
The Global Gender Gap Index was developed to measure the quality of life for women between countries. It measures the gap between males and females in objective statistics that focus on equality. There are four pillars in the index which include: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival using 14 indicators from each country's national statistics. From 1998-2006, there was a reported net improvement for all countries (page 27).
When one considers the day-to-day lives of women in these national statistics, and perhaps more importantly in their personal lives, the concept of what women do as their contribution to the function of society becomes important. Instrumental Tasks are goal directed activities which link the family to the surrounding society, geared toward obtaining resources. This includes economic work, bread winning, and other resource-based efforts. Expressive Tasks are those that pertain to the creation and maintenance of a set of positive, supportive, emotional relationships within the family unit. This includes relationships, nurturing, and social connections needed in the family and society. Today, women do both and typically do them well.
Prior to the Industrial revolution both males and females combined their local economic efforts in homemaking. Most of these efforts were cottage industry-type where families used their children's labor to make products they needed, such as soap, thread, fabric, butter, and many other products. When the factory model of production emerged in Western Civilizations, the breadwinner and homemaker became more distinct. A Breadwinner is a parent or spouse who earns wages outside of the home and uses them to support the family. A Homemaker is typically a women who occupies her life with mothering, housekeeping, and being a wife while depending heavily on the breadwinner.
What About Men?
In the past two decades a social movement referred to as The Men’s Movement has emerged. The Men's Movement is a broad effort across societies and the world to improve the quality of life and family-related rights of men.
Since the Industrial Revolution, men have been emotionally exiled from their families and close relationships. They have become the human piece of the factory machinery (or computer technology in our day) that forced them to disconnect from their most intimate relationships and to become money-acquisition units rather than emotionally powerful pillars of their families.
Many in this line of thought attribute higher suicide rates, death rates, accident rates, substance abuse problems, and other challenges in the lives of modern men directly to the broad social process of post-industrial breadwinning. Not only did the Industrial Revolution’s changes hurt men, but the current masculine role is viewed by many as being oppressive to men, women, and children. Today a man is more likely to kill or be killed, to abuse, and to oppress others. Table 5 lists some of the issues of concern for those in the Men’s Movement.
Table 5: Concerns in the Men’s Movement
1. Life and health challenges
2. Emotional isolation
3. Sexual research and rights
4. Post-divorce/separation father’s rights
5. False sex or physical abuse allegations
6. Early education challenges for boys
7. Declining college attendance
8. Protection from domestic abuse
9. Man-hating or bashing
10. Lack of support for fatherhood
11. Paternal rights and abortion
12. Affirmative action-sex and race
The list of concerns displays the quality of life issues mixed in with specific legal and civil rights concerns. Mens Movement sympathizers would most likely promote or support equality of rights for men and women. They are aware of the Male Supremacy Model, when males erroneously believe that men are superior in all aspects of life and that should excel in everything they do. They also concerns themselves with the Sexual Objectification of Women which is when men learn to view women as objects of sexual consumption rather than as a whole person. Male Bashing is the verbal abuse and use of pejorative and derogatory language about men.
These and other concerns are not being aggressively supported throughout the world as are the women’s rights and suffrage efforts discussed above. Most of the Men’s Movement efforts are in Western Societies, India, and a handful of others.
I’ve included three self-assessments to help you better understand your views and experiences with gender, men’s issues, and the media portrayal of gender roles.
Gender/Androgyny Role Attitude Assessment
Please answer T=True or F=False on each of the items below. If you are married or otherwise committed then have your partner take the assessment. Compare and discuss only after each has completed it. If you are single have your parents or close friend take the assessment and discuss it.
1. T/F Women with school or preschool aged children should stay home if at all possible
2. T/F Cleaning dishes, laundry, cooking, etc... are really a woman's responsibility
3. T/F Men should be the only breadwinners in the home
4. T/F Women are less capable of making important decisions than are men
5. T/F Women are naturally dependent on men
6. T/F When a woman pursues a career, it's because she has problems with relationships
7. T/F When a woman flatters a man to get what she wants, it's O.K.
8. T/F It would be difficult for me to work for a woman
9. T/F You can tell a great deal about a woman by her appearance and sex appeal
10. T/F Most women admire the qualities of men and would like to be more like them
11. T/F Husbands should really make all the tough decisions in the home
12. T/F Women are not as dependable in terms of job stability and commitment
13. T/F Women should pursue an education that would directly benefit their homemaking role
14. T/F Women are simply not as rational/logical as men
15. T/F Women are more social than men
16. T/F If she were qualified, I'd vote for a woman for president of the U.S.
17. T/F Lawmakers should support gender equality issues in the legislation they pass
18. T/F Women are no more emotional than men tend to be
19. T/F Careers provide women with opportunities for self-fulfillment and growth
20. T/F Sexuality is enjoyed just as much by women as men
21. T/F Men are as capable of loving children as women
22. T/F Overall, genetics have little to do with the way men and women behave
23. T/F Men and women are equally as capable of dominance in society
24. T/F Pay should be based on performance, not gender
25. T/F Men tend to welcome their wife's earnings in today's tough market
26. T/F Neither men nor women are superior to one another
27. T/F Both fathers and mothers are essential to the child's upbringing
28. T/F The way men and women communicate depends more on their individuality than gender
29. T/F Couples should negotiate housework, yard work, and child care duties
30. T/F The birth of the child is cause enough to celebrate, not its sex
Scoring your gender role attitudes:
Give yourself 1 point for each True answer in questions 1-15 _____
Give yourself 1 point for each False answer in questions 16-30 _____
Total Score=
The closer your score is to 30 points the more traditional your attitudes tend to be.
Couples and family members enhance the quality of their relationships as they sit down and discuss their gender values and negotiate on those issues which are most significant to those involved. Do these findings accurately reflect you, your expectations, and life experience? Why or Why not?
*81998 Barbara Bearnson, M.S. & Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Personal Mens Issues Assessment
Answer yes or no to all of the events below that actually have or currently are occurring to you. Be as accurate as possible. Females can interview a close male friend or family member. Do not read the answer key until you have taken the assessment.
YES EVENTS NO
I was labeled a trouble maker in public school
I had learning challenges in public school
I was not athletic in public school
I never had a good male role model in my early years
I feel that I never measure up
I feel like a mechanical cog in the big economic machinery
I suffer because of being a male in today's work place
My father is not proud of me
My father is out of touch with issues in my life
I feel an emotional gap between my father and myself
I long to be more intimate with my partner
I was not adequately socialized to nurture children
I feel emotionally detached from most people
I do things at work which I regret, but must do to keep the job
I've thought about suicide before
I lost custody of my children in a divorce or separation
I have overheard male bashing comments
I have been the direct victim of male bashing
I have suffered discrimination as a male
I fear that I will be accused of sexual crimes
Add up all the Yes answers. This assessment is designed to measure the intensity of hardship males experience in a post-industrial society. 0=no hardship, 20=extreme hardship. Did these findings surprise you? Discuss them with someone close to you. You can learn more about Men's Issues on the Internet or in the library.
*82000 Barbara Bearnson, M.S. & Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D
Television Messages about Gender Roles
Many studies have established the fact that television viewing shapes our attitudes and outlook on life. Most people in the U.S. are exposed to numerous TV messages while watching 3-4 hours of television per day (that's 9.1 years equivalent by age 65). This project is designed to facilitate an understanding of the gender role messages you get from various television shows. Watch two separate shows from 7-11:00 PM and use this table to analyze their presentation of male and female roles.
Factors to Consider Title of First Show Title of Second Show
Are the central characters male, female, or both?
Which characters are shown as being in control or having the most power?
Are the male characters portrayed as being competent in their social roles? How can you tell?
Are the female characters portrayed as being independent and capable in their roles? How can you tell?
If the show is set in the context of a central family, are the male and female characters realistically portrayed? If not, why?
List three words which basically describe the male characters in this show.
List three words which basically describe the female characters.
When comparing yourself to the main character(s) of the same sex, what is the difference (if any)? Would you be friends in real life?
Are any of the male or female characters exploited sexually, financially, or socially? If so, how?
Is violence used to coerce male or female characters?
*81998 Barbara Bearnson, M.S. & Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.10%3A_Sex_and_Gender.txt |
Why Do We Define Race The Way We Do?
Race is socially important yet biologically insignificant in the United States. A Racial Group is a group of people with perceived unique biological and physical characteristics. Race is and has been assumed for centuries as being biologically-based and even biologically distinguishable between various groups (African Americans, Whites, Asians, and Native Americans). Science has proven this to be a myth— racial groups are NOT in fact biologically different in significant ways. Current conceptions of race originated long before genetics as a scientific discipline came to be. Here’s the simple scientifically-based truth about biological differences between the races—there are very few.
An article in Scientific American (December, 2003; pages 78-85) addressed the race-to-Biology question in their cover article, “Does Race Exist?” Two geneticists, Bamshad and Olson have worked on mapping the human genome and their answer was, no. Genetic studies yield more support for geographic ancestral origin than for a claim that our social definitions of race are somehow correlated to our social definitions of being White, Black, Asian, Indian, or other. There has been a great deal of intermarriage and cross-cultural unions so much so that Bamshad and Olson reported that among the billions of genetic markers:
“The outward signs on which most definitions of race are based—such as skin color and hair texture—are dictated by a handful of genes. But the other genes of two people of the same “race” can be very different. Conversely, two people of different “races” can share more genetic similarity than two individuals of the same race (page 80).”
By far the significance of race and biology is social, meaning that we are culturally socialized to define race in biological terms. In fact, throughout the history of the world, most cultures defined race more in cultural rather than biological terms. Egyptian royalty were in the sacred race by birthright (even though some were Mediterranean and others African in origin). Scottish kinships were birth, not biologically based. The Old Testament, Qur’an, and Torah Abrahamic descendants were identified by birth and by religion (this includes descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s first-born son, and descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s second-born son).
In Europe (where most of the early immigrants to the United States originated), various cultures had strong beliefs that Europeans were biologically superior to other peoples of the world. This made it very easy to conquer and colonize various cultures, especially for the British, French, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese societies. These are often called racial supremist ideologies, and they came with the Euro immigrants to the US. Ideological Racism is an ideology that considers a group's physical characteristics to be causally related to inferiority or superiority. Slavery, genocide, and cultural destruction then replacement of the original culture by the British culture was very common between the years 1400-1800.
The US’s version of ideological racism left its mark on mainstream culture which is to this day, strikingly British. British and other European founders created social constructs of non-White groups. Native Americans were either noble savages or barbarians, Blacks were amoral or caustically wild; Asians were either perilous or conniving; and Mexicans were either extremely lazy or intrusive. In the history of the US such ideas lead to extreme mistreatment of non-Whites. Oppression in various forms went unanswered by any legal attempts at justice, which at times even lead to unlawful and immoral massacres of people in these categories.
The first US Census, taken by Federal mandate was in 1790. Data extrapolated from it, indicate the presence of mostly Whites and it ignored slaves, Indians, and others. Historical studies have shown that Whites were the ones believed to be important enough to count at this time. Every 10 years another Census is taken, yielding about 22 US Census collections to date. The last one taken in 2000 was the very first to allow citizens to self-report more than one race. That was about 2.4% of the population (see Table 1 below). Previous Census enumerations (counts) forced US citizens to claim how Black they were, using complicated formulas and unfamiliar terms such as “Mulatto” ½ Black; “Quadroon” or ¼ Black; and “Octoroon” or 1/8 Black. Each was a result of misguided thinking that suggested that having a Black ancestor contaminated a White person’s blood lines. One Drop Theory claims that if there is one drop of another race's blood (mostly targeted toward Black blood) then you are tainted by it.
Table 1: (US Census, 2000, see http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html )
Major Racial Groups in the US %
Caucasian 75.1%
African American 12.3%
Asian 3.6%
Native American 0.9%
Native Hawaiian 0.2%
Two or More Races 2.4%
Other 5.5%
Hispanic/Latino 12.5%
Without seeing each individual can you assign a racial category to C, E, & G below? The one drop approach is simply another version of ideological racism. Let me walk you through the Figure 1 below. To help get the point, you answer a few questions as you go. Let’s say a Black male-A marries a White female-B. Eventually they have a son-C. What is the race of this son? When I present that question to my students they say things like, “we need to see him to see which racial traits he has” or “that’s impossible to say because there’s no gene for race”(every so often I hear that “Black always dominates White in an inter-racial union). This gives us the grounds for a healthy discussion about our racial assumptions. I typically force them to vote, count hands, and even though they don’t have what they feel is needed to make the call, most will vote one way or the other and we go with the majority rule (I’m not trying to make a final judgment as much as trying to get them to think out loud about their assumptions and pre-dispositions).
I explain to them that decades ago, marrying across racial groups was considered a tainting and rendered the child non-White by default. This was true even if the child looked White with red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. I then ask them to consider the outcome of C marrying a White female-D and their eventually having a son E. Again I force them to consider the racial category that E might fit into. Again they struggle. Finally, I ask them to tell me what the racial outcome is when E marries a Japanese female-F and they have a son G (This was in fact one of my 1996 student’s heritage). Children of mixed racial couples confound our ability to perpetuate the myth that race can be biologically discerned. It can’t (Google Image: Keanu Reaves, Tiger Woods, or Mariah Carey and guess their racial heritage by how they appear. Do they look like their heritage?)
The US Census Bureau also runs complex population projection analysis to estimate future population trends in our country. In Figure 2 below you can see a diagram portraying the findings from the March, 2004 report:
“From 2000 to 2050, the non-Hispanic, white population should increase from 195.7 million to 210.3 million, an increase of 14.6 million or 7 percent. This group is projected to actually lose population in the 2040s and would comprise just 50.1 percent of the total population in 2050, compared with 69.4 percent in 2000. Nearly 67 million people of Hispanic origin (who may be of any race) would be added to the nation’s population between 2000 and 2050. Their numbers are projected to grow from 35.6 million to 102.6 million, an increase of 188 percent. Their share of the nation’s population would nearly double, from 12.6 percent to 24.4 percent” (see Press Release* taken from Internet 11 June, 2008 from www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/001720.html ).
Why So Much Racism?
You may have already noticed that even though science has established that race is not biologically based, the US Census Bureau continues to use the racial categories. Why? Most scientists will tell you that if people perceive something as being real then it becomes real in its consequences (Thomas Theorem). Race being based on biology is so intricately connected to all the subtle nuances of everyday life that the average person makes no distinction or effort at understanding. Most people simply believe it to be real. The Constitutional mandate to take a census of the US population so that the people are represented by Congress requires a count of people and their self-reported racial classification. Few argue that we should eliminate the race-biology construct, because it is still very important to the average person.
Coming back to the genetics question, there is no single gene that identifies if one is African American, White, Asian, Native American, or Hispanic. One Genetics company, AncestrybyDNA has created a precise test which can give you between an 80-95 percent accurate estimate of the geographic origins of your ancestors (see www.ancestrybydna.com/welcome/home/index.php ).
Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, and other celebrities have purchased the test (roughly about \$400 and is not covered by medical insurance). After reading about Oprah’s test in a magazine, I saved my money, asked my extended family to pitch in, and bought this test for my birthday (I know I’m a real nerd). I had hoped to find out what percentage of my ancestral heritage was Native American since both my mother and father had Cherokee great-grandparents. I discovered that in fact I have no Native American ancestors. Instead I was mostly European (I have brown hair and blue eyes, and somewhat fair skin). I also had Middle-Eastern, Eastern European, and South-east Asian ancestors.
My parents and grand-parents are still confused because I have no Native American and quite a bit if Middle eastern and South east Asian. My children felt disappointed because they defined their Native American heritage (even though it was small) as cool. A few days after I shared the results with my wife and children, my youngest son told me how cool it was to be part Asian. They came to redefine their minority heritage to potentially include Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, and that was now cool. I have since learned that the odds of children who are born to the same parents having identical ancestral genetics is very rare (only the same for identical twins, triplets, etc.). The odds of randomly getting the same genetic heritage is extremely remote. So, siblings in the same families, with the same parents have different genetic markers indicating different racially diverse heritages. In the US, we make the race-biology claim a big deal because it is part of our culture and our socialization to do so. We tend to look at 4 categories of racial traits in order to distinguish ourselves from people of other races: skin color, facial features, hair color and texture, and body shape and size (body morphology). Four simple features have been used as the categorical basis of “Us and Them” thinking patterns throughout US history. Most don’t realize that there is much more variety within a given racial category than between them. For example, look around your classroom and pick a few students who might fall into just one of the five basic racial groupings. Observe their variations in skin tone, hair texture, color, thickness, or curl. In my classes, I’ll ask for volunteers to come down to the front of the class and stand side by side. It becomes very obvious that not all Whites (or any racial grouping of people) look alike when compared to people considered to be of the same race. Why don’t we care about variation in physical features within our own racial groups? It comes back to our culture and socialization…we are socialized to see differences between rather than within racial categories. What’s the difference between a racial and ethnic group? See Figure 3 below which is a continuum of biological versus cultural traits, race is biology-based and ethnicity is culture-based. An Ethnic Group consists of people who share a common orientation toward the world, who develop a sense of peoplehood, and who are perceived by others as having a distinctive culture.
Ethnicity is conceptually different from race (see Max Weber’s 1922 work, reprinted in 1978, Economy and Society in Roth, G. and Wittich, C. U of Cal Press). Ethnicity refers to people, their religion, languages, traditions, and heritage. Much of what we discussed in the Culture chapter applies to one’s ethnicity as well as one’s race. One very important US ethnic classification is Hispanic; a category that was developed by the US Census Bureau to describe people of “Latin” origin and their descendents (see description in U.S. Census Bureau Guidance on the Presentation and Comparison of Race and Hispanic Origin Data. www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/compraceho.html ). Hispanic, as a categorical classification is at best an ambiguous one because there are 19 countries between Mexico and South America (including a few Spanish-speaking island nations) and 1 country in Europe-Spain that could be a nation of origin for Hispanic persons and their ancestors. By the way, Brazilians are South Americans, but their national language is Portuguese and their most common ancestral heritage is African. Are they or are they not Hispanic? Also French speaking Haitians come from the same island nation as Spanish speaking Dominicans. Aren’t both Hispanic? “Hispanic” as a Census Bureau concept often leads to ambiguous conclusions and you’d do well to remember that the concept was created in an attempt to count US citizens with ethnic sensitivity. To assume homogeneity, or very similar cultural traits, among all US Hispanics is a mistake. The same mistake is made when people classify all US Whites as being homogeneous. But, there is a reason that Hispanic is an important concept. Basically, it identifies a category of sub-cultures within the mainstream US population of Spanish-speaking members (albeit a very diverse collective).
Minorities and Dominant Members of Society
In US history there have been two basic groupings of citizens: Minority and Dominant. A minority group is a group living within a society which is disadvantaged in terms of power, control of their own lives, and wealth. The US minority groups were originally Native Americans and Blacks, but included Irish, Catholics, and many other non-Protestant Non-White groups. Dominant group=is the group within a social system which has more power, control, and wealth. The US dominant group was the British Protestant, also known as White Anglo Saxon Protestants, WASP. The dominant group does not always have to be the most populous group in society.
In South Africa, Blacks were by far the most numerous, yet Whites ruled cruelly with racial supremist ideologies that lead to international outcry and eventual collapse of Apartheid rule there. Apartheid was when South African formalized separateness between Blacks and Whites, mandating White supremacy and privileged treatment between 1948 and 1990. Apartheid was broken apart by the combined international efforts of other nations who put economic and political pressure on the South Africa Afrikaner National Government.
There are a number of ways the dominant group can treat its minority group members. Legislative controls include: anti-miscegenation laws (no inter-racial marriages); forced or reinforced segregation (keeping dominant and minority group communities separate); legal oppression (slavery, denial of right to vote, no public education, etc.); Expulsion (Cherokee Trail of Tears forced march), unjust incarceration (WWII Japanese internment camps, Native American pre-reservation incarceration, and Guantanamo Bay-GITMO); and finally out right annihilation (conquering Native Americans).
Another slightly more subtle treatment is called Marginalization is the purposeful mistreatment of minority group members that yields them geographically part of the society while simultaneously being functionally left out of most of its opportunities. Marginalization often results in material deprivation and exclusion. Most non-Anglo Saxon groups experienced some level of marginalization in US history.
After years, decades, and generations of living under dominant group oppression, minority group members often reach a point of standing up against the dominant group. This happened among the pro-French minority group members in Quebec, Canada; among the Blacks in South Africa; and among the Blacks in the Southern United States (like Rosa Parks). Many minority group members accept their plight and live with social circumstances regardless of how they really feel inside. Because of their frustration and long-term fatigue they sometimes self-incriminate and accuse self, family, friends, or others in their minority group of negative stereotypes and labels imposed by the dominant group.
Sometimes, minority group members rise up in defiance and become agents of social change. This was the case with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968, see photos below). He has been a personal hero of mine for many decades. You see I, too was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1963. I was privileged to witness the transition years in the South where Blacks were once oppressed by the older generation that included my parents and grandparents and have experienced more and more equality than ever before (there’s still much change to take place and I hope it will happen in my lifetime). As a child my parents forced me to drink from White-only water fountains, my teachers forced me to sit in front of Black students (in classrooms and busses). My coaches forced me to bond to high school teammates, while simultaneously discouraging any after-school interactions with non-Whites. None of that felt right to me and my friends. We felt confused about why our innocent friendships were so tightly regulated by the adults around us.
In my Junior year in high school (about 1980) the KKK distributed flyers announcing a huge rally in downtown Douglassville, Georgia. The best word I could find to describe to you our feelings as students at Lithia Springs High School was confusion. Their anger and hate did not make sense to us. Friendships and associations were laden by an uninvited awkwardness that sat like smog in the classrooms and hallways. The big day of the rally came, the local and national media showed up, but as I remember it only about 12 participants came to the rally and they were already affiliated with the KKK. Day-to-day functioning eventually returned to our school, yet we learned a lesson that adults could be stupid at times and we had to watch and protect ourselves around them. So, perhaps you can better see why Martin Luther King Jr. is my hero?
Martin Luther King’s life and accomplishments were remarkable even before he became the most influential civil rights change agent in the United States. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology in 1948. He earned another Bachelor’s degree in Divinity in 1951, then his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology in 1955. He became a pastor in 1954 at the age of 25 (see http://www.thekingcenter.org ). He had a unique ability to ignite a passion for unity among all people, even the White dominant group. He took a Functional approach (as opposed to the more common Conflict approach). In Table 2, you can read how he utilized his principles of Non-violent resistance to evil. These core principles guide civil rights efforts in our day:
Table 2. Martin Luther King Jr’s Principles of Non-Violent Resistance
1. We should all be active in using non violent resistance to evil (racism)
2. We should not seek to defeat our enemy but to win his friendship and understanding
3. We should focus on attacking evil rather than those doing the evil
4. We should be willing to accept suffering as part of the social change process and not retaliate for it
5. We should refuse to hate our opponents
6. We should act with a firm hope that justice will prevail
This photo is of the east wall of my office on campus. My collection of Martin Luther King, Jr. posters, paintings, clocks, and quotes is important to me and often impresses students enough that they ask me why I have such a collection. That opens the door for me to talk about his concepts, speeches, sermons, efforts, and leadership. Students and faculty have contributed some of my collection after they understand my respect for Dr. King. Many signatures are on the backs of these, including the late Yolanda King who signed a postcard for me when she spoke on our campus. On the gold-framed drawing above, you’ll notice a post card stuffed in its lower left side of the frame. That’s an autographed card given to me by Yolonda (she passed away 15, May 2007).
Prejudice and Discrimination
One of the mighty principles taught by Martin Luther King Jr. was hope for a positive and mutually beneficial outcome. He urged those who followed his example to see evil for what it was, yet hope for things to end on the side of good. In this next section of discussion we will talk about how to build bridges between racial, ethnic, life style, cultural and other divers groups of people. To do that, we must define the difference in prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is attitudinal. Discrimination is behavioral. Prejudice may be a feeling, thought, or even a predisposition towards others. Discrimination may be speech, mistreatment, illegal or legal, and behavioral (our actions). A modern-day Psychologist named Gordon W. Allport (1897-1967) wrote a profound piece called The Nature of Prejudice (1979, Perseus Books). You can now buy the 25th edition for less than \$20.00 online. Yes, it’s been around that long and has made a tremendous impact on students and faculty for many years. In his book he classifies prejudice into three broad levels: Cognitive Level of Prejudice refers to our perceptions and beliefs and is based on logical and rational thoughts; Emotional Level of Prejudice refers to prejudiced feelings which are aroused by expression or thoughts; Action-Orientation Level of Prejudice is a predisposition to act in favor of or against certain groups.
At the cognitive level prejudice, thoughts are the vehicle for carrying the prejudice. Stereotypes go hand in hand with this level. Stereotypes are broad generalizations about a category of people who are assumed to have positive and negative traits common to every single member of that category. I’ve taught race and minority relations for about 20 years at the college level. Many of my students will sincerely ask me if a certain racial or ethnic group is: “more likely to be drunk, more likely to be violent, built with genetically superior muscles and tendons, are good at math, have a gene for dancing, or are built to make babies.” Inevitably, I’ll get around to asking them where they heard such notions and typically it came from someone they trusted (teachers, coaches, family, friends). Thoughts can be painful to those victimized by this type of prejudice.
Shortly after 9-11, our young children were trying to sell our pedigreed toy poodles. The sales were slow in coming because of the economic state of things. The typical client who purchased them was middle class, wealthy and interested in companionship more than making a profit (most had them spaded or neutered). We posted flyers on community billboards and sold all but one (which eventually was donated to an older couple). One day I walked past our flyer only to discover that it had been written on (see photo below). “White Trash Breeder…7 million unwanted animals killed every year shame on you,” it read. This is an example of cognitive prejudice. It is also an act of discrimination because the person wrote (acted) on their prejudiced feelings. I’ll explain more about this below.
Emotional prejudice includes our feelings, fears, hopes, joys, jealousies, and other emotions. The concept of relative deprivation applies and often underlies emotional based prejudices. Relative Deprivation is the perception of not being the rightful beneficiary of something a person feels entitled to receive. I once had a student try to explain to me why his father couldn’t get good work because of immigrants who would be willing to bid jobs at lower cost to the builders and often win the bid. As I discussed it with him I learned that his father’s price per hour was very high by most standards. I also learned that his father typically worked 40-60 hours per week and was off only when he took vacations. I also learned that he had felt fear once at a football game when he was confronted by people who looked and talked like the immigrants that were the cause of his feeling of being deprived. He was very discontent, yet really had no reason to be. His father’s meal-time anti-immigration discussions had left him feeling that perhaps his own food was being taken from their table by the immigrant laborers.
Once a person feels relative deprivation, then choose to become the victim, they make those who are the focus of their deprivation (the perceived cause) into perpetrators. This in turn justifies their prejudice and at times their discrimination against others. In general, emotional prejudice can be very dangerous because when we are emotional, we are typically feeling rather than using our complex rational thinking processes. Sometimes individuals, mobs, and hostile groups act dangerous when emotional prejudice is felt.
Allport’s action-orientation levels simply mean that people are predisposed to prejudice and may not know it until circumstances present themselves in such a way that their prejudices emerge. I had a dear friend who died from cancer a few years ago. She was and to this day has been my best friend on campus. She and her husband had children my age and they considered me as a younger friend like unto their children. When their youngest son met a Japanese-Korean young lady and fell in love, he brought her home to meet them. She explained to me that she and her husband were very troubled and realized that in their generation people just didn’t marry across racial and ethnic lines. After long discussions with one another and their children, they apologized to their daughter-in-law to be and were forgiven by her for their prejudices. Years after the wedding and the arrival of their new grandson, she expressed to me the joy and love she felt for her daughter-in-law and how she felt like she was truly as close to her as she was to her own daughter.
I received a call, later from her husband, informing me that she had died suddenly. He asked me to speak at her funeral alongside her sons. At the viewing, I noticed the daughter-in-law, quietly crying in the corner of the room. It was her individual way to grieve alone. I intruded on the moment and visited with her. Because I had shared an office with her mother-in-law, I was able to communicate some of my friend’s thoughts and feelings toward her. This helped her to grieve and feel peace at her time of loss. I later reflected on how courageous and humble my friend and her husband were to take ownership of their prejudices, admit wrong, and work toward managing it by loving and supporting their son and daughter-in-law. It was a win-win outcome.
How Can We Overcome Prejudice?
You may have already wondered, what’s the differences in prejudice, stereotypes, and my own personal preferences? I had a student ask me, “If I don’t like Chinese food, does that make me prejudiced?” I think this was a sincere question. I explained that it does not make her prejudiced to simply prefer one food over another, one genre of film over another, or one style of car over another. See the Figure 4 below.
The best way to understand prejudiced thinking is to understand the concept of categorical thinking. Categorical Thinking is the human cognitive process of storing and retrieving information in sections of our memory that are highly associated with one another. For example, read this list: awake, dream, snore, bed, eat, slumber, sound, wake, and night.
Now pick the single best word that categorically fits into this list: computer, wheel, or sleep. Most of my students pick sleep because it so highly related to the original list of concepts. The point is, we think in associations and categories. That’s why if you get wheeled into an emergency room with a fever, side ache, perspiration, and nausea that suddenly hit, doctors suspect Appendicitis. Categorical thinking saves lives, helps you to pass tests, and keeps students employed when their bosses see them as good employees. It is true that categorical thinking makes it so we can function, but it also is the thinking process which underlies prejudice and stereotypes in our relationships. The key is to control categorical thinking, prejudices, and stereotypes.
First, you have to do some self-analysis and discover where you might have learned your prejudices. Many people are taught prejudice from: family, friends, teachers, religious leaders, television, internet, and other agents and agencies of socialization. It’s feels strange to think that family might teach other family members to be prejudiced, but this may be one of the more common sources. In the 1949 musical, South Pacific, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, wrote a gutsy song called “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught…to hate and fear, to be afraid..and to hate all the people your relatives hate.” (retrieved 12 June, 2008 from www.lyrics007.com/print.php?id=TkRRNE1USTM ).
For the year 1949, this was in truth a very gutsy song that proved to be way ahead of its time. Yet, it impacted a great many people who watched the movie. Without knowing that science would someday prove these lyrics to be true as a far as how children do come to be prejudiced, Rodgers and Hammerstein were years in front of the Civil Rights movement in the US. Socialization of Prejudice is learning prejudice from people we look up to (family, relatives, teachers, etc...).
Another source of our prejudices is the social structural source. Social Structure Origin of Prejudice occurs when prejudice is built into the group, community, and social institutional components of society. This was the case in public education when Blacks and Whites were segregated in their churches, schools, workplaces, and other agency-level social environments. Few questioned it because it appeared to be part of the world-taken-for-granted.
There is also, the Competition Origin of Prejudice occurs when members of one group feel threatened and or deprived by members of another group for limited resources. This ties in well with the concept of relative deprivation. When groups of people feel that they are losing at the expense of other groups’ gains, it breeds and fuels competitive hostility at numerous levels. I often teach my students to remember as managers not to create competitions in the workplace among their employees. Create competition between companies or factories, but if competition is fostered between group members, it can easily lead to prejudice and hostility.
Interdependence is the dependence on others for support in order to be able to succeed. This principle works just the opposite of competition (see the “Jigsaw Method” at olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/coop/page4.html ). One can create a non-prejudiced environment by creating mutual dependence among individuals who are vested in the success of themselves and their group—if the individual’s success depends upon the group’s success. Prejudices can also originate from negative interactions with members of a certain group that are distorted overtime and become applied to the category of all group members.
Once you get an idea of where your own prejudices came from you can employ proven strategies for managing them. First and foremost, you are the only one who can manage your personal prejudices. The same is true for me. I have been frustrated for decades trying to help my own socially significant others to see the wisdom that comes with refusing to be prejudiced. For the most part, I have failed in my attempts with them. Ultimately, it boils down to an old joke (not sure who came up with it):
“How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? It only takes one, but the bulb has to really want to be changed” ☺ (I never claimed it to be a funny joke). But, the point is people change their ways when they are ready to change their ways. I’m glad I tried to help with that change, but have only succeeded thus far in managing my own prejudices. Here are a few principles that may be very useful if you are trying to manage prejudices and stereotypes.
First, interact with others on the personal, not the categorical level. Martin Luther King Jr. said:
"I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day livce in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"
Retrieved 12 June, 2008 from http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html ).
His point toward the end, about his four little children living in a nation where “they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” is speaking to the fact that to really judge character you must interact personally, not categorically (color of their skin). The safest and most proven way to interact with another at the personal level is to share trusted feelings and thoughts with others while simultaneously have similar thoughts and feelings be shared back with you. You might replace “the, they, theirs,” or the labels we use such as Black, Whites, etc. with you, me, I, my, or the name of the individual. The personal level quiets the categorical thinking process. You can’t use stereotypes if you are genuinely getting to know and trust another person. Scarcely does a day go by that I am not proud of the US 2008 national Presidential election. In it we had a woman, Black man, and 2 traditional White men on the Presidential and Vic-Presidential tickets.
Now, regardless of who you wanted to win or may have voted for, to some of us old folks born in the 1960s there is a deep sense of joy that the country finally followed Dr. King’s counsel to judge a candidate on his or her character. President Obama symbolically represents the death of old school US ideological racism and has lifted our nation’s standing among many nations of the world which have traditionally elected qualified people regardless of race, color, sex, creed, lifestyles, etc.
Second, find the common ground shared between you and others. Ask questions, share information and look for the experiences, exact or similar, that connect you both on common shared backgrounds. Third, if you say or do something offensive to another, talk about it and apologize. Learn from your mistakes. One prejudiced thought or feeling does not a bigot make. Fourth, find someone you can relate to who has managed their prejudices successfully, then let them be a role model.
We discussed discrimination above, but it needs to be revisited here. Discrimination includes behaviors which result in the unfair or unequal treatment of others. Discrimination is an action (not just a feeling or thought) that typically has two forms: De Jure Discrimination is legalized discrimination which is typically built into the social structure; and De Facto Discrimination is the actual experience of members of society with discrimination.
Even though discrimination is illegal, it still occurs in the US. People, at times, still aren’t served in restaurants, allowed to lodge in motels, or are refused employment. Not all discrimination can be detected much less punished. In the US history of race relations tremendous injustices have been meted out against minority group members by dominant group members and organizations. Most of these will never see justice for their losses.
One extreme form of discrimination is the hate crime. Hate Crimes are perpetrated by individuals who attack others based on their own intense feelings of bias and bigotry. The FBI estimates that fewer than 10,000 Hate Crimes occur each year in the US. But this is highly deceptive because most hate crimes are not reported and are not required to be reported as in the case of all other crimes in the FBI Uniform Crime Report (see Beirich 2007 Taken form Internet 10 June 2008 from www.splcenter.org/blog/2007/11/19/fbi-releases-hate-crime-statistics/ )
Two FBI researchers, John R. Schafer and Joe Navarro discussed the hate process for individuals and groups; they published a ground-breaking report on understanding hate and those who criminally perpetrate it (see from www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2003/mar2003/mar03leb.htm ) .
They referenced three types of hate crime perpetrators: Thrill Seekers tends to commit hate crimes with peer group members but does not belong to hate group; Hard-Core Offenders are extremely violent and aggressive (typically a Hate Group Member); Reactive Offenders ground their attack on a perceived transgression, such as an insult, interracial dating, or a neighborhood integration.
Many hate crime perpetrators are not members of hate groups. They tend to be young, white, from poorer families, and have very weak self-concepts. Their hate crimes are the result of their compensating for their insecurities by making victims out of others (see “Why Do Young Men Commit Hate Crimes?” NPR News and Notes 23 June 2006 from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5506152 ).
Also, many of these perpetrators utilize secondary justification where they try before, during, and after the assault to prove to themselves and others that they were the victims and not the perpetrators. They lie to police, they react to negative coverage in the media as being an act of aggression, and they self-deceive in terms of what an offense is. For example, when they are out about town they feel that they have been violated to have to see in public an interracial or same sex couple or immigrant. They tell the police, “they started it.” In fact nothing was started outside the minds of the perpetrators. Many seek out and cruise for potential victims in places they are likely to hang out. The most common form of hate Crime is the: Anti-Black, Anti-homosexual/Lesbian, Anti-Jewish, then Anti-Ethnic and anti-religious (see table at FBI.gov retrieved from Internet 10 June 2008 from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/table1.html ). | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.11%3A_Race_and_Minority.txt |
What is Gerontology?
The United States of America is inhabited by many diverse people, including distinguishable generations of society's members based on age. Gerontology is the scientific study of the processes and phenomena of aging and growing old. The definition of being elderly varies. For example, the government typically sets 65 to be the elderly years, the American Association of Retired Persons finds 55 to be the eligible age of membership, and many elderly define their 70's or 80's as the time they begin to feel elderly. Gerontology is multi-disciplinary with medical and biological scientists, social scientists, and even financial and economic scientists all studying the processes of aging from their discipline's point of view.
Social Gerontology is the sociological sub field of gerontology which focuses on the nonphysical and social aspects of aging. Sociology focuses on the broad understanding of the elderly experience, their health, their emotional and social wellness, and their quality of life, just to mention a few. How many elderly lived in the US in 2008?
Table 1: Numbers and Percent of United States Population Aged 65 and Over 2008*
US Elderly 15-64 Years old ≤ 14 years of Age United States Total
38,690,169 203,987,724 61,146,753 303,824,646
12.7% 67.1% 20.1% 100%
*Estimates retrieved 17 June 2008 from www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../print/us.html
The future growth of the US elderly population is immense in comparison to previous Census tabulations and growth rates. In Figure 1 below you see tremendous growth in the United States where the elderly now comprise only 1 in 8 members of US society, but in 2050 will comprise 1 in 5. In Figure 2 below you can see that the oldest old, 85 years and older, is also growing rapidly. This means that in general more people are living longer. In fact there are more centenarians than ever before. A Centenarian is a living person who has had their 100 birthday. US Census counts indicated about 37,000 centenarians in 1990 and about 50,000 in 2000 (See Kestenbaum and Reneé, 2006 Retrieved from the Internet 19 July, 2008 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...7/ai_n17183322 ).
In many societies the elderly are revered (especially Asian societies). Filial Piety is the value, respect, and reverence of one's elderly which is often accompanied by care giving and support of the elderly. In Western countries, the elderly and their extended family are considered co-equals and mutually independent until circumstances necessitate assistance from children and other family members.
Understanding the Generations of Life
A Life Course is an ideal sequence of events and positions the average person is expected to experience as he/she matures and moves through life. Dependence and independence levels change over the life course. In Figure 3 below, you can see that from birth to teen years, that children's levels of dependence are relatively high and our levels of independence are relatively low. Newborns have little ability to nurture others, but as they are socialized and grow into their later-teen roles things change. By young adulthood, independence is a prime value which leads many to move out on their own and gain their own experiences (like most of you did). A young adult's ability to nurture is moderate, but often dormant since most pursue avenues of preparation for their adult lives rather than immediately beginning their own families. Married and cohabiting couples are much more independent and capable of nurturing and remain so throughout the grand-parenting years. As the life course progresses into later life, the oldest elderly begin to lose their independence as their health declines to the point that their resources lag behind the daily demands placed upon them. This is because all of us experience senescence. Senescence is the social, emotional, biological, intellectual, and spiritual processes associated with aging.
Table 2: Diagram of Dependence and Independence Over the Life Course.
Stage Dependence or Independence Level Own Ability to Nuture
Birth to Pre-school Totally Dependent Low
Pre-School Mostly Dependent Low
School to Pre-teen Somewhat Dependent Low
Teen to Young Adult Increasingly Dependent Moderate
Young Adult Moderately Independent Moderate
Young Married Mostly Independent Somewhat High
Young Parents Almost Independent High
Parents Independent High
Grandparents Extremely Independent High
Great Grandparents Somewhat Independent Moderate
For many in our modern societies, aging is feared, vilified, and surgically and cosmetically repaired. We do not like being “off our game” and senescence is viewed as a weakness. Yet, many elderly find their lives very satisfying. And they tend to report higher levels of self-esteem than do younger members of society. Because we tend to value youth, youthful appearance, and youthful-centered entertainment, biases appear in the US. There are, in the United States, many who hold deeply held biases and prejudices against the elderly. Ageism is the prejudice and discrimination against a person based on his/her chronological age.
Ageism is a unique form of bias. One may be prejudiced against another racial group, cultural or ethnic group, or religious group while never being at risk of becoming a member of that group. Ironically, ageist people are aging right now and will be until the day they die; they are essentially biased against their own future status.
For those who seek understanding of the elderly, there are three social theories that might help to understand the elderly and their later-life experiences. These are listed in order of their professional value by Gerontologists who study aging-related psychosocial issues.
The Continuity Theory claims that older adults maintain patterns in their later years which they had in their younger years. The elderly adapt to the many changes which accompany aging using a variety of effective personal strategies they developed earlier in their life. For example, those who participated in outdoor activities in their younger years tend to continue to do so as older adults, although they tend to accommodate their health and fitness limitations as they deem appropriate.
The Activity Theory claims that the elderly benefit from high levels of activities, especially meaningful activities that help to replace lost life roles after retirement. The key to success in later-life is staying active and, by doing so, resist the social pressures that limit an older person's world. (Google Robert Havighurst and Aging).
The Disengagement Theory claims that as elderly people realize the inevitability of death and begin to systematically disengage from their previous youthful roles, society simultaneously prepares the pre-elderly and elderly to disengage from their roles. This was the first formal aging theory that fell short of credibility because the scientific data did not support its assumptions. There is quite a bit of support for Continuity and Activity Theories (see The Encyclopedia of Aging).
To really understand the elderly today you have to understand the larger social changes that have transpired over the last century. Around 1900, US elderly held a more cherished place in the hearts of younger family members. Most homes were intergenerational with grandparents, parents, and children all living in the same home and more often with kin on the wife's side being the social connection around which 3 generations would live (see Dorian Apple Sweetser, 1984 “Love and Work: Intergenerational Household Composition in the U. S. in 1900” Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 46, No. 2 (May, 1984), pp. 289-293 retrieved on 18 June 2008 from www.jstor.org/stable/352460?seq=1 ).
In 2000, the US Census Bureau reported that there were 105.5 million households in the country (report C2KBR/01-8 retrieved on 18 June 2008). Table 2 reports that 3.7 percent or nearly 4 million households are multigenerational. Not having older relatives live in your home probably feels normal, however, the point is that in years past elderly family members were considered a valuable asset with their wisdom and support of their children and grandchildren.
Theorizing Later Life
The Modernization Theory claims that industrialization and modernization have lowered the power and influence which the elderly once had and that this has lead to much exclusion of elderly from community roles. Even though this theory is not as well established and is somewhat controversial, it has made a place in science for understanding how large-scale social forces have impacted the individual and collective lives of the elderly. In our modern societies: the economy has grown to a state that has created new levels of prosperity for most; the new technologies have outpaced the ability of the elderly to understand and use them; and the elderly are living much longer and are not essential to the economic survival of the family as was the case for millennia. Modernization can help us to understand why the elderly have become stigmatized and devalued over the last century.
Who make up the generations of our day? Look at Figure 4 below to see birth rates and generation labels for the United States. First notice the red and blue lines. The red represents the Crude Birth Rate. Crude Birth Rate is a measure of the numbers of births per 1,000 population in a given year. The Blue line represents the General Fertility Rate. General Fertility Rate is a measure of the numbers of live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44. Both CBR and GBRs show a pattern of birth rates that were relatively high when the World-At-War Generation was born. Birth rates declined with the Great Depression until 1946 (the commencement of the Baby Boom). The Baby Boom represented a surge in birth rates that endured from 1946-1964 and declined to pre-Boom rates in 1965. Generation X or “Gen X” represents the children of the Baby Boomers which spilled into Generation Y or the “Millennials” which by most accounts are still being born.
The World-At-War Generation is slowly disappearing from the US population landscape. On the 18th of June, 2008 the last living Veteran of World War I was honored by the White House and Congress. Frank W. Buckles fought in WWI and was held prisoner in Manila during World War II (see CNN, retrieved on 19 June, 2008 from http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/07/war.veteran/ ). Also the US Veterans Bureau reported that there were 2,911,900 WWII veterans as of the 30th of September 2007, with about 900 WWII veterans passing away each day. They also reported that 39.1 percent of all US veterans were aged 65 and older (See data sheet retrieved 19 June 2008 from www1.va.gov/vetdata/docs/4X6_...sharepoint.pdf ).
The majority of the elderly today are women. If you consider the elderly as being divided into three life stages you can discern just how the elderly are comprised comparing males to females. The Young-old=65-74 years; the Middle-old=75-84 years; and the Old-old= 85+ years. In 2005 there were more females in all three ages: 65-74; 75-84; and 85+. This is because women, in most countries of the world, have a higher life expectancy than men. Life Expectancy is the average numbers of years a person born today may expect to live. The US Life expectancy today is about 80 for females and 75 for males (worldwide it 70 for females and 66 for males; see www.prb.org, 2007 Population Data Sheet , retrieved 19 June 2008). Life expectancies have increased dramatically over the last 50 years in the Western nations of Canada, United States, Australia, Japan, and Western Europe. Overall, men and women can expect to live longer than they did in the 1940s-1990s.
Sex Ratio is the number of males per 100 females. The sex ratio in the quote above which was 44 for persons 58 to 89 would be interpreted as 44 males per 100 females. I found this quote from www.census.gov about US elderly males and females:
“Perhaps no feature of the oldest old is as striking as their sex ratio (the number of males per 100 females), which was 39 in 1994 (982,000 males and 2.5 million females). The sex ratio in the United States was 44 for persons 85 to 89 years old, and only 26 for persons 95 to 99 years old. In comparison, the sex ratio was 82 for persons 65 to 69 years old." (retrieved 19 June 2008 from www.census.gov).
The Baby Boomers represent 78.2 million US citizens as of the 1st of July, 2005 (see www.census.gov). This large cohort of society's member is moving on mass into the ranks of the elderly. A Cohort is a group of people who share a statistical or demographic trait such as those born between 1946-1964. Nearly 8,000 Baby Boomers turned 60 each day in 2006. The US Census estimates that 57.8 million baby Boomers will be around in 2030 after they've all retired. One issue for gerontologist is the financial strain the Baby Boomers will place on the rest of society once they are retired. Most speculate that baby Boomers will not receive the same from the Social Security Administration benefits that their parents and grandparents enjoyed.
The children of the Baby Boomers were called the Generation X children or the “Baby Bust” because they were born in post-Boom low fertility rate years. They were different from their parents. They grew up with the computer age and came to computer technology much like an immigrant comes to a new country. This cohort grew up in an economic state of greater posterity than did previous generations. Generation Y, or Millennials, are also called the “Internet Generation or Screenagers” because they grew up with TV, video games, cell phones, PDAs, and movie screens. Each generation is culturally distinct compared to the previous ones even though much still remains in common. There is a good chance that children of Generation Y parents will be better skilled than their parents with a technology that has not yet been invented. Such has been the case comparing the last three generations.
In Tables 3 & 4 you see the increasing life expectancies in the US. The elderly of the future will be expected to live longer than any elderly in the history of the United States and world. Being born in the US affords the average member of society a longer life. In Table 3 below you can see that North American children are born with the higher life expectancies than other children around the world. By far, being born in Japan and Hong Kong would provide the absolute highest life expectancy at birth at 82 years for the total.
Table 2: United States Life Expectancies. (Retrieved 19 June 2008 Table 98: Expectations of Life at Birth, 1970-2004, and Projections, 2010 and 2015; www.census.gov/compendia/stat...es/08s0098.pdf ).
Year Total Male Female
1970 70.8 67.1 74.7
1980 73.7 70.0 77.4
1990 75.4 71.8 78.8
2000 77.0 74.3 79.7
2010 78.5 75.6 81.4
2015 79.2 76.2 82.2
Table 4: 2007 World and Regional Life Expectancies. *(www.prb.org, 2007 Population Data Sheet , retrieved 19 June 2008)
Region Total Male Female
World 68 66 70
Africa 53 52 54
N. America 78 70 81
L. America 73 70 76
Asia 68 67 70
Europe 75 71 79
Oceania 75 73 78
In fact all regions of the world are growing older. The developing countries are aging the fastest. Consider this screen capture and color map taken from the Population Reference Bureau World Population data Sheet 2007, Page 6:
Population Aging Is Occurring Worldwide.
Over the past half-century, both the worldwide drop in fertility and the concurrent rise in life expectancy have led to the gradual aging of the world's population. Look at Table 4 below. Since 1950, the share of persons ages 65 and older has risen from 5 percent to 7 percent worldwide. As the map shows, Europe and Japan have led the way, with North America, Australia, and New Zealand close behind. However, older persons are now more than 5 percent of the inhabitants in many developing countries and by 2050 are expected to be 19 percent of Latin America's population and 18 percent of Asia's.
Table 5: Worldwide Percent of Persons Ages 65 and Older
2025 2050
WORLD 7 10 16
Industrialized Countries 16 21 26
Developing Countries 6 9 15
Europe 16 21 28
North America 12 18 21
Oceania 10 15 19
Latin Am. & Caribbean 6 10 9
Asia 6 10 18
Africa 3 4 7
(Retrieved 19 June 2008 from WWW.PRB.org Population Data Sheet 2007: Sources: C. Haub, 2007 World Population Data Sheet, and United Nations Population Division).
As mentioned, elderly women outlive elderly men.
• Widowhood occurs when one's spouse dies
• Widows are surviving wives
• Widowers are surviving husbands
As a young college student you probably don't worry about ever being a widow or widower. Justifiably, you shouldn't have to based on statistical probabilities. In fact, you are more likely to lose a spouse via death than via divorce. Do some math with me. If you are female and marry a guy 2 years older, and he typically dies 5-6 years before you, then you will be a widow at some time in your life and may live 6-8 years as such. One sub-discipline of gerontology is thanatology. Thanatology is the scientific study of death and dying. Thanatology informs those who provide support and counsel to the dying.
How we define death, both our own and the death of others, is very much influenced by the cultural definition of death we incorporated into our own values while growing up. Most of us are related to someone who died in the last 24 months. It's very common for college students about your age to have lost a great aunt/uncle, great grandparent, and even a grand parent. It's not so common for you to have lost you own parent or sibling. Grief is the feeling of loss we experience after a death, disappointment, or tragedy. When you experience grief you are said to be in bereavement. Bereavement is a name for the circumstances and conditions that accompany grief.
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her work as the stages of grief. These include:
1. denial - “All is fine, or it didn't happen”
2. anger - “why me? Or I hate God for this”
3. bargaining - "I'd be a better person if you (God) will just let him live”
4. depression - “all is lost, or why try?”
5. acceptance - "we'll be okay or we can get through this together”
(see “On Death and Dying," 1973; Routledge Press).
I've noticed that we all grieve when things disappoint us, when someone dies, or even when we break up with someone. I've seen my seniors grieve to a certain degree when they did not get into graduate school on their first try. We all grieve and we all grieve in our own way. Studies show that most people experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance, but there exists some disagreement on the part about cycling through Kübler-Ross' stages in any order.
The study of aging, the study of generations, the study of life course, and the study of death and dying are part of the social gerontology approach. Courses and degrees are offered throughout the US and abroad and there are many professions where gerontologist work throughout their careers. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.12%3A_Aging.txt |
In all societies, the family is the premier institution for all of the following: socialization of children, adult intimate relationships, life-long economic support and cooperation, and continuity of relationships along the life-course. Sociologists are leaders among scientists who study the family. They have functioned in a core assessment role for describing, explaining, and predicting family-based social patterns for the United States and other countries of the world. Sociologists have allowed us to understand the larger social and personal level trends in families.
What Is the Family?
The family structures that were very common a century ago are not nearly as common today. In the US around the year, 1900 most families had 3 generations living in one home (IE: children, parents, and uncle/aunt/grandparent) and most did manual labor. Today, most families fall into one of two types. The first is a Nuclear Family, or a family group consisting of mother & father and their children. This is the family type that is mostly preferred. The second most common form is the Blended Family, or the family created by remarriage including step siblings and parents. Today, very few families are multiple generational beyond parents and their children. Finally, all the family relations you have past your nuclear or blended family we call an Extended Family (ie cousins, aunts & uncles, grand and great grandparents).
The US Census Bureau conducts annual surveys of the US population and publishes them as the Current Population Surveys. Table 1 represents the US family Types as of October 1, 2008. You will notice that marrieds comprise the largest proportion of family types in 2008. Single never marrieds are the second largest type and include another 6.8 million cohabiters of opposite sex and an unknown number of same sex cohabiters. Next is divorced, widowed, then separated.
(see Table UC1. Opposite Sex Unmarried Couples by Labor Force Status of Both Partners: 2008 retrieved 30 March 2009 from http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2008.html).
Table 1: US Family Types, 2008
Types Numbers Percentages
Married 123,671,000 52%
Widowed 14,314,000 6%
Divorced 23,346,000 10%
Separated 5,183,000 2%
Never Married-Single 71,479,000 30%
Total Families 15 and over 237,993,000 100%
Taken from Internet on 30 March 2009 from Table A1. Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin/1, 2008
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2008.html
Look at Figure 1 below to see the US trend of actual numbers in millions of family types. It shows that the single largest type of family in the US has always been marrieds then never marrieds. The divorced overtook widowed category in the 1970s and has been higher ever since. Why are the trends upward? Simple, these are numbers and not rates nor percentages. The population has grown and therefore the population size has been steadily increasing.
What Are Typical Marriage Structures?
The culturally preferred marriage type today is Monogamy, or the marriage form permitting only one spouse. Almost all in the US have married monogamously since the original colonies in the 1600s. Monogamy implies a 1:1 relationship and is typically desired both by married and opposite and same-sex cohabiters. Multiple spouses at the same time has been preferred in the past by Mormons (they ceased polygamy in 1890 and Current Mormons who try to marry polygamously are excommunicated) and Mormon-splinter groups (many still polygamous today).
Polygamy is a marriage form permitting more than one spouse at the same time. Polygyny is a marriage form permitting more than one wife at the same time and is the most common form of polygamy in the world’s history. Polygyny is still common and legal in many African, Middle-Eastern, and Indian nations. It was a deep part of China’s history and prior to World War II it was common for a Chinese man to have multiple wives and many children.
Polyandry is a marriage form permitting more than one husband at the same time. This is historically and currently rare and if practiced often included the marriage of one wife to a set of brothers with all having sexual access to the wife. What if a person marries, divorces, marries divorces, etc.? Serial Monogamy or Serial Polygamy is the process of establishing intimate marriage or cohabiting relationships that eventually dissolve and are followed by another intimate marriage or cohabiting relationships that eventually dissolve, etc. in a series. So, polygamists have simultaneous multiple spouses while serial monogamists or serial polygamists have multiple spouses in a sequence of relationships.
Traditional roles of men and women play into how the family functions in society. Typically and throughout history families have been Patriarchal, where males have more power and authority than females and where rights and inheritances typically pass from fathers to sons. Matriarchal families are families where females have more power and authority than males and rights and inheritances pass from mothers to daughter and sons. In Matriarchal families, the mother is not only the social and emotional force of the family but is also the economic force. More and more in the US families are leaning toward Egalitarian families, or families with power and authority more fairly distributed between husband and wife.
What Are The Functions of Families?
In studying the family, Functional Theorists have identified some common and nearly universal family functions. That means almost all families in all countries around the world have at least some of these functions in common: Table 2 shows many of the global functions of the family:
Table 2. Global Functions of the Family
• Economic support - food, clothing, shelter, etc...
• Emotional support - intimacy, companionship, belonging, etc...
• Socialization of child - raising children, parenting
• Control of sexuality - defines and controls when and with whom (IE: marriage)
• Control of reproduction - the types of relationships where children should/could be born
• Ascribed status - contexts of race, socioeconomic status, religion, kinship, etc.
By far, economic support is the most common function of today’s families. When your parents let you raid their pantry, wash clothes in their laundry, or replenish your checking account that’s economic support. For another young adult, say in New Guinea, if she captures a wild animal which is cooked on an open fire, that’s also economic support in a different cultural context. I’ve always been amazed at how far family economic cooperation extends. Some families cooperate in business-like relationships. In Quebec, Montreal there is an established pattern of Italian immigrants who help family and friends emigrate from Italy to Canada. They subsidize each others travel costs, help each other find employment once in Canada, and even privately fund some mortgages for one another. Each participant is expected to support others in the same manner. To partake in this form of economic cooperation is to assume a very business-like relationship.
Emotional relationships are also very common, but you must understand there is a tremendous amount of cultural diversity in how intimacy is experienced during emotional support in various families around the world. Intimacy is the social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical trust that is mutually shared between family members. Family members share confidences, advice, trust, secrets, and ongoing mutual concern. Many family scientists believe that intimacy in family relationships functions as a strong buffer to the ongoing stresses experienced by family members outside of the home.
Socialization of children was covered in detail in a previous chapter. For now, keep in mind that children are born with the potential to be raised as humans. They will realize this potential if older family members or friends take the time to protect and nurture them into their cultural and societal roles. Today the family is the core of primary socialization. But, many other societal institutions contribute to the process.
Controlling sexuality and reproduction have traditionally been sanctioned by families. A few centuries ago the father and mother even selected the spouse of many of their children (they still do in many countries). Today, US parents and children want their adult child to select their own spouse. Older family members tend to encourage pregnancy and childbirth in only marriage or a long-term relationship. Unwed Mothers are mothers who are not legally married at the time of the child’s birth. Being unwed brings up concerns of economic, emotional, social, and other forms of support for the mother that may or may not be present with the father. Many fathers reject their fatherly obligations in the case of unwed mothers.
When an unwed mother delivers the baby, it is often the older female family members who end up providing the functions of support for that child rather than the birth father. Table 3 shows the unwed mother births for the US in 2000 and 2006. Most of the 4,266,000 live US births in 2006 were to married mothers. But, about 1/10 of teen mothers and 38 percent of all mothers were unwed (retrieved 30 March 2009 from www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0077.pdf). This trend of increasing unwed birth rates suggests that more and more families have less control by sanctioning childbirth within marriage. On the other side of the coin, many of these unwed mothers marry the child’s fathers and many of those marriages eventually end in divorce.
Table 3: Percentage of All Births that were to Unwed Teens and Mothers of All Ages Years 2000 and 2006
Year Births to Unwed Teens Births to All Unwed Mothers
2000 11.8% 33.2%
2006 10.4% 35.8%
Taken from Statistical Abstracts of the US on 30 March 2009 from Table 87. Births to Teenage Mothers and Unmarried Women and Births With Low Birth Weight—States and Island Areas: 2000 to 2006 www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0087.pdf
Finally, ascribed status is there at birth. You were born into your racial, cultural-ethnic, religious and economic statuses. That shaped to some degree the way you grew up and were socialized. By far, in our modern societies, achieved status, or those statuses that come as a result of your own efforts, is more important than ascribed for most members of society. The degree of achievement you attain often depends heavily on the level of support families give to you.
Since marriage is so very common in the US, it would be wise for this chapter to cover the process of pairing off and forming marriages as well as the process of divorcing and dissolving marriages that often occurs. Pairing off can be better understood by incorporating a few principles that tend to describe, explain, and help us predict how two people move from strangers to intimate partners during the pairing process.
How Do We Pair Off?
Numerous studies have established that Homogamy is the most important predictor of how couples pair off. Homogamy is the tendency to pair off with another person who is similar to us. Most people are attracted to people of about the same beauty, about the same economic status, about the same value system, and often about the same cultural background. It is not true, at least based on most research studies, “that opposites attract.” Typically, like-persons attract. We seek out and associate with people at the same clubs, the same workplaces, and the same universities and colleges. They often introduce their homogamous friends to you and your homogamous friends. Are you at a state, private, or Ivy League college or University? The factors that impacted you ending up in your institution are probably very similar for you and the other student there. Similar people end up in similar places and organizations.
No couple is 100 percent identical. Homogamy does not mean being identical, it simply means being similar. All couples experience both Homogamy and heterogamy. Heterogamy is the tendency to pair off with another person who is different in some ways from us. I once had a student say that she disagreed with the Homogamy principle. She argued that she and her husband were opposites. She explained that she liked country and he liked classical music; she liked Chinese food and he likes Latin; She like basketball and he liked football; and she was majoring in Sociology and he was majoring in Business. I pointed out to her and the other students in the class that they had differing tastes, but both liked music, ethnic foods, sports, and learning. Many studies have demonstrated that the more Homogamy two people are together the higher the odds of the relationship succeeding over the long-run.
Another explanation for pairing off is the Social Exchange Theory, which claims that society is composed of ever present interactions among individuals who attempt to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. It focuses on how rational decisions are made considering the fact that most of us want to maximize our rewards, minimize our losses and make our final choices economically. The formula looks like this: (Max Rewards- Min Costs)=Outcomes. More than once I have challenged my student to do the following activity:
Go down to the cafeteria or commons and pick the person you find to be the least attractive. Ask him/her on a date and pay for everything. At the end of the date give them one kiss that last at least 7 seconds.
The most common response I get from them is “WHY?” Why would anyone in their right mind make such an effort to suffer in this way? My response of course is that we typically won’t do these things because it would reverse the social exchange approach of maximizing rewards while minimizing costs. In the real world, we should and do want more physical attraction, fun, affection, status, economic support, friendship, social belonging, and even popularity from our dating experiences. If you are really fortunate, you might have a date every so often that ranks high on all of these rewards. But, we never truly get the perfect catch in a partner, dating or married. Mostly because we are not the perfect catch either and we tend to pair homogamously with those much like ourselves (Normal people attract to other normal people).
Another major principle that influences who you might pair off with is called Propenquity, or the geographic proximity of two potential mates to one another. Ask most couples you know where they met and you’ll probably here something like: “we went to the same college, summer camp, mission, church, or Peace Corps experiences.” Others meet at work. Still others are introduced by friends of friends’ roommates. Few meet if they are not geographically close to one another.
I’m often asked about the influence of online match-making sites. These are relatively new but they function to compress propenquity at the stage of meeting someone. They actually reduce the influence of propenquity in the acquaintance process. But, eventually couples typically spend time together before they make any long-term commitments. Finally, Filtering is the process of eliminating potential mates from the pool of eligible’s in the market place.
How many students attend your college or university? Take that number and multiply it times 0.6 (In the US about 6/10 of all college or university students are female). This equals the likely number of females in your market place. The remaining number (representing a multiple of 0.4) is the number of males. Knock another 20 percent off the estimate for men and women because some will be married or already in a relationship. That’s the estimated market place total.
Now, how many do you come into contact with each day? If you don’t know then count for two days (simply count the numbers of potential mates you see walking to classes on a Monday then again on a Tuesday. Add in those you interact with at work or in other places. Add in roommate’s friends and families. Finally, add in sorority or fraternity friends). This is your pool of eligibles. Your pool could be as high as 100-300. Were there some you pass or have in the same class that you didn’t count because you know it wouldn’t work? If yes, this is what filtering is about—you filter out based on your best judgment and on Social Exchange principles.
Another factor in the pairing process is the Sex Ratio, or the number of males per 100 females in a given population. The US sex ratio for young adults is out of balance—meaning that there are more males per females in the 18-29 age group. The US Census bureau estimates that there are about 105-114 males per 100 females in this age group which means 5-14 extra males per 100 females in 2000 (taken from Internet 31 March 2009 from A.C.E. Revision II: Adjustment for Correlation Bias www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/pp-53r.pdf ).
In 1970 a researcher named Murstein published a theory of marital selection which has been very useful in understanding how people move from being strangers to the point where they choose to marry or cohabit. The Stimulus-Value-Role Theory of Marital Choice states that as people find someone they are attracted to, they initiate contact, spend time together comparing values and establishing compatibility, and eventually either break things off or make commitments toward marriage or cohabitation (See Murstein, B.I. (1970) Stimulus-value-role: A theory of marital choice, Journal of Marriage and the Family 32, 465-81).
For example, a young man might see a young woman at a fraternity-sorority party and ask his friend if she's single. Eventually he moves over to her side of the room and introduces himself. If, after the forces of homogamy, propenquity, filtering, and social exchange support their interaction, they might go out together in the near future. After enough quality interactions in groups with friends and alone by themselves they feel compatible and similar, they might eventually decide to date exclusively or “steady.” Over time this may lead to a proposal or a decision to cohabit. The original and continuing stimulus helps to establish similar values and eventually leads to semi-permanent or permanent roles.
What Predicts Divorce in the US?
In the US, states have power to allow for marriages and divorces. The state you reside in regulates when and how you must apply for and be allowed to marry. Your marriage license is proof of your compliance to the state’s laws. If a couple who has been married decides to end their legal status as a married couple, the state laws allow for Divorce, or the legal dissolution of a marriage. Most legal status changes each year are marriages, not divorces.
The US has historically had low divorce rates which spiked briefly after World War II; declined until the late 1960s and rose sharply until the mid-1980s; finally, they declined gradually and continue to do so today. Figure 2 shows divorce rates per 1,000 for each of the 5 years between 1960 and 2005. It takes the US government a few years to calculate data like this which explains why the rates are not as current as last year.
The power held by states to legalize the economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical union or disunion of a man and a woman is not only traditional, but also enduring in US history. Centuries and millennia ago, fathers, clan or kinship leaders, religious leaders, and community members had the rights to marry which are now afforded to the state. True, states don’t get involved in the spiritual or physical union, they just license it or legalize it the same way they license drivers or certify the legal sale of property. Almost every year, there is about 1 legally sanctioned divorce per every 2 legally sanctioned marriages in the US.
For decades newscasters and educators have warned that 1 in 2 marriages “end in divorce.” Sounds frightening, doesn’t it? Is it true? Not really, divorce never reached the actual 50 percent mark. Based on surveys of exactly how many people have ever been divorced in their lifetimes, most will tell you it is closer to 43 percent (see US Census for tables at www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/marr-div/2004detailed_tables.html ).
Years and years of research on divorce yielded a few common themes of what puts a couple at more or less risk of divorce. Before we discuss those factors let me point out an uncomfortable truth—all of us are at risk of dying as long as we are alive; likewise, all of us are at risk of divorcing as long as we are married. But, the presence of divorce risks does not imply the outcome of divorce. There are things individuals can do to minimize the risks of divorce (personal level actions). The list below tabulates 10 of these actions.
Ten Actions Individuals Can Take To minimize the Odds of Divorce
1. Wait until at least your 20s to marry. Avoid marrying as a teenager (either spouse). By some estimates, this raises your odds by 2-3 times the likelihood.
2. Don’t marry out of duty to a child. Avoid marrying just because she got pregnant. Pregnancy is not the same processes we discussed in the pairing off section above.
3. Become proactive by maintaining your marriage with preventative efforts designed to avoid break downs. Find books, seminars, and a therapist to help you both work out the tough issues.
4. Never cohabit if you think you might marry. Decades of studies show that cohabitation contributes to higher divorce risks among those who eventually marry.
5. Leave the marriage market—when you marry avoid keeping an eye open for a better spouse.
6. Remain committed to your marriage—most couples have irreconcilable difference and most learn to live comfortably together in spite of them (just live with it).
7. Keep a positive outlook. Avoid losing hope in your first 36 months—those who get past the 3-year mark often see improvements in quality of marital relationship and the first 36 months have the most intense adjustments in them.
8. Take the media with a grain of salt. Avoid accepting evidence that your marriage is doomed—this means being careful not to let accurate or inaccurate statistics convince you that all is lost, especially before you even marry.
9. Do your homework when selecting a mate. Take your time and realize that marrying in your late 20’s is common now and carefully identify someone who is homogamous to you, especially about wanting to be married.
10. Look to the positive benefits found to be associated with being married in society.
Individuals who marry in their teens (even 17, 18, & 19) have much higher rates of marital dissolution. Some argue that this might be because the individual continues to change up until about age 25-26 when they are fully psychologically mature. Try to remember who you thought was attractive your senior year in high school. Would you still find them attractive today? Some who marry in their teens actually outgrow one another including their loss of attraction that stems from their changed tastes. Couples who married as teenagers must unite as they take into account their ongoing maturation and change in tastes. When marital data is collected by the US Census Bureau, it often shows that those marrying in their teen years have the highest rates of having ever been divorced.
As is mentioned above, most unwed mothers end up marrying the biological father of their baby. These marriages often end in divorce more than marriages for non-pregnant newlyweds. The existence of children at the time of the wedding is often associated with higher divorce rates.
Family Scientists have borrowed from the physics literature a concept called entropy which is roughly defined as the principle that matter tends to decay and reduce, toward its simplest parts. For example, a new car, if parked in a field and ignored, would eventually decay and rot. A planted garden if left unmaintained would be overrun with weeds, pests, and yield low if any crop. Marital Entropy is the principle that if a marriage does not receive preventative maintenance and upgrades it will move towards decay and break down. Couples who take ownership of their marriage and who realize that marriage is not bliss and that it often requires much work, experience more stability and strength when they nurture their marriage. They treat their marriage like a nice car and become committed to prevent breakdowns rather than wait to repair them. These couples read and study experts like: Gottman, Cherlin, Popenoe, and others who have focused their research on how to care for the marriage, acknowledging the propensity relationships have to decay if unattended.
Cohabitation has been studied extensively for the last 2 decades, especially in contrast between cohabiting and married couple. Clear findings consistently show that cohabiting and marriage are two different creatures (see studies by Lawrence Ganong and Marilyn Coleman). Those who cohabit tend to establish patterns of relationships that later inhibit marital duration. In other words people who cohabit then later marry are much more likely to divorce than those who never cohabited.
Many individuals struggle to completely surrender their single status. They mentally remain on the marriage market in case “someone better than their current spouse comes along.” Norval Glenn in 1991 argued that many individuals see marriage as a temporary state while they keep an eye open for someone better, “More honest vows would often be “as long as we both shall love” or “as long as no one better comes along (page 268).” Glenn gets at the core of the cultural values associated with risks of divorcing. (See “The Recent Trend in Marital Success in the United States” by Norval D. Glenn Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, No. 2 (May, 1991), pp. 261-270)
Robert and Jeanette Lauer are a husband-wife team who have not only studied the family but have written a college textbook called Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy (2009, Cengage). They studied commitment and endurance of married couples. They identified 29 factors among couples who had been together for 15 years or more. They found that both husbands and wives reported as their number 1 and 2 factors that “My spouse is my best friend and I like my spouse as a person” (see ‘Til Death Do Us Part: How Couples Stay Together 1986 by Robert Lauer and also Google: Lauer and Lauer and Kerr various years). The Lauers also studied the levels of commitment couples had to their marriage. The couples reported that they were in fact committed to and supportive of not only their own marriage but marriage as an institution. Irreconcilable differences are common to marriage and the basic strategy to deal with them is to: negotiate as much as is possible, accept the irresolvable differences, and finally live happily with them.
Keeping a positive outlook on your marriage is essential. As was mentioned above, as long as a couple is married they are technically at risk of divorce. But, not all divorce risks are created equally. Newly married couples 1-10 years have a great deal of adjustment to work through, especially during the first 36 months. They have new boundaries and relationships to establish. They have to get to know one another and negotiate agreements about the: who, what, why, and how of their day-to-day lives together. The longer they stay together the lower their risks of divorce.
In Figure 4 you can see the median duration of marriage for people 15 and older by sex and age. This data is exclusively for those who ended up divorcing. Even those who do divorce can expect a median (exact middle value in a list) of about 8 years for both men and women. The average couple could expect to stay married quite a long time.
“Doomed, soaring divorce rates, spousal violence, husbands killing wives, decline of marriage,” and other gloomy headlines are very common on electronic, TV, and print news stories. The media functions to disseminate information and its primary goal is to make money by selling advertising. The media never has claimed to be random or scientific in their stories. They don’t really try to represent the entire society with every story. In fact, media is more accurately described as biased by the extremes, based on the nature of stories that are presented to us the viewers.
Many media critics have made the argument for years that the news and other media use fear as a theme for most stories, so that we will consume them. As you observed above, most in the US choose marriage and most who are divorced will eventually marry again. True, marriage is not bliss, but it is a preferred lifestyle by most US adults. From the Social Exchange perspective, assuming that people maximize their rewards while minimizing their losses, marriage is widely defined as desirable and rewarding.
Doing your homework cannot be emphasized enough in the mate selection process. The old adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” truly does apply to mate selection. Taking your time, understanding yourself, waiting until you are 20 something or older, and finding a good friend in your spouse can make all the difference in the marital experience you have. Keep in mind that very few people marry someone they meet as a stranger (even though I did). Most of us end up marrying someone they find through their social networks such as work, campus, dorms, frats and sororities, friends of friends, and other relationship-based connections. If you are female, there are an abundance of males because the country currently has a Marriage Squeeze, or a shortage of males or females in the marriage market. There are 10-14 extra US men for every 100 women in the prime marriage years. This has been the case since the 1980s (Google :US Marriage Squeeze).
There also continues to be a trend of delaying age at first marriage. In 2005, the US median age at marriage was about 27 years for men (Washington DC was 29.9 years and Utah was 24.6) and 25.5 for women (Washington DC was 29.8 years and 22.1 for Utah). (Taken from the Internet on 2 April, 2009 from R1204. Median Age at First Marriage for Men: 2005 and R1205. Median Age at First Marriage for Women: 2005 factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTable?_bm=y&-_box_head_nbr=R1204&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-_lang=en&-format=US-30 and http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet...&-format=US-30 ).
Marriage is very popular among US adults, in part because it does offer many rewards that unmarried people don’t enjoy. A sociologist named Linda Waite co-wrote a book with Maggie Gallagher called The Case For Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially (2001, Doubleday). Its title summarizes basic trends that have been found among married people for decades. Marriage has become socially controversial in part because of the intense political efforts to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. Regardless of your moral position on the issue of same-sex marriage, you can see the political quest for it as an indicator of just how rewarding it is to be legally a “married couple.” There are numerous studies and books on the benefits of marriage to married individuals. The list below tablulates 10 categories of these known benefits for you to consider.
Ten Benefits of Being Married in Contrast to Being Single
• Better physical and emotional health
• More wealth and income
• Positive social status
• More and safer sex
• Life-long continuity of intimate relationships
• Safer circumstances for children
• Longer life expectancy
• Lower odds of being crime victims
• Enhanced legal and insurance rights and benefits (tax, medical, and inheritance)
• Higher self-reported happiness
Keep in mind as you think about this, that a toxic marriage has never been universally shown to be better than being unmarried or never married. It would be unwise to marry carelessly. It would also be unwise to think that once you marry you are at the end of your problems. A newlywed once told her mother that “now that I’m married I’m at the end of all my problems.” Her mother wisely replied, “which end, dear?” Marriage requires preventative, proactive, consistent, and timely maintenance to be rewarding and satisfying. The bottom line is that the burden of your marital quality falls to you and your spouse. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.13%3A_Family.txt |
What Is The Relationship Between Education and Money?
Here’s the fact, pure and simple—more education means more money and opportunity in the United States. Typically, the higher your education the higher your economic status, power, prestige, and levels of property. Socio-Economic Status (SES) is a combination of one's education, occupation, and income and has been found to be highly correlated with a better quality of life for those in society who have higher SES scores. There is more job stability (less unemployment and more pay) for those with higher educations. In Figure 1 below you can see data extracted from the US Census Bureau on this.
High school dropouts are more than 4 times more likely to be unemployed than doctoral (Ph.D., Ed.D., MD, or JD) graduates. Four-year graduates (Bachelor’s) make \$387 more per week than high school grads. That’s \$1,548 per month or \$18,576 per year more for Bachelor’s grads. This pattern holds true among all US racial groups and among males and females.
A recently published E-article articulated the many benefits of college graduation (see “Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society” by Sandy Baum and Jennifer Ma; in Trends in Higher Education Series 2007 Taken form Internet on 23 March 2009 from http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/trends/ed_pays_2007.pdf ). Baum and Ma also pointed out that the higher your education the better your medical insurance, health, lifestyle for family and next generation, contribution to society, and more. Education, especially earning degrees, is a doorway to many life-long payoffs to college graduates.
You need education because we live in a credentialed society. Credentialed Societies are societies which use diplomas or degrees to determine who is eligible for a job. The key in the US is to graduate every chance you get: a Certificate=1-year past high school; an Associates=2-year degree; a Bachelor’s=4-year degree; a Masters=another 2-year degree past Bachelor’s; and a Doctorate=another 4-6 years past Bachelor’s degree.
Look at Figure 2 below to see the relationship between higher education levels and the “American dream” or “Ideal” lifestyle. Education is the great equalizer and allows the tradition of college attendance and graduation to be introduced into any individual’s personal and family life experience if they so desire and can muster the personal work and commitment along with the resources needed to attend then graduate. Tens of millions in the US have zero, nada, or no medical or health care coverage. Most of them have lower education levels and little to no college education. The extremely poor and disabled may have limited government coverage, but most poor and near poor have no medical insurance.
For the most part, working class and middle class people have some level of medical insurance. Interested in a job or career with yearly salary and not hourly pay? Interested in medical benefits and year-end bonuses with paid time off and vacations? Then you need at least a Bachelor’s, Masters or Doctoral degree. Or you may be from the top 10-25 percent of our economic strata that are born into privilege. They get the educational levels, social networking, marriage market, and overall better life chances that only money can buy, including exclusive education, prep-school, admittance into competitive programs, and Ivy League launch pads.
Remember Max Weber’s concept of life chances? Life Chances are an individual’s access to basic opportunities and resources in the marketplace. The very few in our society born into extreme wealth have enormous life chances when compared to the rest of us. Can you run for political office without the proper social connections among the country’s power elite? Probably not. Can you become famous or extremely successful without access to extremely well educated friends and associates who are connected to those corporate owners and board members? Probably not. Can you call a friend and get a huge favor for your children with the understanding that someday you will reciprocate back with a huge favor for their children? Probably not, especially if you were born into an average family.
You may not be able to change your ascribed status of having been born poor or middle class, but you can definitely change the SES of your own family by choosing to attend and graduate from college. You see, compared to most people outside the US, you and I have it better. You even have it better today than most royalty from just 100 years ago. Look at Figure 3 below to compare your average US life today to the life of European royalty back then.
Our Standard of Living
Have you ever toured a medieval castle? Their best accommodations were far better than the average person of their time, but way sub-par in comparison to the average person in our time. You grew up with central heat, running water, electricity, basic health knowledge and medical care, opportunities for 12-13 years of public education that cost you nothing (although your parents paid taxes), all the electronic gadgets you can buy, extra money to save or invest, and a life expectancy that very few royalty dreamed possible hundreds of years ago. Sure, they could control their subjects and servants, even take their lives if they so desired; but, today you can control your personal choices at the personal level and dramatically impact your own and some of your family member’s life course as you see fit.
Take for example one of my students from my Social Problems class back in 1996. To illustrate the personal level of stratification, I was interviewing the students in the class to see how much education and income their parents had, what their own majors were, and how much income they could anticipate after graduation. This way we could estimate their mobility between generations. For the most part my students were from working class backgrounds except one who had a medical doctor for a mother and a banker for a father. Her parents’ income was \$2 million higher per year than all the other students.
The very last student in the class, “Julie” was from a family of 9. Her father was a disabled Vietnam War vet who could not hold a job and who had asked a war buddy to let him, his wife, and their 7 children live in his barn. They had only one extension cord, one garden hose, and a port-a-potty. She said she came to our college to become a school teacher and have a steady full-time job with medical benefits. She generously explained how happy she was to have 5 roommates in an apartment.
“I’ll never take another garden hose cold shower if I can help it. Did you know my apartment has 2 bathrooms with tubs and toilettes in each? We’ve got a dishwasher, fridge, and electric oven, too.” She had the entire class’ attention by now. “Yep, I’ll be a school teacher and when I do I'll help my brothers and sisters go to college…”
Interesting isn’t it? We often take for granted all the luxuries and comforts we have in our modern society and yet, sometimes right next door there are people who don’t have what we have. Julie did graduate and become a school teacher. I have since lost contact with her, but I’m sure she’s settled down and is helping her siblings through college. The point is that she, like all of us, can chose higher education, to graduate, and to acquire for ourselves a larger piece of the American Dream of a comfortable lifestyle and job security. We do this through education.
Measuring Education
In Sociology we measure two distinct types of educational accomplishments: Educational Attainment is the number of years of school completed and Educational Achievement refers to how much the student has learned in terms of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Look at Table 1 to see how attainment typically correlates with degrees.
Table 1: Years of Schooling and Typical Degrees Associated with Them. *Extracted from Jason Amos, (August 2008) Dropouts, Diplomas, and Dollars: US High Schools and the Nation’s Economy taken from Internet on 24 March 2009 from http://www.all4ed.org/files/Econ2008.pdf All4edu funded by Bill and Malinda gates Foundation.
Years Typical Degree
<12 Drop out
12 High School
13 Vocational Certificate
14 Associates
16 Bachelor’s
18 Masters
20 Doctorate (Ph.D.; Ed.D. ; JD,; or MD)
21+ Specialization or Post-doctoral education
Table 2 also shows the levels of income typically associated with these typical degrees. The difference between high school dropouts and graduates is about \$8,100/year more for graduates or on a 35-year career in the labor force at least \$283,500 more money earned by graduates. What would a 4-year Bachelor’s degree add per year? \$19,400 per year for Bachelor’s grads compared to high school grads or \$679,000 in 35 years of career work. A 4-year degree is financially well worth it.
Table 2: Degrees and Median Incomes Associated with Them*
Degrees Median Yearly Incomes
Drop out \$ 23,400
High School \$ 31,500
Vocational Certificate \$ 37,100
Associates \$ 40,000
Bachelor’s \$ 50,900
Masters \$ 61,300
Doctorate (Ph.D.; Ed.D. ; JD,; or MD) \$ 79,400
Specialization or Post-doctoral education \$100,000+
*Extracted from Baum and May (2007) Figure 1.1 Median Earnings and Tax Payments of Full-time Year-Round Workers Ages 25 and Older by education Level, 2005
When students ask me how I feel about taking out student loans I explain the following to them. If you choose to go to college and forfeit full-time wages to become a full-time student you will lose about \$126,000 of lost wages while in college. Plus it might cost you another \$25,000 in student loans or expenses. So you could conclude that it cost you about \$151,000 to earn a 4-year degree. Subtract that \$151,000 from the extra \$697,000 and you end up a \$546,000 net increase in career earnings even accounting for missed wages and student loan expenses. So going to college pays, but how does dropping out of high school affect individuals and society?
The worst possible scenario in terms of work and lifestyle is to drop out of high school. And millions drop out each year in the US. Table 3 shows the dropout rates by racial classification for the US. By far, Asians Americans dropout the least at only 18.7 percent, followed closely by Whites at 22.4 percent. Hispanics, African Americans and Native Americans each have over 40 percent dropout rates—all that income lost; all that lifestyle forfeit; and all those other benefits of higher education missed.
Table 3:Dropout rates by Racial Classification in The United States 2007*. *Extracted from Jason Amos, (August 2008) Dropouts, Diplomas, and Dollars: US High Schools and the Nation’s Economy taken from Internet on 24 March 2009 from http://www.all4ed.org/files/Econ2008.pdf All4edu funded by Bill and Malinda gates Foundation.
Racial Classification Percent Dropping Out of High School
Native American 49.4%
African American 44.7%
Hispanic 42.2%
White 22.4%
Asian American 18.7%
Jason Amos (2008) in his study of US dropouts also stated that:
“Individuals who fail to earn a high school diploma are at a great disadvantage, and not only when it comes to finding good-paying jobs. They are also generally less healthy and die earlier, are more likely to become parents when very young, are more at risk of tangling with the criminal justice system, and are more likely to need social welfare assistance. Even more tragic, their children are more likely to become high school dropouts themselves, as are their children’s children, and so on, in a possibly endless cycle of poverty (page 7).”
Truly this is an accurate statement. The US has some of the best educational opportunities for average children to acquire a good public education. But, it lacks cultural motivations that translate across racial and ethnic lines in such a way that education become valued and pursued by average children as a way of opening doors and improving life chances for themselves and their families. It is a paradox in the context of Weber’s life chances, because so many life chances are readily available to average people. Yet, they are refused or ignored by millions.
Amos (2008) also pointed out that high school dropouts from the Class of 2008 will lose \$318,000,000,000 in lost lifetime earnings. They will be more likely to be arrested and use welfare for another combined cost of \$25,000,000,000 to local and state agencies (page 8). The billions of lost earnings and judicial and welfare costs translate to a lower collective standard of living that could be corrected and improved upon if dropouts would graduate or even go back to earn their high school equivalency diploma GED.
Figure 4 shows US dropout rates by race for 1972 and 1980-2006. Overall, the dropout rate has been slightly declining for years, but remains disproportionately high for non-Whites. This confirms data listed above and shows that it has been an ongoing problem, especially where non-White schools and districts have been historically underfunded at the basic level of need.
There appears to be a geographic trend in best and worst dropout rates by states. Look at Table 4 below to see state dropout rates with the 10 best. Please note that all of the 10 best states with lowest dropout rates located in the Northern states, except one Western state, Utah.
Table 4: 2005 Ten Best States for Dropout Rates (lowest) From Amos 2008. *Extracted from Jason Amos, (August 2008) Dropouts, Diplomas, and Dollars: US High Schools and the Nation’s Economy taken from Internet on 24 March 2009 from http://www.all4ed.org/files/Econ2008.pdf All4edu funded by Bill and Malinda gates Foundation.
State Percent Dropout
1. New Jersey 16.7
2. Iowa 17.2
3. Wisconsin 19.5
4. Pennsylvania 19.6
5. Vermont 19.8
6. Nebraska 20.4
7. North Dakota 20.8
8. Utah 21.4
9. Connecticut 21.9
10. Minnesota 21.9
Now look at Table 5 to see the 10 worst states with highest dropout rates. Seven of the 10 are in the Southern states with Washington DC in the North and New Mexico and Nevada in the west.
Table 5: 2005 Ten Worst States for Dropout Rates (highest) From Amos 2008
State Percent Dropout
1. Mississippi 38.2
2. Alabama 38.7
3. Florida 39.2
4. Delaware 39.9
5. Georgia 41.9
6. District of Columbia 42.4
7. South Carolina 44.4
8. Louisiana 45.3
9. New Mexico 45.9
10. Nevada 54.6
*Extracted from Jason Amos, (August 2008) Dropouts, Diplomas, and Dollars: US High Schools and the Nation’s Economy taken from Internet on 24 March 2009 from http://www.all4ed.org/files/Econ2008.pdf All4edu funded by Bill and Malinda gates Foundation.
For those who stay in school, there becomes an issue of quality of education. I know it is relatively difficult to define what “quality of education” even means, much less which states or schools get the best quality. It’s a real challenge given that the US spent about \$290,700,000,000 on public education in 2007 which is designed to serve nearly 50,000,000 public education students (taken 24 March 2009 from http://nces.ed.gov/ and http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/expenditures/tables/table_03.asp ).
We can approach quality of education at the personal level. One thing you can try to avoid at your own educational personal level is what is called Bureaucratic Ritualism, or the habit of following the rules and procedures and forgetting the main purpose of the bureaucracy's mission. So often teachers, schools, and school districts become large and they end up trying to meet the needs of 10's of thousands of diverse students and do so fairly.
This inevitably leads to what educational leaders call Transparency - the creation of rules, regulations, and guidelines to be followed by all students, teachers, and parents. Transparency is a bureaucratic effort to be open, fair, and legally protected. It also creates a culture of a bureaucracy rather than a culture of learning. Students come to feel like a number and not an individual. Students get bored, disheartened, and fall into the daily routines and become somewhat a part of the bureaucracy. This is bureaucratic ritualism and it can be fatal to learning and creativity.
Table 6 below shows the state by state per pupil total spending as reported in 2007. Please note that the worst per pupil spending is also the 8th best state for low dropout rates in 2005, Utah. There are also 2 states on Table 5 that were among the 10 worst for dropout rates.
Table 6: 2007 Top Worst States for Annual Per Pupil Spending*. *taken 24 March 2009 from ttp://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/expenditures/tables/table_03.asp Table 3. Student membership and current expenditures per pupil for public elementary and secondary education, by function, subfunction, and state or jurisdiction: Fiscal year 2007
State # of Students \$Per Pupil Expenditures
1. Utah 523,586 5,706
2. Idaho 267,380 6,648
3. Tennessee 978,368 7,129
4. Arizona 1,065,082 7,338
5. Oklahoma 639,391 7,430
6. Mississippi 495,026 7,459
7. Nevada 424,240 7,806
8. Texas 4,599,509 7,850
9. North Carolina 1,427,880 7,878
10. Kentucky 683,173 7,940
11. South Dakota 121, 158 8,064
Compared to other countries the US does not always compete in math, reading, and problem solving. An analysis of 2003 comparative data between the US and a dozen other countries yielded some discouraging results, given the hundreds of billions spent for US public education each year. For mathematics, the US scored worse than 12 other countries with Korea, Canada, Hong Kong, Netherlands, and Japan coming in the top 5. In reading the US scored worse than 10 other countries with Korea, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, and Sweden coming in the top 5. In problem solving, the US Scored worse than 12 other countries with Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, Japan and Denmark coming in the top 5. The US did beat Italy and Mexico in math, reading, and problem solving and also beat Spain and Germany in reading (see Baum and Ma, 2007).
What Can You Do To Succeed?
As we get closure on the discussion of education we have to focus on the personal level efforts you make toward graduation. Please note there is a Study Skills and Stuff chapter for you online with this textbook. It has guidelines for helping you increase your own odds of graduating college with a 4-year degree. These guidelines should be helpful in addition to that chapter:
1. See your academic advisor
2. Pick a major as soon as possible and set specific goals to graduate
3. Attend all classes most of the time
4. Ask any question you have (even if it sounds dumb because this is your education and you pay for it which allows you to ask questions)
5. Learn to love: learning, gaining new information, and insights
6. Visit all your professors during their office hours and get to know how they succeeded in college
7. Go to on and off-campus events
8. Make a good friend
9. Volunteer and do something good for others and tell your parents what you did
10. Manage your time, and money as though it were priceless
The Economy In Society
We’ve spoken about how important education is to you and your career and even how important it is to our national economy. Let’s discuss a few concepts about the economy. Economy is a system of producing and distributing goods and services and can be local, state, national, international, and global. There are various types of economic systems in today’s global marketplace. Capitalism is an economy based on the amount of goods and services produced in a free trade setting. Socialism is an economy based on governmental management and control of goods and services.
Communism is an extreme socialistic economy with extreme governmental management of goods and services along with management of public and private ideologies. Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and China are a few remaining national-level communistic economies. However, China has become the most open capitalistic economic systems among the remaining communistic countries. There are communist parties in many countries today, but few have national control as do the four above or the many that existed during the Cold War.
Recently many have criticized the US as having forfeited its capitalistic ideals in favor of a form of Democratic Socialism, or an economic system based on the merger of capitalism and socialism that often is accompanied by vague boundaries between governmental management of goods and services and diminished “hands-off” governmental involvement in the individual pursuit of economic stability.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) was an eccentric professor who wrote in The Wealth of Nations that an “invisible hand” emerged when people pursued their own business interest and collectively benefitted society at large. The full impact of Adam Smith’s work is hard to estimate. He is considered to be one of the most intellectually potent thinkers of the last four centuries. His ideas have been taught and have guided national economic policy for decades.
Today’s economy is far different from that of Adam Smith’s. In Adam Smith’s day, much work was located in the Primary sector of the economy. The Primary Sector is the part of economic production involving agriculture, mining, fishing, and materials acquisition. Smith’s day also was laden with work in the Secondary Sector, or the part of the economic production involving manufacturing (factories and home-based). Today, the majority of our work involves the Tertiary Sector, or work which involves providing a service to others such as food, retail, computer processing, or information management. The tertiary sector emerged along with telecommunications and the computer chip technologies (the Three–Sector Theory originated with research by Colin Clark and Jean Fourastié).
In Adam Smith’s day, I’d estimate 2 percent of all work was in the tertiary sector with the rest being in primary and secondary sectors. See Table 7 below to see US percentages of jobs in each of the three sectors for 2007. Note that 8 out of 10 jobs are in the service sector. Where exactly is all the primary and secondary work taking place for us in the US if not here? Look at the label on your shoes, clothes, computers, cell phones, cars, TV’s and even groceries. The US is a nation populated widely by consumers with most of its production being service-related.
Table 7: 2007 Service Sector Employment Percentages*
Sector Percent employed in Sector
Primary Almost 1%
Secondary 17%
Tertiary 82%
Taken from Bureau of Labor Statistics 24 March 2009 from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.t02.htm Table 2. Employment by Industry and Occupational Group, 2007.
Part of the explanation of why jobs shifted to service-related classifications has to do with supply and demand. Supply is the availability of goods and services in the market place. Demand is the desire in the marketplace for goods and services. Typically with higher supply and lower demand you’d see lower prices. With higher demand and lower supply you’d see higher prices. This is true in many markets, but does not appear to apply to the very unstable US cost of gasoline per gallon which changes without traditional regard to supply and demand.
As the supply of labor-ready employees increased in the US factories and other labor-based industries the demand for these employees appeared to never end. But, as the computer chip transformed technology to the point that less demand for labor became the norm and then workers from all over the world were willing to do the US’s primary and secondary labor for a fraction of the cost, the US literally became an import nation for its primary and secondary goods. Much of the current job market pays and rewards education because education is still in high demand in a service economy. Without it a worker has to compete with cheaper foreign labor or get lucky with the very few labor-related jobs that are in the US economy today. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.14%3A_Education.txt |
Religion is a unified system of beliefs, rituals, and practices that typically involve a broader community of believers who share common definitions of the sacred and the profane. Sacred is the supernatural, divine, awe inspiring, and spiritually significant aspects of our existence. Profane is that which is part of the regular everyday life experience. The definitions originated from Durkheim's studies of religion (see 1947 The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Glencoe Press reprint of 1912). For you, religion might be a personal definition of how you feel about your place in the universe. It may also reflect how you understand categories of people who share a common system of beliefs that differ from your own (Jews, Muslims, Christians, etc.).
For sociologists, religion is typically studied in two typically approaches: first, a cultural approach that evaluates the religious aspects of the culture shared by followers of a certain religion; second, a theoretical approach to religion including its symbols, functions, exchange-based interactions, and power issues. Religion has always been an important issue at both levels of society: personal and larger social. Figure 1 shows a pie chart of the CIA's 2007 estimate of the world's composition of religious followers. By far, Muslims collectively comprise the largest single religious belief system in the world in 2007. Over the last century birthrates among Muslims have remained high. By sheer numbers alone, a high birthrate among an estimated 1,300,000,000 people makes birth become a significant factor in the Muslim world growth rate. A less common factor is that in many Muslim nations polygamy continues to be the norm with 1-4 wives being acceptable.
*Taken from Internet on 22 May, 2008 from https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/xx.html
Next is the Roman Catholic Church which has strong membership in Western Europe, Latin America, the United States and other Countries and regions. Hindus which are primarily located in India come in a close third. Jews which are daily discussed in the news because of international issues pertaining to Israel are ranked 12th most common in the world.
The United State's Religions
Figure 2 shows the CIA estimated US religions for 2007. The collective category of US Protestants is the largest collection of religious belief systems. These include Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and various non-Catholic and non-Orthodox Christian denominations. Second in percentage is the Roman Catholic Church. In contrast to the Protestant classification which is comprised of many diverse denominations, the Roman Catholic Christian Church is comprised of only one denomination headquartered in Rome, Italy.
The Roman Catholic population in the US has grown for two primary reasons: first, Roman Catholics continue to have higher birthrates than others (yet about the same for Mormons and Catholics); and second, many of our US immigrants since the 1980s come from Mexico and bring their Catholicism with them to the US. Also from the CIA data is the fact that about 12 percent were unaffiliated, 4 percent reported none, and 3 percent chose not to specify their religion. After that, Mormons were next with nearly 2 percent. Mormons have a very high birthrate and a strong force of proselytizing missionaries throughout the US and the World.
Figure 2. 2007 Estimation of Percentage of United States Religions*
*Taken from Internet on 26 March 2007 from www.cia.gov/library/publicat...elds/2122.html
The history of religions in the world and US cannot be overstated in terms of the religiously-motivated treatment and mistreatment of other human beings in the name of religion. Given the peaceful nature of most of the major religions it is paradoxical to have so many: religiously-based wars, genocides, population transfers, conquest, and other forms of large-scale aggression which have transpired throughout history. In the Race and Minority Chapter we learned about prejudice and the goal of finding common ground in building bridges and overcoming prejudices. With religions this is particularly difficult to apply.
Many of us believe very deeply in our religious convictions. We change and alter our lifestyles and desires because we believe that our hope, salvation, or existence will be made better because of our sacrifices. It's understandable that we are deeply devoted and passionate. But, we also tend to believe that we belong to the exclusively right or correct faith and that all others are mistaken and perhaps going to hell. Some religious fanatics believe so strongly in the damnation of non-believers that they feel justified in killing others as an act of so called, "saving other people from themselves." This explains in part the rationale of the religiously-based conflicts in our current and historical experiences.
Religious Tolerance
Believe it or not, we don't have to all believe in the same way and people who believe differently from you probably do so as passionately as you do with your beliefs. Finding common ground takes more effort, but sustains the process of open-minded, non-prejudiced treatment of others of different religions. Figure 3 shows a photograph of one of my favorite books. Written by Jeffrey Moses, "Oneness: Great Principles Shared By All Religions" and forwarded by Mother Theresa, this is truly a work of bridge-building between believers. In it Mr. Moses describes common beliefs and values which are articulated in the core doctrines and scriptures of many of the world and US religions. "Honor thy father and mother, be good to those around you, it is better to give than receive, and respect the elderly in your life" are just a few examples of common teachings from many diverse religions found in the book.
Figure 3. A "Common Ground" Approach to Other Religions by Jeffrey Moses
To take such an open-minded stance requires a concerted effort on our part. To be able to feel secure enough in our own beliefs to find acceptance in the beliefs others have takes devotion to our own faith and deep caring about the quality of the human experience in our many relationships. We mistakenly believe that we have strength in commonality when often there's just as much strength found in mutually-respected tolerance of different people who respect and honor one another..
Most people from most of the world's and US's religions share most beliefs in common. It's true, but we more often define ourselves based on differences not similarities. Most of us could peacefully live as next-door neighbors and peacefully co-exist. In fact, the more you talk to one another about your beliefs and the more you agree to accept one another and respect one another's free choice, the more understanding and tolerant you'll become. For example, there's a category of religions in the world called the Abrahamic Religions are those religions which trace their religious ancestry back through "Father" Abraham. Look at figure 4 below:
Figure 4. The Genealogy of the World's Abrahamic Religions: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Abraham had a wife named Sarah who could not get pregnant. She gave Abraham her handmaid, named Hagar, as a second wife. Hagar had Abraham's firstborn son, Ishmael. Ishmael and Hagar ended up in the wilderness and were miraculously preserved from exposure, dehydration, and starvation. Eventually, Ishmael would father 12 princes as his sons. From one of his sons, Mohammed was born, and with him, Islam or the Muslim religion.
Abraham eventually fathered a child with Sarah resulting in the birth of Isaac. Isaac fathered Jacob and Jacob fathered sons, including Judah. From the lineage of Judah came the Jewish religion and eventually Jesus Christ was born a Jew and began Christianity in all its forms. All three Abrahamic Religions combined account for about 55 percent or 3,685,000,000 people. Father Abraham was promised by God that his descendants would eventually inherit a piece of land called Canaan which had about the same land mass as New Jersey and is called Israel in our day. Christians, Muslims, and Jews have battled and argued over this holy land for centuries and do to this day. I often tell my students that the prophecy stated that Abrahams descendants would inherit the land, not get along together once they did.
Another major genealogical origin of world religions is called Indian Religions are those which originated from the Sub-Asian continent of India. Though the record of these religious origins is a bit more vague than found with the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism are major world religions which represent about 1,300,000,000 people today.
There are a classification of religions that sociologists use to distinguish them based on beliefs and rituals. Simple Supernaturalism has no gods, but focuses on human & non-human supernatural forces which influences us for better or worse. Animism also has no gods, but focuses on good or evil spirits which inhabit animals, rocks and/or people and animals (Simple supernaturalism and Animism underlie Japanese Animism plot structure and themes).
Theistic Religions have divine beings which are Gods. There are three Monotheistic Religions. Monotheistic Religions are religions that have one single all powerful God: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Polytheistic refers to religions with multiple Gods such as Hinduism. About 2/3rds of all people of the world worship in a theistic manner.
Abstract Ideals refers to religions that focus on sacred principles and thoughts which guide our lives and typically have no divine beings in charge of the world and universe. Buddhism is an example of an abstract ideal religion.
The Functions of Religion
Let's now talk a bit about the functional aspects of religion in the larger social picture. If you remember from our chapter on the Sociological Imagination, religion is one of the 7 social institutions in society (media, technology, government, family, economy, and education are the others). For decades sociologists have studied the functional aspects of religion as a social institution. It is safe to conclude that religions are functional (and sometimes dysfunctional) at both the personal and larger social level. Table 1 below shows eight functional aspects of religion.
Table 1. Eight Functions of Religion
1. Religion answers the deepest questions of existence
2. Religion provides emotional comfort
3. Religion facilitates social solidarity
4. Religion provides guidelines for everyday life
5. Religion facilitates social control
6. Religion provides for continuity and adaptation
7. Religion provides support for governments
8. Religion are often part of social change
Let me share a personal experience with you that will illustrate these functions of religion at my own personal level. In 1986 I worked during the summer at a small and remote 2-year college called Ricks College. I ran summer youth camps and conferences for high school students. A co-worker of mine did the same job and we soon became good friends and his wife and my wife became BFFs. When the summer ended we went to different universities but kept in touch and spent time together regularly. A few years had passed and on the eve of my major Ph.D. comprehensive exams, he called me with tragic news. He had backed out of his driveway just when their 18 month old ran behind the vehicle. She was killed instantly.
He and his wife grieved deeply, but also had a strong sense of peace about their loss. After the funeral I asked him to share with me why he felt so much peace during such a difficult time. I still remember his response, "Ron, either you believe what you've been taught your entire life or you don't. We believe our daughter is at peace and is where she needs to be." I was touched by his sincerity.
I want back to campus and tried to get some studying done. My friend from India stopped in to ask how my comprehensive exam went. Eventually she asked me why I looked so troubled and I told her the story. She reached over and placed her hand gently on my knee and said, "Ron, at least you can have the peace in knowing that her life is not forfeit. I believe that she will be reincarnated and born into another form so that she will have a chance to live the life she lost here." Again, I was touched by her sincerity.
There you have it. Both my friends comforted me from their deepest beliefs about our existence here on this earth and about how to define this tragedy in such a way that I could live with it. Both lived their beliefs and never showed hypocrisy in their actions and values. Both used their beliefs to guide their daily lives and both adapted to the death of this child through their religious filters. Because of this, I never felt threatened by either of their differing value systems. I felt joy in having good friends and in being in relationships where comfort is shared and received. Sociology and the study of religion can help to inform your outlook, tolerance, and appreciation for all types of diversity in the human experience.
Sociologists also study the nature of religion. You see, religions are universal in cultures around the world-that is, almost all cultures have religions present even though many simultaneously have different religions present. Durkheim studied the presence of religion in societies, the nature and meaning of rituals and rites of passage, the way in which religion supports or undermines political authority, and how religions satisfy personal needs (see Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life; New York, Collier Books, 1961).
Max Weber also studied religion and focused on how religion gave the individual a context for understanding their life and the purpose of it. He claimed that Protestant ideals of self-discipline, self-control, and hard work lead to the financial success of many who felt "righteous in God's eyes" as they lived Protestant work ethics and simultaneously built the collective foundation for capitalism's success in Western Civilization (See The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism; translated by Talcott Parsons; Scribner Pub. NY).
In fact, religion does shape the attitudes and values of individuals. Gallup polling corporation collected US religiosity data during 2008. Religiosity is the measurable importance of religion to a person's life. Religiosity can be measured by considering: how active someone feels in their religion; how often someone attends formal services; how much money they donate; how often they privately worship in their home; and other factors.
Gallup in January 28, 2009 reported that after interviewing 350,000 US individuals, there were some collective religiosity patterns which emerged. The top 10 most religious states were all in the South Eastern US. The bottom 10 least religious states were: North Eastern (7), North Western (2), and Nevada in the West. They also reported that 65 percent of people in the US said "Yes' religion is an important part of their daily life (taken form Internet 26 March 2009 from http://www.gallup.com/poll/114022/St...-Religion.aspx ).
Studying Religions
We can also distinguish religions from one another based on their levels of membership, wealth of the organization, wealth of the individual members, and training of their clergy (See Figure 5). A Cult is a newer religion with few followers whose teachings are perceived to be at odds with the dominant culture and religion. Do not confuse a cult with the Occult which applies more to magical knowledge that is hidden from the average person and is found in extreme areas of truth. Most religions begin as cults. Even Islam and Christianity began with only a few followers. In the sense that "cult" is used by sociologists, it could be compared to a group of friends who form a soccer team then a number of soccer teams and eventually their own league. Most new cults rarely get past their small foundation nor do they typically endure for extended periods of time.
A Sect is a group larger than a cult but still perceived as being weird and is often treated with hostility by non-sect members. A sect is relatively small by comparison to an established church. A Church is a sect that has gained numerous followers and has become highly bureaucratized. Today's trend in US Christian worship involves Megachurches, or modern churches attended by thousands of followers in person and even many thousands more via television or the Internet (taken from Internet on 27 March 20009 from http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/database.html ).
Megachurches tend to be Protestant and evangelical in nature. Then after much time and growth of membership, wealth, and training, there sometimes emerges Ecclesia, or religious organizations which have grown to be large and are integrated with government and other social institutions. In our modern world there are few ecclesia found in Muslim (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) and Christian (Rome, Italy) countries; the boundaries between government and religion in these countries are vague and overlapping.
In Utah, when it was still an official territory and not yet a state, Brigham Young served simultaneously as the Governor of the Utah Territory and Superintendent of Indian Affairs while also serving as the Mormon Prophet. In order for Utah to become an official state a non-Mormon Governor had to replace Brigham Young, which transpired in 1858. Utah became the 45th state in 1896.
Figure 5. Cult, Sect, Church, and Ecclesia are Based on Levels of Membership, Wealth of Organization, Wealth of Members, and Training of Clergy
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
One final concept should be discussed. Secularization is the trend toward worldly concerns and away from concerns for the religiously sacred in the lives of society's members. Another study of US religiosity was collected over three scientific surveys conducted in 1990, 2001, and again in 2008 (The American Religious Identification Survey was taken from the Internet on 9 March 2009 http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/ ). Data indicated an increase in the percentage of those in the US claiming no religion from 8.2 percent 1990, to 14.2 percent 2001, and finally 15 percent in 2008. The US is becoming more and more secular. Typically the more modern a society becomes the less religious it remains and the more secular it becomes. There exist an inverse (opposite) correlation between science, modernization, rationality and religious traditions and adherences (see http://www.adherents.com/).
If you find the scientific study of religion to be interesting you might consider some of the WebPages below: | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.15%3A_Religion.txt |
Jill, A Typical College Student?
Jill's clock radio goes off at 6:15am. She listens carefully to the traffic and weather while she brushes her teeth. She unplugs her cell phone from the charger and text messages an alert to Leigh who drives her carpool. Sometimes Leigh sleeps in, so Jill sends a regular wake up text. Jill turns on the desktop computer and takes a quick shower. Once dressed she gets about 5 minutes to check her e-mails and instant messages from last night.
When Leigh honks the horn Jill grabs her heavy backpack and forwards all her personal unanswered e-mails to her university e-mail. She'll get to these during class. During the 15 minute commute she navigates with the GPS system in the car and plays close attention to the radio traffic and weather, letting Leigh know if there are any problems with breakdowns or accidents.
Jill gets out of Leigh's car on the corner and walks into the coffee shop where she works 5 days a week. He first duty is to turn on the morning news on both of the shop's big screen TV's. She waives to the manager who's ordering supplies online while he sets up the Latte machine. Jill puts in her earphones, checks her cell phone for any critical texts, turns off her phone and starts stocking the supplies for the big rush of caffeine and carb-deprived customers that flows in and out of the coffee shop for the next 2-3 hours. Once the stocking is finished, Jill removes one ear piece and listens to a lecture from 2 days ago which was posted to the Web by her professor. During the last hour, while she waits on customers, she jams to her music. When her shift ends, she puts the music away and answers text messages while she walks the 7 blocks to campus.
In her first class Jill sits on the very back row then she silences her phone and turns on her notebook computer, capturing the campus-wide wireless Internet. She logs in. While the professor lectures she types actively on her computer, stopping occasionally to text on her cell phone. Her professor thinks she's taking copious notes. She's actually chatting live with her friends. The professor mentions a Website he heard about but can't remember the name of it, so Jill Googles it and raises her hand to share the URL with him. He thanks her. She smiles and watches the professor clumsily locate and then display the Website for the entire class to see.
There are 15 notebook computers in this classroom. Only one of the students in front of her is actually taking notes. Two have an ear piece in and are watching YouTube. The rest basically do what Jill is doing. Jill attends her 2 other classes then heads back to the coffee shop to clean up and get set up for the after work rush.
Leigh eventually picks her up later on the same corner and she finds herself at home at about 6:15 pm. Jill turns on the TV, plugs in her cell phone, glances at the campus newspaper headlines then reads the personals. During dinner she texts, watches her shows, does an Internet assignment, and shops online for a half-priced textbook she needs for class. She opens her notebook computer because it has a built in web cam and get's Leigh online to ask her to see if her IPod fell out in the car during their commute home. Leigh already found it.
Jill e-mails her mother. She'd rather text message but her mother prefers the e-mail. She finishes her homework while watching reality TV. At 9:00 pm, Leigh honks the horn and Jill takes a small purse for her phone and heads out to the car. Leigh and two other friends are going dancing. Jill gets her IPod back and then texts their guy friends who said they were going to the same club, but who knows if they'll show up or not. Jill, Leigh, and their friends video tape a cool short travel log at the club and have it posted to their My Space page the next morning.
Does any of this sound familiar to you and your daily routine? Jill's day and use of technology and media are very common among college students. Junco and Mastrodicasa (2007) found that in a survey of over 7,000 college and university students 9 out of 10 owned a computer and cell phone; 3 out of 4 instant message and already have a Facebook account; 6 out of 10 have a portable music player; 44 percent read blogs; and 34 percent use the Internet as their primary source for news. (Retrieved 16 April, 2009 from www.outsourcemarketing.com/ar...icle_gen-y.pdf "Generation Y-Why Worry?" in Outsource Quarterly.)
Never in the world's entire history has there been such a vast availability of media than in this current day and age. Books; newspapers (although these may completely disappear in their paper format); TV channels; cell phone texts, video, photos, and Internet connections; e-books; radio and satellite radio; movies and DVDs/Blue Rays; magazines and e-zines; billboards; and who knows whatever technology might come out tomorrow. We are surrounded by and figuratively swim in mass media every day of out lives.
Mass Media are channels of communication in a mass society, especially electronic and print media. Mass media are not verbal and represent the use of technology in communication. Media can be found in artifacts from lost civilizations thousands of years into the past. Paintings on cave walls, pottery, or even field sculptures of stones all represent some of these ancient forms. Etchings on metal plates or writings on skin or paper scrolls were made at great expense in the past. They were rare then and only a few are still available today.
In the early 1400s Johannes Gutenberg, who was a goldsmith, invented the world's first mechanical press. The Gutenberg Bible was the first ever mass produced book and its introduction into society marked the beginning of printed media. Gutenberg not only invented a printing press, he facilitated the ability of the masses to learn how to read. He also created a logical cultural process in Western Civilization, wherein most of us learned how to read, think, store, and process information. Top to bottom, left to right, punctuation, spelling, and grammar considerations all became part of the mainstream culture.
Many cultures have different rules about how to read and write, yet all follow a logical and linear pattern of reading and writing. This pattern remained in place, un-challenged until the Internet came onto the scene. Over the last 30 years, technology that lead up to the Internet as we know it today changed the rules of reading and gathering information through the media. The Internet currently connects over a billion online users together worldwide. Whereas the paper form of media is bound by its physical mass, the Internet form of media is limitless because it is based on light and electricity, both of which travel very fast and facilitate information sharing in nearly limitless volumes and rates of speed.
When I grew up in the 1960s-80s I had to ask a teacher or other authority figure any answers to questions I wanted to know. We had to pay for encyclopedias and books that could teach and inform us. Today, one need only turn on the computer or handheld device and connect to the Internet. All the information in the world that is on the Internet can be obtained to some degree: free, instantly, non-linearly, and without the direct involvement of an authority figure. It is fascinating how information for the masses has transformed in such a short amount of time.
The media has societal functions as one of the seven basic social institutions in our modern societies. First the media disseminates information. Not all of that information is created equally. Some media is the focus of tremendous protest and outcry while other forms of media are less conspicuous and controversial. The media also molds and shapes public opinion while reporting current events. Because media corporations have rather strict control over the stories they tell, we in the US often don't even find out about many salient international issues. These issues may be crucial to non-US citizens, but are not reported by US media outlets. Often the US is criticized for its narrow world view.
I remember once riding in a taxi in the Washington DC area. My driver was from Ethiopia. At that time the US media was all over the Ethiopian famine and how to get relief to those starving peoples. I asked the driver what he thought about the famine. "Which famine?" He replied. "We have had 4 major famines in the last 15 years and it wasn't until this one that the US media reported the story." What an eye opener for me.
When the news media select a story, they monitor the opinions of those who watched it and the indicators which show public interest in it. If it proves to be of enough interest then they will provide more coverage. If not they let it go. Competition between news shows and outlets makes the coverage of specific news stories relevant from a business rather than an information dissemination point of view.
Television Viewing
We in the US love media in all its forms. Nielsen Media Research regularly reports on how much TV people in the US typically watch. The average US person in 2006 watched about four and a half hours per day of TV, including nearly 2 hours during prime time evening (retrieved 16 April from http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/porta...00ac0a260aRCRD ). These 2006 data represent a 26 minute increase over 1995-1996 hours of TV viewed. Nielsen based its estimates on a very carefully selected sample of 10,000 viewers.
If they are pretty close on their estimate and each of us watches about 4 hours per day, then that's a great deal of TV in a lifetime. Multiply 4 hours by (7 days then 52 weeks), you'll find that we watch an estimated 1,456 hours of TV per year. If we maintained that every year from Kindergarten through 12th grade we'd end up having watched about 17-19,000 hours of TV by the time we graduated high school (give or take a few hours per week). Interestingly, K-12 typically equals about 16-17,000 hours of at school learning by the time of graduation (Go to http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/ for much more information on ratings and statistics). Not only do we watch TV shows but we also watch TV commercials-perhaps a quarter million by the time we graduate high school. Estimates vary but we also use the Internet, radio, cell phone, video games, and big screen movies as forms of daily media consumption.
Television viewing is not completely without effect upon the viewer. George Gerbner (1919-2005) was a professor of Communications. He founded the Cultivation Theory which claims that the types of TV viewing we watch accumulate within us and impact our world view. In other words, if we only watched crime, detective, and forensic shows we would have the additive effect of these shows on our perception of how the world really is. The types of TV we watch passively, yet persistently shape our world view.
The Mean World Syndrome is the tendency to view society as being meaner and more violent than it really is because of the violent and harsh TV shows one has watched over the years (see George Gerbner's (1994) "Reclaiming Our Cultural Mythology." In The Ecology of Justice (IC#38), Spring page 40, Context Institute retrieved 16 April 2009 from www.context.org/ICLIB/IC38/Gerbner.htm ). If someone preoccupied their daily TV viewing to soap operas then Gerbner would say that that person would have a world focus that overemphasized soap opera-melodramatic themes. The same could be said of anyone who watches mostly: police shows, pornography, sports, news, or reality TV.
But, keep in mind that TV is not produced by people who simply want to entertain us. So, what is the main purpose of media in our day? Money. Entertainment, access to information, advertising, and/or attitude shifting is at the core of most media-based ventures. They charge money for the commercial time or product placement. What they really want is for you to watch their shows and see their advertisements and buy a product or service because you were watching. The online Television Advertising Bureau (TAB) (www.tvb.org/nav/build_framese...s/homepage.asp ) reported that US TV stations sold more than \$1 billion in interactive sales in 2008 (retrieved 16 April, 2009 from www.tvb.org/nav/build_framese...s/homepage.asp ). This report also noted the continuing gain of TV Website ads over printed newspaper ads and that is part of the explanation of the death of the local and national newspaper that is being witnessed in today's mass media marketplace.
The TAB report also noted that most people pay for television, but non-cable providers have as much as 32 percent of that market in 2008 (see www.tvb.org/nav/build_framese...s/homepage.asp ). Most importantly as we focus on the for-profit advertising issue, in 1970 \$3,596,000,000 was spent on US television advertising alone. In 2007 that was up to \$70,840,000,000 . In all, between 1970-2007 there were \$1,158,250,000,000 spent on all forms of TV advertising (retrieved 16 April 2009 from www.tvb.org/nav/build_framese...s/homepage.asp ). That's more than 1 trillion dollars in TV advertising revenue.
Advertisings Negative Effects
One has to focus on the impact media can have with that level of revenue at stake. Perpetual Discontent is a two-pronged advertising theme which emphasizes: 1) how broken and flawed we are and 2) how we can buy hope in the form of a product being sold. Women in the US are bombarded daily with advertising images that point out their flaws. They are constantly having it brought to their attention how they are too: thin, fat, short, thin, round, wrinkled, blond, brunette, red, dark light, wrinkled, tanned, freckled, etc. This trend is exceptionally cruel for teen and young adult women. Men are not exempt from the abuse of perpetual discontent. There has also been a barrage of messages about the same flaws women are taught to loath which now lands in the individual sense of self for men.
Many argue that this has lead not only to discontent with our body images, but also discontent with every aspect of our spending life (products, house, cars, computers, clothes, etc.). Of ironic note is the fact that many millions and millions of people don't get enough food to eat every day while we in the United States have become so conscious of the self we portray to others that we self-limit our food intake and go to drastic measure in diet, exercise, and even surgery. Every year, millions pay vast sums of money to acquire surgical beauty enhancements.
In Figure 1 you can see data from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) for the 11 years between 1997-2007. There are nearly 12 million clients of aesthetic plastic surgery in the US, and most paid large sums of money for their surgery. In Figure 2 you can see that nearly 13 billion dollars were spent for the 6 years between 2002-2007. The ASAPS also reported that their most common client is a White female between ages of 20-50.
The media is perhaps one of the most underestimated of the 7 social institutions. At the personal level, people think of it in terms of convenience and entertainment rather than political influence, power, and control. The media is mostly controlled by wealthy people and at the national and world level is tightly controlled in terms of political ideologies of those who decide what we get to watch, hear, and read. The owners and managers seek profits while promoting their own political agenda, selecting and shaping advertisement, and for providing exposure to political and special interests groups they favor.
The Power Elite in the Media
Do your personally know someone who owns a TV, radio, or newspaper/magazine? Most of us don't unless we happen to fall into a wealthy income category. C. Wright Mills made a powerful observation (remember his was also the Sociological Imagination idea). He recognized that wealth and power is unevenly distributed in society and that it is the relatively wealthy privileged few who control the power. The other argument (contrary to Mills' Power Elite) is called Pluralism, which claims that power is diffused among many diverse interests groups and that in fact not all wealthy elite people unite on the same side of most issues. The accurate description of today's society-level power structures is that there is a large, unconnected category of powerful people, each exerting their own wills upon others, either against or in cooperation with other powerful people. In Figure 3 you can see that the top 10 percent of society's members are the wealthy elite and own or control the corporate (including media corporations), military positions and political offices. The next 20 percent are also relatively wealthy and connected to the power elite. This class runs the government, political scene, and interests-groups. They often are given coverage in the media and are considered among our "famous" members of society.
Then there's you and me. We are among the 70 percent of the common people who comprise the masses. Most of us enjoy politics, media, and other newsworthy topics but rarely understand the reality of their day-to-day functioning and influence on our lives. We are uneducated about the power elite's actions that often harm us in the long-run (take the recent mortgage and financial market schemes that have made the top two classes very wealthy at the expense of the bottom 70 % for an example). Mills also described False Consciousness, which is when members of groups which are relatively powerless in society accept beliefs that work against their self-interests. Typically our ignorance is played upon and erroneous information is provided in a calculated manner by the power elite for the further gain of their goals.
You can learn a great deal about the power of media by studying societies outside of the United States. A Totalitarian Government is a political system where a small power elite controls virtually every aspect of the personal and larger social levels of society. Some examples include Nazi, Germany, North Korea, Russia in Stalin's era, and a few eastern European countries that were once part of the former Soviet union. In these systems, the media was strictly controlled and some systems failed once media control was lost.
The media has tremendous political power, especially in the national election coverage they provide. The journalists who provide our media have distinct goals and values which motivate them to typically take a more negative position towards a candidate than the candidate would prefer. Many sources officially give or withhold their support for a candidate while other news and media sources continue to work in a more objective manner. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, literally hundreds and hundreds of polls were taken and reported on the national news via TV, radio, Internet, and printed news. The very presence of poll results can actually influence the choices made by voters who are undecided and others who have made their choice, but might be influenced to change their minds. Many feel that their candidates were treated with bias by the media (they are probably correct).
The media has editorial strategies which easily coincide with the goals of the power elite. Framing involves placing the news story into a preexisting frame of reference for the public so that they understand it as journalists would have it be understood. The protestors were "freedom fighters, martyrs, or courageous." Even though two people died, the frame changes them from terrorists to saints. Formatting is the design and construction of the news story. One might see a story that includes an introduction about the sacrifices made by the protesters which runs for 45 seconds. This story might end with a 15 second summary of their protest actions as being martyr-like.
Sequencing is ordering news stories in such a way as to present a thematic message. An example of this would be to run the story about the protesters right after the story about the military occupants who were allegedly guilty of raping and torturing inmates. Agenda Setting is the process of selecting and screening topics which will be presented to the general public. An example of this might be the omission of successes on the battlefield and the inclusion of crimes by soldiers, losses by civilians, and outcry by the country's political enemies.
The Coffee Filter, Power Elite Metaphor
Figure 4 shows the "Coffee Filtering" metaphor of the power elite as it has broken into two semi-oppositional schools of thought often referred to as the "Left and Right." If you consider the Power Elite model over the pluralism model of power in society, you can see how the elite who control media, military, and corporations shape politics and laws. Mill's model fits just as well now as it did in his day, but there is a twist on the polarized culture between Left and Right wing influences in society. Figure 4 shows how the elite form a type of filter (coffee) that shapes the flow of political and legal outcomes in the form of laws, treaties, and legal precedence. Although not formally unified into one centralized political social movement, the Left and Right shakers and movers each influence this filtering process for their own interests and goals.
On the Left side of the spectrum, feminism, sexual politics (same-sex, trans-gendered, and bisexual), anti-natalism, environmental protection, and general secularism share many overlapping values that prove to be mutually beneficial if mutual support is given. For example, a protest at the United Nations building in New York City against a less-developed country's refusal to let their girls and women receive formal education could also be supported by: anti-natalists (the more education a woman gets the fewer the babies she has); environmentalists (the fewer the babies the less pressure on the physical environment); and secularists (the more education a woman gets the less religious she tends to be).
On the Right hand side of the cultural continuum lobbying for a continuation of tax breaks for parents and marrieds would serve all interests groups in multiple ways. One of the premier social movements to illustrate this has been the battle over the legalization of same-sex or gay marriage. It's been on the referendum ballots of a number of states. It's been considered for discussion at the federal legislation level, but returned to the state-level since states have the right to legally sanction marriages and divorces. It's been considered in a few state supreme courts with pre-emptive strikes by states which went ahead and codified marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman. Other state supreme courts have preemptively ruled in favor of same-sex marriages. Billions of dollars, millions of volunteer hours, and countless and immeasurable levels of personal frustration are involved in this social issue. What both the Left and Right have understood and utilized for decades is the use their elite contacts to accomplish their goal-driven political and legal changes. The media will continue to play a central role in this and other heated political issues. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.16%3A_Media.txt |
Demography is the scientific study of population growth and change. Everything in society influences demography and demography conversely influences everything in society. After World War II, the United States began to recover from the long-term negative effects of the war. Families had been separated, relatives died or were injured, and women who had gone to the factories then returned home at war's end. For about 4 years goods and services were rationed and the government had assumed war-time powers which they thought limited the civil rights of the average citizen. It was an era of social and cultural upheaval.
The year 1946 reflected the impact of that upheaval in its very atypical demographic statistics. Starting in 1946 people married younger, had more children per woman, divorced then remarried again, and kept having one child after another. From 1946 to 1956 the birth rate rose and peaked, then began to decline again. By 1964 the national high birth rate was finally back to the level it was at in 1946. All those millions of children born from 1946-1964 were called the Baby Boom Generation (there are about 78 million of them alive today, see Chapter 12). Why was there such a change in family-related rates? The millions of deaths caused by the war, the long-term separation of family members from one another, and the deep shifts toward conservative values all contributed. The Baby Boom had landed. And after the Baby Boom Generation was in place, it conversely affected personal and larger social levels of society in every conceivable way.
The Formula
In this chapter you will learn how financial, educational, spiritual, cultural, and emotional social forces shape and form the demographic trends within a society. You'll also get a glimpse of how demographic forces shape your society. The core of demographic studies has three component concerns: births, deaths, and migration. All of demography can be reduced to this very simple formula:
(Births-Deaths) +/- ((In-Migration)-(Out Migration))=Population Change.
This part of the formula, (Births-Deaths) is called Natural increase, or all births minus all the deaths in a given population over a given time period. The other part of the formula, ((In-Migration)-(Out Migration)) is called Net Migration which is all the in-migration minus all the out-migration in a given population over a given time period. Population Change is then added to a previous year's population to yield new population estimate. Most official population counts really are estimates. There are mistakes in counting that render results that are close, but never perfectly accurate.
Let's consider this formula by first looking at the US population in 1990. Census Enumeration is the formal counting of a population by its government. Based on the US Census, the US population was 248,709,000 (retrieved 7 April, 2009 from http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen1990.html ). If you start the estimate with the 1990 population, you can run the numbers through the formula and derive an end of year 1999 population estimate. You can see the results of adding all the US birth, death, and migration data for 1990-1999 in Table 1 below.
Table 1. Numbers of Births, Deaths, and Net Migrationa for the United States between 1990-1999b
Births - Deaths + Net Migration = Population Change
39,860,000 22,711,000 9,580,000 +26,729,000
a Net Migration=(In-Migration)-(Out-Migration) or (9,800,000)-(220,000)=(9,580,000)
b Data collected from two sources retrieved 7 April, 2009: Martin, P. & Midgley, E. (2003) "Immigration: Shaping and Reshaping America," Vol. 58, No. 2 Population Bulletin from www.prb.org; and www.census.gov Table 77. Live Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Divorces: 1960-2006.
By the end of 1999 the population was estimated to be (1990)+(1990-1999 population change)=1999 population or (248,709,000)+(26,729,000)=275,438,000. These estimates are very close to the actual July 1st, 1999 US Census estimates (retrieved 7 April, 2009 from http://www.michigan.gov/documents/90...eg_26029_7.pdf US POPULATION 1790-2000).
Table 2 lists the 10 most populated countries of the world in 2008 and the US ranks 3rd in 2008. The US is one of the most populated nations of the world and is estimated to continue to rank 3rd even in 2050. Interestingly, in 2050, India will rank 1st and China 2nd (see Table 3 for the details).
Table 2. The Ten Most Populated Countries in the World, 2008*
Country Estimated Population
1 China 1,324,700,000
2 India 1,149,300,000
3 United States 304,500,000
4 Indonesia 239,900,000
5 Brazil 195,100,000
6 Pakistan 172,800,000
7 Nigeria 148,100,000
8 Bangladesh 147,300,000
9 Russia 141,900,000
10 Japan 127,700,000
Retrieved 7 April, 2009 from http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf
Table 3. The Ten Most Populated Countries in the World, 2050*
Country Estimated Population
1 India 1,755,200,000
2 China 1,437,000,000
3 United States 438,200,000
4 Indonesia 343,100,000
5 Pakistan 295,200,000
6 Nigeria 282,200,000
7 Brazil 259,800,000
8 Bangladesh 215,100,000
9 Congo, De. Rep. 189,300,000
10 Philippines 150,100,000
Retrieved 7 April, 2009 from http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf
United States Population and Key Rates
Figure 1 shows the US population for selected years between 1790 (the 1st US Census) and 2009 (estimated by the US Census Bureau). At its first official Census, the US had more than 4 million inhabitants, but it failed to count Natives, Blacks, and other racial groups. In the 219 years represented in Figure 1, you can see that the US population has increased nearly 78 times since its 1790 count-this taking into consideration all the births, all the deaths, and all the in-out migration. The US continues to grow in our day and will in coming years.
Figure 1. Estimated Population of the United States for Selected Years 1790-2009*
*Retrieved 9 April, 2009 from Table 1: Population Bulletin, Vol. 57, No 4 What Drives US Population Growth? Dec, 2002 http://www.prb.org/Source/57.4WhatDr...Population.pdf; Statistical Abstracts of the US, 1997 Table 1; 2009 estimated retrieved from www.census.gov
Let's look at the birth rates for the US compared to the current highest birth rate state, Utah, and the current lowest birth rate state, Vermont, between the years 1991-2006. But, first we need to define rates. The Crude Birth Rate is the number of live births per 1,000 people living in the population. It's called crude because it ignores age-specific risks of getting pregnant. Figure 2 shows these rates and clearly indicates the higher rates for Utah in comparison to the US and Vermont. Before 1991, Alaska often competed with Utah for the highest state birth rate. Vermont is the lowest state rate today, but has also competed with Maine in past years.
Figure 2. Estimated Crude Birth Rates per 1,000 Population of the United States, Utah, and Vermont for Selected Years 1991-2006*
*Retrieved 9 April, 2009 from Table 77 Live Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Divorces: 1960-2006; Statistical Abstracts of the US and 1990-2006 from 1990-2006 data retrieved 9 April, 2009 from 205.207.175.93/VitalStats/Tab...tableView.aspx
There are other rates to measure births between populations. Demographers use slightly different terminology than the average person when describing a woman's ability to get pregnant. True Rate is the "Number of events/ Number" at risk of the event. In other words, the Crude Birth Rate is not a true rate because it includes children, males and the elderly in the denominator of "1,000 population." To demographers, Fertility is a measure of the number of children born to a woman.
Total Fertility Rate is the total number of children ever born to a woman calculated both individually and at the societal level. Fecundity is the physiological ability to conceive or give birth to children. In Table 4 you can see some of the striking differences in Crude Birth and Total Fertility Rates. To understand these data you need to understand the term, More Developed Nations are nations with comparably higher wealth than most countries of the world including: Western Europe; Canada, United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Less Developed Nations are nations located near to or south of the Equator which have less wealth and more of the world's population of inhabitants including: Africa, India, Central and South America, most island nations, and most of Asia (Excluding China). China has the most strict fertility policy in the world and is often excluded from the rest of Asia in most official reports.
Table 4. Crude Birth Rates and Total Fertility Rates for Selected Regions and Countries*
Country or Region Crude Birth Rates CBR Total Fertility Rates TFR
More developed 12 1.6
Less Developed 23 2.8
Africa 37 4.9
Latin America/Caribbean 21 2.5
Asia (Excluding China) 23 2.4
China 12 1.6
Liberia 50 6.8
Canada 11 1.6
Mexico 20 2.3
United States 14 2.1
Italy 9 1.3
Japan 9 1.0
World 21 2.6
*From 2008 World Population Data Sheet: Demographic Data and Estimates for the Countries and Regions of the World.
Africa is the "birth hot spot" of the world and has been since about 1950. It has a projected population change of an increase of 100 percent between the years 2008-2050. A few African nations are higher and some are a bit lower. Uganda for example should experience a 263 percent increase while Swaziland should experience a 33 percent decline. The 6.8 TFR for Liberia means that the average woman is expected to have 6.8 children there. In the US it is only 2.1. This is an important indicator of population change because there is a principle which states that it requires a minimum TFR of 2.1 for the population to replace the man and woman who made the children and a TFR of 2.3 to begin to expand the population. Thus you can see from Table 4 that the less-developed regions of the world (especially Africa) are expected to grow, while the more developed (especially Japan) should not grow. Japan should decrease by 25 percent between 2008-2050.
Theories and Principles
Doubling Time is the time required for a population to double if the current growth rate continues. To calculate the doubling time you simply divide 70 by the current growth rate of the country and that yields the number of years required for the double. Table 5 shows the growth rates and estimated doubling times for selected countries based on 2008 estimates. The world's population should double in 58 years. Liberia on the other hand should double its population in only 23 years.
In fact, most of the world's population now lives in the less developed regions of the world and they will double in about 47 years. There are approximately 68 percent of the 6.7 billion peoples of this world who now live in less developed countries (roughly 4.56 billion people). In the year 2055 (the year 2008 + 47 years=2055) there should be 9.12 billion people living in the less developed regions of the world. The more developed regions of the world will not double in any of our lifetimes (it would be the year 2358 according to these data).
Zero Population Growth occurs when a population neither shrinks nor expands from year to year. Based on other factors in the demographic equation, including death and migration, you can see various results. To understand why some countries have higher or lower rates, you must first understand some theoretical backgrounds.
There are two distinct perspectives that relate to births in a population. Antinatalist is a perspective which opposes childbearing and Pronatalist is a perspective which promotes birth and increased population. Antinatalists oppose birth, support contraceptive, abortions, and sterilization along with the education of women. Educating a woman is the most effective way of lowering her fertility. Pronatalists support birth, large families, extended families, and the governmental support of childbearing.
Table 5. Growth Rates and Doubling Times for Selected Countries 2008*
Country or Region Growth Rate Doubling Time in Years
More developed 0.2 350
Less Developed 1.5 47
Africa 2.4 29
Latin America/Caribbean 1.5 47
Asia (Excluding China) 1.5 47
China 0.5 140
Liberia 3.1 23
Canada 0.3 233
Mexico 1.6 44
United States 0.6 116
Italy 0.0 Can't Calculate
Japan 0.0 Can't Calculate
World 1.2 58
*From 2008 World Population Data Sheet: Demographic Data and Estimates for the Countries and Regions of the World.
The US had an antinatalist perspective until then President Ronald Reagan changed the US foreign policy in the 1984 population conference held in Mexico City. President Bill Clinton eventually changed it back to antinatalist. George W. Bush changed it back to pronatalist and President Barack Obama changed it back to antinatalist again. Once a US President chooses the nation's perspective, international and local policies come into effect by supporting pro-or antinatalist programs.
The first Antinatalist was Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). He was a Reverend and English scholar who took a strong stance against the unprepared parents of his day. To him "prepared parents" had established their education and livelihood, their household, and their marriage before they considered getting pregnant. Keep in mind that there were very few effective methods of birth control at this time, so Malthus came across as a hardliner against parenting. He published half a dozen editions of his work, An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798-1830) which were extremely controversial, yet carefully read by many influential people of his day.
For Malthus the problem was that populations grew more rapidly than the production of food, which to him was the cause of many social ills in the new industrial societies of Europe. See Figure 3 for a graph depicting the shortage. He declared that no sex before marriage, forced sterilization, and criminal treatment of unprepared parents would be the new conservative norm.
Indeed history has shown that famines, wars, plagues, and other terrible conditions do occur. The antinatalists blame too many babies and people, too much destruction of the natural environment, the existence of the traditional family, and capitalistic profit-seeking at the cost of global well-being. A contemporary antinatalist named Paul Ehrlich wrote the book, The Population Bomb in 1968 (Ballantine Books). He is considered to be a Neo-Malthusian, or an antinatalist who agrees with Malthus, but rejects his conservative and religious proscriptions. Much of the governmental organizations in the world today are antinatalistic.
Figure 3. The Malthus Graph Depicting the Shortage That Occurs When Population Growth Exceeds Food Production Capacity.
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
The pronatalists point out that there is plenty of food in the world and always has been. They blame political and social mismanagement for the social ills, not the high birth rates. Look at Figure 4 below to see the estimated world population from 10,000 BC to 2009 AD (these are only estimated since there were very few government statistics prior to the industrial revolution).
You can clearly see that there were millions and millions of people on the earth throughout the history of the world. Pronatalists argue that for the most part, civilizations ate, lived, and thrived and still do today. When they starved it was typically some political or natural disaster factor not a Malthusian shortage that explained it. Besides, they argue, Malthus underestimated the enormous gains in medical, agricultural, environmental, political, and other sciences that have given this world the highest standard of living it has ever known. Do you feel a bit confused? Truth is that there is ample evidence to support both antinatalist's and pronatalist's perspectives. Bottom line is that the World Health Organization, World Bank, United Nations, United States, and all of the other more developed nations of the world are Neo-Malthusian/Antinatalistic to some degree or another. While the people of the less developed regions of the world live a pronatalist's lifestyle and thereby are mainly responsible for the rapidly increasing growth of births into the world population.
Figure 4. World Population Estimates in Millions for 10,000 BC to 2009 AD*
*Retrieved 9 April 2009 from US Census Bureau 's Historical estimates of the World's Population (10,000 BC to 1950 AD) www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html and from Historical World Population Estimates From Year 0 to 2050 How many people have ever lived on Earth? www.prb.org/Journalists/FAQ/W...opulation.aspx
Look at Table 6 below to see how fast the US and World are growing by seconds, minutes, hours, etc. In the US, every hour 432 babies are born, totaling up to about 3,784,320 in a year (please note that this estimate tends to be lower than the actual number reported by the US's Vital Statistics at 4.2 million births, because estimates are calculate base on previous years' rates, whereas the Vital Statistics are actual counts made 2 years after the actual data has been collected and tabulated.
In the world, every hour 15,834 babies are born adding up to 138,715,000 per year. Wow, that's just a great deal of babies! How do you suppose anti- and pronatalists might respond to these data? You're probably right, in totally opposite camps.
Table 6: United States and World Population Clocks 2009*
Births Per: United States World
Second 0.12 4.40
Minute 7.20 264.00
Hour 432.00 15,835.00
Day 10,368.00 380,041.00
Year 3,784,320.00 138,715,000.00
Deaths Per: United States World
Second 0.08 1.80
Minute 4.80 108.00
Hour 288.00 6,481.00
Day 6,912.00 155,553.00
Year 2,522,880.00 56,777,000.00
*Retrieved 9 April, 2009 from www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html and from www.prb.org/Articles/2008/wor...clock2008.aspx
Look at the deaths in table 6. Think about it. If you can hold your breath for 30 seconds, about 2 people will die in the US and over 54 will die worldwide during that time. Death is the termination of the body, its systems, and brain activity in an irreversible way. Death is a part of life. All of us are at risk of dying, but not all of us share the same risks. To be born around or below the equator, female, tribal, and non-white represents risk factors not shared by those born in the US, female, suburban, and non-white (think about Max Weber's Life Chances). In fact, in many cases migrants to the US raise their life expectancies higher than they would have been back in their less developed home countries.
Figure 5 shows the top 10 causes of death in the US. Heart disease is and has been the number 1 killer in the US for decades. Heart disease has lead world-wide causes of death for decades as well. The top 4 causes are highly correlated with tobacco use. And since smoking is becoming much more common in less developed countries, cancer is predicted to become the number 1 cause of death world-wide by 2010 with over 40 percent of the world's smokers living in China and India (retrieved 10 April, 2009 from www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,464184,00.html).
In less developed nations there are other significant causes of death that we don't worry about here as much. Malaria, AIDS, accidents, maternal death, diarrhea, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, local exotic diseases, and other infectious and parasitic diseases. In fact, AIDS or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is much more common in Africa and parts of Asia than in any other region of the world. Heterosexuality is sex between a man and woman and is the most common way of transmitting AIDS throughout the world. Scientists from many different disciplines study and track diseases such as AIDS and the others.
Epidemiology is the scientific study of diseases, their transmission, and their management. The US has the most advanced disease tracking and epidemiological management system which is found at the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia (http://www.cdc.gov/ ). On this website you can click on "Traveler's Alerts" and choose a country to see if there are any disease concerns for tourists (wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/default.aspx ). Go to the website, pick a country and read up about their current disease concerns and shots you should get in preparation to visit another country.
Figure 5. Top 10 Major Causes of Death in the United States 2005*
*Retrieved 10 April 2009 from CDC Leading Causes of Death 2005 Table C http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm
Because we have so many visiting and migrating to and from the US, it is in the CDC's best interest to be globally concerned and involved. The CDC concerns itself with all diseases in every country. Demographers also concern themselves with a number of death-related rates. The Crude Death Rate is the number of deaths in a given population per 1,000 people living in that population. Again, this is not a true rate because not all members of society have the same risks of dying (IE: 30 year-olds not at the same risks of death as 80 year-olds). The Infant Mortality Rate is the number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births. The CDR and IMR vary greatly between countries and regions (See Table 7 below).
The nation with the worst Crude Death Rate is Sierra Leone at 23. The best CDR's are found in the Middle East (Qatar and the United Arab Emirates at 2). The nations with the worst IMR happen to be Afghanistan at 163 and Sierra Leone at 158. The best IMR is found in Iceland at 1.3. The US does not have the best IMR. This is most likely a consequence of not having universal medical care. Table 7 shows some of the variations in death rates for select regions and countries. To summarize these and other findings in this chapter you can conclude that: 1) more babies are born in developing nations of the world than in the developed ones; 2) more infants and other people die sooner in the less developed regions of the world than in the developed ones; and 3) most of the world's future population growth will come from the less developed regions of the world.
Table 7. Crude Death Rates and Infant Mortality Rates for Selected Regions and Countries*
Country or Region Crude Death Rate CDR Infant Mortality Rates TFR
More developed 10 6.0
Less Developed 8 54.0
Africa 14 82.0
Latin America/Caribbean 6 23.0
Asia (Excluding China) 7 45.0
China 7 23.0
Liberia 18 133.0
Canada 7 5.5
Mexico 5 19.0
United States 14 2.1
Italy 10 4.2
Japan 9 2.8
World 8 49
*From 2008 World Population data Sheet: Demographic Data and Estimates for the Countries and Regions of the World.
Why is the world's population growing so rapidly in regions that have the fewest resources? Part of the answer to this question is found in the Demographic Transition Theory which claims that populations go through 3 distinct stages that correspond to the onset of the Industrial Revolution with regard to changes in birth and death rates. Look at Figure 6 below to see the three stages of this theory.
As you can see, the Demographic Transition Theory has three distinct stages. Stage 1, the Pre-Industrial Revolution Stage, encompassed the world's population up until about 1700 AD. Much of the world's population grew very slowly up to that point. That's all it could do because the high birth rates were offset by the high death rates (lots of people were born and they died soon).
Stage 2 or the Industrial Revolution Stage saw the decline in death rates while birth rates remained high. This is the perfect demographic storm for population growth and this coincides with the rapid growth of populations in Western Civilizations (lots of people were born and they died later in life). The Post-Industrial Revolution, Stage 3 came with the technical and computer chip revolution that raised the standard of living so much that death rates remained low while birth rates dropped (fewer people being born and they die even later in life).
The Demographic Transition theory did describe what happened in Western Europe, Canada, The United States, Australia , and Japan. But, it does not fit so neatly in the less developed countries of the world. They never really had an Industrial Revolution, they only benefited from the European one. They never really moved fully into the technological and computer chip revolution. It just spills over to them gradually. Because of post World War II medical delivery systems and because of international aid, the less developed countries of the world have had their death rates decline and their lives have been extended. But, their birth rates remain relatively high (as you've already read above). This is why so much of the world's future population growth will come from Africa, Latin America, Parts of Asia, and the island nations.
Very concerted antinatalistic efforts have been implemented in the less developed countries of the world over the last 40 years. Scientists can measure a gradual lowering of the birth rates as a direct result from it. But, keep in mind that however they got there, the peoples of the less developed regions of the world are still in Stage 2 and have explosive population trends that will continue for the next 40-50 years.
Population Structures
Before we discuss migration, let's talk about the population from an age-sex structural point of view. Every population/society can be compared by an age-sex structural approach called the Population Pyramid, or the graphic representation of specified 5-year age groups within a population and by being males or females. Look at the 1990 US population pyramid in Figure 7 below. Please notice that this pyramid was available on a quick search of www.census.gov and represents blue for males and green for females.
A population pyramid for 1990 can tell you some interesting things about the age-sex structure of the US at that time. For one thing, even though there are slightly more females than males, their relative proportions appear about even here. It also shows you the bulge of the Baby Boomers. By 1990, the Baby Boomers would have been between ages 26-44. The high fertility rates of the years 1946-1964 echo in the bulge of this pyramid. Also there is an interesting sex differences among the older US population. There are far more females than males in the later years.
Now look at Figure 8. It shows you smaller pyramids that let you watch the disappearance of the Baby Boomers gradually over the years 1990-2050. By the year 2050 the oldest Baby Boomer would have to be 104 years old to still be alive. The Youngest Baby Boomer would be 86. These pyramids also show that there will be a similar proportion of males and females. Because birth rates are low and are remaining that way, you see a widening look as the pyramid portrays the population more as a column than a pyramid. Population pyramids can actually take on any number of shapes. But the true pyramid shape comes only when there are high birth rates (a wider pyramid in the younger ages) and people die soon (a narrower pyramid in the older years at the top of the pyramid).
*Retrieved 10 April 2009 from www.census.gov/population/www.../natchart.html
Figure 8. United State's Population Pyramid: 1990, 2000, 2025, and 2050*
*Retrieved 10 April 2009 from www.census.gov/population/www.../natchart.html
As this chapter draws to a close, we must discuss the last portion of the demographic formula, Migration. If someone moves out of your country they are called emigrants. Emigration is the departure from your country of origin to reside in another. Once there, they'd be considered to be an immigrant. Immigration is the arrival of a foreigner into a country they will reside in and likely become a citizen of on some future date. The US has far more immigrants (arrivals) than emigrants (departures) every year.
Why do people decide to move from one country to another? Demographers consider two very important factors in understanding migration: push and pull. Push Factors are negatives aspects of where you live which make you consider leaving. Pull Factors are positive aspects of another place which draw you to migrate to it. Push factors include wars, famines, political hostility, natural disasters, and other harsh circumstances that create an environment conducive to looking for another place to live. Pull factors include economic prosperity, jobs, food, safety, asylum, and the hope of survival that draws people to move to the desired location. About 1 in 6 people in the US moves each year. College students, job seekers, transferees, divorcees, and most recently people needing to live with extended family because of tough economic times all contribute to the migration process within the United States. As we finish the demography chapter, keep in mind that demography effects everything and everything effects demography | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.17%3A_Population.txt |
Cities, Country Side, and Suburban
Urbanization is the societal trend where the proportion of people living in cities increases while the proportion of people living in the country side diminishes. Urban refers to the geographic territory within or close to a city. The governments of the world define urban in different ways, but it is safe to assume that between 2-5,000 inhabitants in a city is the minimum required to call a geographic territory urban. Some urban areas such as Tokyo, New York, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Lima range from 35 million down to 7 million people living in those cities (see www.PRB.org Retrieved 13 April, 2009 from "Most Populous Urban Agglomerations 2005.")
A few factors have to be in place in order for urban growth to occur. These theoretical approaches help in understanding urban development. Agricultural Surplus Theory claims that as farming skills increased, a surplus of basic foodstuffs existed. The surplus freed certain people from having to produce their own food and let them develop other occupations. Central Place Theory claims that farmers needed a central place to trade or sell their surplus and cities developed in those central places. Trading Theory claims that the surplus was not as important as were the specialists who knew how to create it and do other occupations. There must also be a transportation route (river, trail, valley, railroads, harbors, or oceans). Once settlers move in, the city will flourish or fail depending on its ability to continue to draw in people seeking opportunities.
Rural refers to the geographic territory in the less populated regions of a society. Mona, Utah; Hell, Michigan, and North Pole, Alaska are just a few of the less populated rural areas in the US. If you grew up in the United States you can find out all types of recent information about your home town (rural or urban) by going to http://www.census.gov/ and typing in the "Population Finder" section of the homepage. I typed in the zip code for Hell, Michigan (Zip code 48619) and it brought up a table of all the 481Ézip code areas and some interesting information on these cities. According to the 2000 US Census, Hell had 19,840 inhabitants and 59.89 miles of land area or 331.3 people per square mile. I also typed in New York City, New York. It indicated that in 2007 there were about 8,274,527 people living there. It also indicated that some of the city has no residents while in its most densely populated areas it has over 200,000 people per square mile living there (see TM-P002, Persons per Square Mile: 2000 NY, NY).
Sociologists who study the cities often use this simple concept called Population Density=the number of people per square mile or square kilometer. The Population Reference Bureau is free online at www.PRB.org ). It provides details about every country of the world including the US. See Table 1 below for some 2000 population density estimates which show the variety of densities worldwide.
Table 1. Population Densities for Select Countries and Regions*
Territory Density/Square Mile
World 117
United States 74
More Developed 60
Less Developed 153
Africa 68
Latin America 65
Caribbean 401
Asia 300
Europe 82
Western Europe 429
Eastern Europe 42
Oceania 9
*All values converted to people/square mile. Retrieved 13 April 2009 from www.prb.org/Educators/Teacher...ionAnswer.aspx original retrieved from World Population data Sheet, 2000.
The United States Road System
The United States has become increasingly urban since its formal inception in 1776. Washington D.C. in 2000 was 100 percent urban while Vermont was only 38.2% (retrieved 14 April, 2009 see Table 28. Urban and rural Population by State from http://search.census.gov/search?q=pe...ubtitle=statab ). In Figure 1 you can see the increasing urbanization in the US (the blue line) and some of the factors that contributed so strongly to it after 1940. There were 2 key pieces of legislation that made the development of today's interstate and road system what it currently is. The 1925 and later 1956 Federal Highway Acts facilitated the federal control, organization, and funding of nation-wide road development. Prior to these acts many roads were impassable, or very poorly maintained.
A nationally coordinated numbering system was put into place and after 1956 billions of dollars were earmarked to fund the asphalt and concrete paving of a new highway system. Today we have over 4 million miles of roads that require tens of billions per year in construction and maintenance costs. You can also see that car ownership increased dramatically once the roads were built. The number of cars owned tripled between 1960-2000 and these cars facilitated the commuting trends into the suburbs. The availability of the internet facilitated working from home and telecommuting. For the wealthy elite, gentrification and Exurbanization was made possible by abandoned factories and apartment buildings, now desirable for purchase and renovation by the upper-middle class young couples.
By 1980s, many empty warehouses and many abandoned apartment buildings scarred certain sections of the city. Wealthy young couples began a trend called Gentrification, or the purchase of rundown buildings in the city center which were remodeled for upper class apartments. Inevitably, gentrification forced the poor inner city dwellers out of their neighborhoods, because city officials were persuaded to rezone these gentrified neighborhoods to keep the "undesirable elements" away. Around the 1990 another trend emerged called Exurbanization, where upper class city dwellers moved out of the city beyond the suburbs and lived in high-end housing in the countryside. Truly, the modern US urban experience has followed a semi-circular pattern in the last 150 years, following this pattern: Rural habitation _ Urban habitation _ Suburban habitation _Gentrification for wealthy _Exurbanization for wealthy. Figure 1 summarizes some of the key historical factors that brought current US urbanization to the point of over 7 out of 10 in the US living in urban areas, following this historical pattern: Industrial Revolution _ World War II _Transportation expansion _ Technological Revolution (computer chip).
Figure 1. Percentage of United States Population Urban and Rural*
* Retrieved 14 April, 2009 Statistical Abstracts of the US, No HS-2 Population Characteristics: 1900-2002; and Statistical Abstracts, 1991http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-02.pdf; and Table 1. Historical Data on Income, Vehicle Ownership and Population, 1960-2002 from http://www.econ.nyu.edu/dept/courses...rship_2007.pdf; and Table 1055. Highway Mileage--Urban and Rural by Ownership: 1980 TO 2005 http://search.census.gov/search?q=mi...ubtitle=statab
Why live in a city in the first place? One explanation goes back to the Push and Pull Factors we learned about in Chapter 17. Push factors back home might include: too many people and not enough jobs or food; too few opportunities; almost everyone is poor in rural areas; and there are often severe taxes in rural areas. Pull factors toward the city typically include hope of better jobs, opportunities, reunion with family members, and lifestyles. In general over the last 100 years the rural economy provided fewer and fewer opportunities, services, and culturally-desirable experiences in comparison to the urban one. People are literally pulled to the urban and suburban areas because the city offers more of these unmet needs. The Industrial Revolution brought many workers to live in and around the urban areas. Factories and inner-city concentrated housing units were very common up until World War II.
By the end of the war, people wanted their own homes, independence, and a daily reprieve from the grind of the big city. They didn't want to move too far away, just far enough to allow them a less hectic daily life with a more affordable cost of living. The suburbs came at a perfect time.
Suburban refers to smaller cities located on the edges of the larger city which often include residential neighborhoods for those working in the area. The suburbs in the US grew dramatically after World War II when the superhighways and freeways combined with the somewhat modest cost of automobiles, the movement out of the inner city and into the suburbs was on.
Look at Figure 2 below to see the characteristics of rural, suburban, and urban social structures. On the left side of this graphic notice that rural areas typically have high levels of homogeneous people (they are very similar), self-dependence, mechanical solidarity, and similarity in work. Urban areas have relatively low levels in each of these. On the right hand side, notice that urban has heterogeneous people (very diverse peoples), inter-dependence (the doctor needs the butcher, the butcher needs the accountant, the accountant needs the electrician, etc.), organic solidarity, diversity in work, higher cost of living, formalized rules, organizational complexity, numbers of people, and anomie. Rural areas have relatively low levels in each of these. Suburban areas have a relative mix of all of these traits, some higher and some lower depending on other structural, cultural, SES, and historical factors.
All of the definitions in this paragraph were discussed in other chapters, but for the sake of quick reference they are repeated here.
• Homogeneous implies similar types of people whereas Heterogeneous implies diverse types of people.
• Gemeinschaft (Guh-mine-shoft) means "intimate community" whereas Gesellschaft (Guh-zell-shoft) means" impersonal associations."
• Mechanical Solidarity is a shared conscious among society's members who each has a similar form of livelihood whereas Organic Solidarity is a sense of interdependence on the specializations of occupations in modern society.
• Anomie is a state of social normlessness which occurs when our lives or society has vague norms.
World Trends
Figure 2. Graphic Depiction of Rural, Suburban, and Urban Societal Characteristics
© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
The 2008 Population data Sheet from the www.PRB.org website stated, "The world will pass a milestone in 2008: One-half of the world's residents will live in urban areas. This event is impressive when we consider that less than 30 percent lived in urban areas in 1950 (page 5)." Look at Figure 3 below to see NASA's amazing time-lapsed, night time photograph of the Americas, Western Europe, and Western Africa. From this satellite photograph you can see the population concentrations throughout the US, South America and Western Europe in contrast to the relatively sparsely lit Western Africa. This not only represents fewer numbers, but also less utilization of rather expensive electrical lights in the urban areas. You can barely distinguish Canada from the US. This is because most Canadians live in the lower portion of the country where the climate is more conducive to human existence.
Figure 3. NASA's Photograph of Americas, Western Europe, and Western Africa*
*Used by Permission of NASA, 1995
In Figure 4 you can see the NASA night photo of the rest of the world (not including the north and south continents). On the left side of the photograph it becomes obvious that most of Africa is not as lit up as are the other regions of the world. There are nearly 800 million people currently living in Africa. Electricity and city lights are very expensive based on the standard of living there. Notice the lights of Europe, Russia, The Middle East, India, Eastern China and Asia, the Island nations and the outer boundary of Australia. These light concentrations are in and near major cities and photographically distinguish the differences in socio-economic status between these regions of the world. They also identify the world's urban areas in a clear way.
Figure 4. NASA's Photograph of Africa, Europe, Middle East, Russia, Asia, Australia, and Island Nations*
*Used by Permission of NASA, 1995
Look again at the United States in Figure 3. You can see a massive cluster in the North-eastern region. The clusters represent what sociologists call a Megalopolis, which is an overspill of one urban area into another often where many small towns grow into one huge urban area connected by a major transportation corridor. Some of the larger ones today include: Boston-Washington; Chicago-Pittsburgh; and New York-New Jersey. A megalopolis often has 10 million or more people living there. These are found in Europe, Asia, India, Mexico, and Japan. A megalopolis is comprised of Metropolitan Areas, or large population concentrations in cities which have influence of the city's various zones. Each city has a number of zones of influence within its boundaries.
Theories of Urban Development
Human Ecology studies the form, structure, and development of the community in human populations. Ernest W. Burgess developed the Concentric Zone hypothesis of city development in his work, "The Growth of the City," in a 1925 publication (see The City by Park, R.E. and Burgess, E.W. eds U. of Chicago Press, 1967). Burgess was from a very influential sociological program called the Chicago School and he believed that a city grew out much like the trunk of a tree with concentric zones. The Concentric Zone Theory claims that cities grow like the rings of a tree, starting in the center and growing outward.
He identified the following zones: Central Business District; low, middle, and high class residential zones; heavy and light manufacturing, and commuter and suburbs zones to give a short list. Each zone has its realm of influence on the daily lives of city dwellers. Although Burgess' approach has been highly modified, it proved to be a classic in studying the nature of cities. Another scientist named Homer Hoyt noticed that not all city patterns were concentric and he devised a theory to study the pie wedge-shaped zones he came to call "sectors." The Sector Theory claims that cities grow in pie wedge shapes as the city develops (see Hoyt, H. 1939, "The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities;" published by the US Federal Housing Administration, Washington, D.C.).
Later, in 1945 Chauncy O. Harris and Edward L. Ullman wrote a scientific piece in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences called "The Nature of Cities" (page 242 published by Sage publications). Their approach came to be known as the Multiple Nuclei Theory, which claims that cities have multiple centers (Nuclei) that yield influence on the growth and nature of an urban area. These scientists cleared up the issue that a cities growth and development can be universally predictable. They and many scientists since them have established that some commonalities can be predicted, but each city has its own unique history, culture, geography, and resources.
In 2006, an article entitled, "Growth and Change in U.S. Micropolitan Areas" was published by Mulligan, G. F. and Vias, A. C. (see The Annals of Regional Science, Vol. 40, No. 2/ June, 2006 pages 203-228). The relatively new concept of a Micropolitan was discussed. A Micropolitan is an urban area with 10,000-49,000 inhabitants. Mulligan and Vias reported about 581 micropolitans counted in the 1990 US Census. The city I live in Payson, Utah is a Micropolitan. When I first moved my family there it had 3 red lights and we counted them. It had a vending machine with live fishing bait on the main corner at the first red light. According to the US Census Payson's Zip code of 84651 had 17.735 inhabitants and 5,178 housing units.
There are many other official classifications used by Government and educational scientists to study the urban, suburban, and rural experiences among society's members. Let's just learn one more concept that will help you to understand the US Census Bureau's approach to segmenting and analyzing cities, counties, states, and the nation as a whole. A Metropolitan Statistical Area includes one or more adjacent counties that has at least one 50,000 populated urban center that influences the economic, transportation and social connection of the area.
Cities: Good or Bad?
For centuries, philosophers and scientists have studied the value of cities in contrast to rural settings. Historians provided records of ancient cities dating back thousands of years BC. Scientists from other disciplines studied the historical documents to derive their structure and function. From these and contemporary studies they've drawn modern-day conclusions about how cities best work. In the early US history there was an intensive debate about the nature of the city as being evil. Many felt that the smaller, spread out cities supported better physical and mental health (although little science went into their claims). Some claimed that the mega city had the best to offer and architects laid out enormous city plans, some using mega-buildings, other using parks and grids to create the ideal city plan that attempted to balance urban traits with rural ones. Many of these plans were utilized in the development of suburbs.
Individuals often weigh in on the debate. Urbanites are drawn to the city for a number of reasons including: the energy, diversity of people, dining and entertainment, safety (yes, many people feel safer in cities), cultural events, and sporting events. Those not attracted by the city are repulsed by: fear of crime, large numbers of people, expensive costs, congestion, and crowding. I remember one of my students expressing how afraid he would be of having an accident out in the countryside and no one being there to provide help. Another student added that he was afraid of psychotic children jumping out of a corn field and killing any strangers who wandered by. Yet another student chimed in that he felt just as much in danger in the city because there were so many different types of people and unless you were "street smart" you couldn't distinguish the bad guys from the good ones.
Herbert Gans published an important work about the types of people who live in cities. In many ways his ideas still apply today (see Gans, Herbert 1968. "Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life. A Re-evaluation of Definitions." In People and Plans, pages 34-52, Basic Books: NY.) Gans focused on the life-style of the city-dweller as much as the demographic background. Cosmopolites are intellectuals, professional, and artists who are attracted to the city because of opportunities and community that are found there. Unmarried Singles aging in the 20-30's typically enjoy the city-singles scene and will probably move when they get older or marry. Ethnic Villagers are city dwellers who group together with others of the same ethnic background and set up miniature enclaves. The Deprived and Trapped are the very poor, disabled, or emotionally disturbed who are often victims of other city dwellers.
Certainly Gans' descriptions have merit in our day. We might add a few other categories since over 40 years have passed since his work was published. On one hand we might add opportunist who see the big city as providing their big break in life. We might also add the business entrepreneur who wants to capitalize in the concentrated marketplace of the modern city. On the other hand, we might add organized criminals, white collar criminals, and gang members. Since we discussed organized and white-collar criminals in the previous chapters, let's limit the discussion here to gangs.
Gang Troubles
Street gangs have been around in the US in one form or another since the early 1800s. Today, street gangs represent a major threat to personal safety and national security. In some communities they account for 80 percent of all the crime (National Gang Threat Assessment Issued 2, February, 2009 from www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel09/ngta020209.htm ). This FBI report also indicated that:
"Gang members are migrating from urban to suburban and rural areas, expanding the gangs' influence in most regions. They are doing so for a variety of reasons, including expanding drug distribution territories, increasing illicit revenue, recruiting new members, hiding from law enforcement, and escaping from other gangs. Many suburban and rural communities are experiencing increasing gang-related crime and violence because of expanding gang influence. Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder, and weapons trafficking. Gang members are the primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs. They also are increasingly distributing wholesale-level quantities of marijuana and cocaine in most urban and suburban communities. ..Many gangs actively use the Internet to recruit new members and to communicate with members in other areas of the U.S. and in foreign countries (Retrieved on 15 April, 2009 from www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel09/ngta020209.htm )."
In another recent FBI report, the FBI also reported that modern gangs tend to be local and community-based. There are approximately 20-30,000 gangs today with about 800,000- 1 million members which negatively impact 2,500 local communities. And approximately 58 percent of all US law enforcement officers report active gangs in their jurisdiction. It is estimated that there are 11 national-level street gangs; 5 regional gangs, and most of the 20-30,000 US gangs are local (Retrieved 15 April 2009 from http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=1593
National Youth Gang Survey Analysis and www.FBI.gov at http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs32/32146/index.htm
See also National Gang Intelligence Center online at www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ngic/ ).
Use caution in drawing too hasty of conclusions about cities causing gangs. Cities don't cause or breed gangs. They just facilitate a high concentration of people so that gangs can easily do the crimes they want to do. Besides, many of today's worst gangs originated in prisons, not the city streets. Other gangs came in with migrants. Still, some have been around long enough to move from the urban to rural areas.
For the most part, gang membership is an urban lifestyle of young men, although female gang membership at a lower level of participation is common. Although White gangs exist, gang membership is predominantly African American, Hispanic, and other race related.
The burden of managing gangs falls mainly on law enforcement officials who curb or eliminate gang problems in the community. These curbing efforts become more complicated when local elected officials deem it unprofitable to acknowledge a gang presence in their community (this in spite of gang tagging which is apparent to all in the community). Gang members recruit and migrate to other communities. Fundamentally, gang activities are related to illegal money-making activities-the same is true for organized and white-collar crime, but varies in sophistication of methods and violence used. Most gangs, organized criminals, and white-collar criminals follow this principle, "murder for profit." Any degree of violent means is justified that leads toward the illegal profit-making ends. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.18%3A_Urbanization.txt |
What Are Collective Behaviors?
Imagine a football game where the teams never huddled before each play. That’s the way things were in college football until a bright Gallaudet quarterback noticed that the other teams were trying to spy on their sign language signals. Thus, in the late 1800s the circular football huddle was born (read Gallaudet on Wikipedia, 2008). Gallaudet is a national historic treasure in the culture and development of education for the Deaf and in progress toward the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gallaudet University began as a federal effort to support the development and education of Deaf persons. It has progressed and grown in many ways as a subculture group that coexisted within, but not always a part of the mainstream culture. There have been some fascinating collective behaviors transpire at Gallaudet which can help you to better understand how and why large numbers of people accomplish their goals in society.
In 1988, Gallaudet experienced a Deaf civil rights process that forever shaped the campus culture and the self-identity of its student body and the Deaf throughout the country. When another president, in a long string of hearing presidents was appointed by the mostly hearing Board of Trustees, the campus collectively expressed their discontent in what eventually came to be known as the Deaf President Now Movement. The outcome was the eventual appointment of a deaf president and the expectation of consideration of the deaf community’s interest in their own self-governance
In 2005-6, a new President, Dr. Jane K. Fernandez was appointed president. Fernandez was born Deaf. She was born to a deaf mother and hearing father. Most deaf children are born to hearing parents and unless the parents exert tremendous effort to start them out very early in ASL, most grow up as Fernandez did—learning ASL later in their childhoods. As a potential president, she had extensive experience in deaf education and in the leadership of Gallaudet University.
The protest began with the Black Student Association on campus when another presidential candidate who was black was eliminated from consideration. The protest grew as more and more students and faculty began to oppose her appointment. Eventually the faculty voted no confidence and the students shut down the campus. Fernandez stepped down. She refused to take it personally and, instead, attributed it to cultural issues and growing pains. One side said she was opposed because she wanted Gallaudet to enhance its academic rigor. Another side said she was opposed for not being in touch with the real needs of the Deaf campus. I have interviewed former faculty and students from Gallaudet. I have observed that each one has a strikingly different view of what transpired. But, can we study it as outsiders using a sociological analysis and at least come to understand some of the collective behaviors that took place on campus in an objective way? Yes.
One former professor at Gallaudet, Margaret Weigers Vitullo, wrote an article in the American Sociological Association’s Footnotes about the sociological definition of trust that was at the heart of Deaf culture not just at Gallaudet, but throughout the United States (See “Protest and Trust at Gallaudet University” 2006 found at http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mar07/fn7.html I took the article from the Internet on 21 Oct., 2008). Vitullo argued that the issue makes sense when you understand two types of trusts experienced within groups: Calculative Trust is trust based on performance and competence (instrumental relationships) and Normative Trust is trust based on a sense of belonging and feelings (families and communities).
Calculative is more common in modern societies while normative is more common in small traditional societies—Gallaudet’s student body and faculty were more traditional and normative and President Fernandez more modern and calculative. In essence the collective protests created solidarity among students and faculty, but many educators are concerned about the overall outcome of the protest. Among the culture of higher educators a feeling of belonging is not so important. Educators are focused on instrumental accomplishments. They want test scores, graduation rates, and GPA’s. So educators and their task-driven cultural points of view felt threatened by the solidarity that pushed Fernandez out. This explains in part why the accrediting agency that provides Gallaudet with its credentials placed Gallaudet on probation for a few months, but had to rescind that placement because of weak grounds.
The students, faculty, and interpreters who place much more cultural emphasis on unity and taking charge of the destiny of their university perceived themselves as victims (again) of a non-deaf culture. The Deaf Culture is the culture of those who were born deaf, raised using ASL to communicate, and/or educated as adults to serve as interpreters for the Native Deaf. One crucial component of the Deaf Culture is the core belief that “Deaf” is spelled with a big “D” and disability is spelled with a small one (Deaf is not a disability, rather a unique and co-existing ethnic sub-culture).
In the case of Gallaudet as with the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Suffrage Movement, and many other collective behaviors, sociology opens a world of understanding about why and how people behave collectively to accomplish their goals and interact together in large numbers. Collective Behaviors are unusual or non-routine behaviors that large numbers of people participate in. There are a variety of types of collective behaviors.
A Mass is a large number of people oriented toward a set of shared symbols or social objects (media). The NFL’s Super Bowl draws an enormous mass of viewers in the US and the world—over 130 million in the US alone according to www.NFL.com . The annual World Cup of Soccer (Known as Football outside the US) tends to draw over 1 billion each year according to www.FIFA.com. That’s a tremendous number of people in a mass of fans and viewers worldwide.
Crowds are large numbers of people in the same space at the same time. As mentioned above they are not always groups who share a common identity, have roles, and meet together often. Crowds are more often many people in the same place at the same time doing about the same thing (aggregates). My wife and I stayed in Vancouver, British Columbia for the Pacific Sociological Association’s National Conference. While there a world-class marathon was run with thousands of participants. We video-taped the beginning of the race from our 15th floor window of the hotel. When you watch it think about how Sociologists try to get a metaphorically similar view by studying masses and crowds. This gives a uniquely powerful perspective when studying society.
The Why and How of Crowd Behaviors
There have been a number of core research studies on how and why crowds behave as they do. Keep in mind that a crowd at a bus stop that gets on the bus does not necessarily qualify as having participated in collective behavior because of the brevity of their time together and the purpose in which they share the same public space. A crowd coming together to celebrate a State College’s transition to a University does participate in collective behavior (See UVU case below).
Gustav Le Bon (1841-1931) was a French Social Psychologist who studied crowds in his work, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.” Le Bon believed that when a crowd came together their individual conscious merges into one large collective conscious. Le Bon’s Contagion Theory claimed that in a crowd people get caught up in the collective mind of the crowd and evade personal responsibility for their actions. Though his idea proved not to be true, it helped other social scientist study the ways in which crowds and the people who comprise them are motivated to act.
Another more viable argument, Convergence Theory, proved to be a better explanation of crowd behavior. The Convergence Theory claims that motivations are not born in the crowd but develop in individuals who carry them to the crowd. The crowd may provide an outlet for relieving their frustration. By themselves, it would be difficult to act out. Together in the group it becomes much easier with other like-minded people. In other words angry people who feel victimized by a racial injustice might come together (say the KKK or Nation of Islam) and collectively their emotions would contribute to collective actions that probably would not occur if such people were simply by themselves.
Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian (1993) wrote a book about crowd behavior (See Collective Behavior 4th edition Prentice Hall). The Emergent Norm Theory claims that as crowds form and people interact, new norms develop in the crowd and facilitate certain actions. In other words events and emotions develop within the crowd while they are together. For example (and I know this is extremely unusual), In Bolivia a drunk man was discovered beating a woman on a neighborhood street. A few men came and stopped him and restrained him until the police arrived. Word spread to the adult son of the beating victim and he and his friends came to defend her honor. They overpowered the original bystanders and began beating the drunk man. Yes, it gets more complicated. The drunk man’s family heard about the new beating of the drunk and an all out mob-on-mob brawl ensued. The police arrived and rescued the drunk (this was on www.Youtube.com).
To understand crowds and how they function you need to think about them in terms of: how they came to be a crowd; how they compare or contrast to other crowds; and fundamentally what the crowd did or did not do together. Consider a more normal circumstance of a crowd at Utah Valley University. I started here as a professor in 1993 when we were Utah Valley Community College and had only 10,000 students. We became Utah Valley State College in the 1990s then became Utah Valley University in 2008 with about 26,000+ students. By the time I retire in 2022 there should be about 35,000 students enrolled here (UVU Factbook, 2007). On July 1st, 2008 a huge crowd gathered for the formal dedication ceremony and ribbon cutting. Hundreds of people came to see state and national dignitaries and local personalities where a series of 2 minutes speeches resonated throughout the campus (see photo below).
This crowd came together to celebrate a new era of campus and community connection. It was a Conventional Crowd is a crowd that gathers for a typical event that is more routine in nature (IE: Moody Blues concert, Super Bowl Game, or Midsummer’s Night Dream play). An Expressive Crowd is a crowd gathered to express an emotion (IE: Woodstock; the Million Man March; or the 9-11 Memorial Services). Solidaristic Crowds are crowds that gather as an act of social unity (IE: Breast Cancer awareness events). All three of these types of crowds are safe, non-violent, and mostly predictable in terms of what they accomplish.
Acting Crowds are crowds which are emotionally charged against an event or goal. Some become mobs, but not all of them. This might happen when a large number of fans exit an arena after their team won or lost. When they see police arresting another fan their emotions become more anger-centered and they collectively move against the police. The fact that the other fan may have been robbing someone at knife point may or may not matter if the others perceive an injustice or overbearing police action. Generally speaking, Acting Crowds are more dangerous that other crowds.
Many crowds have evolved into Riots, or large numbers of people who act violently in protest against some authority or action of others (typically governmental or corporate authority). Fans whose team won or lost, employees laid off from work, neighbors who are angry about a police action, and other scenarios are connected to typical riots. Very few riots are purely protestive in nature. In the 1991 Los Angeles Riots they became commodity riots, where the original issue is forgotten as locals loot businesses and stores for commodities. Commodity riots are the norm since about the 1960s in the US. Prior to that, property damage and violence against police were the norm.
The Why and How of Movements
On September 11, 2001 governmental, corporate, and private organizations closed their doors and put their very best security at protecting their people and property. Days later we realized that the real threat was to New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania only. Panic occurs when crowds or masses react suddenly to perceived entrapment, exclusion, or danger. Panics can impacts masses and crowds.
In the 9-11 terroristic attack the panic may have saved lives and property had the terroristic threats been broader than they really were. In the Stock Market, panics damage profits and put the economy in peril. It doesn’t matter if the threat is real or imagined (see Thomas Theorem). When something catches on for a short season of intense interest, we call it a fad. A Fad is a novel form of behavior that catches on in popularity but later fades. The Lance Armstrong forever strong wrist band was an example of a popular fad that came and went to some degree of popularity.
On a larger scale and with more social impact, is the phenomenon of a social movement. Social Movements are intentional efforts by groups in a society to create new institutions or reform existing ones. Social movements are much more organized and goal driven than crowds' fad behaviors. They typically organize to promote or resist change at some level of society. They also tend to have the same intensity of organizational leadership that might be found in a government or business organization.
Messianic Movements seek to bring about social change with the promise of miraculous intervention. Almost always these movements are led by a rather charismatic leader and followed by people inclined to need or want to be a part of something exceptional in their lives. Charisma means having an outstanding personality that magnetically attracts others to you. In recent years there have been three very similar messianic movements whose charismatic leaders were born and raised in the US, but were not very successful in their individual lives and ended up leading large numbers of people to their mortal demise (See Jones, Koresh, and Applewhite below).
Figure 1. A Comparison of Jones, Koresh, and Applewhite Messianic Movements
© 2009 Developed by Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D
Although the details vary, these movements are very similar in terms of what was accomplished and in terms of how their end was voluntarily self-destructive. Many people feel threatened by social change, especially when their definition of what keeps society together, of what makes a “good” society, or what God would be happy or unhappy with in our own society leads them to distrust the collective direction of their main stream society.
In the three cases listed above, Jimmy Jones and the People’s Temple, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and Marshal Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate groups all had similar social processes at play, even though there was no apparent connection between leaders of one group and the others (Google “Cults that end in suicide” to read about these cults all over the world). Eventually the leaders, who have enough leadership skills to get the group together and manage them, but not enough leadership skills to negotiate their interactions with social organizations outside of their compounds, run out of options and are content with suicide and murder.
When threatened, the leaders call for more isolation. When members question their authority they are exiled or co-opted. Cooptation is the absorption of new (threatening) ideas and people into the policy making structure. In some cases questioning members are sent away. In other cases they are recruited into the leadership structure. David Koresh drifted into the already existent Branch Davidian cult and posed a threat to Rodens (original founder family). Koresh and others violently wrestled leadership from the Rodens (he common law married Lois Roden in her 77th year). With the Rodens gone, Koresh claimed polygamy, and sexual relations only between females and himself. Koresh did not respect police authority but used it to obtain his own goals of power and control. Many members who still believed in the movement defected before the confrontation murder suicide (Google Koresh and Branch Davidian for much more detail).
There are other types of movements that can be classified in terms of their function, similarities, or differences. A Revolutionary Movement seeks to overthrow existing institutions and class systems while replacing them with new ones. The United States, French, Mexican and other national revolutions fall under this category. A Reformist Movement seeks partial changes in only a few institutions on behalf of interest groups. In the US the feminist, children’s rights, and animal protection movements are indicative of this type movement. Most efforts work within existing political channels.
A Conservative Movement seeks to uphold the values and institutions of society and generally resist attempts to alter them. The Conservative Right movement in the US falls under this category. A Reactionary Movement seeks to return the institutions and values of the past by doing away with existing ones. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of reactionary movement. An Expressive Movement seeks to allow for expression of personal concerns and beliefs. Punk, Goths, and Emos are examples of this type.
Let’s briefly discuss a few sociological theories that support the study of social movements. The Deprivation Theory claims that people feel relatively deprived in comparison to some other group or institution and use the social movement to equalize things. Movements are more supported when members feel that compared to others they are worse off and a balance needs to be struck. The Structural-Strain Theory claims that social problems/strains on the current social structure combined with discontent lead to movements. Such is the case with the spread of American liberal values across the world via satellite TV. Many conservative cultures world-wide (Muslim, Asian, and others) find the US and other Western nations repulsive in their values on women’s roles, sexuality, and crime. This unites many people in many diverse societies to become like-minded in their values.
The Resource Mobilization Theory maintains that a social movement succeeds or fails based on people's ability to gather and organize resources. The environmental movement has made tremendous collective progress because of the vast numbers of key educational, governmental, and social leaders who bring resources to bear on social change.
Given the discussion above, where would sociologists place terrorism on the spectrum of types of social movements? Let’s define it first. Terrorism is the use of murder and mayhem to create a state of fear which can be used to gain political, religious, or ideological advantage. Terrorists can be classified as political, religious, and or cultural (many overlap in terms of functions and goals). At its core, terrorism follows a basic strategy:
1. Scare average people and force their compliance with desired goals of the terrorist group
2. Force organized governments to overreact to terrorists in trying to prevent future violence and thereby create sympathy among average people
3. Direct the attention of people and government to the terrorists’ issues
4. Obtain the organizational goals of the terrorist group
Terrorism works, and there appears to be an unending supply of people willing to support terrorism for a “noble cause,” because they are criminal minded to begin with or are somewhat insane enough to forfeit their lives. Laird Wilcox wrote a paper in 1988 called, “What Is Political Extremism?” (Google title). In it he discusses some of the characteristics of people inclined to participate in or support terrorism among other extreme politics. Wilcox argues that terrorist take the moral high ground, enjoy the power, appear to be happier when they don’t have to make their own decisions, and find a series of closes family-like relationships among other terrorists.
Israel, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Asian Nations, and even the United States have adopted the basic anti-terrorism doctrine of moderate reactions to terrorism; no negotiation with terrorists; use covert deception and detection combined with lethal militaristic action; and unfortunately suppression of civil rights for its citizens. In this regard terrorism always wins if the economy, day-to-day lives, and safety of a society is out of balance. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.19%3A_Collective_Behaviors.txt |
Rape is not the same as sex
Rape is violence, motivated by men with power, anger, selfishness, and sadistic issues. Rape is dangerous and destructive and more likely to happen in the United States than in most other countries of the world. There are 195 countries in the world today. The US typically is among the worst in terms of rape (yes, that means that most of the world’s countries are safer for women than the US). Consecutive studies performed by the United Nations Surveys on crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems confirm that South Africa is the most dangerous, crime-ridden nation on the planet in all crimes including rape (see http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-a...e-Systems.html).
The FBI typically keeps statistics on violent crimes committed and reported to local police (unreported crimes cannot be counted in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports). It summarizes all the local and state crimes into reports made available on various government Websites. From these data, the Bureau of Justice Statistics provides specific rape rates per 100,000 for the years 1960 to 2006 (See Figure 1 below). Alaska is by far the most dangerous state as far as rape rates are concerned and West Virginia is an example of one of the safest.
Figure 1: Reported Rapes per 100,000 Population in United States, Alaska (Worst State Rate), and West Virginia (Safest State Rate), Years 1960-2006*
*Retrieved on 13 June, 2008 From bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonl...byState.cfmThe United states in general (being in the worst 5 percent of all the world’s countries) has seen a slight decline in rape rates since the early 1990s, but the danger and risks to the average woman is unacceptably too high. It is estimated that 1 in 6 US women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes and college-aged women are 4 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than other US women (see http://www.rainn.org/statistics ). The Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, an online Web page and the largest US’s anti-sexual assault organization provides tremendous insight into rape. They also provide support for those impacted by rape (1-800-656-HOPE and an online hotline at http://www.rainn.org ). Their definition of rape and sexual assault is so concise that the US Office on Violence against Women quotes them:
Sexual assault can be defined as any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient of the unwanted sexual activity. Falling under the definition of sexual assault is sexual activity such as forced sexual intercourse, sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape. Some more specific examples of sexual assault include:
1. Unwanted vaginal, anal, or oral penetration with any object
2. Forcing an individual to perform or receive oral sex
3. Forcing an individual to masturbate, or to masturbate someone else
4. Forcing an individual to look at sexually explicit material or pose for sexually explicit pictures
5. Touching, fondling, kissing, and any other unwanted sexual contact with an individual's body
6. Exposure and/or flashing of sexual body parts
In general, state law assumes that a person does not consent to sexual activity if he or she is forced, threatened, unconscious, drugged, a minor, developmentally disabled, chronically mentally ill, or believe they are undergoing a medical procedure.
Perpetrators of sexual assault can be strangers, friends, acquaintances, or family members. Often, perpetrators commit sexual assault by way of violence, threats, coercion, manipulation, pressure, or tricks. In extreme cases, sexual assault may involve the use of force which may include, but is not limited to:
1. Physical violence
2. Use or display of a weapon
3. Immobilization of victim
More often, however, sexual assault involves psychological coercion and taking advantage of an individual who is incapacitated or under duress and, therefore, is incapable of making a decision on his or her own (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) Retrieved 13 June, 2008 from http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/sexassault.htm).
The Personal and Larger Social Levels of Rape’s Impact on Society
In this discussion we will use C. Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination and study rape from both the personal and larger sociological levels. Because of the way I context it here, this section may sound much like an advice column with specific suggestions and strategies for you to consider. Trust me, many research-based principles guide this discussion and you can place a high degree of confidence in these arguments.
The Personal Level: Whose Fault Is It?
The fault lies squarely on the rapist and his personal choices. Rape, by the definition given above is, not consensual. Many throughout the history of the world have defined rape as a form of sex. Look at this statement carefully:
Rape ≠ Sex
Rape has no consent. Sex has mutual consent. Typically, force or threats are used to coerce compliance. I often have students ask me, “what if she agrees at night, then changes her mind in the morning and says she was raped?” My response is that in this case mutual consent occurred and a lie was told afterward. I then ask the student why he or she asked this hypothetical question (I assume they have a hard time believing the victim’s claim). Often they’ve heard that “almost” all rape allegations are false. The truth is that about 1 in 10 rape allegations prove to be unfounded (see FBI report, 1996 at www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_97/96CRIME/96crime2.pdf ).
The significant question here is why aren’t rapes reported more often? The Bureau of Justice Statistics does a survey of crime victimization in the US. In it, respondents are asked to report if they had been the victims of various crimes. If they were, then they are asked more detailed questions about the crime. With rape, they often find that most rape victims do not report them to the police. These results are reported for 2003 in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Percentage of Violent Crimes that Were Reported to the Police by Victims
Percent Reported
Percent Reported
Percent Reported
To Police, 2002
Robbery 56.9% 35.8% 71.2%
Aggravated assault 59.2% 64.2% 56.6%
Simple assault 44.3% 44.9% 42.7%
Rape/sexual assault 41.4% 35.8% 53.7%
Retrieved on 13 June 2008 from: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cv06.pdf and
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cv02.pdf and http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cv04.pdf
So, what might you say if you hear from someone that they were raped? At the personal level, with your friends and family members who might or ever have been raped, there is one crucial question you must ask, “How are you doing now?” Whatever it takes, avoid the common mistake of asking, “What were you doing when this happened?” For many of us, we feel that our own safety is threatened when we ourselves know the victim and we often ask “what happened?” in an attempt to protect ourselves in the future. The point is to ask how a rape survivor is doing now, because it keeps them in the now. Their answer to how they are doing might provide insight into how you might be of support of them. The question of what happened puts them emotionally back in the time and place of the attack and reopens the wound again.
The Oil and Water Paradigm
I’ve taught a paradigm for years to my students which has helped them to distinguish the two core issues in the case of rape: first, we live in a dangerous world which requires women to be vigilant in defending and protecting themselves; and second, it is never the victim’s fault. I call this the “Oil and Water Paradigm.” In Figures: 2, 3, and 4 below, you see two exclusive and unmixable sides of the same issue. Here’s the metaphor in a nutshell; no matter how hard you try, the fundamental structure of oil and water make them impossible to ever mix. Think of your bottle of Italian salad dressing. You shake it vigorously and have to quickly pour it on your salad before it separates again. Oil repels water. In this paradigm, I use oil and water as metaphors for understanding these ideas that should not be mixed (because they really don’t mix).
In Figure 2, you see the self-defense component of the dangerous society we live in today. Women have to protect themselves from attacks. True, most men would never attack a woman. But, women can’t discern which men are safe and which are not, simply because rapists are very predatory and deceptive. Don’t get me wrong women are quite capable of living under these dangerous circumstances, but morally shouldn’t have to. I heard a friend of mine say, “It’s just sad that one-half of the population (women) has to live in fear of the other half (men), because some of the other half might attack them.” In the US, about 3 out of 4 rape victims knew their assailant before the attack.
Women spend time, money, resources, and emotional energy being vigilant against a potential attack. The burden of protection falls mostly on them and their close friends and family. My students carry their keys so they can use them as weapons, carry pepper mace, take Karate, travel only with friends at night, and some even have a safety plan for their apartment. But, you have to know, there is no single preventative measure that can universally prevent rape. I interviewed a former FBI profiler, Greg Cooper. When I interviewed him he indicated that the FBI puts all the blame for the rape on the perpetrator, not the victim.
“Often times rape victims blame themselves, trying to figure out what exactly they did to cause the attack. From a law enforcement point of view, victims have no responsibility. There is nothing that the FBI can tell a woman to wear, to do, or to say that will decrease her likelihood of being attacked. The perpetrator bears all the blame and it’s him that we focus on. (From documentary called “Oil and Water: The Truth About Rape” by Hammond available at Insight Media at http://www.insight-media.com/IMHome.asp ).
Women know from their childhood that certain men can be dangerous and that they have to become diligent in protecting themselves. In Figure 3 you see the clear and simple truth that rape is never a victim’s fault (remember that sex has consent rape does not). There is not one case, ever, where a rape victim is at fault. I’ve heard many argue with me on that point. They say, “what if she dressed in sexy clothes, went into the bar looking for some action, invited him up to her place, agreed to go on the date…” This type of thinking seeks to shake the oil and water together by erasing that line that separates them (oil and water don’t mix, no matter how hard you shake the Italian dressing, it eventually separates back into oil and water). If we ask them to explain the details, then carelessly say something like, “why’d you go on a date with him anyway?” then we’ve just blamed the victim.
Figure 4 shows both the ideas in the same diagram. It’s like the woman standing on the sidewalk and a man drives up on the sidewalk and runs her over. And an eye witness rushes to her aid and says, “Why were you standing on that sidewalk when you knew a truck could run you over? Were you trying to get attacked…”
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.Think about what a rape victim has been through: bruises, cuts, gun & stab wounds, STDs, and pregnancies, internal injuries, chronic pain, persistent headaches, facial pain, sleep disorders, depression, PTSD, attachment problems, trust challenges, flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks, and difficulty turning to closest support system (family, Friends, others). On www.rainn.org one rape survivor compared her attack to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. She explained that just like we often refer to the pre 9-11 era of this country, she refers to the pre-rape era of her life. “The party was over, my life utterly and permanently altered. In an instant I fell from grace, moving through feelings of invincibility to vulnerability.”
Not only do rapists hurt their victims, they often blame them verbally before they leave. This makes recovery even more difficult since most rape victims already blame themselves (see Ullman et al 2007 about the construct of self-blame and a model for assisting survivors in their recovery at http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?v...%40sessionmgr2 and in Murnen, et al. 1989 a study of college student established that most victims blamed themselves at http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?v...0sessionmgr108 ).
Yes, it is true that most victims erase the line and blame themselves. “I should have…” is the most common lamentation. Hind sight gets confounded by grief and recovery. Yet, the last thing a rape victim needs is for you or anyone else in their support network to add to that grief by adding your intentional or unintentional blame. Keep oil and water apart. Defense attorneys often blame victims in the courtroom, media reports often imply or convey to blame to victims; and since rape victim’s family and friends grieve too, they often blame self and the victims. You wouldn’t slap a mugging victim for walking down the street alone. They’ve already been through enough. But sometimes we believe that only good things happen to good people (Google “Just World Syndrome” for more insight to this myth). Violence happens to both morally good and bad people. It always has.
Helping Survivors To Avoid Blaming Themselves
Consider the comments made by two rape victims I personally interviewed (their names have been changed to protect their privacy). Nella had been raped in Colorado five years prior to our interview. The rapist trapped her and assaulted her over the course of three hours. Nella escaped and ran to get help from a friend. They called the police. The police put out an APB on the assailant’s car and arrested him within the hour while he casually shopped for groceries in the local supermarket.
Nella told me that during the trial her attacker and his attorney turned the entire attack back against her. “I sat stunned on the witness stand,” Nella explained. “trying to figure out why I had to defend myself when I was the one who was so brutally attacked.” “I feel peace right now, but I live in constant fear that when he gets out, he’ll somehow find me. Anyway, he threatened my life while he attacked me, saying if I went to police he’d find me and kill me.” Nella explained through tear filled eyes. “I went to police anyway.” Nella, like many other rape victims was emotionally victimized again during the trial. Nella’s attacker was sent to prison and is already out on parole.
Jana’s assailant was a coworker. He asked her out to dinner and attacked her in a secluded area near the restaurant. Afterwards, he showed no remorse, no guilt, not even an acknowledgment that he’d just done something terrible to her.
“He was such a nice man to me until we were alone.” Jana reported. “Then his countenance change. I saw evil in his eyes, but couldn’t get away because he had planned the entire thing in advance.” Jana shook her head as she gently held the locket hanging on the chain around her neck. “This is a picture of my son.” She opened the locket. “He was the only good thing that came from the whole experience.”
Jana reported the rape to police. The rapist served time in jail and was under suspicion for other rapes in the area but nothing ever came of that. The rapist is out of prison now. Jana moved and tries to move on with her life; much like the countless other survivors throughout the state and country are forced to do.
In summary, on the personal level you can be a great asset to a survivor of rape. You might find yourself someday on a jury where other jurors blame her for not protecting herself. Look at Figure 5 and explain to them why the perpetrator is at fault.
Larger Social Explanations
At the larger social level rape can be understood through scientific studies, analysis of crime data, and interviews with rapists. We can understand trends about rapists and why they do what they do. We can also understand national social facts that can indicate how best to handle the problem from every level of social intervention. What are some of the possible explanations for high rape rates in the United States? A few trends emerge from my studies:
-An increase in rape prevention programs and rape crisis centers so that, unlike in the past, where a rape victim had a very difficult time in reporting rape, we now have a structure in place where victims can go for assistance. This may indicate that rape happened more in the past, but was reported less because of the absence of a legitimate place to go report it and get help.
-An increase in substance use among perpetrators and victims which is highly correlated with decreased inhibitions by men who might not otherwise act violently toward women.
-1960s, 1970’s, and 1980’s shift from abstinence to sexual promiscuity where men are more likely to feel entitled to whatever sexual desire they have. This may have also coincided with male value shifts in expectations of self, women, and sexual predation (see Figure 6 below).
Many men in our day have abdicated the protector, nurturer, and community-minded roles common among men in the past. Rapists have specifically become scam artists where the confidence scam of establishing trust among women then violating that trust has become all too common. Many rapists report feeling victimized when they are arrested and held accountable (over 6 out of 10 US rapist are not held accountable in terms of prison or guilty verdicts). Let me restate this crucial fact, rapists are the core of the problem (See Figure 7).
Changed Values Among Men
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.As mentioned before, I interviewed Greg M. Cooper, a former FBI profiler. To the FBI, rape is not about sex. It is about power, domination, anger, and the ability to control and destroy another person’s life. A rapist expresses his need for power, domination, and anger in a sexual way. I must say this confuses many students. They ask, “how can rape not be sexual if the vagina and penis and other sexual parts of the body are involved?” My answer follows the statement made by a nun who was teaching a group of survivors.
“A man can use his hand with a number of different motivations. He could caress the hair of his loved one, massage a back, or simply hold another-motivated by love and concern. He could also strangle, beat, and otherwise inflict pain upon another. It’s not that the hand is a body part exclusively designed for nurturance or violence—it’s the motivation behind how the hand is used that makes the hand what it is.”
The same can be said about our body’s sexual parts. In a mutually consenting relationship between people of legal age of consent, sexual parts of the body can be used out of a motivation of intimacy. For rapists the sexual parts are used out of power, domination, anger, and control.
Greg Cooper utilized a model with four types of rapists based on their risk of harm to the victim and their level of confidence in their violence. Power-Reassurance Rapists are the most common type of rapist; he uses little to no violence; has a very weak sense of self and of lacking “manliness;” and rape is his outlet of power, domination, anger, and control (see Figure 8). This rapist is inadequate in general and rapes in a futile attempt to feel adequate. The Power-Assertive Rapist has a very low self-concept; he attempts to reassure himself of his manhood; and uses very little force or violence. His deep-seated shame drives him to offend often and not feel long-term satisfaction from the assaults.
© 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D. (special Thanks to Greg M. Cooper, FBI, Retired)The next two types of rapists are more dangerous. They tend to have a better self-image and will use violence. The Anger-Retaliatory Rapist has plenty of self-confidence (perhaps to the point of too much); he tends to demean, degrade, humiliate, and punish his victim for things she did not do (for example his bad day at work might be taken out on her); and he tends to be brutal, blitzing his victims so that they offer little resistance. This rapist is making the victim pay for things gone bad in his own life.
The Anger-Excitation Rapist is the least common type, yet the most evil; he will torture, kidnap, and even kill his victim out of pleasure-seeking at the cost of another’s pain; he is sadistic and predatory; and he uses his intelligence to plot and prey upon unsuspecting victims. Greg Cooper also referred to him as “evil” and “the dark side of humanity.”
How can a man ascribe to such low values toward another individual? I borrow my answer from a Ugandan born man who lived in South Africa for a decade. David Ssjeinja said, in our interview about the enormously high rape rates in South Africa, that:
“Real men don’t rape. Raping is really against the character of a good man and all that is necessary for good behavior in a civilized world.”
Perhaps this will be the legacy of the first decade of the new millennium, where social reform programs focus on efforts to transform values of men toward a more respectful view of women. Such an organization can be found today online, www.mencanstoprape.org/ . Men Can Stop Rape is an organization that allies male youths to women in preventing rape and other acts of violence toward women. One hopes that some of society’s potential rapists get exposure to such a program, experience a shift in values toward respecting women, and ultimately lower the incidence of rape in Utah and the United States.
Useful Internet Resources About Rape and Rape Prevention
www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-nforciblerape04.html
www.Rainn.org www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html www.search.utah.gov/retina/public/suggest.do?title=Prevalence%2C+Incidence%2C+and+Consequences+of+Violen...&id=&links=%5BRAPE%5D&reference=http%3A%2F%2Fhealth.utah.gov%2Fvipp%2Fpdf%2Fviolenceagainstwomensurvey.pdf www.mencanstoprape.com www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/172837.htm www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/ipvfacts.htm | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.20%3A_Rape_and_Sexual_Assault.txt |
Introduction
Nationally, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) administers a myriad of complex health services at 152 VA Medical Center's. Some of these services are justice-related services and approaches that involve the cooperation and partnership of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and law enforcement. These services are provided at VA Medical Center's to facilitate reentry, support and advocacy services for incarcerated Veterans in state, county jail, community corrections and those released but still involved in the CJS. This reflects a paradigm shift within the VA, Court Systems, corrections and law enforcement in targeting how Veteran offenders are identified, afforded treatment, reenter and adjust to society. VA's are continuing to develop re-entry initiatives, justice coordinators and increased role within the Veteran's Court trend. This work enhances and does not replace the duties of the CJS in the transition of veteran prisoners to a productive life in the community and ensuring that these veterans receive timely services from VA to ensure a successful transition back to the community. Post-release, the VA provides the necessary services for eligible Veterans, other than what was provided in the institution.
Impact
In 2008, a study by the RAND Corporation found that about 1/5, 300,000 of the more than 1.6 million U.S. troops, witnessed combat action and reported symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression. Many of those veterans did not seek treatment for their problems, the study found. The ongoing OIF/OEF wars have yielded many veterans that return from war with incidences of substance abuse, partner relational domestic violence, PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), employment, depression, anxiety, suicide, suicidal ideations, redeployment and related issues.
Many veterans encounter the CJS post-deployment or post-discharge and need a treatment alternative vs. incarceration. Some Veterans will not be afforded an alternative, like diversion, based upon the severity of their crime (e.g. murder, sex offender, rape, arson, etc). Veterans in this country appear to be overrepresented when it comes to psycho-social problems like, substance abuse, driving under the influence (DUI), higher rates of unemployment, assaults, intimate partner violence (IPV), family conflicts, homelessness episodes, suicides, PTSD and other problems. Veterans as a group are not overrepresented in the corrections system, but may have special treatment needs (e.g. PTSD, TBI, etc) not provided by the institution. Tragically, some studies report that Veterans in general are twice as likely to commit suicide. Another study (Wortzel, 2009) also suggests that veterans in jail and prisons face an increased risk of suicide. Most Veterans have had more violent offenses, are usually first time offenders and honorably discharged (Noonan, 2004). Recent 2009 US Department of Labor (DOL) unemployment statistics revealed that veterans have a higher unemployment rate than non-veterans. The aggregate of their problems, studies and statistics profile the timeliness and the urgency of Veterans Treatment Courts, diversion programs and enhanced VA-CJS interface, as we face epidemic proportions. The magnitude of this population and their criminogenic needs has not been established. The most recent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Survey of Inmates in local jails (2002) data indicates that 9.3% of people incarcerated in jails are Veterans. The controlling offense for 70% of these Veterans was a non-violent crime, and 45% had served two or more state prison sentences. At minimum, 90,000 of the 9 million unique inmates annually released from U.S. jails are Veterans. A large majority, 82% are eligible for VA services, having been discharged either under honorable (65%) or general with honorable (17%) conditions. BJS reported in 2006 that 60% of all U.S. jail inmates had a mental health problem. As of 2005, only one in six jail inmates with a mental health diagnosis had received mental health treatment since incarceration. The 2002 BJS Jail Survey also found that 65 % had screened positive for either an alcohol or drug dependency problem. Twenty-nine % had been diagnosed with at least one of five psychiatric disorders (depressive, bipolar, psychotic, PTSD, or anxiety disorder). One in five (18%) Veterans were homeless in the year prior to the current incarceration. Statistics on the jail and prison inmate populations suggest significant health risk for Veterans released from jail. The war's unpopularity and the prospect of a draft have resulted in enlistment standards being relaxed over the past few years to allow recruitment of those with criminal records. Commonly referred to as the moral waiver process, the Army and Marines did provide waivers for eligible recruits for misdemeanors and some felony offenses. Most of these recruit became OEF or OIF Veterans. Military applicants with no criminal convictions, fines, or periods of restraint are morally eligible for enlistment. However, the voluntary disclosure, or recruiter discovery, of any form of police/criminal involvement by an applicant may require waiver of the moral disqualification. It's important to note here that federal law requires applicants to divulge all criminal history on recruiting applications, including expunged, sealed, or juvenile records. Additionally, in most states, such records are accessible to military investigators, regardless of what you have heard to the contrary. The process begins with an interview by the recruiter, asking the applicant about any records of arrest, charges, juvenile court adjudications, traffic violations, probation periods, dismissed or pending charges or convictions, including those which have been expunged or sealed. A confounding service variable that needs consideration is the Veteran not eligible for VA services and/or having an Other Than Honorable (OTH) or Bad Conduct Discharge (BCD). These Veterans are typically provided an application for military discharge upgrade and provided guidance and support with the process. Although rare, some Veterans with an OTH or BCD are eligible for VA services if they have a service connected disability. They can only be seen for their disability. Veterans with UHC, OTH and BCD discharges have had judicial and court offenses subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The UCMJ provides four methods of disposing of cases involving servicemen's offenses: general, special, and summary courts-martial, and disciplinary punishment pursuant to Article 15 of the UCMJ. General courts-martial and special courts-martial, which may impose substantial penalties, resemble judicial proceedings, nearly always presided over by lawyer judges, with lawyer counsel for both sides. Historically, reports of World War II, Korean, Vietnam and post-Vietnam era Veterans with histories of civilian or military trauma and service-related injuries suggest an association between trauma and subsequent contact with the CJS. Thus, an association for some Veterans of the Persian Gulf War (PGW). For the majority of Veterans this appears a matter of choice and decision-making to break the law. PTSD symptoms can indirectly lead to criminal behavior (for example, domestic violence, substance abuse, prescription drug abuse, hyper-vigilance, road rage, etc.) or a traumatic incident to a specific crime. These justice-related services are more commonly provided by VA social workers through the following programs: Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO), Health Care for Reentry Veterans (HCRV) and Veterans Treatment Courts (VTC). First, the VJO is an initiative for homeless prevention and avoids the unnecessary criminalization of mental illness and extended incarceration among Veterans by ensuring that eligible justice-involved Veterans have timely access to VA mental health and substance abuse services when clinically indicated, and other VA services and benefits as appropriate. Each VA medical center has been asked to designate a facility-based Veterans' Justice Outreach Specialist, responsible for direct outreach, assessment, and case management for justice-involved Veterans in local courts and jails, and liaison with local justice system partners. VJO services include:
1. Outreach and pre-release assessments services for Veterans in county jails, probation and pre-trial diversion where applicable*.
2. Referrals and linkages to medical, psychiatric, and social services, including employment services upon release
3. Short term case management assistance upon release
*Note: There are DUI programs at the Philadelphia, PA; Northern Florida/Southern Georgia; Colorado VA's; Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) programs at the Tampa, FL, Indianapolis, IN and Buffalo VA's; Gambling Addiction program, Brecksville, OH.
Second, HCRV is designed to address the community re-entry needs of incarcerated Veterans. The goals are to prevent homelessness, reduce the impact of medical, psychiatric, and substance abuse problems upon community re-adjustment, and decrease the likelihood of re-incarceration for those leaving prison. HCRV services include:
1. Outreach and pre-release assessments services for Veterans in state and federal prison
2. Referrals and linkages to medical, psychiatric, and social services, including employment services upon release
3. Short term case management assistance upon release
The VA cannot provide medical services that are part of care to be provided by correctional institutions and only provide outreach and pre-release assessment. Also, the VA cannot provide medications while a Veteran is incarcerated.
Reentry Outreach and Diversion in the Greater Cincinnati Area
The Cincinnati approach is unique in that the Veteran is afforded reentry and diversion services. At the Cincinnati VA, the reentry is provided through the Incarcerated Veteran Outreach Program (IVOP) and the Domestic Relations Clinic (DRC) where the staff provides outreach, pre-release assessments to ensure comprehensive service delivery and/or community agencies, assists veteran with parole or probation officer, problem solving and advocating for veteran as appropriate. Also, the IVOP staff also disseminates the Ohio state incarcerated veteran guidebook to reentry staff and re-entering incarcerated veterans. Veterans need to be able to provide feedback about the content, outreach worker, overall usefulness, pre/post knowledge about veteran's benefits and general comments about their reentry needs. In Cincinnati, the IVOP had designed a survey tool for these purposes and obtained 143 responses from incarcerated veterans that afforded further insight into their needs as well as guidebook feedback.
Since 2003, the IVOP has encountered and captured data on the reentry needs of 399 Veterans (refer to tables 1 -4). Of the 399, the contacts were made in the following settings: 42% prison, 45% jail and 13% community corrections. The IVOP has taken the lead role in this collaboration with ODRC, Adult Parole Authority (APA), jails and CJS providers. In addition, the Cincinnati Volunteer of America (VOA) has a VA capital grant for 50 beds specific to veteran's reentry needs. VA and VOA have finalized a housing strategy option for homeless veteran sex offenders separate from the grant. The concept is that homeless veteran sex offenders admitted to the VA would be discharged to VOA under a contract for housing, transitional and sex offender treatment, as clinically indicated.
Objectives for Veteran Reentry & Diversion:
1. Provide seamless and collaborative pre-release planning, assessment and coordination of services.
2. Examine jailed veteran health characteristics, VA enrollment and episodes of homelessness.
Goals for Veteran Reentry & Diversion
1. Optimize their chances for successful community reintegration; reduce recidivism and incidences of homelessness.
2. Interact with agencies on a national, state and local level, working actively for change through social action and community education
3. Identify referral patterns, sources and build coalition support.
4. Improve incarcerated veteran satisfaction and overall functioning.
5. Provide basic to intensive case services and post-release follow-up.
The IVOP provides short-term case management services to assist offenders in acquiring the life skills needed to succeed in the community and become law-abiding citizens with the following three phases:
Phase 1-Pre-release Preparation: Veterans having 6 months or less remaining on their sentence are identified, assessed and prepared to reenter society. Services provided in this phase include outreach, assessment, enrollment, education, mental health and substance abuse treatment and job linkages. Phase 2-Post-Release: Working with veterans immediately following their release from correctional institutions. Services provided in this phase include, as appropriate, education, monitoring, mentoring, life-skills training, job-skills coordination, mental health and substance abuse treatment. Phase 3-Support: Connecting veterans with a network of VA, social services agencies and community-based organizations to provide ongoing services and relationships. Table 1: Demographics, Military Service and Housing Needs (n=399)
Demographics Totals
Enrolled In VA System 47%
Mean Age Age Range Std Deviation 44.6 20-80 9.65
Gender Males Females
98%
2%
Race White Black Hispanic
54%
41% 4%
Education GED High School College Graduate Vocational 16% 61% 17% 1% 4%
Marital Status Married Divorced Separated Never Married Widowed 12% 48% 11% 25% 4%
Non Service Connected (NSC) Service Connected (SC) Injuries 88% 12%
Average Years in a Correctional Setting 5.16
Military Discharge Honorable General Honorable* Other than Honorable** Bad Conduct** 77% 13% 9% 1%
Era of Service Korean Vietnam Post-Vietnam Persian Gulf OEF/OIF .5% 40% 35% 22% 2%
Branch of Service Army Navy Marines Air Force Coast Guard 55% 23% 16% 6% 1%
Combat Non-Combat 19% 81%
Homeless 1x Homeless >1x 74% 50%
SSD/SSI 12.7%
Jobless 57.4%
*UHC - Uniform Code of Military Justice, Judicial Article 15 offenses
**OTH and BCD - Court Marital offensTable 2: Medical Problems (n=399)
Problems Totals
Medical 62%
Dental 56%
Eye 28%
High Blood Pressure 34%
Gastro 17%
Liver 12%
Diabetes 13%
Table 3: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Problems (n=399)
Problems Totals
Alcohol Present 60%
Drug Present 55%
Psychiatric Meds 29%
Current Psychiatric 57%
PTSD from Combat 14%
Past Hospitalization for SA/MH 37%
Used VA in last 6 months? 26%
Depression 58%
Anxiety 54%
Hallucinations 13%
Understanding/Concentration 45%
Violent Behavior 18%
Suicide Thoughts 18%
Suicide Attempts 7%
DV Abuser Past 23%
Table 4 - Category of Offenses*
Offense Number Percentages
Violent 180 45%
Property 47 12%
Drug 87 22%
Public 50 13%
Parole/Probation 25 6%
Other 10 3%
Total 399
Categories of Offenses:
1. Violent Offense (example: murder, manslaughter, assault, sexual assault, including rape or child molestation, robbery or other violent offense).
2. Property Offense (example: burglary, breaking & entering, larceny, motor vehicle threat, fraud, stole property, arson, shoplifting, vandalism, other property offense) 3. Drug Offense (example: possession, trafficking, other drug offense) 4. Public Order Offense (example: weapons offense, prostitution, public intoxication, disorderly conduct, child support, DWI, other public order offense). 5. Probation/parole violation. 6. Other/unspecified.
Identification and Referral Process
Ohio is the 7th most populous state in the country, and Cincinnati is its 3rd largest city; the 53rd largest in the nation. To identify Veterans, inmates were asked during the jail intake process or during prerelease, if they are military veterans, and if “yes” in what branch of service they served. Some jails had already had a data field set to capture veteran information. Many do not have this data field established. This information is then fed communicated on a monthly basis to the IVOP Coordinator, Cincinnati VA Medical Center for efficient, effective and seamless services.
Consequently, the IVOP then verifies veteran status, facilitates enrollment for those eligible, assists with DD214 processing, military upgrades applications, Compensation & Pension (C&P) applications, the Ohio Incarcerated Veteran Guidebook, survey tool for the guidebook and the pre-release assessment. The assessment tool data was utilized to identify demographics, medical, mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, housing, vocational and reentry needs.
Diversion Example
The author facilitated a Domestic Relations Clinic (DRC) at the VA in Cincinnati, OH, from 2002 - 2008. The DRC was a diversion focused and justice-related. The DRC is a 13-week domestic violence prevention program that was approved the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) and Adult Parole Authority (APA) for reentry. The program targeted Veterans that had anger and domestic violence problems. Nearly 1,000 Veterans were screened for IPV in the DRC with an average score of 8.6 on a scale of 0 - 34 (mild, moderate severe), 389 were referred, 221 had successfully completed the program with an aggregated pre-test score of 9.63 to a post-test of 2.33.
Veterans that successfully completed (56.8%) the program were less likely to repeat (27.6%) the offense. This outcome partially represents what the Veterans Courts are striving for with all offenders. Hence, this type of program offers an aspect of the problems that are encountered and is a commensurate fit into the Veterans Court equation. Within the VA system, only Tampa, FL; Phoenix, AZ and Buffalo, NY are active. In addition, the Tacoma, WA Vet Center and Boston, MA are funded for the study of IPV and PTSD. Bay Bines, FL and Cincinnati, OH closed in 2009. This appears contra-indicated based upon the advent of VTCs. However, some VTC are exploring IPV programming as a component.
County Case Example
The Hamilton County Jail's Corrections Division operates all adult detention facilities in Hamilton County Ohio under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Office. With an average daily inmate population of 2000, and an estimated 55,000 admissions annually, the local jail system is ranked in the top 25 largest in the nation. The total system capacity is 1,240. A computerized Jail Management System assists staff and other criminal justice agencies in locating and maintaining accurate information on the inmate population Hamilton County's violent crimes rate was recorded as 114.9 per 100,000 and 529.8 per
100,000 for non-violent crimes. Across the country, too many veterans come home facing challenges the rest of us don't have to grapple with, like life-altering injuries, scars, both physical and psychological, medical issues, substance abuse, homeless, and some recycle in our local jails. In 2008, Hamilton County Pre-Trial Services, trend data conducted 07/23/08 reflected that: 99 veterans were jailed daily, which included, 5 that were active duty, and 9 who were medically discharged; _from January 1, 2008 through June 30, 2008, 1125 veterans went through our jails (out of 23,009 total cases), including 26 active duty, and 53 who had been medically discharged. 973 had been honorably discharged; of those 1125, 217 were identified with a mental health issue, 642 with substance abuse, and 205 with both. The cumulative aforementioned VA and county jailed veteran data may suggest that a veteran specific data may need further exploration. The point to emphasize is that veterans have specific penal treatment and post-release needs related to their military service. This is especially true for veterans with service connected (SC), such as PTSD, Mental Health, Medical, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), etc. There needs to more emphasis on identifying veterans at arrest, during their entrance into the penal system and linking this information to the VA or relevant system. In general, health care and re-entry of ex-offenders back into their communities has become a public health crisis. We must understand that reentry is a complex process for the person, family, environment and society. Everyone appears to be seeking the perfect model of reentry. A fragmented approach and half measures will not suffice. The effort must be sustained to succeed and parties need to get up off their apathies to make a difference, promote and be change agents. Reentry for veterans is a collective approach. This cannot be achieved in a vacuum or by a singular entity as it warrants a collaborative response. Reentry is a process that begins at incarceration and requires short, long and/or intensive follow-up; dependent upon a host of factors. Conceptually, reentry involves the use of programs targeted at promoting the effective reintegration of veteran offenders back to communities upon release from prison and jail. Reentry programming involves a comprehensive case management approach, is intended to assist offenders in acquiring the life skills needed to succeed and become law-abiding citizens.
Veterans Treatment Courts
Veteran's Treatment Courts (VTCs) are a growing therapeutic jurisprudence trend in the United States within the Criminal Justice System (CJS). These new judicial approaches are challenging the traditional roles of Judges, Courts, Jail corrections, County Sheriff's, State Police, Probation Officers, Police Chief's and Police Officers and the VA in affording unique collaborations, diversion alternatives and court sanctions. These Courts are a special docket within the Court system and target Veterans charged with non-violent felony offenses. They are similar to Mental Health, Drug and DUI Courts. All parties are collaborating in this effort to address the needs of military Veterans who turn to various crimes in the aftermath of military service. These Courts address the needs of all Veterans ready, willing and able to abide by the Court sanctions and make the necessary changes in their lives. The need for intervention, services and treatment related to their military service has drastically increased in the last several years, especially with the impact of the Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) wars amid a turbulent economy. The rationale is based on the combat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), non-combat PTSD (military sexual trauma), economic hardships, substance abuse, domestic violence and readjustment. Most of these Veterans are law-abiding, but their problems contribute to criminal behavior among a substantial number of veterans.
In 2008, the first Veterans Court was started in Buffalo, NY by Judge Robert Russell. Since this court started, Veterans Courts have opened in Orange and Santa Clara counties in CA; Tulsa, OK; Rochester, NY; Anchorage, Alaska. Most jurisdictions are encountering 100 - 150 Veterans per month. New Courts are being considered in Phoenix, AZ, Edwardsville, IL; Colorado Springs, CO; Las Vegas, NV; Southern Oregon; Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Scranton and Montgomery, PA. Their successes will lead to others being developed. The SERV Act would enhance and hopefully sustain these efforts to help spread Veterans Courts trend across the country. Generally, the key ingredients of these Veterans Court and Diversion programs are: 1) Local County Courts, Police, Pre-Trial, Jails and/or Magistrate Jurisdiction 2) A reliable mechanism to verify Veteran's Status. 3) Court liaison to interface with the VA 4) Development and Implementation through Partnership between Court system, Corrections, Police, VA and other advocate parties. 5) Treatment, mentoring, monitoring, advocacy and support. 6) Availability to all Veterans from all periods of service. In traditional courts, an offender is sentenced if found guilty. Alternative courts offer qualified participants an opportunity to participate in court-supervised, community-based treatment in lieu of typical criminal sanctions. Some studies on drug courts have shown a lower recidivism rate and cost savings than traditional court approaches. All parties in these courts (e.g. judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, probation officers, substance abuse, therapists, community, advocates, mentors and families) work together toward a holistic outcome that focuses on recovery and support rather than incarceration. Studies have shown that as many as half of the troops returning from OEF/OIF suffer PTSD and other disorders, and mental health is the second-most-treated ailment for returning Veterans in the VA system. However, some question the necessity of separate Veterans Courts, stigma of being a Veteran and the underlying theme of culpability in the Veteran's offense. Is there a connection between their service and crime? Are the establishments of Veterans Courts discriminatory and suggests that Veterans are more likely than non-Veterans to commit crimes. Veterans have generally committed non-violent offenses such as driving while intoxicated (DUI), drug possession, theft, domestic violence, assaults, etc. Veterans that agree to: stay clean and sober, urine screens, obtain mental health or addiction counseling, and so forth will get their lives back on track. Generally, court and VA staff meets with the Veterans routinely for case management and progress. Some court systems even assign a mentor or adviser to support the Veterans recovery and monitor progress. Once he/she complete the requirements, their charges are reduced, cases are dismissed and/or expunged. If they fail to comply, they risk facing their original criminal charges and could be sentenced to jail and/or prison time. To underscore, the transition from military to civilian life is challenging and Veterans cope in many different ways whether exposed to combat or not. Veterans often isolate, turn to substance abuse, domestic violence, assaults, etc. trying to cope with what they experienced in the military. However, not all Veterans get into trouble. The Court, VA and military systems seem overburdened, lack sufficient resources to meet the needs of those suffering from PTSD, readjustment and other psychological problems, which place Veterans at-risk for a host of problems. Like prior wars, current Veterans are also facing the growing stigma of war. Many Veterans may think getting help is weak, but the reality is that it takes the strength to ask for help. As indicated by the Veteran Court bench practice and diversion trends, Veterans are receiving a collective, holistic and multi-system chance to get their lives back in order. Hence, Veterans Courts and diversion programs are viable options that also warrant chances to survive and thrive.
Conclusions
The likelihood of receiving VA services increased as a result of the IVOP and DRC reentry and diversion services. Veterans received case management and service coordination for medical, psychiatric, substance abuse, PTSD, discharge upgrades, VA pensions and transitional housing. The majority of jailed veterans had one episode of homelessness prior to their incarceration. They reported medical, psychiatric, substance abuse, PTSD, domestic abuse and employability problems, but were less likely to be disabled. The numbers of incarcerated veterans are likely to increase, especially within the PGW and OEF/OIF populace. This is based upon expeditious discharge mustering, under-reporting of service related injuries, multiple & extended tours of duty, the advent of felony waivers to enter the military) and difficulty in adjusting to life and coping with life stressors. More VA/County Jail benchmark reentry models, diversion programs, Veterans Treatment Courts (VTC), appears warranted for our veterans, but will only succeed with the sustained juxtaposition of society, corrections and VA.
For supplemental information, please visit the: Veterans Treatment Court Clearinghouse at: www.nadcp.org/learn/veterans-...-clearinghouse Veterans Justice Outreach: www1.va.gov/HOMELESS/VJO.asp Health Care for Reentry Veterans: www1.va.gov/HOMELESS/Reentry.asp References Hal S. Wortzel, MD, Ingrid A. Binswanger, MD, MPH, C. Alan Anderson, MD, and Lawrence E. Adler, MD: Suicide Among Incarcerated Veterans, J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 37:82-91, 2009 ME Noonan: Veterans in state and federal prison, 2004. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, 2007. B Schaffer: Male Veteran Interpersonal Partner Violence (IPV) and Associated Problems, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma (JAMT), Volume 19, No. 4, June 2010 B Schaffer, C. Seals: Jailed Rural Veterans: VA/County Jail & Sheriff Reentry Outreach Collaboration, Sheriff Magazine: 31-32, Fall 2008
About the author
Bradley Schaffer is the Coordinator, Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO) and Veterans Treatment Court (VTC) Liaison at VA Butler Healthcare. He has over 24 year's federal service and is a USMC Veteran. He has developed particular expertise with incarcerated veterans & reentry, diversion, domestic violence prevention and fatherhood programs for Veterans. He is a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW) and Board Certified Diplomat (BCD) in Clinical Social Work. He is an Adjunct Instructor, Thiel College, Department of Sociology as well as California University of Pennsylvania, Department of Social Work. For more information, contact him at (724) 285-2240 and/or email: [email protected] | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology_(Hammond_et_al.)/1.21%3A_Military_and_Criminal.txt |
Sociology is the study of social behavior or society, including its origins, development, organization, networks, and institutions. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder, and change. Many sociologists aim to conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, while others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure.
• 1.1: Introduction to Sociology
We all belong to many groups; you’re a member of your sociology class, and you're a member of your family; you may belong to a political party, sports team, or the crowd watching a sporting event; you’re a citizen of your country, and you're a part of a generation. You may have a somewhat different role in each group and feel differently in each. Groups vary in their sizes and formalities, as well as in the levels of attachment between group members, among other things.
• 1.2: What Is Sociology?
Sociology is the study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups. A group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture is what sociologists call a society. Sociologists working from the micro-level study small groups and individual interactions, while those using macro-level analysis look at trends among large groups and societies.
• 1.3: The History of Sociology
Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the relationship between individuals and the societies to which they belong. Many topics studied in modern sociology were also studied by ancient philosophers in their desire to describe an ideal society, including theories of social conflict, economics, social cohesion, and power.
• 1.4: Theoretical Perspectives
Sociologists study social events, interactions, and patterns, and they develop a theory in an attempt to explain why things work as they do. In sociology, a theory is a way to explain different aspects of social interactions and to create a testable proposition, called a hypothesis, about society.
• 1.5: Why Study Sociology?
Many people interested in sociology have been driven by the scholarly desire to contribute knowledge to this field. Others have seen it as way not only to study society, but also to improve it. Besides desegregation, sociology has played a role in many important social reforms, such as equal opportunity for women in the workplace, improved treatment and accessibility for individuals with learning disabilities and physical handicaps, and rights of native populations to preserve their culture.
Thumbnail: Inside view of Ruca Che arena in Neuquén, Argentina, during a rock concert. (Public domain; Diegoluciano)
01: An Introduction to Sociology
We all belong to many groups; you’re a member of your sociology class, and you're a member of your family; you may belong to a political party, sports team, or the crowd watching a sporting event; you’re a citizen of your country, and you're a part of a generation. You may have a somewhat different role in each group and feel differently in each.Groups vary in their sizes and formalities, as well as in the levels of attachment between group members, among other things. Within a large group, smaller groups may exist, and each group may behave differently.
Sociologists study how society affects people and how people affect society. (Photo courtesy of Diego Torres Silvestre/flickr)
At a rock concert, for example, some may enjoy singing along, others prefer to sit and observe, while still others may join in a mosh pit or try crowd surfing. Why do we feel and act differently in different types of social situations? Why might people of a single group exhibit different behaviors in the same situation? Why might people acting similarly not feel connected to others exhibiting the same behavior? These are some of the many questions sociologists ask as they study people and societies. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/01%3A_An_Introduction_to_Sociology/1.01%3A_Introduction_to_Sociology.txt |
Sociologists learn about society as a whole while studying one-to-one and group interactions. (Photo courtesy of Gareth Williams/flickr)
What Are Society and Culture?
Sociology is the study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups. A group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture is what sociologists call a society. Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society. Sociologists working from the micro-level study small groups and individual interactions, while those using macro-level analysis look at trends among and between large groups and societies. For example, a micro-level study might look at the accepted rules of conversation in various groups such as among teenagers or business professionals. In contrast, a macro-level analysis might research the ways that language use has changed over time or in social media outlets.
The term culture refers to the group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs. Culture encompasses a group’s way of life, from routine, everyday interactions to the most important parts of group members' lives. It includes everything produced by a society, including all of the social rules. Sociologists often study culture using the sociological imagination, which pioneer sociologist C. Wright Mills described as an awareness of the relationship between a person’s behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person’s choices and perceptions. It’s a way of seeing our own and other people’s behavior in relationship to history and social structure (1959).
One illustration of this is a person’s decision to marry. In the United States, this choice is heavily influenced by individual feelings; however, the social acceptability of marriage relative to the person’s circumstances also plays a part. Remember, though, that culture is a product of the people in a society; sociologists take care not to treat the concept of “culture” as though it were alive in its own right. Reification is an error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence (Sahn 2013).
Studying Patterns: How Sociologists View Society
All sociologists are interested in the experiences of individuals and how those experiences are shaped by interactions with social groups and society as a whole. To a sociologist, the personal decisions an individual makes do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns and social forces put pressure on people to select one choice over another. Sociologists try to identify these general patterns by examining the behavior of large groups of people living in the same society and experiencing the same societal pressures.
Changes in the U.S. family structure offer an example of patterns that sociologists are interested in studying. A “typical” family now is vastly different than in past decades when most U.S. families consisted of married parents living in a home with their unmarried children. The percent of unmarried couples, same-sex couples, single-parent and single-adult households is increasing, as well as is the number of expanded households, in which extended family members such as grandparents, cousins, or adult children live together in the family home (U.S. Census Bureau 2013).
While mothers still make up the majority of single parents, millions of fathers are also raising their children alone, and more than 1 million of these single fathers have never been married (Williams Institute 2010; cited in Ludden 2012). Increasingly, single men and women and cohabitating opposite-sex or same-sex couples are choosing to raise children outside of marriage through surrogates or adoption.
Some sociologists study social facts, which are the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life, that may contribute to these changes in the family. Do people in the United States view marriage and family differently than before? Do employment and economic conditions play a role? How has culture influenced the choices that individuals make in living arrangements? Other sociologists are studying the consequences of these new patterns, such as the ways children are affected by them or changing needs for education, housing, and healthcare.
Modern U.S. families may be very different in structure from what was historically typical. (Photo courtesy of Tony Alter/Wikimedia Commons)
Another example of the way society influences individual decisions can be seen in people’s opinions about and use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits. Some people believe those who receive SNAP benefits are lazy and unmotivated. Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture show a complex picture.
SNAP Use by State in 2005
Sociologists examine social conditions in different states to explain differences in the number of people receiving SNAP benefits. (Table courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Percent Eligible by Reason for Eligibility
Living in Waiver Area Have Not Exceeded Time Limits1 In E & T Program Received Exemption Total Percent Eligible for the FSP2
Wyoming 7 62 / 72 0 0 64 / 74
Mississippi 39 62 / 72 0 3 100
Florida 48 62 / 72 0 0 80 / 85
District of Columbia 100 62 / 72 0 0 100
California 6 62 / 72 0 0 64 / 74
Alaska 100 62 / 72 0 0 100
Alabama 29 62 / 72 0 1 73 / 80
The percentage of the population receiving SNAP benefits is much higher in certain states than in others. Does this mean, if the stereotype above were applied, that people in some states are lazier and less motivated than those in other states? Sociologists study the economies in each state—comparing unemployment rates, food, energy costs, and other factors—to explain differences in social issues like this.
To identify social trends, sociologists also study how people use SNAP benefits and how people react to their use. Research has found that for many people from all classes, there is a strong stigma attached to the use of SNAP benefits. This stigma can prevent people who qualify for this type of assistance from using SNAP benefits. According to Hanson and Gundersen (2002), how strongly this stigma is felt is linked to the general economic climate. This illustrates how sociologists observe a pattern in society.
Sociologists identify and study patterns related to all kinds of contemporary social issues. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the emergence of the Tea Party as a political faction, how Twitter has influenced everyday communication—these are all examples of topics that sociologists might explore.
Studying Part and Whole: How Sociologists View Social Structures
A key basis of the sociological perspective is the concept that the individual and society are inseparable. It is impossible to study one without the other. German sociologist Norbert Elias called the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior figuration.
An application that makes this concept understandable is the practice of religion. While people experience their religions in a distinctly individual manner, religion exists in a larger social context. For instance, an individual’s religious practice may be influenced by what government dictates, holidays, teachers, places of worship, rituals, and so on. These influences underscore the important relationship between individual practices of religion and social pressures that influence that religious experience (Elias 1978).
INDIVIDUAL-SOCIETY CONNECTIONS
When sociologist Nathan Kierns spoke to his friend Ashley (a pseudonym) about the move she and her partner had made from an urban center to a small Midwestern town, he was curious about how the social pressures placed on a lesbian couple differed from one community to the other. Ashley said that in the city they had been accustomed to getting looks and hearing comments when she and her partner walked hand in hand. Otherwise, she felt that they were at least being tolerated. There had been little to no outright discrimination.
Things changed when they moved to the small town for her partner’s job. For the first time, Ashley found herself experiencing direct discrimination because of her sexual orientation. Some of it was particularly hurtful. Landlords would not rent to them. Ashley, who is a highly trained professional, had a great deal of difficulty finding a new job.
When Nathan asked Ashley if she and her partner became discouraged or bitter about this new situation, Ashley said that rather than letting it get to them, they decided to do something about it. Ashley approached groups at a local college and several churches in the area. Together they decided to form the town's first gay-straight alliance.
The alliance has worked successfully to educate their community about same-sex couples. It also worked to raise awareness about the kinds of discrimination that Ashley and her partner experienced in the town and how those could be eliminated. The alliance has become a strong advocacy group, and it is working to attain equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LBGT individuals.
Kierns observed that this is an excellent example of how negative social forces can result in a positive response from individuals to bring about social change (Kierns 2011).
Summary
Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
Section Quiz
Which of the following best describes sociology as a subject?
1. The study of individual behavior
2. The study of cultures
3. The study of society and social interaction
4. The study of economics
Answers
C
C. Wright Mills once said that sociologists need to develop a sociological __________ to study how society affects individuals.
1. culture
2. imagination
3. method
4. tool
Answers
B
A sociologist defines society as a group of people who reside in a defined area, share a culture, and who:
1. interact
2. work in the same industry
3. speak different languages
4. practice a recognized religion
Answers
A
Seeing patterns means that a sociologist needs to be able to:
1. compare the behavior of individuals from different societies
2. compare one society to another
3. identify similarities in how social groups respond to social pressure
4. compare individuals to groups
Answers
C
Short Answer
What do you think C. Wright Mills meant when he said that to be a sociologist, one had to develop a sociological imagination?
Describe a situation in which a choice you made was influenced by societal pressures.
Further Research
Sociology is a broad discipline. Different kinds of sociologists employ various methods for exploring the relationship between individuals and society. Check out more about sociology at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/what-is-sociology.
Footnotes
1. 1 The lower number is for individuals in households reporting food stamp receipt in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The higher number is for individuals in households not reporting food stamp receipt in the SIPP.
2. 2 The lower number is for individuals in households reporting food stamp receipt in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The higher number is for individuals in households not reporting food stamp receipt in the SIPP.
Glossary
culture
a group's shared practices, values, and beliefs
figuration
the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of an individual and the society that shapes that behavior
reification
an error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence
society
a group of people who live in a defined geographical area who interact with one another and who share a common culture
sociological imagination
the ability to understand how your own past relates to that of other people, as well as to history in general and societal structures in particular
sociology
the systematic study of society and social interaction | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/01%3A_An_Introduction_to_Sociology/1.02%3A_What_Is_Sociology.txt |
People have been thinking like sociologists long before sociology became a separate academic discipline: Plato and Aristotle, Confucius, Khaldun, and Voltaire all set the stage for modern sociology. (Photos (a),(b),(d) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Photo (c) courtesy of Moumou82/Wikimedia Commons)
Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the relationship between individuals and the societies to which they belong. Many topics studied in modern sociology were also studied by ancient philosophers in their desire to describe an ideal society, including theories of social conflict, economics, social cohesion, and power (Hannoum 2003).
In the thirteenth century, Ma Tuan-Lin, a Chinese historian, first recognized social dynamics as an underlying component of historical development in his seminal encyclopedia, General Study of Literary Remains. The next century saw the emergence of the historian some consider to be the world’s first sociologist: Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) of Tunisia. He wrote about many topics of interest today, setting a foundation for both modern sociology and economics, including a theory of social conflict, a comparison of nomadic and sedentary life, a description of political economy, and a study connecting a tribe’s social cohesion to its capacity for power (Hannoum 2003).
In the eighteenth century, Age of Enlightenment philosophers developed general principles that could be used to explain social life. Thinkers such as John Locke, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Hobbes responded to what they saw as social ills by writing on topics that they hoped would lead to social reform. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) wrote about women’s conditions in society. Her works were long ignored by the male academic structure, but since the 1970s, Wollstonecraft has been widely considered the first feminist thinker of consequence.
The early nineteenth century saw great changes with the Industrial Revolution, increased mobility, and new kinds of employment. It was also a time of great social and political upheaval with the rise of empires that exposed many people—for the first time—to societies and cultures other than their own. Millions of people moved into cities and many people turned away from their traditional religious beliefs.
Creating a Discipline
Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
Auguste Comte played an important role in the development of sociology as a recognized discipline. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
The term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) in an unpublished manuscript (Fauré et al. 1999). In 1838, the term was reinvented by Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte originally studied to be an engineer, but later became a pupil of social philosopher Claude Henri de Rouvroy Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). They both thought that social scientists could study society using the same scientific methods utilized in natural sciences. Comte also believed in the potential of social scientists to work toward the betterment of society. He held that once scholars identified the laws that governed society, sociologists could address problems such as poor education and poverty (Abercrombie et al. 2000).
Comte named the scientific study of social patterns positivism. He described his philosophy in a series of books called The Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) and A General View of Positivism (1848). He believed that using scientific methods to reveal the laws by which societies and individuals interact would usher in a new “positivist” age of history. While the field and its terminology have grown, sociologists still believe in the positive impact of their work.
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)—the First Woman Sociologist
Harriet Martineau was a writer who addressed a wide range of social science issues. She was an early observer of social practices, including economics, social class, religion, suicide, government, and women’s rights. Her writing career began in 1832 with a series of stories titled Illustrations of Political Economy, in which she tried to educate ordinary people about the principles of economics (Johnson 2003).
Martineau was the first to translate Comte’s writing from French to English and thereby introduced sociology to English-speaking scholars (Hill 1991). She is also credited with the first systematic methodological international comparisons of social institutions in two of her most famous sociological works: Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838). Martineau found the workings of capitalism at odds with the professed moral principles of people in the United States; she pointed out the faults with the free enterprise system in which workers were exploited and impoverished while business owners became wealthy. She further noted that the belief in all being created equal was inconsistent with the lack of women’s rights. Much like Mary Wollstonecraft, Martineau was often discounted in her own time by the male domination of academic sociology.
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Karl Marx was one of the founders of sociology. His ideas abot social conflict are still relevant today. (Photo courtesy of John Mayall/Wikimedia Commons)
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher and economist. In 1848 he and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) coauthored the Communist Manifesto. This book is one of the most influential political manuscripts in history. It also presents Marx's theory of society, which differed from what Comte proposed.
Marx rejected Comte's positivism. He believed that societies grew and changed as a result of the struggles of different social classes over the means of production. At the time he was developing his theories, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism led to great disparities in wealth between the owners of the factories and workers. Capitalism, an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods and the means to produce them, grew in many nations.
Marx predicted that inequalities of capitalism would become so extreme that workers would eventually revolt. This would lead to the collapse of capitalism, which would be replaced by communism. Communism is an economic system under which there is no private or corporate ownership: everything is owned communally and distributed as needed. Marx believed that communism was a more equitable system than capitalism.
While his economic predictions may not have come true in the time frame he predicted, Marx’s idea that social conflict leads to change in society is still one of the major theories used in modern sociology.
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
In 1873, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer published The Study of Sociology, the first book with the term “sociology” in the title. Spencer rejected much of Comte’s philosophy as well as Marx's theory of class struggle and his support of communism. Instead, he favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control capitalism. His work influenced many early sociologists including Émile Durkheim (1858–1917).
Georg Simmel (1858–1918)
Georg Simmel was a German art critic who wrote widely on social and political issues as well. Simmel took an anti-positivism stance and addressed topics such as social conflict, the function of money, individual identity in city life, and the European fear of outsiders (Stapley 2010). Much of his work focused on the micro-level theories, and it analyzed the dynamics of two-person and three-person groups. His work also emphasized individual culture as the creative capacities of individuals. Simmel’s contributions to sociology are not often included in academic histories of the discipline, perhaps overshadowed by his contemporaries Durkheim, Mead, and Weber (Ritzer and Goodman 2004).
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
Durkheim helped establish sociology as a formal academic discipline by establishing the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895 and by publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method in 1895. In another important work, Division of Labour in Society (1893), Durkheim laid out his theory on how societies transformed from a primitive state into a capitalist, industrial society. According to Durkheim, people rise to their proper levels in society based on merit.
Durkheim believed that sociologists could study objective “social facts” (Poggi 2000). He also believed that through such studies it would be possible to determine if a society was “healthy” or “pathological.” He saw healthy societies as stable, while pathological societies experienced a breakdown in social norms between individuals and society.
In 1897, Durkheim attempted to demonstrate the effectiveness of his rules of social research when he published a work titled Suicide. Durkheim examined suicide statistics in different police districts to research differences between Catholic and Protestant communities. He attributed the differences to socioreligious forces rather than to individual or psychological causes.
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931)
George Herbert Mead was a philosopher and sociologist whose work focused on the ways in which the mind and the self were developed as a result of social processes (Cronk n.d.). He argued that how an individual comes to view himself or herself is based to a very large extent on interactions with others. Mead called specific individuals that impacted a person’s life significant others, and he also conceptualized “generalized others” as the organized and generalized attitude of a social group. Mead’s work is closely associated with the symbolic interactionist approach and emphasizes the micro-level of analysis.
Max Weber (1864–1920)
Prominent sociologist Max Weber established a sociology department in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in 1919. Weber wrote on many topics related to sociology including political change in Russia and social forces that affect factory workers. He is known best for his 1904 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The theory that Weber sets forth in this book is still controversial. Some believe that Weber argued that the beliefs of many Protestants, especially Calvinists, led to the creation of capitalism. Others interpret it as simply claiming that the ideologies of capitalism and Protestantism are complementary.
Weber believed that it was difficult, if not impossible, to use standard scientific methods to accurately predict the behavior of groups as people hoped to do. They argued that the influence of culture on human behavior had to be taken into account. This even applied to the researchers themselves, who, they believed, should be aware of how their own cultural biases could influence their research. To deal with this problem, Weber and Dilthey introduced the concept of verstehen, a German word that means to understand in a deep way. In seeking verstehen, outside observers of a social world—an entire culture or a small setting—attempt to understand it from an insider’s point of view.
In his book The Nature of Social Action (1922), Weber described sociology as striving to "interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which action proceeds and the effects it produces." He and other like-minded sociologists proposed a philosophy of antipositivism whereby social researchers would strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values. This approach led to some research methods whose aim was not to generalize or predict (traditional in science), but to systematically gain an in-depth understanding of social worlds.
The different approaches to research based on positivism or antipositivism are often considered the foundation for the differences found today between quantitative sociology and qualitative sociology. Quantitative sociology uses statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants. Researchers analyze data using statistical techniques to see if they can uncover patterns of human behavior. Qualitative sociology seeks to understand human behavior by learning about it through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and analysis of content sources (like books, magazines, journals, and popular media).
Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?
In the 2014 State of the Union Address, President Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage, and he signed an executive order putting this into effect for individuals working on new federal service contracts. Congress did not pass legislation to change the national minimum wage more broadly. The result has become a national controversy, with various economists taking different sides on the issue, and public protests being staged by several groups of minimum-wage workers.
Opponents of raising the minimum wage argue that some workers would get larger paychecks while others would lose their jobs, and companies would be less likely to hire new workers because of the increased cost of paying them (Bernstein 2014; cited in CNN).
Proponents of raising the minimum wage contend that some job loss would be greatly offset by the positive effects on the economy of low-wage workers having more income (Hassett 2014; cited in CNN).
Sociologists may consider the minimum wage issue from differing perspectives as well. How much of an impact would a minimum wage raise have for a single mother? Some might study the economic effects, such as her ability to pay bills and keep food on the table. Others might look at how reduced economic stress could improve family relationships. Some sociologists might research the impact on the status of small business owners. These could all be examples of public sociology, a branch of sociology that strives to bring sociological dialogue to public forums. The goals of public sociology are to increase understanding of the social factors that underlie social problems and assist in finding solutions. According to Michael Burawoy (2005), the challenge of public sociology is to engage multiple publics in multiple ways.
Summary
Sociology was developed as a way to study and try to understand the changes to society brought on by the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some of the earliest sociologists thought that societies and individuals’ roles in society could be studied using the same scientific methodologies that were used in the natural sciences, while others believed that is was impossible to predict human behavior scientifically, and still others debated the value of such predictions. Those perspectives continue to be represented within sociology today.
Section Quiz
Which of the following was a topic of study in early sociology?
1. Astrology
2. Economics
3. Physics
4. History
Answers
B
Which founder of sociology believed societies changed due to class struggle?
1. Emile Comte
2. Karl Marx
3. Plato
4. Herbert Spencer
Answers
B
The difference between positivism and antipositivism relates to:
1. whether individuals like or dislike their society
2. whether research methods use statistical data or person-to-person research
3. whether sociological studies can predict or improve society
4. all of the above
Answers
C
Which would a quantitative sociologists use to gather data?
1. A large survey
2. A literature search
3. An in-depth interview
4. A review of television programs
Answers
A
Weber believed humans could not be studied purely objectively because they were influenced by:
1. drugs
2. their culture
3. their genetic makeup
4. the researcher
Answers
B
Short Answer
What do you make of Karl Marx’s contributions to sociology? What perceptions of Marx have you been exposed to in your society, and how do those perceptions influence your views?
Do you tend to place more value on qualitative or quantitative research? Why? Does it matter what topic you are studying?
Further Research
Many sociologists helped shape the discipline. To learn more about prominent sociologists and how they changed sociology check out openstaxcollege.org/l/ferdinand-toennies.
Glossary
antipositivism
the view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values
generalized others
the organized and generalized attitude of a social group
positivism
the scientific study of social patterns
qualitative sociology
in-depth interviews, focus groups, and/or analysis of content sources as the source of its data
quantitative sociology
statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants
significant others
specific individuals that impact a person's life
verstehen | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/01%3A_An_Introduction_to_Sociology/1.03%3A_The_History_of_Sociology.txt |
Sociologists study social events, interactions, and patterns, and they develop a theory in an attempt to explain why things work as they do. In sociology, a theory is a way to explain different aspects of social interactions and to create a testable proposition, called ahypothesis, about society (Allan 2006).
For example, although suicide is generally considered an individual phenomenon, Émile Durkheim was interested in studying the social factors that affect it. His studied social ties within a group, or social solidarity, and hypothesized that differences in suicide rates might be explained by religion-based differences. Durkheim gathered a large amount of data about Europeans who had ended their lives, and he did indeed find differences based on religion. Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics in Durkheim’s society, and his work supports the utility of theory in sociological research.
Sociologists develop theories to explain social occurrences such as protest rallies. (Photo courtesy of voanews.com/Wikimedia Commons)
Theories vary in scope depending on the scale of the issues that they are meant to explain. Macro-level theories relate to large-scale issues and large groups of people, while micro-level theories look at very specific relationships between individuals or small groups.Grand theories attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change. Sociological theory is constantly evolving and should never be considered complete. Classic sociological theories are still considered important and current, but new sociological theories build upon the work of their predecessors and add to them (Calhoun 2002).
In sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life, and these are called paradigms. Paradigms are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them. Three paradigms have come to dominate sociological thinking, because they provide useful explanations: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.
Sociological Theories or Perspectives. Different sociological perspectives enable sociologists to view social issues through a variety of useful lenses.
Sociological Paradigm Level of Analysis Focus
Structural Functionalism Macro or mid The way each part of society functions together to contribute to the whole
Conflict Theory Macro The way inequalities contribute to social differences and perpetuate differences in power
Symbolic Interactionism Micro One-to-one interactions and communications
Functionalism
Functionalism, also called structural-functional theory, sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that society. Functionalism grew out of the writings of English philosopher and biologist, Hebert Spencer (1820–1903), who saw similarities between society and the human body; he argued that just as the various organs of the body work together to keep the body functioning, the various parts of society work together to keep society functioning (Spencer 1898). The parts of society that Spencer referred to were the social institutions, or patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.
Émile Durkheim, another early sociologist, applied Spencer’s theory to explain how societies change and survive over time. Durkheim believed that society is a complex system of interrelated and interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability (Durkheim 1893), and that society is held together by shared values, languages, and symbols. He believed that to study society, a sociologist must look beyond individuals to social facts such as laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashion, and rituals, which all serve to govern social life. Alfred Radcliff-Brown (1881–1955) defined thefunction of any recurrent activity as the part it played in social life as a whole, and therefore the contribution it makes to social stability and continuity (Radcliff-Brown 1952). In a healthy society, all parts work together to maintain stability, a state called dynamic equilibrium by later sociologists such as Parsons (1961).
Durkheim believed that individuals may make up society, but in order to study society, sociologists have to look beyond individuals to social facts. Social facts are the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life (Durkheim 1895). Each of these social facts serves one or more functions within a society. For example, one function of a society’s laws may be to protect society from violence, while another is to punish criminal behavior, while another is to preserve public health.
Another noted structural functionalist, Robert Merton (1910–2003), pointed out that social processes often have many functions. Manifest functions are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated, while latent functions are the unsought consequences of a social process. A manifest function of college education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes that education. Latent functions of your college years include meeting new people, participating in extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. Another latent function of education is creating a hierarchy of employment based on the level of education attained. Latent functions can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society are calleddysfunctions. In education, examples of dysfunction include getting bad grades, truancy, dropping out, not graduating, and not finding suitable employment.
Criticism
One criticism of the structural-functional theory is that it can’t adequately explain social change. Also problematic is the somewhat circular nature of this theory; repetitive behavior patterns are assumed to have a function, yet we profess to know that they have a function only because they are repeated. Furthermore, dysfunctions may continue, even though they don’t serve a function, which seemingly contradicts the basic premise of the theory. Many sociologists now believe that functionalism is no longer useful as a macro-level theory, but that it does serve a useful purpose in some mid-level analyses.
A GLOBAL CULTURE?
Sociologists around the world look closely for signs of what would be an unprecedented event: the emergence of a global culture. In the past, empires such as those that existed in China, Europe, Africa, and Central and South America linked people from many different countries, but those people rarely became part of a common culture. They lived too far from each other, spoke different languages, practiced different religions, and traded few goods. Today, increases in communication, travel, and trade have made the world a much smaller place. More and more people are able to communicate with each other instantly—wherever they are located—by telephone, video, and text. They share movies, television shows, music, games, and information over the Internet. Students can study with teachers and pupils from the other side of the globe. Governments find it harder to hide conditions inside their countries from the rest of the world.
Some sociologists see the online world contributing to the creation of an emerging global culture. Are you a part of any global communities? (Photo courtesy of quasireversible/flickr)
Sociologists research many different aspects of this potential global culture. Some explore the dynamics involved in the social interactions of global online communities, such as when members feel a closer kinship to other group members than to people residing in their own countries. Other sociologists study the impact this growing international culture has on smaller, less-powerful local cultures. Yet other researchers explore how international markets and the outsourcing of labor impact social inequalities. Sociology can play a key role in people's abilities to understand the nature of this emerging global culture and how to respond to it.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theory looks at society as a competition for limited resources. This perspective is a macro-level approach most identified with the writings of German philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx (1818–1883), who saw society as being made up of individuals in different social classes who must compete for social, material, and political resources such as food and housing, employment, education, and leisure time. Social institutions like government, education, and religion reflect this competition in their inherent inequalities and help maintain the unequal social structure. Some individuals and organizations are able to obtain and keep more resources than others, and these “winners” use their power and influence to maintain social institutions. Several theorist suggested variations on this basic theme.
Polish-Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) expanded on Marx’s ideas by arguing that war and conquest are the basis of civilizations. He believed that cultural and ethnic conflicts led to states being identified and defined by a dominant group that had power over other groups (Irving 2007).
German sociologist Max Weber agreed with Marx but also believed that, in addition to economic inequalities, inequalities of political power and social structure cause conflict. Weber noted that different groups were affected differently based on education, race, and gender, and that people’s reactions to inequality were moderated by class differences and rates of social mobility, as well as by perceptions about the legitimacy of those in power.
German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) believed that conflict can help integrate and stabilize a society. He said that the intensity of the conflict varies depending on the emotional involvement of the parties, the degree of solidarity within the opposing groups, and the clarity and limited nature of the goals. Simmel also showed that groups work to create internal solidarity, centralize power, and reduce dissent. Resolving conflicts can reduce tension and hostility and can pave the way for future agreements.
In the 1930s and 1940s, German philosophers, known as the Frankfurt School, developed critical theory as an elaboration on Marxist principles. Critical theory is an expansion of conflict theory and is broader than just sociology, including other social sciences and philosophy. A critical theory attempts to address structural issues causing inequality; it must explain what’s wrong in current social reality, identify the people who can make changes, and provide practical goals for social transformation (Horkeimer 1982).
More recently, inequality based on gender or race has been explained in a similar manner and has identified institutionalized power structures that help to maintain inequality between groups. Janet Saltzman Chafetz (1941–2006) presented a model of feminist theory that attempts to explain the forces that maintain gender inequality as well as a theory of how such a system can be changed (Turner 2003). Similarly, critical race theory grew out of a critical analysis of race and racism from a legal point of view. Critical race theory looks at structural inequality based on white privilege and associated wealth, power, and prestige.
FARMING AND LOCAVORES - HOW SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES MIGHT VIEW FOOD CONSUMPTION
The consumption of food is a commonplace, daily occurrence, yet it can also be associated with important moments in our lives. Eating can be an individual or a group action, and eating habits and customs are influenced by our cultures. In the context of society, our nation’s food system is at the core of numerous social movements, political issues, and economic debates. Any of these factors might become a topic of sociological study.
A structural-functional approach to the topic of food consumption might be interested in the role of the agriculture industry within the nation’s economy and how this has changed from the early days of manual-labor farming to modern mechanized production. Another examination might study the different functions that occur in food production: from farming and harvesting to flashy packaging and mass consumerism.
A conflict theorist might be interested in the power differentials present in the regulation of food, by exploring where people’s right to information intersects with corporations’ drive for profit and how the government mediates those interests. Or a conflict theorist might be interested in the power and powerlessness experienced by local farmers versus large farming conglomerates, such as the documentary Food Inc. depicts as resulting from Monsanto’s patenting of seed technology. Another topic of study might be how nutrition varies between different social classes.
A sociologist viewing food consumption through a symbolic interactionist lens would be more interested in micro-level topics, such as the symbolic use of food in religious rituals, or the role it plays in the social interaction of a family dinner. This perspective might also study the interactions among group members who identify themselves based on their sharing a particular diet, such as vegetarians (people who don’t eat meat) or locavores (people who strive to eat locally produced food).
Just as structural functionalism was criticized for focusing too much on the stability of societies, conflict theory has been criticized because it tends to focus on conflict to the exclusion of recognizing stability. Many social structures are extremely stable or have gradually progressed over time rather than changing abruptly as conflict theory would suggest.
Symbolic Interactionist Theory
Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon.
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism though he never published his work on it (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things; the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and society; the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific circumstances (Blumer 1969). If you love books, for example, a symbolic interactionist might propose that you learned that books are good or important in the interactions you had with family, friends, school, or church; maybe your family had a special reading time each week, getting your library card was treated as a special event, or bedtime stories were associated with warmth and comfort.
Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one interactions. For example, while a conflict theorist studying a political protest might focus on class difference, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in how individuals in the protesting group interact, as well as the signs and symbols protesters use to communicate their message. The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922–1982) to develop a technique calleddramaturgical analysis. Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” Because it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the situation unfolds (Goffman 1958).
Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.
Constructivism is an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be. We develop social constructs based on interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the society. This approach is often used to understand what’s defined as deviant within a society. There is no absolute definition of deviance, and different societies have constructed different meanings for deviance, as well as associating different behaviors with deviance. One situation that illustrates this is what you believe you’re to do if you find a wallet in the street. In the United States, turning the wallet in to local authorities would be considered the appropriate action, and to keep the wallet would be seen as deviant. In contrast, many Eastern societies would consider it much more appropriate to keep the wallet and search for the owner yourself; turning it over to someone else, even the authorities, would be considered deviant behavior.
Criticism
Research done from this perspective is often scrutinized because of the difficulty of remaining objective. Others criticize the extremely narrow focus on symbolic interaction. Proponents, of course, consider this one of its greatest strengths.
Sociological Theory Today
These three approaches are still the main foundation of modern sociological theory, but some evolution has been seen. Structural-functionalism was a dominant force after World War II and until the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, sociologists began to feel that structural-functionalism did not sufficiently explain the rapid social changes happening in the United States at that time.
Conflict theory then gained prominence, as there was renewed emphasis on institutionalized social inequality. Critical theory, and the particular aspects of feminist theory and critical race theory, focused on creating social change through the application of sociological principles, and the field saw a renewed emphasis on helping ordinary people understand sociology principles, in the form of public sociology.
Postmodern social theory attempts to look at society through an entirely new lens by rejecting previous macro-level attempts to explain social phenomena. Generally considered as gaining acceptance in the late 1970s and early 1980s, postmodern social theory is a micro-level approach that looks at small, local groups and individual reality. Its growth in popularity coincides with the constructivist aspects of symbolic interactionism.
Summary
Sociologists develop theories to explain social events, interactions, and patterns. A theory is a proposed explanation of those social interactions. Theories have different scales. Macro-level theories, such as structural functionalism and conflict theory, attempt to explain how societies operate as a whole. Micro-level theories, such as symbolic interactionism, focus on interactions between individuals.
Section Quiz
Which of these theories is most likely to look at the social world on a micro level?
1. Structural functionalism
2. Conflict theory
3. Positivism
4. Symbolic interactionism
D
Who believed that the history of society was one of class struggle?
1. Emile Durkheim
2. Karl Marx
3. Erving Goffmann
4. George Herbert Mead
B
Who coined the phrase symbolic interactionism?
1. Herbert Blumer
2. Max Weber
3. Lester F. Ward
4. W. I. Thomas
A
A symbolic interactionist may compare social interactions to:
1. behaviors
2. conflicts
3. human organs
4. theatrical roles
D
Which research technique would most likely be used by a symbolic interactionist?
1. Surveys
2. Participant observation
3. Quantitative data analysis
4. None of the above
B
Short Answer
Which theory do you think better explains how societies operate—structural functionalism or conflict theory? Why?
Do you think the way people behave in social interactions is more like the behavior of animals or more like actors playing a role in a theatrical production? Why?
Further Research
People often think of all conflict as violent, but many conflicts can be resolved nonviolently. To learn more about nonviolent methods of conflict resolution check out the Albert Einstein Institution http://openstaxcollege.org/l/ae-institution
Glossary
conflict theory
a theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources
constructivism
an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be
dramaturgical analysis
a technique sociologists use in which they view society through the metaphor of theatrical performance
dynamic equilibrium
a stable state in which all parts of a healthy society work together properly
dysfunctions
social patterns that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society
function
the part a recurrent activity plays in the social life as a whole and the contribution it makes to structural continuity
functionalism
a theoretical approach that sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals that make up that society
grand theories
an attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change
hypothesis
a testable proposition
latent functions
the unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process
macro-level
a wide-scale view of the role of social structures within a society
manifest functions
sought consequences of a social process
micro-level theories
the study of specific relationships between individuals or small groups
paradigms
philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them
social facts
the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life
social institutions
patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs
social solidarity
the social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion
symbolic interactionism
a theoretical perspective through which scholars examine the relationship of individuals within their society by studying their communication (language and symbols)
theory
a proposed explanation about social interactions or society | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/01%3A_An_Introduction_to_Sociology/1.04%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives.txt |
The research of sociologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark helped the Supreme Court decide to end “separate but equal” racial segregation in schools in the United States. (Photo courtesy of public domain)
When Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, she was met by an angry crowd. But she knew she had the law on her side. Three years earlier in the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned twenty-one state laws that allowed blacks and whites to be taught in separate school systems as long as the school systems were “equal.” One of the major factors influencing that decision was research conducted by the husband-and-wife team of sociologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Their research showed that segregation was harmful to young black schoolchildren, and the Court found that harm to be unconstitutional.
Since it was first founded, many people interested in sociology have been driven by the scholarly desire to contribute knowledge to this field, while others have seen it as way not only to study society but also to improve it. Besides desegregation, sociology has played a crucial role in many important social reforms, such as equal opportunity for women in the workplace, improved treatment for individuals with mental handicaps or learning disabilities, increased accessibility and accommodation for people with physical handicaps, the right of native populations to preserve their land and culture, and prison system reforms.
The prominent sociologist Peter L. Berger (1929– ), in his 1963 book Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, describes a sociologist as "someone concerned with understanding society in a disciplined way." He asserts that sociologists have a natural interest in the monumental moments of people’s lives, as well as a fascination with banal, everyday occurrences. Berger also describes the “aha” moment when a sociological theory becomes applicable and understood:
[T]here is a deceptive simplicity and obviousness about some sociological investigations. One reads them, nods at the familiar scene, remarks that one has heard all this before and don't people have better things to do than to waste their time on truisms—until one is suddenly brought up against an insight that radically questions everything one had previously assumed about this familiar scene. This is the point at which one begins to sense the excitement of sociology. (Berger 1963)
Sociology can be exciting because it teaches people ways to recognize how they fit into the world and how others perceive them. Looking at themselves and society from a sociological perspective helps people see where they connect to different groups based on the many different ways they classify themselves and how society classifies them in turn. It raises awareness of how those classifications—such as economic and status levels, education, ethnicity, or sexual orientation—affect perceptions.
Sociology teaches people not to accept easy explanations. It teaches them a way to organize their thinking so that they can ask better questions and formulate better answers. It makes people more aware that there are many different kinds of people in the world who do not necessarily think the way they do. It increases their willingness and ability to try to see the world from other people's perspectives. This prepares them to live and work in an increasingly diverse and integrated world.
Sociology in the Workplace
Employers continue to seek people with what are called “transferable skills.” This means that they want to hire people whose knowledge and education can be applied in a variety of settings and whose skills will contribute to various tasks. Studying sociology can provide people with this wide knowledge and a skill set that can contribute to many workplaces, including
• an understanding of social systems and large bureaucracies;
• the ability to devise and carry out research projects to assess whether a program or policy is working;
• the ability to collect, read, and analyze statistical information from polls or surveys;
• the ability to recognize important differences in people’s social, cultural, and economic backgrounds;
• skills in preparing reports and communicating complex ideas; and
• the capacity for critical thinking about social issues and problems that confront modern society. (Department of Sociology, University of Alabama)
Sociology prepares people for a wide variety of careers. Besides actually conducting social research or training others in the field, people who graduate from college with a degree in sociology are hired by government agencies and corporations in fields such as social services, counseling (e.g., family planning, career, substance abuse), community planning, health services, marketing, market research, and human resources. Even a small amount of training in sociology can be an asset in careers like sales, public relations, journalism, teaching, law, and criminal justice.
PLEASE “FRIEND” ME: STUDENTS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
The phenomenon known as Facebook was designed specifically for students. Whereas earlier generations wrote notes in each other’s printed yearbooks at the end of the academic year, modern technology and the Internet ushered in dynamic new ways for people to interact socially. Instead of having to meet up on campus, students can call, text, and Skype from their dorm rooms. Instead of a study group gathering weekly in the library, online forums and chat rooms help learners connect. The availability and immediacy of computer technology has forever changed the ways in which students engage with each other.
Now, after several social networks have vied for primacy, a few have established their place in the market and some have attracted niche audience. While Facebook launched the social networking trend geared toward teens and young adults, now people of all ages are actively “friending” each other. LinkedIn distinguished itself by focusing on professional connections and served as a virtual world for workplace networking. Newer offshoots like Foursquare help people connect based on the real-world places they frequent, while Twitter has cornered the market on brevity.
The widespread ownership of smartphones adds to this social experience; the Pew Research Center (2012) found that the majority of people in the United States with mobile phones now have “smart” phones with Internet capability. Many people worldwide can now access Facebook, Twitter, and other social media from virtually anywhere, and there seems to be an increasing acceptance of smartphone use in many diverse and previously prohibited settings. The outcomes of smartphone use, as with other social media, are not yet clear.
These newer modes of social interaction have also spawned harmful consequences, such as cyberbullying and what some call FAD, or Facebook Addiction Disorder. Researchers have also examined other potential negative impacts, such as whether Facebooking lowers a student’s GPA, or whether there might be long-term effects of replacing face-to-face interaction with social media.
All of these social networks demonstrate emerging ways that people interact, whether positive or negative. They illustrate how sociological topics are alive and changing today. Social media will most certainly be a developing topic in the study of sociology for decades to come.
Summary
Studying sociology is beneficial both for the individual and for society. By studying sociology people learn how to think critically about social issues and problems that confront our society. The study of sociology enriches students’ lives and prepares them for careers in an increasingly diverse world. Society benefits because people with sociological training are better prepared to make informed decisions about social issues and take effective action to deal with them.
Section Quiz
Kenneth and Mamie Clark used sociological research to show that segregation was:
1. beneficial
2. harmful
3. illegal
4. of no importance
B
Studying sociology helps people analyze data because they learn:
1. interview techniques
2. to apply statistics
3. to generate theories
4. all of the above
D
Berger describes sociologists as concerned with:
1. monumental moments in people’s lives
2. common everyday life events
3. both a and b
4. none of the above
C
Short Answer
How do you think taking a sociology course might affect your social interactions?
What sort of career are you interested in? How could studying sociology help you in this career?
Further Research
Social communication is rapidly evolving due to ever improving technologies. To learn more about how sociologists study the impact of these changes check outopenstaxcollege.org/l/media | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/01%3A_An_Introduction_to_Sociology/1.05%3A_Why_Study_Sociology.txt |
Social research is research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified along a quantitative/qualitative dimension.
• 2.1: Introduction to Sociological Research
People commonly try to understand the happenings in their world by finding or creating an explanation for an occurrence. Social scientists may develop a hypothesis for the same reason. A hypothesis is a testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables; it’s a possible explanation for specific happenings in the social world and allows for testing to determine whether the explanation holds true in many instances, as well as among various groups or in different places.
• 2.2: Approaches to Sociological Research
Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the sociologist forms the question, he or she proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.
• 2.3: Research Methods
Sociologists use research methods to design a study—perhaps a detailed, systematic, scientific method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the study. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topics and that fit with their overall approaches to research.
• 2.4: Ethical Concerns
Many sociologists believe it is impossible to set aside personal values and retain complete objectivity. They caution readers, rather, to understand that sociological studies may, by necessity, contain a certain amount of value bias. It does not discredit the results but allows readers to view them as one form of truth rather than a singular fact. Some sociologists attempt to remain uncritical and as objective as possible when studying cultural institutions.
02: Sociological Research
Many believe that crime rates go up during the full moon, but scientific research does not support this conclusion. (Photo courtesy of Jubula 2/flickr)
Have you ever wondered if home schooling affects a person’s later success in college or how many people wait until they are in their forties to get married? Do you wonder if texting is changing teenagers’ abilities to spell correctly or to communicate clearly? How do social movements like Occupy Wall Street develop? How about the development of social phenomena like the massive public followings for Star Trek and Harry Potter? The goal of research is to answer questions. Sociological research attempts to answer a vast variety of questions, such as these and more, about our social world.
We often have opinions about social situations, but these may be biased by our expectations or based on limited data. Instead, scientific research is based on empirical evidence, which is evidence that comes from direct experience, scientifically gathered data, or experimentation. Many people believe, for example, that crime rates go up when there’s a full moon, but research doesn’t support this opinion. Researchers Rotton and Kelly (1985) conducted a meta-analysis of research on the full moon’s effects on behavior. Meta-analysis is a technique in which the results of virtually all previous studies on a specific subject are evaluated together. Rotton and Kelly’s meta-analysis included thirty-seven prior studies on the effects of the full moon on crime rates, and the overall findings were that full moons are entirely unrelated to crime, suicide, psychiatric problems, and crisis center calls (cited in Arkowitz and Lilienfeld 2009). We may each know of an instance in which a crime happened during a full moon, but it was likely just a coincidence.
People commonly try to understand the happenings in their world by finding or creating an explanation for an occurrence. Social scientists may develop a hypothesis for the same reason. A hypothesis is a testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables; it’s a possible explanation for specific happenings in the social world and allows for testing to determine whether the explanation holds true in many instances, as well as among various groups or in different places. Sociologists use empirical data and the scientific method, or an interpretative framework, to increase understanding of societies and social interactions, but research begins with the search for an answer to a question.
Glossary
empirical evidence
evidence that comes from direct experience, scientifically gathered data, or experimentation
meta-analysis
a technique in which the results of virtually all previous studies on a specific subject are evaluated together | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Sociological_Research/2.01%3A_Introduction_to_Sociological_Research.txt |
When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behavior as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered workplace patterns that have transformed industries, family patterns that have enlightened family members, and education patterns that have aided structural changes in classrooms.
The crime during a full moon discussion put forth a few loosely stated opinions. If the human behaviors around those claims were tested systematically, a police officer, for example, could write a report and offer the findings to sociologists and the world in general. The new perspective could help people understand themselves and their neighbors and help people make better decisions about their lives. It might seem strange to use scientific practices to study social trends, but, as we shall see, it’s extremely helpful to rely on systematic approaches that research methods provide.
Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the sociologist forms the question, he or she proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.
The Scientific Method
Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behavior.
However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behavior. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results.
The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scholarship.
The scientific method is an essential tool in research.
But just because sociological studies use scientific methods does not make the results less human. Sociological topics are not reduced to right or wrong facts. In this field, results of studies tend to provide people with access to knowledge they did not have before—knowledge of other cultures, knowledge of rituals and beliefs, or knowledge of trends and attitudes. No matter what research approach they use, researchers want to maximize the study’s reliability, which refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what happens to one person will happen to all people in a group. Researchers also strive for validity, which refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. Returning to the crime rate during a full moon topic, reliability of a study would reflect how well the resulting experience represents the average adult crime rate during a full moon. Validity would ensure that the study’s design accurately examined what it was designed to study, so an exploration of adult criminal behaviors during a full moon should address that issue and not veer into other age groups’ crimes, for example.
In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might study environmental influences and patterns of behavior that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on negative behaviors or challenging situations, researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighborhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.
Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but also to interpret and analyze the data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in—but not attached to—the results. They work outside of their own political or social agendas. This doesn’t mean researchers do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in a particular study.
With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963).
Typically, the scientific method starts with these steps—1) ask a question, 2) research existing sources, 3) formulate a hypothesis—described below.
Ask a Question
The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geography and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. That said, happiness and hygiene are worthy topics to study. Sociologists do not rule out any topic, but would strive to frame these questions in better research terms.
That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?” When forming these basic research questions, sociologists develop an operational definition, that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner.
The operational definition must be valid, appropriate, and meaningful. And it must be reliable, meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, “good drivers” might be defined in many ways: those who use their turn signals, those who don’t speed, or those who courteously allow others to merge. But these driving behaviors could be interpreted differently by different researchers and could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “a driver who has never received a traffic violation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition.
Research Existing Sources
The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through aliterature review, which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library and a thorough online search will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables them to position their own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to borrow previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.
To study hygiene and its value in a particular society, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about child-rearing, vanity, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and cultural attitudes toward beauty. It’s important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve studies' designs.
Formulate a Hypothesis
A hypothesis is an assumption about how two or more variables are related; it makes a conjectural statement about the relationship between those variables. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. In research, independent variables are the cause of the change. The dependent variableis the effect, or thing that is changed.
For example, in a basic study, the researcher would establish one form of human behavior as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?
Examples of Dependent and Independent VariablesTypically, the independent variable causes the dependent variable to change in some way.
Hypothesis Independent Variable Dependent Variable
The greater the availability of affordable housing, the lower the homeless rate. Affordable Housing Homeless Rate
The greater the availability of math tutoring, the higher the math grades. Math Tutoring Math Grades
The greater the police patrol presence, the safer the neighborhood. Police Patrol Presence Safer Neighborhood
The greater the factory lighting, the higher the productivity. Factory Lighting Productivity
The greater the amount of observation, the higher the public awareness. Observation Public Awareness
At this point, a researcher’s operational definitions help measure the variables. In a study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, one researcher might define a “good” grade as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” Another operational definition might describe “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” Those definitions set limits and establish cut-off points that ensure consistency and replicability in a study.
As the table shows, an independent variable is the one that causes a dependent variable to change. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Or rephrased, a child’s sense of self-esteem depends, in part, on the quality and availability of hygienic resources.
Of course, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. Perhaps a sociologist believes that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will automatically increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying two topics, or variables, is not enough; their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.
Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome doesn’t mean data contradicting the hypothesis aren’t welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.
Once the preliminary work is done, it’s time for the next research steps: designing and conducting a study and drawing conclusions. These research methods are discussed below.
Interpretive Framework
While many sociologists rely on the scientific method as a research approach, others operate from an interpretive framework. While systematic, this approach doesn’t follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, aninterpretive framework, sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective, seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge.
Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of researcher also learns as he or she proceeds and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.
Summary
Using the scientific method, a researcher conducts a study in five phases: asking a question, researching existing sources, formulating a hypothesis, conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. The scientific method is useful in that it provides a clear method of organizing a study. Some sociologists conduct research through an interpretive framework rather than employing the scientific method.
Scientific sociological studies often observe relationships between variables. Researchers study how one variable changes another. Prior to conducting a study, researchers are careful to apply operational definitions to their terms and to establish dependent and independent variables.
Section Quiz
A measurement is considered ______ if it actually measures what it is intended to measure, according to the topic of the study.
1. reliable
2. sociological
3. valid
4. quantitative
Answer
C
Sociological studies test relationships in which change in one ______ causes change in another.
1. test subject
2. behavior
3. variable
4. operational definition
Answers
C
In a study, a group of ten-year-old boys are fed doughnuts every morning for a week and then weighed to see how much weight they gained. Which factor is the dependent variable?
1. The doughnuts
2. The boys
3. The duration of a week
4. The weight gained
Answers
D
Which statement provides the best operational definition of “childhood obesity”?
1. Children who eat unhealthy foods and spend too much time watching television and playing video games
2. A distressing trend that can lead to health issues including type 2 diabetes and heart disease
3. Body weight at least 20 percent higher than a healthy weight for a child of that height
4. The tendency of children today to weigh more than children of earlier generations
Answers
C
Short Answer
Write down the first three steps of the scientific method. Think of a broad topic that you are interested in and which would make a good sociological study—for example, ethnic diversity in a college, homecoming rituals, athletic scholarships, or teen driving. Now, take that topic through the first steps of the process. For each step, write a few sentences or a paragraph: 1) Ask a question about the topic. 2) Do some research and write down the titles of some articles or books you’d want to read about the topic. 3) Formulate a hypothesis.
Further Research
For a historical perspective on the scientific method in sociology, read “The Elements of Scientific Method in Sociology” by F. Stuart Chapin (1914) in the American Journal of Sociology: openstaxcollege.org/l/Method-in-Sociology
Glossary
dependent variables
a variable changed by other variables
hypothesis
a testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables
independent variables
variables that cause changes in dependent variables
interpretive framework
a sociological research approach that seeks in-depth understanding of a topic or subject through observation or interaction; this approach is not based on hypothesis testing
literature review
a scholarly research step that entails identifying and studying all existing studies on a topic to create a basis for new research
operational definitions
specific explanations of abstract concepts that a researcher plans to study
reliability
a measure of a study’s consistency that considers how likely results are to be replicated if a study is reproduced
scientific method
an established scholarly research method that involves asking a question, researching existing sources, forming a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study, and drawing conclusions
validity
the degree to which a sociological measure accurately reflects the topic of study | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Sociological_Research/2.02%3A_Approaches_to_Sociological_Research.txt |
Sociologists examine the world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study—perhaps a detailed, systematic, scientific method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study.
When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know they are being observed. A researcher wouldn’t stroll into a crime-ridden neighborhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?” And if a researcher walked into a coffee shop and told the employees they would be observed as part of a study on work efficiency, the self-conscious, intimidated baristas might not behave naturally. This is called the Hawthorne effect—where people change their behavior because they know they are being watched as part of a study. The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research. In many cases, sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld 1985).
Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviors, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers can’t just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Klan meetings and unobtrusively observe behaviors. In situations like these, other methods are needed. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the study. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topics and that fit with their overall approaches to research.
In planning studies' designs, sociologists generally choose from four widely used methods of social investigation: survey, field research, experiment, and secondary data analysis, or use of existing sources. Every research method comes with plusses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use.
Surveys
As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire. The survey is one of the most widely used scientific research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.
Questionnaires are a common research method; the U.S. Census is a well-known example. (Photo courtesy of Kathryn Decker/flickr)
At some point, most people in the United States respond to some type of survey. The U.S. Census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Not all surveys are considered sociological research, however, and many surveys people commonly encounter focus on identifying marketing needs and strategies rather than testing a hypothesis or contributing to social science knowledge. Questions such as, "How many hot dogs do you eat in a month?" or "Were the staff helpful?" are not usually designed as scientific research. Often, polls on television do not reflect a general population, but are merely answers from a specific show’s audience. Polls conducted by programs such as American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance represent the opinions of fans but are not particularly scientific. A good contrast to these are the Nielsen Ratings, which determine the popularity of television programming through scientific market research.
American Idol uses a real-time survey system—with numbers—that allows members in the audience to vote on contestants. (Photo courtesy of Sam Howzit/flickr)
Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel and think—or at least how they say they feel and think. Surveys can track preferences for presidential candidates or reported individual behaviors (such as sleeping, driving, or texting habits) or factual information such as employment status, income, and education levels.
A survey targets a specific population, people who are the focus of a study, such as college athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes. Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or asample: that is, a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In arandom sample, every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. According to the laws of probability, random samples represent the population as a whole. For instance, a Gallup Poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 2,000 or 10,000 people.
After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask questions and record responses. It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the study up front. If they agree to participate, researchers thank subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researcher presents the subjects with an instrument, which is a means of gathering the information. A common instrument is a questionnaire, in which subjects answer a series of questions. For some topics, the researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question. This kind of quantitative data—research collected in numerical form that can be counted—are easy to tabulate. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” responses or correct answers, and chart them into percentages.
Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers—beyond “yes,” “no,” or the option next to a checkbox. In those cases, the answers are subjective and vary from person to person. How do plan to use your college education? Why do you follow Jimmy Buffett around the country and attend every concert? Those types of questions require short essay responses, and participants willing to take the time to write those answers will convey personal information about religious beliefs, political views, and morals. Some topics that reflect internal thought are impossible to observe directly and are difficult to discuss honestly in a public forum. People are more likely to share honest answers if they can respond to questions anonymously. This type of information is qualitative data—results that are subjective and often based on what is seen in a natural setting. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising. The benefit of written opinions, though, is the wealth of material that they provide.
An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and it is a way of conducting surveys on a topic. Interviews are similar to the short-answer questions on surveys in that the researcher asks subjects a series of questions. However, participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly.
Questions such as, “How did society's view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. And, obviously, a sociological interview is not an interrogation. The researcher will benefit from gaining a subject’s trust, from empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and from listening without judgment.
Field Research
The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined spaces. Sociologists seldom study subjects in their own offices or laboratories. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. It is a research method suited to an interpretive framework rather than to the scientific method. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In field work, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element.
The researcher interacts with or observes a person or people and gathers data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it’s a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or the DMV, a hospital, airport, mall, or beach resort.
Sociological researchers travel across countries and cultures to interact with and observe subjects in their natural environments. (Photo courtesy of IMLS Digital Collections and Content/flickr and Olympic National Park)
While field research often begins in a specific setting, the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviors in that setting. Field work is optimal for observing how people behave. It is less useful, however, for understanding why they behave that way. You can't really narrow down cause and effect when there are so many variables floating around in a natural environment.
Much of the data gathered in field research are based not on cause and effect but oncorrelation. And while field research looks for correlation, its small sample size does not allow for establishing a causal relationship between two variables.
PARROTHEADS AS SOCIOLOGICAL SUBJECTS
Business suits for the day job are replaced by leis and T-shirts for a Jimmy Buffett concert. (Photo courtesy of Sam Howzitt/flickr)
Some sociologists study small groups of people who share an identity in one aspect of their lives. Almost everyone belongs to a group of like-minded people who share an interest or hobby. Scientologists, folk dancers, or members of Mensa (an organization for people with exceptionally high IQs) express a specific part of their identity through their affiliation with a group. Those groups are often of great interest to sociologists.
Jimmy Buffett, an American musician who built a career from his single top-10 song “Margaritaville,” has a following of devoted groupies called Parrotheads. Some of them have taken fandom to the extreme, making Parrothead culture a lifestyle. In 2005, Parrotheads and their subculture caught the attention of researchers John Mihelich and John Papineau. The two saw the way Jimmy Buffett fans collectively created an artificial reality. They wanted to know how fan groups shape culture.
What Mihelich and Papineau found was that Parrotheads, for the most part, do not seek to challenge or even change society, as many sub-groups do. In fact, most Parrotheads live successfully within society, holding upper-level jobs in the corporate world. What they seek is escape from the stress of daily life.
At Jimmy Buffett concerts, Parrotheads engage in a form of role play. They paint their faces and dress for the tropics in grass skirts, Hawaiian leis, and Parrot hats. These fans don’t generally play the part of Parrotheads outside of these concerts; you are not likely to see a lone Parrothead in a bank or library. In that sense, Parrothead culture is less about individualism and more about conformity. Being a Parrothead means sharing a specific identity. Parrotheads feel connected to each other: it’s a group identity, not an individual one.
In their study, Mihelich and Papineau quote from a recent book by sociologist Richard Butsch, who writes, “un-self-conscious acts, if done by many people together, can produce change, even though the change may be unintended” (2000). Many Parrothead fan groups have performed good works in the name of Jimmy Buffett culture, donating to charities and volunteering their services.
However, the authors suggest that what really drives Parrothead culture is commercialism. Jimmy Buffett’s popularity was dying out in the 1980s until being reinvigorated after he signed a sponsorship deal with a beer company. These days, his concert tours alone generate nearly \$30 million a year. Buffett made a lucrative career for himself by partnering with product companies and marketing Margaritaville in the form of T-shirts, restaurants, casinos, and an expansive line of products. Some fans accuse Buffett of selling out, while others admire his financial success. Buffett makes no secret of his commercial exploitations; from the stage, he’s been known to tell his fans, “Just remember, I am spending your money foolishly.”
Mihelich and Papineau gathered much of their information online. Referring to their study as a “Web ethnography,” they collected extensive narrative material from fans who joined Parrothead clubs and posted their experiences on websites. “We do not claim to have conducted a complete ethnography of Parrothead fans, or even of the Parrothead Web activity,” state the authors, “but we focused on particular aspects of Parrothead practice as revealed through Web research” (2005). Fan narratives gave them insight into how individuals identify with Buffett’s world and how fans used popular music to cultivate personal and collective meaning.
In conducting studies about pockets of culture, most sociologists seek to discover a universal appeal. Mihelich and Papineau stated, “Although Parrotheads are a relative minority of the contemporary US population, an in-depth look at their practice and conditions illuminate [sic] cultural practices and conditions many of us experience and participate in” (2005).
Here, we will look at three types of field research: participant observation, ethnography, and the case study.
Participant Observation
In 2000, a comic writer named Rodney Rothman wanted an insider’s view of white-collar work. He slipped into the sterile, high-rise offices of a New York “dot com” agency. Every day for two weeks, he pretended to work there. His main purpose was simply to see whether anyone would notice him or challenge his presence. No one did. The receptionist greeted him. The employees smiled and said good morning. Rothman was accepted as part of the team. He even went so far as to claim a desk, inform the receptionist of his whereabouts, and attend a meeting. He published an article about his experience in The New Yorker called “My Fake Job” (2000). Later, he was discredited for allegedly fabricating some details of the story and The New Yorker issued an apology. However, Rothman’s entertaining article still offered fascinating descriptions of the inside workings of a “dot com” company and exemplified the lengths to which a sociologist will go to uncover material.
Rothman had conducted a form of study called participant observation, in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers experience a specific aspect of social life. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behavior. Researchers temporarily put themselves into roles and record their observations. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, live as a homeless person for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.
Is she a working waitress or a sociologist conducting a study using participant observation? (Photo courtesy of zoetnet/flickr)
At the beginning of a field study, researchers might have a question: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” or “What is it like to be homeless?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside.
Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in shaping data into results.
In a study of small towns in the United States conducted by sociological researchers John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, the team altered their purpose as they gathered data. They initially planned to focus their study on the role of religion in U.S. towns. As they gathered observations, they realized that the effect of industrialization and urbanization was the more relevant topic of this social group. The Lynds did not change their methods, but they revised their purpose. This shaped the structure of Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, their published results (Lynd and Lynd 1959).
The Lynds were upfront about their mission. The townspeople of Muncie, Indiana, knew why the researchers were in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviors of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behavior. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job.
Once inside a group, some researchers spend months or even years pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book and describe what he or she witnessed and experienced.
This type of research is what journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted for her book Nickel and Dimed. One day over lunch with her editor, as the story goes, Ehrenreich mentioned an idea. How can people exist on minimum-wage work? How do low-income workers get by? she wondered. Someone should do a study. To her surprise, her editor responded,Why don’t you do it?
That’s how Ehrenreich found herself joining the ranks of the working class. For several months, she left her comfortable home and lived and worked among people who lacked, for the most part, higher education and marketable job skills. Undercover, she applied for and worked minimum wage jobs as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a retail chain employee. During her participant observation, she used only her income from those jobs to pay for food, clothing, transportation, and shelter.
She discovered the obvious, that it’s almost impossible to get by on minimum wage work. She also experienced and observed attitudes many middle and upper-class people never think about. She witnessed firsthand the treatment of working class employees. She saw the extreme measures people take to make ends meet and to survive. She described fellow employees who held two or three jobs, worked seven days a week, lived in cars, could not pay to treat chronic health conditions, got randomly fired, submitted to drug tests, and moved in and out of homeless shelters. She brought aspects of that life to light, describing difficult working conditions and the poor treatment that low-wage workers suffer.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, the book she wrote upon her return to her real life as a well-paid writer, has been widely read and used in many college classrooms.
Field research happens in real locations. What type of environment do work spaces foster? What would a sociologist discover after blending in? (Photo courtesy of drewzhrodague/flickr)
Ethnography
Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Ethnographies involve objective observation of an entire community.
The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a community. An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small U.S. fishing town, an Inuit community, a village in Thailand, a Buddhist monastery, a private boarding school, or an amusement park. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain ways and respect certain cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible.
A sociologist studying a tribe in the Amazon might watch the way villagers go about their daily lives and then write a paper about it. To observe a spiritual retreat center, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record data, and collate the material into results.
Institutional Ethnography
Institutional ethnography is an extension of basic ethnographic research principles that focuses intentionally on everyday concrete social relationships. Developed by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith, institutional ethnography is often considered a feminist-inspired approach to social analysis and primarily considers women’s experiences within male-dominated societies and power structures. Smith’s work is seen to challenge sociology’s exclusion of women, both academically and in the study of women’s lives (Fenstermaker, n.d.).
Historically, social science research tended to objectify women and ignore their experiences except as viewed from the male perspective. Modern feminists note that describing women, and other marginalized groups, as subordinates helps those in authority maintain their own dominant positions (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, n.d.). Smith’s three major works explored what she called “the conceptual practices of power” (1990; cited in Fensternmaker, n.d.) and are still considered seminal works in feminist theory and ethnography.
THE MAKING OF MIDDLETOWN: A STUDY IN MODERN U.S. CULTURE
In 1924, a young married couple named Robert and Helen Lynd undertook an unprecedented ethnography: to apply sociological methods to the study of one U.S. city in order to discover what “ordinary” people in the United States did and believed. Choosing Muncie, Indiana (population about 30,000), as their subject, they moved to the small town and lived there for eighteen months.
Ethnographers had been examining other cultures for decades—groups considered minority or outsider—like gangs, immigrants, and the poor. But no one had studied the so-called average American.
Recording interviews and using surveys to gather data, the Lynds did not sugarcoat or idealize U.S. life (PBS). They objectively stated what they observed. Researching existing sources, they compared Muncie in 1890 to the Muncie they observed in 1924. Most Muncie adults, they found, had grown up on farms but now lived in homes inside the city. From that discovery, the Lynds focused their study on the impact of industrialization and urbanization.
They observed that Muncie was divided into business class and working class groups. They defined business class as dealing with abstract concepts and symbols, while working class people used tools to create concrete objects. The two classes led different lives with different goals and hopes. However, the Lynds observed, mass production offered both classes the same amenities. Like wealthy families, the working class was now able to own radios, cars, washing machines, telephones, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators. This was an emerging material new reality of the 1920s.
As the Lynds worked, they divided their manuscript into six sections: Getting a Living, Making a Home, Training the Young, Using Leisure, Engaging in Religious Practices, and Engaging in Community Activities. Each chapter included subsections such as “The Long Arm of the Job” and “Why Do They Work So Hard?” in the “Getting a Living” chapter.
When the study was completed, the Lynds encountered a big problem. The Rockefeller Foundation, which had commissioned the book, claimed it was useless and refused to publish it. The Lynds asked if they could seek a publisher themselves.
Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture was not only published in 1929 but also became an instant bestseller, a status unheard of for a sociological study. The book sold out six printings in its first year of publication, and has never gone out of print (PBS).
Nothing like it had ever been done before. Middletown was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times. Readers in the 1920s and 1930s identified with the citizens of Muncie, Indiana, but they were equally fascinated by the sociological methods and the use of scientific data to define ordinary people in the United States. The book was proof that social data was important—and interesting—to the U.S. public.
A classroom in Muncie, Indiana, in 1917, five years before John and Helen Lynd began researching this “typical” U.S. community. (Photo courtesy of Don O’Brien/flickr)
Case Study
Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like documents and archival records, conducts interviews, engages in direct observation and even participant observation, if possible.
Researchers might use this method to study a single case of, for example, a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim. However, a major criticism of the case study as a method is that a developed study of a single case, while offering depth on a topic, does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person, since one person does not verify a pattern. This is why most sociologists do not use case studies as a primary research method.
However, case studies are useful when the single case is unique. In these instances, a single case study can add tremendous knowledge to a certain discipline. For example, a feral child, also called “wild child,” is one who grows up isolated from human beings. Feral children grow up without social contact and language, which are elements crucial to a “civilized” child’s development. These children mimic the behaviors and movements of animals, and often invent their own language. There are only about one hundred cases of “feral children” in the world.
As you may imagine, a feral child is a subject of great interest to researchers. Feral children provide unique information about child development because they have grown up outside of the parameters of “normal” child development. And since there are very few feral children, the case study is the most appropriate method for researchers to use in studying the subject.
At age three, a Ukranian girl named Oxana Malaya suffered severe parental neglect. She lived in a shed with dogs, and she ate raw meat and scraps. Five years later, a neighbor called authorities and reported seeing a girl who ran on all fours, barking. Officials brought Oxana into society, where she was cared for and taught some human behaviors, but she never became fully socialized. She has been designated as unable to support herself and now lives in a mental institution (Grice 2011). Case studies like this offer a way for sociologists to collect data that may not be collectable by any other method.
Experiments
You’ve probably tested personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When you test the theory, your results either prove or disprove your hypothesis.
One way researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment, meaning they investigate relationships to test a hypothesis—a scientific approach.
There are two main types of experiments: lab-based experiments and natural or field experiments. In a lab setting, the research can be controlled so that perhaps more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher.
As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-thenstatements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result. To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables.
Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group. The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring but not the control group. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. As you can imagine, in a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for example.
AN EXPERIMENT IN ACTION
Sociologist Frances Heussenstamm conducted an experiment to explore the correlation between traffic stops and race-based bumper stickers. This issue of racial profiling remains a hot-button topic today. (Photo courtesy of dwightsghost/flickr)
A real-life example will help illustrate the experiment process. In 1971, Frances Heussenstamm, a sociology professor at California State University at Los Angeles, had a theory about police prejudice. To test her theory she conducted an experiment. She chose fifteen students from three ethnic backgrounds: black, white, and Hispanic. She chose students who routinely drove to and from campus along Los Angeles freeway routes, and who’d had perfect driving records for longer than a year. Those were her independent variables—students, good driving records, same commute route.
Next, she placed a Black Panther bumper sticker on each car. That sticker, a representation of a social value, was the independent variable. In the 1970s, the Black Panthers were a revolutionary group actively fighting racism. Heussenstamm asked the students to follow their normal driving patterns. She wanted to see whether seeming support of the Black Panthers would change how these good drivers were treated by the police patrolling the highways. The dependent variable would be the number of traffic stops/citations.
The first arrest, for an incorrect lane change, was made two hours after the experiment began. One participant was pulled over three times in three days. He quit the study. After seventeen days, the fifteen drivers had collected a total of thirty-three traffic citations. The experiment was halted. The funding to pay traffic fines had run out, and so had the enthusiasm of the participants (Heussenstamm 1971).
Secondary Data Analysis
While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline throughsecondary data analysis. Secondary data don’t result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are the already completed work of other researchers. Sociologists might study works written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, or magazines from any period in history.
Using available information not only saves time and money but can also add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way, a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might watch movies, televisions shows, and situation comedies from that period. Or to research changes in behavior and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the Internet, or Facebook.
Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments and global groups, like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the World Health Organization, publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic like the foreclosure rate might be useful for studying the effects of the 2008 recession; a racial demographic profile might be compared with data on education funding to examine the resources accessible by different groups.
One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is nonreactive research (or unobtrusive research), meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviors. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data doesn’t require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process.
Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher will need to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. To guide the search through a vast library of materials and avoid wasting time reading unrelated sources, sociologists employ content analysis, applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as they relate to the study at hand.
But, in some cases, there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy to count how many drunk drivers, for example, are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it’s possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their GED later.
Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not include the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the average salaries paid to professors at a public school is public record. But the separate figures don’t necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they’ve been teaching.
When conducting content analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd gathered research for their book Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture in the 1920s. Attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different then than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study’s purpose was to reveal the truth about small U.S. communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s' attitudes and values.
Summary
Sociological research is a fairly complex process. As you can see, a lot goes into even a simple research design. There are many steps and much to consider when collecting data on human behavior, as well as in interpreting and analyzing data in order to form conclusive results. Sociologists use scientific methods for good reason. The scientific method provides a system of organization that helps researchers plan and conduct the study while ensuring that data and results are reliable, valid, and objective.
The many methods available to researchers—including experiments, surveys, field studies, and secondary data analysis—all come with advantages and disadvantages. The strength of a study can depend on the choice and implementation of the appropriate method of gathering research. Depending on the topic, a study might use a single method or a combination of methods. It is important to plan a research design before undertaking a study. The information gathered may in itself be surprising, and the study design should provide a solid framework in which to analyze predicted and unpredicted data.
Main Sociological Research MethodsSociological research methods have advantages and disadvantages.
Method Implementation Advantages Challenges
Survey
• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Yields many responses
• Can survey a large sample
• Quantitative data are easy to chart
• Can be time consuming
• Can be difficult to encourage participant response
• Captures what people think and believe but not necessarily how they behave in real life
Field Work
• Observation
• Participant observation
• Ethnography
• Case study
• Yields detailed, accurate real-life information
• Time consuming
• Data captures how people behave but not what they think and believe
• Qualitative data is difficult to organize
Experiment
• Deliberate manipulation of social customs and mores
• Tests cause and effect relationships
• Hawthorne Effect
• Ethical concerns about people’s wellbeing
Secondary Data Analysis
• Analysis of government data (census, health, crime statistics)
• Research of historic documents
• Makes good use of previous sociological information
• Data could be focused on a purpose other than yours
• Data can be hard to find
Section Quiz
Which materials are considered secondary data?
1. Photos and letters given to you by another person
2. Books and articles written by other authors about their studies
3. Information that you have gathered and now have included in your results
4. Responses from participants whom you both surveyed and interviewed
Answer
B
What method did researchers John Mihelich and John Papineau use to study Parrotheads?
1. Survey
2. Experiment
3. Web Ethnography
4. Case study
Answer
C
Why is choosing a random sample an effective way to select participants?
1. Participants do not know they are part of a study
2. The researcher has no control over who is in the study
3. It is larger than an ordinary sample
4. Everyone has the same chance of being part of the study
Answer
D
What research method did John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd mainly use in their Middletown study?
1. Secondary data
2. Survey
3. Participant observation
4. Experiment
Answer
C
Which research approach is best suited to the scientific method?
1. Questionnaire
2. Case study
3. Ethnography
4. Secondary data analysis
Answer
A
The main difference between ethnography and other types of participant observation is:
1. ethnography isn’t based on hypothesis testing
2. ethnography subjects are unaware they’re being studied
3. ethnographic studies always involve minority ethnic groups
4. ethnography focuses on how subjects view themselves in relationship to the community
Answer
A
Which best describes the results of a case study?
1. It produces more reliable results than other methods because of its depth
2. Its results are not generally applicable
3. It relies solely on secondary data analysis
4. All of the above
Answer
B
Using secondary data is considered an unobtrusive or ________ research method.
1. nonreactive
2. nonparticipatory
3. nonrestrictive
4. nonconfrontive
Answer
A
Short Answer
What type of data do surveys gather? For what topics would surveys be the best research method? What drawbacks might you expect to encounter when using a survey? To explore further, ask a research question and write a hypothesis. Then create a survey of about six questions relevant to the topic. Provide a rationale for each question. Now define your population and create a plan for recruiting a random sample and administering the survey.
Imagine you are about to do field research in a specific place for a set time. Instead of thinking about the topic of study itself, consider how you, as the researcher, will have to prepare for the study. What personal, social, and physical sacrifices will you have to make? How will you manage your personal effects? What organizational equipment and systems will you need to collect the data?
Create a brief research design about a topic in which you are passionately interested. Now write a letter to a philanthropic or grant organization requesting funding for your study. How can you describe the project in a convincing yet realistic and objective way? Explain how the results of your study will be a relevant contribution to the body of sociological work already in existence.
Further Research
For information on current real-world sociology experiments, visit:http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Sociology-Experiments
Glossary
case study
in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual
content analysis
applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as it relates to the study at hand
correlation
when a change in one variable coincides with a change in another variable, but does not necessarily indicate causation
ethnography
observing a complete social setting and all that it entails
experiment
the testing of a hypothesis under controlled conditions
field research
gathering data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey
Hawthorne effect
when study subjects behave in a certain manner due to their awareness of being observed by a researcher
interview
a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject
nonreactive research
using secondary data, does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviors
participant observation
when a researcher immerses herself in a group or social setting in order to make observations from an “insider” perspective
population
a defined group serving as the subject of a study
primary data
data that are collected directly from firsthand experience
quantitative data
represent research collected in numerical form that can be counted
qualitative data
comprise information that is subjective and often based on what is seen in a natural setting
random sample
a study’s participants being randomly selected to serve as a representation of a larger population
samples
small, manageable number of subjects that represent the population
secondary data analysis
using data collected by others but applying new interpretations
surveys
collect data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Sociological_Research/2.03%3A_Research_Methods.txt |
Sociologists conduct studies to shed light on human behaviors. Knowledge is a powerful tool that can be used toward positive change. And while a sociologist’s goal is often simply to uncover knowledge rather than to spur action, many people use sociological studies to help improve people’s lives. In that sense, conducting a sociological study comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility. Like any researchers, sociologists must consider their ethical obligation to avoid harming subjects or groups while conducting their research.
The American Sociological Association, or ASA, is the major professional organization of sociologists in North America. The ASA is a great resource for students of sociology as well. The ASA maintains a code of ethics—formal guidelines for conducting sociological research—consisting of principles and ethical standards to be used in the discipline. It also describes procedures for filing, investigating, and resolving complaints of unethical conduct.
Practicing sociologists and sociology students have a lot to consider. Some of the guidelines state that researchers must try to be skillful and fair-minded in their work, especially as it relates to their human subjects. Researchers must obtain participants’ informed consent and inform subjects of the responsibilities and risks of research before they agree to partake. During a study, sociologists must ensure the safety of participants and immediately stop work if a subject becomes potentially endangered on any level.
Researchers are required to protect the privacy of research participants whenever possible. Even if pressured by authorities, such as police or courts, researchers are not ethically allowed to release confidential information. Researchers must make results available to other sociologists, must make public all sources of financial support, and must not accept funding from any organization that might cause a conflict of interest or seek to influence the research results for its own purposes. The ASA’s ethical considerations shape not only the study but also the publication of results.
Pioneer German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) identified another crucial ethical concern. Weber understood that personal values could distort the framework for disclosing study results. While he accepted that some aspects of research design might be influenced by personal values, he declared it was entirely inappropriate to allow personal values to shape the interpretation of the responses. Sociologists, he stated, must establish value neutrality, a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment, during the course of a study and in publishing results (1949). Sociologists are obligated to disclose research findings without omitting or distorting significant data.
Is value neutrality possible? Many sociologists believe it is impossible to set aside personal values and retain complete objectivity. They caution readers, rather, to understand that sociological studies may, by necessity, contain a certain amount of value bias. It does not discredit the results but allows readers to view them as one form of truth rather than a singular fact. Some sociologists attempt to remain uncritical and as objective as possible when studying cultural institutions. Value neutrality does not mean having no opinions. It means striving to overcome personal biases, particularly subconscious biases, when analyzing data. It means avoiding skewing data in order to match a predetermined outcome that aligns with a particular agenda, such as a political or moral point of view. Investigators are ethically obligated to report results, even when they contradict personal views, predicted outcomes, or widely accepted beliefs.
Summary
Sociologists and sociology students must take ethical responsibility for any study they conduct. They must first and foremost guarantee the safety of their participants. Whenever possible, they must ensure that participants have been fully informed before consenting to be part of a study.
The ASA maintains ethical guidelines that sociologists must take into account as they conduct research. The guidelines address conducting studies, properly using existing sources, accepting funding, and publishing results.
Sociologists must try to maintain value neutrality. They must gather and analyze data objectively and set aside their personal preferences, beliefs, and opinions. They must report findings accurately, even if they contradict personal convictions.
Section Quiz
Which statement illustrates value neutrality?
1. Obesity in children is obviously a result of parental neglect and, therefore, schools should take a greater role to prevent it
2. In 2003, states like Arkansas adopted laws requiring elementary schools to remove soft drink vending machines from schools
3. Merely restricting children’s access to junk food at school is not enough to prevent obesity
4. Physical activity and healthy eating are a fundamental part of a child’s education
Answers
B
Which person or organization defined the concept of value neutrality?
1. Institutional Review Board (IRB)
2. Peter Rossi
3. American Sociological Association (ASA)
4. Max Weber
Answers
D
To study the effects of fast food on lifestyle, health, and culture, from which group would a researcher ethically be unable to accept funding?
1. A fast-food restaurant
2. A nonprofit health organization
3. A private hospital
4. A governmental agency like Health and Social Services
Answers
A
Short Answer
Why do you think the ASA crafted such a detailed set of ethical principles? What type of study could put human participants at risk? Think of some examples of studies that might be harmful. Do you think that, in the name of sociology, some researchers might be tempted to cross boundaries that threaten human rights? Why?
Would you willingly participate in a sociological study that could potentially put your health and safety at risk, but had the potential to help thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people? For example, would you participate in a study of a new drug that could cure diabetes or cancer, even if it meant great inconvenience and physical discomfort for you or possible permanent damage?
Further Research
Founded in 1905, the ASA is a nonprofit organization located in Washington, DC, with a membership of 14,000 researchers, faculty members, students, and practitioners of sociology. Its mission is “to articulate policy and implement programs likely to have the broadest possible impact for sociology now and in the future.” Learn more about this organization at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/ASA.
Glossary
code of ethics
a set of guidelines that the American Sociological Association has established to foster ethical research and professionally responsible scholarship in sociology
value neutrality
a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment during the course of a study and in publishing results | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/02%3A_Sociological_Research/2.04%3A_Ethical_Concerns.txt |
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
• 3.1: Introduction to Culture
A culture represents the beliefs and practices of a group, while society represents the people who share those beliefs and practices. Neither society nor culture could exist without the other. In this chapter, we examine the relationship between culture and society in greater detail and pay special attention to the elements and forces that shape culture, including diversity and cultural changes. A final discussion touches on the different theoretical perspectives from which sociologists research
• 3.2: What Is Culture?
Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned. Culture generally describes the shared behaviors and beliefs of these people, and includes material and nonmaterial elements.. Our experience of cultural difference is influenced by our ethnocentrism and xenocentrism. Sociologists try to practice cultural relativism.
• 3.3: Elements of Culture
A culture consists of many elements, such as the values and beliefs of its society. Values are a culture’s standard for discerning what is good and just in society. Values are deeply embedded and critical for transmitting and teaching a culture’s beliefs.Beliefs are the tenets or convictions that people hold to be true. Culture is also governed by norms, including laws, mores, and folkways. The symbols and language of a society are key to developing and conveying culture.
• 3.4: Pop Culture, Subculture, and Cultural Change
There are a multitude of cultural differences between societies in the world. Societies are also comprised of many subcultures—smaller groups that share an identity. Countercultures reject mainstream values and create their own cultural rules and norms. Through invention or discovery, cultures evolve via new ideas and new ways of thinking. In many modern cultures, technology can lead to cultural lag and spreads both material and nonmaterial culture to contribute to globalization.
• 3.5: Theoretical Perspectives on Culture
There are three major theoretical approaches toward the interpretation of culture. A functionalist perspective acknowledges that many parts of culture work together as a system to fulfill society’s needs and culture is a reflection of society’s values. Conflict theorists see culture as inherently unequal, influence by gender, class, race, and age. An interactionist is mainly interested in culture as experienced in the daily interactions between individuals and the symbols of that culture.
Thumbnail: ǃKung woman and child sharing a meal. (CC-SA-BY 4.0; Staehler).
03: Culture
People adhere to various rules and standards that are created and maintained in culture, such as giving a high five to someone. (Photo courtesy of Chris Barnes/flickr)
What are the rules when you pass an acquaintance at school, work, in the grocery store, or in the mall? Generally, we do not consider all of the intricacies of the rules of behavior. We may simply say, "Hello!" and ask, "How was your weekend?" or some other trivial question meant to be a friendly greeting. Rarely do we physically embrace or even touch the individual. In fact, doing so may be viewed with scorn or distaste, since as people in the United States we have fairly rigid rules about personal space. However, we all adhere to various rules and standards that are created and maintained in culture. These rules and expectations have meaning, and there are ways in which you may violate this negotiation. Consider what would happen if you stopped and informed everyone who said, "Hi, how are you?" exactly how you were doing that day, and in detail. You would more than likely violate rules of culture and specifically greeting. Perhaps in a different culture the question would be more literal, and it may require a response. Or if you are having coffee with a good friend, perhaps that question warrants a more detailed response. These examples are all aspects of culture, which is shared beliefs, values, and practices, that participants must learn. Sociologically, we examine in what situation and context certain behavior is expected, and in which situations perhaps it is not. These rules are created and enforced by people who interact and share culture.
In everyday conversation, people rarely distinguish between the terms culture andsociety, but the terms have slightly different meanings, and the distinction is important to a sociologist. A society describes a group of people who share a community and a culture. By “community,” sociologists refer to a definable region—as small as a neighborhood (Brooklyn, or “the east side of town”), as large as a country (Ethiopia, the United States, or Nepal), or somewhere in between (in the United States, this might include someone who identifies with Southern or Midwestern society). To clarify, a culture represents the beliefs and practices of a group, while society represents the people who share those beliefs and practices. Neither society nor culture could exist without the other. In this chapter, we examine the relationship between culture and society in greater detail and pay special attention to the elements and forces that shape culture, including diversity and cultural changes. A final discussion touches on the different theoretical perspectives from which sociologists research culture.
Glossary
culture
shared beliefs, values, and practices
society
people who live in a definable community and who share a culture | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Culture/3.01%3A_Introduction_to_Culture.txt |
Humans are social creatures. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens nearly 250,000 years ago, people have grouped together into communities in order to survive. Living together, people form common habits and behaviors—from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques for obtaining food. In modern-day Paris, many people shop daily at outdoor markets to pick up what they need for their evening meal, buying cheese, meat, and vegetables from different specialty stalls. In the United States, the majority of people shop once a week at supermarkets, filling large carts to the brim. How would a Parisian perceive U.S. shopping behaviors that Americans take for granted?
Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned. In the United States, people tend to view marriage as a choice between two people, based on mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families, or in other cases, through a direct system, such as a “mail order bride.” To someone raised in New York City, the marriage customs of a family from Nigeria may seem strange or even wrong. Conversely, someone from a traditional Kolkata family might be perplexed with the idea of romantic love as the foundation for marriage and lifelong commitment. In other words, the way in which people view marriage depends largely on what they have been taught.
Behavior based on learned customs is not a bad thing. Being familiar with unwritten rules helps people feel secure and “normal.” Most people want to live their daily lives confident that their behaviors will not be challenged or disrupted. But even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidences a great deal of cultural propriety.
How would a visitor from the suburban United States act and feel on this crowded Tokyo train? (Photo courtesy of simonglucas/flickr)
Take the case of going to work on public transportation. Whether people are commuting in Dublin, Cairo, Mumbai, or San Francisco, many behaviors will be the same, but significant differences also arise between cultures. Typically, a passenger will find a marked bus stop or station, wait for his bus or train, pay an agent before or after boarding, and quietly take a seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, passengers might have to run, because buses there often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. Dublin bus riders would be expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. And when boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behavior would be considered the height of rudeness in the United States, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity.
In this example of commuting, culture consists of thoughts (expectations about personal space, for example) and tangible things (bus stops, trains, and seating capacity).Material culture refers to the objects or belongings of a group of people. Metro passes and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are automobiles, stores, and the physical structures where people worship. Nonmaterial culture, in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. A metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture, namely, capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation. Clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture, but the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture. These material and nonmaterial aspects of culture can vary subtly from region to region. As people travel farther afield, moving from different regions to entirely different parts of the world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar. What happens when we encounter different cultures? As we interact with cultures other than our own, we become more aware of the differences and commonalities between others’ worlds and our own.
Cultural Universals
Often, a comparison of one culture to another will reveal obvious differences. But all cultures also share common elements. Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. One example of a cultural universal is the family unit: every human society recognizes a family structure that regulates sexual reproduction and the care of children. Even so, how that family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. In the United States, by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period before forming a family unit that consists of parents and their offspring. Other cultural universals include customs like funeral rites, weddings, and celebrations of births. However, each culture may view the ceremonies quite differently.
Anthropologist George Murdock first recognized the existence of cultural universals while studying systems of kinship around the world. Murdock found that cultural universals often revolve around basic human survival, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter, or around shared human experiences, such as birth and death or illness and healing. Through his research, Murdock identified other universals including language, the concept of personal names, and, interestingly, jokes. Humor seems to be a universal way to release tensions and create a sense of unity among people (Murdock 1949). Sociologists consider humor necessary to human interaction because it helps individuals navigate otherwise tense situations.
IS MUSIC A CULTURAL UNIVERSAL?
Imagine that you are sitting in a theater, watching a film. The movie opens with the heroine sitting on a park bench with a grim expression on her face. Cue the music. The first slow and mournful notes play in a minor key. As the melody continues, the heroine turns her head and sees a man walking toward her. The music slowly gets louder, and the dissonance of the chords sends a prickle of fear running down your spine. You sense that the heroine is in danger.
Now imagine that you are watching the same movie, but with a different soundtrack. As the scene opens, the music is soft and soothing, with a hint of sadness. You see the heroine sitting on the park bench and sense her loneliness. Suddenly, the music swells. The woman looks up and sees a man walking toward her. The music grows fuller, and the pace picks up. You feel your heart rise in your chest. This is a happy moment.
Music has the ability to evoke emotional responses. In television shows, movies, even commercials, music elicits laughter, sadness, or fear. Are these types of musical cues cultural universals?
In 2009, a team of psychologists, led by Thomas Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, studied people’s reactions to music that they’d never heard (Fritz et al. 2009). The research team traveled to Cameroon, Africa, and asked Mafa tribal members to listen to Western music. The tribe, isolated from Western culture, had never been exposed to Western culture and had no context or experience within which to interpret its music. Even so, as the tribal members listened to a Western piano piece, they were able to recognize three basic emotions: happiness, sadness, and fear. Music, it turns out, is a sort of universal language.
Researchers also found that music can foster a sense of wholeness within a group. In fact, scientists who study the evolution of language have concluded that originally language (an established component of group identity) and music were one (Darwin 1871). Additionally, since music is largely nonverbal, the sounds of music can cross societal boundaries more easily than words. Music allows people to make connections, where language might be a more difficult barricade. As Fritz and his team found, music and the emotions it conveys can be cultural universals.
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Despite how much humans have in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of particular language structures and conversational etiquette reveal tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. North Americans keep more distance and maintain a large “personal space.” Even something as simple as eating and drinking varies greatly from culture to culture. If your professor comes into an early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume she is drinking? In the United States, it’s most likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favorite in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet.
The way cuisines vary across cultures fascinates many people. Some travelers pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, like celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain, while others return home expressing gratitude for their native culture’s fare. Often, people in the United States express disgust at other cultures’ cuisine and think that it’s gross to eat meat from a dog or guinea pig, for example, while they don’t question their own habit of eating cows or pigs. Such attitudes are an example ofethnocentrism, or evaluating and judging another culture based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms. Ethnocentrism, as sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) described the term, involves a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others. Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric. For example, Americans tend to say that people from England drive on the “wrong” side of the road, rather than on the “other” side. Someone from a country where dog meat is standard fare might find it off-putting to see a dog in a French restaurant—not on the menu, but as a pet and patron’s companion. A good example of ethnocentrism is referring to parts of Asia as the "Far East." One might question, "Far east of where?"
A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy; a shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike for other cultures and could cause misunderstanding and conflict. People with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people, because they see them as uneducated or backward—essentially inferior. In reality, these travelers are guilty of cultural imperialism, the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture. Europe’s colonial expansion, begun in the sixteenth century, was often accompanied by a severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often viewed the people in the lands they colonized as uncultured savages who were in need of European governance, dress, religion, and other cultural practices. A more modern example of cultural imperialism may include the work of international aid agencies who introduce agricultural methods and plant species from developed countries while overlooking indigenous varieties and agricultural approaches that are better suited to the particular region.
Ethnocentrism can be so strong that when confronted with all of the differences of a new culture, one may experience disorientation and frustration. In sociology, we call thisculture shock. A traveler from Chicago might find the nightly silence of rural Montana unsettling, not peaceful. An exchange student from China might be annoyed by the constant interruptions in class as other students ask questions—a practice that is considered rude in China. Perhaps the Chicago traveler was initially captivated with Montana’s quiet beauty and the Chinese student was originally excited to see a U.S.-style classroom firsthand. But as they experience unanticipated differences from their own culture, their excitement gives way to discomfort and doubts about how to behave appropriately in the new situation. Eventually, as people learn more about a culture, they recover from culture shock.
Culture shock may appear because people aren’t always expecting cultural differences. Anthropologist Ken Barger (1971) discovered this when he conducted a participatory observation in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. Originally from Indiana, Barger hesitated when invited to join a local snowshoe race. He knew he’d never hold his own against these experts. Sure enough, he finished last, to his mortification. But the tribal members congratulated him, saying, “You really tried!” In Barger’s own culture, he had learned to value victory. To the Inuit people, winning was enjoyable, but their culture valued survival skills essential to their environment: how hard someone tried could mean the difference between life and death. Over the course of his stay, Barger participated in caribou hunts, learned how to take shelter in winter storms, and sometimes went days with little or no food to share among tribal members. Trying hard and working together, two nonmaterial values, were indeed much more important than winning.
During his time with the Inuit tribe, Barger learned to engage in cultural relativism.Cultural relativism is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture. Practicing cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values and norms. However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not always possible. Even the most culturally relativist people from egalitarian societies—ones in which women have political rights and control over their own bodies—would question whether the widespread practice of female genital mutilation in countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan should be accepted as a part of cultural tradition. Sociologists attempting to engage in cultural relativism, then, may struggle to reconcile aspects of their own culture with aspects of a culture that they are studying.
Sometimes when people attempt to rectify feelings of ethnocentrism and develop cultural relativism, they swing too far to the other end of the spectrum. Xenocentrism is the opposite of ethnocentrism, and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own. (The Greek root word xeno, pronounced “ZEE-no,” means “stranger” or “foreign guest.”) An exchange student who goes home after a semester abroad or a sociologist who returns from the field may find it difficult to associate with the values of their own culture after having experienced what they deem a more upright or nobler way of living.
Perhaps the greatest challenge for sociologists studying different cultures is the matter of keeping a perspective. It is impossible for anyone to keep all cultural biases at bay; the best we can do is strive to be aware of them. Pride in one’s own culture doesn’t have to lead to imposing its values on others. And an appreciation for another culture shouldn’t preclude individuals from studying it with a critical eye.
OVERCOMING CULTURE SHOCK
During her summer vacation, Caitlin flew from Chicago to Madrid to visit Maria, the exchange student she’d befriended the previous semester. In the airport, she heard rapid, musical Spanish being spoken all around her. Exciting as it was, she felt isolated and disconnected. Maria’s mother kissed Caitlin on both cheeks when she greeted her. Her imposing father kept his distance. Caitlin was half asleep by the time supper was served—at 10 p.m.! Maria’s family sat at the table for hours, speaking loudly, gesturing, and arguing about politics, a taboo dinner subject in Caitlin’s house. They served wine and toasted their honored guest. Caitlin had trouble interpreting her hosts’ facial expressions, and didn’t realize she should make the next toast. That night, Caitlin crawled into a strange bed, wishing she hadn’t come. She missed her home and felt overwhelmed by the new customs, language, and surroundings. She’d studied Spanish in school for years—why hadn’t it prepared her for this?
What Caitlin hadn’t realized was that people depend not only on spoken words but also on subtle cues like gestures and facial expressions, to communicate. Cultural norms accompany even the smallest nonverbal signals (DuBois 1951). They help people know when to shake hands, where to sit, how to converse, and even when to laugh. We relate to others through a shared set of cultural norms, and ordinarily, we take them for granted.
For this reason, culture shock is often associated with traveling abroad, although it can happen in one’s own country, state, or even hometown. Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1960) is credited with first coining the term “culture shock.” In his studies, Oberg found that most people found encountering a new culture to be exciting at first. But bit by bit, they became stressed by interacting with people from a different culture who spoke another language and used different regional expressions. There was new food to digest, new daily schedules to follow, and new rules of etiquette to learn. Living with this constant stress can make people feel incompetent and insecure. People react to frustration in a new culture, Oberg found, by initially rejecting it and glorifying one’s own culture. An American visiting Italy might long for a “real” pizza or complain about the unsafe driving habits of Italians compared to people in the United States.
It helps to remember that culture is learned. Everyone is ethnocentric to an extent, and identifying with one’s own country is natural.
Caitlin’s shock was minor compared to that of her friends Dayar and Mahlika, a Turkish couple living in married student housing on campus. And it was nothing like that of her classmate Sanai. Sanai had been forced to flee war-torn Bosnia with her family when she was fifteen. After two weeks in Spain, Caitlin had developed a bit more compassion and understanding for what those people had gone through. She understood that adjusting to a new culture takes time. It can take weeks or months to recover from culture shock, and it can take years to fully adjust to living in a new culture.
By the end of Caitlin’s trip, she’d made new lifelong friends. She’d stepped out of her comfort zone. She’d learned a lot about Spain, but she’d also discovered a lot about herself and her own culture.
Experiencing new cultures offers an opportunity to practice cultural relativism. (Photo courtesy of OledSidorenko/flickr)
Summary
Though “society” and “culture” are often used interchangeably, they have different meanings. A society is a group of people sharing a community and culture. Culture generally describes the shared behaviors and beliefs of these people, and includes material and nonmaterial elements.. Our experience of cultural difference is influenced by our ethnocentrism and xenocentrism. Sociologists try to practice cultural relativism.
Section Quiz
The terms _________________ and ______________ are often used interchangeably, but have nuances that differentiate them.
1. imperialism and relativism
2. culture and society
3. society and ethnocentrism
4. ethnocentrism and xenocentrism
Answer
B
The American flag is a material object that denotes the United States of America; however, there are certain connotations that many associate with the flag, like bravery and freedom. In this example, what are bravery and freedom?
1. Symbols
2. Language
3. Material culture
4. Nonmaterial culture
Answer
D
The belief that one’s culture is inferior to another culture is called:
1. ethnocentrism
2. nationalism
3. xenocentrism
4. imperialism
Answer
C
Rodney and Elise are U.S. students studying abroad in Italy. When they are introduced to their host families, the families kiss them on both cheeks. When Rodney’s host brother introduces himself and kisses Rodney on both cheeks, Rodney pulls back in surprise. Where he is from, unless they are romantically involved, men do not kiss one another. This is an example of:
1. culture shock
2. imperialism
3. ethnocentrism
4. xenocentrism
Answer
A
Most cultures have been found to identify laughter as a sign of humor, joy, or pleasure. Likewise, most cultures recognize music in some form. Music and laughter are examples of:
1. relativism
2. ethnocentrism
3. xenocentrism
4. universalism
Answer
D
Short Answer
Examine the difference between material and nonmaterial culture in your world. Identify ten objects that are part of your regular cultural experience. For each, then identify what aspects of nonmaterial culture (values and beliefs) that these objects represent. What has this exercise revealed to you about your culture?
Do you feel that feelings of ethnocentricity or xenocentricity are more prevalent in U.S. culture? Why do you believe this? What issues or events might inform this?
Further Research
In January 2011, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America presented evidence indicating that the hormone oxytocin could regulate and manage instances of ethnocentrism. Read the full article here: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/oxytocin
Glossary
cultural imperialism
the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture
cultural relativism
the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards, and not in comparison to another culture
cultural universals
patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies
culture shock
an experience of personal disorientation when confronted with an unfamiliar way of life
ethnocentrism
the practice of evaluating another culture according to the standards of one’s own culture
material culture
the objects or belongings of a group of people
nonmaterial culture
the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society
xenocentrism
a belief that another culture is superior to one’s own | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Culture/3.02%3A_What_Is_Culture.txt |
Values and Beliefs
The first, and perhaps most crucial, elements of culture we will discuss are its values and beliefs. Values are a culture’s standard for discerning what is good and just in society. Values are deeply embedded and critical for transmitting and teaching a culture’s beliefs.Beliefs are the tenets or convictions that people hold to be true. Individuals in a society have specific beliefs, but they also share collective values. To illustrate the difference, Americans commonly believe in the American Dream—that anyone who works hard enough will be successful and wealthy. Underlying this belief is the American value that wealth is good and important.
Values help shape a society by suggesting what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, sought or avoided. Consider the value that the United States places upon youth. Children represent innocence and purity, while a youthful adult appearance signifies sexuality. Shaped by this value, individuals spend millions of dollars each year on cosmetic products and surgeries to look young and beautiful. The United States also has an individualistic culture, meaning people place a high value on individuality and independence. In contrast, many other cultures are collectivist, meaning the welfare of the group and group relationships are a primary value.
Living up to a culture’s values can be difficult. It’s easy to value good health, but it’s hard to quit smoking. Marital monogamy is valued, but many spouses engage in infidelity. Cultural diversity and equal opportunities for all people are valued in the United States, yet the country’s highest political offices have been dominated by white men.
Values often suggest how people should behave, but they don’t accurately reflect how people do behave. Values portray an ideal culture, the standards society would like to embrace and live up to. But ideal culture differs from real culture, the way society actually is, based on what occurs and exists. In an ideal culture, there would be no traffic accidents, murders, poverty, or racial tension. But in real culture, police officers, lawmakers, educators, and social workers constantly strive to prevent or repair those accidents, crimes, and injustices. American teenagers are encouraged to value celibacy. However, the number of unplanned pregnancies among teens reveals that not only is the ideal hard to live up to, but the value alone is not enough to spare teenagers the potential consequences of having sex.
One way societies strive to put values into action is through rewards, sanctions, and punishments. When people observe the norms of society and uphold its values, they are often rewarded. A boy who helps an elderly woman board a bus may receive a smile and a “thank you.” A business manager who raises profit margins may receive a quarterly bonus. People sanction certain behaviors by giving their support, approval, or permission, or by instilling formal actions of disapproval and nonsupport. Sanctions are a form of social control, a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms. Sometimes people conform to norms in anticipation or expectation of positive sanctions: good grades, for instance, may mean praise from parents and teachers. From a criminal justice perspective, properly used social control is also inexpensive crime control. Utilizing social control approaches pushes most people to conform to societal rules, regardless of whether authority figures (such as law enforcement) are present.
When people go against a society’s values, they are punished. A boy who shoves an elderly woman aside to board the bus first may receive frowns or even a scolding from other passengers. A business manager who drives away customers will likely be fired. Breaking norms and rejecting values can lead to cultural sanctions such as earning a negative label—lazy, no-good bum—or to legal sanctions, such as traffic tickets, fines, or imprisonment.
Values are not static; they vary across time and between groups as people evaluate, debate, and change collective societal beliefs. Values also vary from culture to culture. For example, cultures differ in their values about what kinds of physical closeness are appropriate in public. It’s rare to see two male friends or coworkers holding hands in the United States where that behavior often symbolizes romantic feelings. But in many nations, masculine physical intimacy is considered natural in public. This difference in cultural values came to light when people reacted to photos of former president George W. Bush holding hands with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in 2005. A simple gesture, such as hand-holding, carries great symbolic differences across cultures.
In many parts of Africa and the Middle East, it is considered normal for men to hold hands in friendship. How would Americans react to these two soldiers? (Photo courtesy of Geordie Mott/Wikimedia Commons)
Norms
So far, the examples in this chapter have often described how people are expected to behave in certain situations—for example, when buying food or boarding a bus. These examples describe the visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies are structured, or what sociologists call norms. Norms define how to behave in accordance with what a society has defined as good, right, and important, and most members of the society adhere to them.
Formal norms are established, written rules. They are behaviors worked out and agreed upon in order to suit and serve the most people. Laws are formal norms, but so are employee manuals, college entrance exam requirements, and “no running” signs at swimming pools. Formal norms are the most specific and clearly stated of the various types of norms, and they are the most strictly enforced. But even formal norms are enforced to varying degrees and are reflected in cultural values.
For example, money is highly valued in the United States, so monetary crimes are punished. It’s against the law to rob a bank, and banks go to great lengths to prevent such crimes. People safeguard valuable possessions and install antitheft devices to protect homes and cars. A less strictly enforced social norm is driving while intoxicated. While it’s against the law to drive drunk, drinking is for the most part an acceptable social behavior. And though there are laws to punish drunk driving, there are few systems in place to prevent the crime. These examples show a range of enforcement in formal norms.
There are plenty of formal norms, but the list of informal norms—casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to—is longer. People learn informal norms by observation, imitation, and general socialization. Some informal norms are taught directly—“Kiss your Aunt Edna” or “Use your napkin”—while others are learned by observation, including observations of the consequences when someone else violates a norm. But although informal norms define personal interactions, they extend into other systems as well. In the United States, there are informal norms regarding behavior at fast food restaurants. Customers line up to order their food and leave when they are done. They don’t sit down at a table with strangers, sing loudly as they prepare their condiments, or nap in a booth. Most people don’t commit even benign breaches of informal norms. Informal norms dictate appropriate behaviors without the need of written rules.
BREACHING EXPERIMENTS
Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) studied people’s customs in order to find out how societal rules and norms not only influenced behavior but also shaped social order. He believed that members of society together create a social order (Weber 2011). His resulting book, Studies in Ethnomethodology, published in 1967, discusses people’s assumptions about the social makeup of their communities.
One of Garfinkel's research methods was known as a “breaching experiment,” in which the researcher behaves in a socially awkward manner in order to test the sociological concepts of social norms and conformity. The participants are not aware an experiment is in progress. If the breach is successful, however, these “innocent bystanders” will respond in some way. For example, if the experimenter is, say, a man in a business suit, and he skips down the sidewalk or hops on one foot, the passersby are likely to stare at him with surprised expressions on their faces. But the experimenter does not simply “act weird” in public. Rather, the point is to deviate from a specific social norm in a small way, to subtly break some form of social etiquette, and see what happens.
To conduct his ethnomethodology, Garfinkel deliberately imposed strange behaviors on unknowing people. Then he observed their responses. He suspected that odd behaviors would shatter conventional expectations, but he wasn’t sure how. For example, he set up a simple game of tic-tac-toe. One player was asked beforehand to mark Xs and Os not in the boxes but on the lines dividing the spaces instead. The other player, in the dark about the study, was flabbergasted and did not know how to continue. The second player's reactions of outrage, anger, puzzlement, or other emotions illustrated the existence of cultural norms that constitute social life. These cultural norms play an important role. They let us know how to behave around each other and how to feel comfortable in our community.
There are many rules about speaking with strangers in public. It’s OK to tell a woman you like her shoes. It’s not OK to ask if you can try them on. It’s OK to stand in line behind someone at the ATM. It’s not OK to look over his shoulder as he makes his transaction. It’s OK to sit beside someone on a crowded bus. It’s weird to sit beside a stranger in a half-empty bus.
For some breaches, the researcher directly engages with innocent bystanders. An experimenter might strike up a conversation in a public bathroom, where it’s common to respect each other’s privacy so fiercely as to ignore other people’s presence. In a grocery store, an experimenter might take a food item out of another person’s grocery cart, saying, “That looks good! I think I’ll try it.” An experimenter might sit down at a table with others in a fast food restaurant or follow someone around a museum and study the same paintings. In those cases, the bystanders are pressured to respond, and their discomfort illustrates how much we depend on social norms. Breaching experiments uncover and explore the many unwritten social rules we live by.
Norms may be further classified as either mores or folkways. Mores (mor-ays) are norms that embody the moral views and principles of a group. Violating them can have serious consequences. The strongest mores are legally protected with laws or other formal norms. In the United States, for instance, murder is considered immoral, and it’s punishable by law (a formal norm). But more often, mores are judged and guarded by public sentiment (an informal norm). People who violate mores are seen as shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups. The mores of the U.S. school system require that a student’s writing be in the student’s own words or use special forms (such as quotation marks and a whole system of citation) for crediting other writers. Writing another person’s words as if they are one’s own has a name—plagiarism. The consequences for violating this norm are severe and usually result in expulsion.
Unlike mores, folkways are norms without any moral underpinnings. Rather, folkways direct appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. They indicate whether to shake hands or kiss on the cheek when greeting another person. They specify whether to wear a tie and blazer or a T-shirt and sandals to an event. In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In Egypt, that’s not acceptable. In regions in the southern United States, bumping into an acquaintance means stopping to chat. It’s considered rude not to, no matter how busy one is. In other regions, people guard their privacy and value time efficiency. A simple nod of the head is enough. Other accepted folkways in the United States may include holding the door open for a stranger or giving someone a gift on their birthday. The rules regarding these folkways may change from culture to culture.
Many folkways are actions we take for granted. People need to act without thinking in order to get seamlessly through daily routines; they can’t stop and analyze every action (Sumner 1906). Those who experience culture shock may find that it subsides as they learn the new culture’s folkways and are able to move through their daily routines more smoothly. Folkways might be small manners, learned by observation and imitated, but they are by no means trivial. Like mores and laws, these norms help people negotiate their daily lives within a given culture.
Symbols and Language
Humans, consciously and subconsciously, are always striving to make sense of their surrounding world. Symbols—such as gestures, signs, objects, signals, and words—help people understand that world. They provide clues to understanding experiences by conveying recognizable meanings that are shared by societies.
The world is filled with symbols. Sports uniforms, company logos, and traffic signs are symbols. In some cultures, a gold ring is a symbol of marriage. Some symbols are highly functional; stop signs, for instance, provide useful instruction. As physical objects, they belong to material culture, but because they function as symbols, they also convey nonmaterial cultural meanings. Some symbols are valuable only in what they represent. Trophies, blue ribbons, or gold medals, for example, serve no other purpose than to represent accomplishments. But many objects have both material and nonmaterial symbolic value.
A police officer’s badge and uniform are symbols of authority and law enforcement. The sight of an officer in uniform or a squad car triggers reassurance in some citizens, and annoyance, fear, or anger in others.
It’s easy to take symbols for granted. Few people challenge or even think about stick figure signs on the doors of public bathrooms. But those figures are more than just symbols that tell men and women which bathrooms to use. They also uphold the value, in the United States, that public restrooms should be gender exclusive. Even though stalls are relatively private, most places don’t offer unisex bathrooms.
Some road signs are universal. But how would you interpret the signage on the right? (Photo (a) courtesy of Andrew Bain/flickr; Photo (b) courtesy of HonzaSoukup/flickr)
Symbols often get noticed when they are out of context. Used unconventionally, they convey strong messages. A stop sign on the door of a corporation makes a political statement, as does a camouflage military jacket worn in an antiwar protest. Together, the semaphore signals for “N” and “D” represent nuclear disarmament—and form the well-known peace sign (Westcott 2008). Today, some college students have taken to wearing pajamas and bedroom slippers to class, clothing that was formerly associated only with privacy and bedtime. Though students might deny it, the outfit defies traditional cultural norms and makes a statement.
Even the destruction of symbols is symbolic. Effigies representing public figures are burned to demonstrate anger at certain leaders. In 1989, crowds tore down the Berlin Wall, a decades-old symbol of the division between East and West Germany, communism, and capitalism.
While different cultures have varying systems of symbols, one symbol is common to all: language. Language is a symbolic system through which people communicate and through which culture is transmitted. Some languages contain a system of symbols used for written communication, while others rely on only spoken communication and nonverbal actions.
Societies often share a single language, and many languages contain the same basic elements. An alphabet is a written system made of symbolic shapes that refer to spoken sound. Taken together, these symbols convey specific meanings. The English alphabet uses a combination of twenty-six letters to create words; these twenty-six letters make up over 600,000 recognized English words (OED Online 2011).
Rules for speaking and writing vary even within cultures, most notably by region. Do you refer to a can of carbonated liquid as “soda,” pop,” or “Coke”? Is a household entertainment room a “family room,” “rec room,” or “den”? When leaving a restaurant, do you ask your server for a “check,” the “ticket,” or your “bill”?
Language is constantly evolving as societies create new ideas. In this age of technology, people have adapted almost instantly to new nouns such as “e-mail” and “Internet,” and verbs such as “downloading,” “texting,” and “blogging.” Twenty years ago, the general public would have considered these nonsense words.
Even while it constantly evolves, language continues to shape our reality. This insight was established in the 1920s by two linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. They believed that reality is culturally determined, and that any interpretation of reality is based on a society’s language. To prove this point, the sociologists argued that every language has words or expressions specific to that language. In the United States, for example, the number thirteen is associated with bad luck. In Japan, however, the number four is considered unlucky, since it is pronounced similarly to the Japanese word for “death.”
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is based on the idea that people experience their world through their language, and that they therefore understand their world through the culture embedded in their language. The hypothesis, which has also been called linguistic relativity, states that language shapes thought (Swoyer 2003). Studies have shown, for instance, that unless people have access to the word “ambivalent,” they don’t recognize an experience of uncertainty from having conflicting positive and negative feelings about one issue. Essentially, the hypothesis argues, if a person can’t describe the experience, the person is not having the experience.
In addition to using language, people communicate without words. Nonverbal communication is symbolic, and, as in the case of language, much of it is learned through one’s culture. Some gestures are nearly universal: smiles often represent joy, and crying often represents sadness. Other nonverbal symbols vary across cultural contexts in their meaning. A thumbs-up, for example, indicates positive reinforcement in the United States, whereas in Russia and Australia, it is an offensive curse (Passero 2002). Other gestures vary in meaning depending on the situation and the person. A wave of the hand can mean many things, depending on how it’s done and for whom. It may mean “hello,” “goodbye,” “no thank you,” or “I’m royalty.” Winks convey a variety of messages, including “We have a secret,” “I’m only kidding,” or “I’m attracted to you.” From a distance, a person can understand the emotional gist of two people in conversation just by watching their body language and facial expressions. Furrowed brows and folded arms indicate a serious topic, possibly an argument. Smiles, with heads lifted and arms open, suggest a lighthearted, friendly chat.
IS THE UNITED STATES BILINGUAL?
In 1991, when she was six years old, Lucy Alvarez attended a school that allowed for the use of both English and Spanish. Lucy’s teacher was bilingual, the librarian offered bilingual books, and many of the school staff spoke both Spanish and English. Lucy and many of her classmates who spoke only Spanish at home were lucky. According to the U.S. Census, 13.8 percent of U.S. residents speak a non-English language at home. That’s a significant figure, but not enough to ensure that Lucy would be encouraged to use her native language in school (Mount 2010).
Lucy’s parents, who moved to Texas from Mexico, struggled under the pressure to speak English. Lucy might easily have gotten lost and left behind if she’d felt the same pressure in school. In 2008, researchers from Johns Hopkins University conducted a series of studies on the effects of bilingual education (Slavin et al. 2008). They found that students taught in both their native tongue and English make better progress than those taught only in English.
Technically, the United States has no official language. But many believe English to be the rightful language of the United States, and over thirty states have passed laws specifying English as the official tongue. Proponents of English-only laws suggest that a national ruling will save money on translation, printing, and human resource costs, including funding for bilingual teachers. They argue that setting English as the official language will encourage non-English speakers to learn English faster and adapt to the culture of the United States more easily (Mount 2010).
Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) oppose making English the official language and claim that it violates the rights of non-English speakers. English-only laws, they believe, deny the reality of our nation’s diversity and unfairly target Latinos and Asians. They point to the fact that much of the debate on this topic has risen since 1970, a time when the United States experienced new waves of immigration from Asia and Mexico.
Today, a lot of product information gets written in multiple languages. Enter a store like Home Depot and you’ll find signs in both English and Spanish. Buy a children’s product, and the safety warnings could be presented in multiple languages. While marketers are financially motivated to reach the largest number of consumers possible, this trend also may help people acclimate to a culture of bilingualism.
Studies show that most U.S. immigrants eventually abandon their native tongues and become fluent in English. Bilingual education helps with that transition. Today, Lucy Alvarez is an ambitious and high-achieving college student. Fluent in both English and Spanish, Lucy is studying law enforcement—a field that seeks bilingual employees. The same bilingualism that contributed to her success in grade school will help her thrive professionally as a law officer serving her community.
Nowadays, many signs—on streets and in stores—include both English and Spanish. What effect does this have on members of society? What effect does it have on our culture? (Photo courtesy of istolethetv/flickr)
Summary
A culture consists of many elements, such as the values and beliefs of its society. Culture is also governed by norms, including laws, mores, and folkways. The symbols and language of a society are key to developing and conveying culture.
Section Quiz
A nation’s flag is:
1. A symbol
2. A value
3. A culture
4. A folkway
Answer
A
The existence of social norms, both formal and informal, is one of the main things that inform ___________, otherwise known as a way to encourage social conformity.
1. values
2. sanctions
3. social control
4. mores
Answer
C
The biggest difference between mores and folkways is that
1. mores are primarily linked to morality, whereas folkways are primarily linked to being commonplace within a culture
2. mores are absolute, whereas folkways are temporary
3. mores refer to material culture, whereas folkways refer to nonmaterial culture
4. mores refer to nonmaterial culture, whereas folkways refer to material culture
Answer
A
The notion that people cannot feel or experience something that they do not have a word for can be explained by:
1. linguistics
2. Sapir-Whorf
3. Ethnographic imagery
4. bilingualism
Answer
B
Cultural sanctions can also be viewed as ways that society:
1. Establishes leaders
2. Determines language
3. Regulates behavior
4. Determines laws
Answer
C
Short Answer
What do you think of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Do you agree or disagree with it? Cite examples or research to support your point of view.
How do you think your culture would exist if there were no such thing as a social “norm”? Do you think chaos would ensue or relative peace could be kept? Explain.
Further Research
The science-fiction novel, Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delaney was based upon the principles of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Read an excerpt from the novel here:http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Babel-17
Glossary
beliefs
tenets or convictions that people hold to be true
folkways
direct, appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture
formal norms
established, written rules
ideal culture
the standards a society would like to embrace and live up to
informal norms
casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to
language
a symbolic system of communication
mores
the moral views and principles of a group
norms
the visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies are structured
real culture
the way society really is based on what actually occurs and exists
sanctions
a way to authorize or formally disapprove of certain behaviors
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
the way that people understand the world based on their form of language
social control
a way to encourage conformity to cultural norms
symbols
gestures or objects that have meanings associated with them that are recognized by people who share a culture
values
a culture’s standard for discerning what is good and just in society | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Culture/3.03%3A_Elements_of_Culture.txt |
It may seem obvious that there are a multitude of cultural differences between societies in the world. After all, we can easily see that people vary from one society to the next. It’s natural that a young woman from rural Kenya would have a very different view of the world from an elderly man in Mumbai—one of the most populated cities in the world. Additionally, each culture has its own internal variations. Sometimes the differences between cultures are not nearly as large as the differences inside cultures.
High Culture and Popular Culture
Do you prefer listening to opera or hip hop music? Do you like watching horse racing or NASCAR? Do you read books of poetry or celebrity magazines? In each pair, one type of entertainment is considered high-brow and the other low-brow. Sociologists use the termhigh culture to describe the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in the highest class segments of a society. People often associate high culture with intellectualism, political power, and prestige. In America, high culture also tends to be associated with wealth. Events considered high culture can be expensive and formal—attending a ballet, seeing a play, or listening to a live symphony performance.
The term popular culture refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in mainstream society. Popular culture events might include a parade, a baseball game, or the season finale of a television show. Rock and pop music—“pop” is short for “popular”—are part of popular culture. Popular culture is often expressed and spread via commercial media such as radio, television, movies, the music industry, publishers, and corporate-run websites. Unlike high culture, popular culture is known and accessible to most people. You can share a discussion of favorite football teams with a new coworker or comment on American Idol when making small talk in line at the grocery store. But if you tried to launch into a deep discussion on the classical Greek play Antigone, few members of U.S. society today would be familiar with it.
Although high culture may be viewed as superior to popular culture, the labels of high culture and popular culture vary over time and place. Shakespearean plays, considered pop culture when they were written, are now part of our society’s high culture. Five hundred years from now, will our descendants associate Breaking Bad with the cultural elite?
Subculture and Counterculture
A subculture is just what it sounds like—a smaller cultural group within a larger culture; people of a subculture are part of the larger culture but also share a specific identity within a smaller group.
Thousands of subcultures exist within the United States. Ethnic and racial groups share the language, food, and customs of their heritage. Other subcultures are united by shared experiences. Biker culture revolves around a dedication to motorcycles. Some subcultures are formed by members who possess traits or preferences that differ from the majority of a society’s population. The body modification community embraces aesthetic additions to the human body, such as tattoos, piercings, and certain forms of plastic surgery. In the United States, adolescents often form subcultures to develop a shared youth identity. Alcoholics Anonymous offers support to those suffering from alcoholism. But even as members of a subculture band together, they still identify with and participate in the larger society.
Sociologists distinguish subcultures from countercultures, which are a type of subculture that rejects some of the larger culture’s norms and values. In contrast to subcultures, which operate relatively smoothly within the larger society, countercultures might actively defy larger society by developing their own set of rules and norms to live by, sometimes even creating communities that operate outside of greater society.
Cults, a word derived from culture, are also considered counterculture group. The group “Yearning for Zion” (YFZ) in Eldorado, Texas, existed outside the mainstream and the limelight, until its leader was accused of statutory rape and underage marriage. The sect’s formal norms clashed too severely to be tolerated by U.S. law, and in 2008, authorities raided the compound and removed more than two hundred women and children from the property.
THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN HIPSTER SUBCULTURE
Skinny jeans, chunky glasses, and T-shirts with vintage logos—the American hipster is a recognizable figure in the modern United States. Based predominately in metropolitan areas, sometimes clustered around hotspots such as the Williamsburg neighborhood in New York City, hipsters define themselves through a rejection of the mainstream. As a subculture, hipsters spurn many of the values and beliefs of U.S. culture and prefer vintage clothing to fashion and a bohemian lifestyle to one of wealth and power. While hipster culture may seem to be the new trend among young, middle-class youth, the history of the group stretches back to the early decades of the 1900s.
Where did the hipster culture begin? In the early 1940s, jazz music was on the rise in the United States. Musicians were known as “hepcats” and had a smooth, relaxed quality that went against upright, mainstream life. Those who were “hep” or “hip” lived by the code of jazz, while those who were “square” lived according to society’s rules. The idea of a “hipster” was born.
The hipster movement spread, and young people, drawn to the music and fashion, took on attitudes and language derived from the culture of jazz. Unlike the vernacular of the day, hipster slang was purposefully ambiguous. When hipsters said, “It’s cool, man,” they meant not that everything was good, but that it was the way it was.
In the 1940s, U.S. hipsters were associated with the “cool” culture of jazz. (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress)
By the 1950s, the jazz culture was winding down and many traits of hepcat culture were becoming mainstream. A new subculture was on the rise. The “Beat Generation,” a title coined by writer Jack Kerouac, were anticonformist and antimaterialistic. They were writers who listened to jazz and embraced radical politics. They bummed around, hitchhiked the country, and lived in squalor.
The lifestyle spread. College students, clutching copies of Kerouac’s On the Road, dressed in berets, black turtlenecks, and black-rimmed glasses. Women wore black leotards and grew their hair long. Herb Caen, a San Francisco journalist, used the suffix from Sputnik 1, the Russian satellite that orbited Earth in 1957, to dub the movement’s followers “Beatniks.”
As the Beat Generation faded, a new, related movement began. It too focused on breaking social boundaries, but it also advocated freedom of expression, philosophy, and love. It took its name from the generations before; in fact, some theorists claim that Beats themselves coined the term to describe their children. Over time, the “little hipsters” of the 1970s became known simply as “hippies.”
Today’s generation of hipsters rose out of the hippie movement in the same way that hippies rose from Beats and Beats from hepcats. Although contemporary hipsters may not seem to have much in common with 1940s hipsters, the emulation of nonconformity is still there. In 2010, sociologist Mark Greif set about investigating the hipster subculture of the United States and found that much of what tied the group members together was not based on fashion, musical taste, or even a specific point of contention with the mainstream. “All hipsters play at being the inventors or first adopters of novelties,” Greif wrote. “Pride comes from knowing, and deciding, what’s cool in advance of the rest of the world. Yet the habits of hatred and accusation are endemic to hipsters because they feel the weakness of everyone’s position—including their own” (Greif 2010). Much as the hepcats of the jazz era opposed common culture with carefully crafted appearances of coolness and relaxation, modern hipsters reject mainstream values with a purposeful apathy.
Young people are often drawn to oppose mainstream conventions, even if in the same way that others do. Ironic, cool to the point of noncaring, and intellectual, hipsters continue to embody a subculture, while simultaneously impacting mainstream culture.
Intellectual and trendy, today’s hipsters define themselves through cultural irony. (Photo courtesy of Lorena Cupcake/Wikimedia Commons)
Cultural Change
As the hipster example illustrates, culture is always evolving. Moreover, new things are added to material culture every day, and they affect nonmaterial culture as well. Cultures change when something new (say, railroads or smartphones) opens up new ways of living and when new ideas enter a culture (say, as a result of travel or globalization).
Innovation: Discovery and Invention
An innovation refers to an object or concept’s initial appearance in society—it’s innovative because it is markedly new. There are two ways to come across an innovative object or idea: discover it or invent it. Discoveries make known previously unknown but existing aspects of reality. In 1610, when Galileo looked through his telescope and discovered Saturn, the planet was already there, but until then, no one had known about it. When Christopher Columbus encountered America, the land was, of course, already well known to its inhabitants. However, Columbus’s discovery was new knowledge for Europeans, and it opened the way to changes in European culture, as well as to the cultures of the discovered lands. For example, new foods such as potatoes and tomatoes transformed the European diet, and horses brought from Europe changed hunting practices of Native American tribes of the Great Plains.
Inventions result when something new is formed from existing objects or concepts—when things are put together in an entirely new manner. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, electric appliances were invented at an astonishing pace. Cars, airplanes, vacuum cleaners, lamps, radios, telephones, and televisions were all new inventions. Inventions may shape a culture when people use them in place of older ways of carrying out activities and relating to others, or as a way to carry out new kinds of activities. Their adoption reflects (and may shape) cultural values, and their use may require new norms for new situations.
Consider the introduction of modern communication technology, such as mobile phones and smartphones. As more and more people began carrying these devices, phone conversations no longer were restricted to homes, offices, and phone booths. People on trains, in restaurants, and in other public places became annoyed by listening to one-sided conversations. Norms were needed for cell phone use. Some people pushed for the idea that those who are out in the world should pay attention to their companions and surroundings. However, technology enabled a workaround: texting, which enables quiet communication and has surpassed phoning as the chief way to meet today’s highly valued ability to stay in touch anywhere, everywhere.
When the pace of innovation increases, it can lead to generation gaps. Technological gadgets that catch on quickly with one generation are sometimes dismissed by a skeptical older generation. A culture’s objects and ideas can cause not just generational but cultural gaps. Material culture tends to diffuse more quickly than nonmaterial culture; technology can spread through society in a matter of months, but it can take generations for the ideas and beliefs of society to change. Sociologist William F. Ogburn coined the term culture lag to refer to this time that elapses between the introduction of a new item of material culture and its acceptance as part of nonmaterial culture (Ogburn 1957).
Culture lag can also cause tangible problems. The infrastructure of the United States, built a hundred years ago or more, is having trouble supporting today’s more heavily populated and fast-paced life. Yet there is a lag in conceptualizing solutions to infrastructure problems. Rising fuel prices, increased air pollution, and traffic jams are all symptoms of culture lag. Although people are becoming aware of the consequences of overusing resources, the means to support changes takes time to achieve.
Sociologist Everett Rogers (1962) developed a model of the diffusion of innovations. As consumers gradually adopt a new innovation, the item grows toward a market share of 100 percent, or complete saturation within a society. (Graph courtesy of Tungsten/Wikimedia Commons)
Diffusion and Globalization
The integration of world markets and technological advances of the last decades have allowed for greater exchange between cultures through the processes of globalization and diffusion. Beginning in the 1980s, Western governments began to deregulate social services while granting greater liberties to private businesses. As a result, world markets became dominated by multinational companies in the 1980s, a new state of affairs at that time. We have since come to refer to this integration of international trade and finance markets as globalization. Increased communications and air travel have further opened doors for international business relations, facilitating the flow not only of goods but also of information and people as well (Scheuerman 2014 (revised)). Today, many U.S. companies set up offices in other nations where the costs of resources and labor are cheaper. When a person in the United States calls to get information about banking, insurance, or computer services, the person taking that call may be working in another country.
Alongside the process of globalization is diffusion, or the spread of material and nonmaterial culture. While globalization refers to the integration of markets, diffusion relates to a similar process in the integration of international cultures. Middle-class Americans can fly overseas and return with a new appreciation of Thai noodles or Italian gelato. Access to television and the Internet has brought the lifestyles and values portrayed in U.S. sitcoms into homes around the globe. Twitter feeds from public demonstrations in one nation have encouraged political protesters in other countries. When this kind of diffusion occurs, material objects and ideas from one culture are introduced into another.
Officially patented in 1893 as the “clasp locker” (left), the zipper did not diffuse through society for many decades. Today, it is immediately recognizable around the world. (Photo (a) courtesy of U.S. Patent Office/Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Rabensteiner/Wikimedia Commons)
Summary
Sociologists recognize high culture and popular culture within societies. Societies are also comprised of many subcultures—smaller groups that share an identity. Countercultures reject mainstream values and create their own cultural rules and norms. Through invention or discovery, cultures evolve via new ideas and new ways of thinking. In many modern cultures, the cornerstone of innovation is technology, the rapid growth of which can lead to cultural lag. Technology is also responsible for the spread of both material and nonmaterial culture that contributes to globalization.
Section Quiz
An example of high culture is ___________, whereas an example of popular culture would be ____________.
1. Dostoevsky style in film; “American Idol” winners
2. medical marijuana; film noir
3. country music; pop music
4. political theory; sociological theory
Answer
A
The Ku Klux Klan is an example of what part of culture?
1. Counterculture
2. Subculture
3. Multiculturalism
4. Afrocentricity
Answer
A
Modern-day hipsters are an example of:
1. ethnocentricity
2. counterculture
3. subculture
4. high culture
Answer
C
Your eighty-three-year-old grandmother has been using a computer for some time now. As a way to keep in touch, you frequently send emails of a few lines to let her know about your day. She calls after every email to respond point by point, but she has never emailed a response back. This can be viewed as an example of:
1. cultural lag
2. innovation
3. ethnocentricity
4. xenophobia
Answer
A
Some jobs today advertise in multinational markets and permit telecommuting in lieu of working from a primary location. This broadening of the job market and the way that jobs are performed can be attributed to:
1. cultural lag
2. innovation
3. discovery
4. globalization
Answer
D
The major difference between invention and discovery is:
1. Invention is based on technology, whereas discovery is usually based on culture
2. Discovery involves finding something that already exists, but invention puts things together in a new way
3. Invention refers to material culture, whereas discovery can be material or theoretic, like laws of physics
4. Invention is typically used to refer to international objects, whereas discovery refers to that which is local to one’s culture
Answer
B
That McDonald’s is found in almost every country around the world is an example of:
1. globalization
2. diffusion
3. culture lag
4. xenocentrism
Answer
B
Short Answer
Identify several examples of popular culture and describe how they inform larger culture. How prevalent is the effect of these examples in your everyday life?
Consider some of the specific issues or concerns of your generation. Are any ideas countercultural? What subcultures have emerged from your generation? How have the issues of your generation expressed themselves culturally? How has your generation made its mark on society’s collective culture?
What are some examples of cultural lag that are present in your life? Do you think technology affects culture positively or negatively? Explain.
Further Research
The Beats were a counterculture that birthed an entire movement of art, music, and literature—much of which is still highly regarded and studied today. The man responsible for naming the generation was Jack Kerouac; however, the man responsible for introducing the world to that generation was John Clellon Holmes, a writer often lumped in with the group. In 1952 he penned an article for the New York Times Magazine titled, “This Is the Beat Generation.” Read that article and learn more about Clellon Holmes and the Beats: openstaxcollege.org/l/The-Beats
Popular culture meets counterculture in this as Oprah Winfrey interacts with members of the Yearning for Zion cult. Read about it here: openstaxcollege.org/l/Oprah
Glossary
countercultures
groups that reject and oppose society’s widely accepted cultural patterns
culture lag
the gap of time between the introduction of material culture and nonmaterial culture’s acceptance of it
diffusion
the spread of material and nonmaterial culture from one culture to another
discoveries
things and ideas found from what already exists
globalization
the integration of international trade and finance markets
high culture
the cultural patterns of a society’s elite
innovations
new objects or ideas introduced to culture for the first time
inventions
a combination of pieces of existing reality into new forms
popular culture
mainstream, widespread patterns among a society’s population
subcultures
groups that share a specific identification, apart from a society’s majority, even as the members exist within a larger society | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Culture/3.04%3A_Pop_Culture_Subculture_and_Cultural_Change.txt |
Music, fashion, technology, and values—all are products of culture. But what do they mean? How do sociologists perceive and interpret culture based on these material and nonmaterial items? Let’s finish our analysis of culture by reviewing them in the context of three theoretical perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.
Functionalists view society as a system in which all parts work—or function—together to create society as a whole. In this way, societies need culture to exist. Cultural norms function to support the fluid operation of society, and cultural values guide people in making choices. Just as members of a society work together to fulfill a society’s needs, culture exists to meet its members’ basic needs.
Functionalists also study culture in terms of values. Education is an important concept in the United States because it is valued. The culture of education—including material culture such as classrooms, textbooks, libraries, dormitories—supports the emphasis placed on the value of educating a society’s members.
This statue of Superman stands in the center of Metropolis, Illinois. His pedestal reads “Truth—Justice—The American Way.” How would a functionalist interpret this statue? What does it reveal about the values of American culture? (Photo courtesy of David Wilson/flickr)
Conflict theorists view social structure as inherently unequal, based on power differentials related to issues like class, gender, race, and age. For a conflict theorist, culture is seen as reinforcing issues of "privilege" for certain groups based upon race, sex, class, and so on. Women strive for equality in a male-dominated society. Senior citizens struggle to protect their rights, their health care, and their independence from a younger generation of lawmakers. Advocacy groups such as the ACLU work to protect the rights of all races and ethnicities in the United States.
Inequalities exist within a culture’s value system. Therefore, a society’s cultural norms benefit some people but hurt others. Some norms, formal and informal, are practiced at the expense of others. Women were not allowed to vote in the United States until 1920. Gay and lesbian couples have been denied the right to marry in some states. Racism and bigotry are very much alive today. Although cultural diversity is supposedly valued in the United States, many people still frown upon interracial marriages. Same-sex marriages are banned in most states, and polygamy—common in some cultures—is unthinkable to most Americans.
At the core of conflict theory is the effect of economic production and materialism: dependence on technology in rich nations versus a lack of technology and education in poor nations. Conflict theorists believe that a society’s system of material production has an effect on the rest of culture. People who have less power also have less ability to adapt to cultural change. This view contrasts with the perspective of functionalism. In the U.S. culture of capitalism, to illustrate, we continue to strive toward the promise of the American dream, which perpetuates the belief that the wealthy deserve their privileges.
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective that is most concerned with the face-to-face interactions between members of society. Interactionists see culture as being created and maintained by the ways people interact and in how individuals interpret each other’s actions. Proponents of this theory conceptualize human interactions as a continuous process of deriving meaning from both objects in the environment and the actions of others. This is where the term symbolic comes into play. Every object and action has a symbolic meaning, and language serves as a means for people to represent and communicate their interpretations of these meanings to others. Those who believe in symbolic interactionism perceive culture as highly dynamic and fluid, as it is dependent on how meaning is interpreted and how individuals interact when conveying these meanings.
We began this chapter by asking what culture is. Culture is comprised of all the practices, beliefs, and behaviors of a society. Because culture is learned, it includes how people think and express themselves. While we may like to consider ourselves individuals, we must acknowledge the impact of culture; we inherit thought language that shapes our perceptions and patterned behavior, including about issues of family and friends, and faith and politics.
To an extent, culture is a social comfort. After all, sharing a similar culture with others is precisely what defines societies. Nations would not exist if people did not coexist culturally. There could be no societies if people did not share heritage and language, and civilization would cease to function if people did not agree on similar values and systems of social control. Culture is preserved through transmission from one generation to the next, but it also evolves through processes of innovation, discovery, and cultural diffusion. We may be restricted by the confines of our own culture, but as humans we have the ability to question values and make conscious decisions. No better evidence of this freedom exists than the amount of cultural diversity within our own society and around the world. The more we study another culture, the better we become at understanding our own.
This child’s clothing may be culturally specific, but her facial expression is universal. (Photo courtesy of Beth Rankin/flickr)
Summary
There are three major theoretical approaches toward the interpretation of culture. A functionalist perspective acknowledges that there are many parts of culture that work together as a system to fulfill society’s needs. Functionalists view culture as a reflection of society’s values. Conflict theorists see culture as inherently unequal, based upon factors like gender, class, race, and age. An interactionist is primarily interested in culture as experienced in the daily interactions between individuals and the symbols that comprise a culture. Various cultural and sociological occurrences can be explained by these theories; however, there is no one “right” view through which to understand culture.
Section Quiz
A sociologist conducts research into the ways that Hispanic American students are historically underprivileged in the U.S. education system. What theoretical approach is the sociologist using?
1. Symbolic interactionism
2. Functionalism
3. Conflict theory
4. Ethnocentrism
Answer
C
The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 grew to be an international movement. Supporters believe that the economic disparity between the highest economic class and the mid to lower economic classes is growing at an exponentially alarming rate. A sociologist who studies that movement by examining the interactions between members at Occupy camps would most likely use what theoretical approach?
1. Symbolic interactionism
2. Functionalism
3. Conflict theory
4. Ethnocentrism
Answer
A
What theoretical perspective views society as having a system of interdependent inherently connected parts?
1. Sociobiology
2. Functionalism
3. Conflict theory
4. Ethnocentrism
Answer
B
The “American Dream”—the notion that anybody can be successful and rich if they work hard enough—is most commonly associated with which sociological theory?
1. Sociobiology
2. Functionalism
3. Conflict theory
4. Ethnocentrism
Answer
C
Short Answer
Consider a current social trend that you have witnessed, perhaps situated around family, education, transportation, or finances. For example, many veterans of the Armed Forces, after completing tours of duty in the Middle East, are returning to college rather than entering jobs as veterans as previous generations did. Choose a sociological approach—functionalism, conflict theory, or symbolic interactionism—to describe, explain, and analyze the social issue you choose. Afterward, determine why you chose the approach you did. Does it suit your own way of thinking? Or did it offer the best method to illuminate the social issue? | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/03%3A_Culture/3.05%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Culture.txt |
In sociology, social interaction is a dynamic, changing sequence of social actions between individuals or groups A social interaction is an exchange between two or more individuals and is a building block of society. Social interactions can be studied between groups of two (dyads), three (triads) or larger social groups. By interacting with one another, people design rules, institutions and systems within which they seek to live. Symbols are used to communicate the expectations of a given society to those new to it.
• 4.1: Introduction to Society and Social Interaction
Sociologists study how societies interact with the environment and how they use technology.
• 4.2: Types of Societies
Societies are classified according to their development and use of technology. For most of human history, people lived in preindustrial societies characterized by limited technology and low production of goods. After the Industrial Revolution, many societies based their economies around mechanized labor, leading to greater profits and a trend toward greater social mobility. At the turn of the new millennium, a new type of society emerged.
• 4.3: Theoretical Perspectives on Society
Émile Durkheim believed that as societies advance, they make the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity. For Karl Marx, society exists in terms of class conflict. With the rise of capitalism, workers become alienated from themselves and others in society. Sociologist Max Weber noted that the rationalization of society can be taken to unhealthy extremes.
• 4.4: Social Constructions of Reality
Society is based on the social construction of reality. How we define society influences how society actually is. Likewise, how we see other people influences their actions as well as our actions toward them. We all take on various roles throughout our lives, and our social interactions depend on what types of roles we assume, who we assume them with, and the scene where interaction takes place.
Thumbnail: Looking north up Broadway from 43d Street, New York, USA. (Public Domain; Jim.henderson)
04: Society and Social Interaction
It was a school day, and Adriana, who was just entering eighth grade, woke up at 6:15 a.m. Before she got out of bed, she sent three text messages. One was to Jenn, who last year had moved five states away to a different time zone. Even though they now lived far apart, the two friends texted on and off every day. Now Adriana wanted to tell Jenn that she liked the new boots in the photo that Jenn had posted on a social media site last night.
Sociologists study how societies interact with the environment and how they use technology. (Photo courtesty of Garry Knight/flickr)
Throughout the day, Adriana used her smart phone to send fifty more texts, but she made no phone calls. She even texted her mother in the next room when she had a question about her homework. She kept in close electronic contact with all of her friends on a daily basis. In fact, when she wasn't doing homework or attending class, she was chatting and laughing with her friends via texts, tweets, and social media websites. Her smart phone was her main source of social interaction.
We can consider Adriana a typical teenager in the digital age—she constantly communicates with a large group of people who are not confined to one geographical area. This is definitely one of the benefits of new forms of communication: it is cheap and easy, and you can keep in touch with everyone at the same time. However, with these new forms of communication come new forms of societal interaction.
As we connect with each other more and more in an online environment, we make less time to interact in person. So the obvious question is this: are these forms of communication good developments in terms of social interaction? Or, if there are negative effects, what will they be? As we shall see, our reliance on electronic communication does have consequences. Beyond popularizing new forms of communication, it also alters the traditional ways in which we deal with conflict, the way we view ourselves in relationship to our surroundings, and the ways in which we understand social status. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Society_and_Social_Interaction/4.01%3A_Introduction_to_Society_and_Social_Interaction.txt |
Hunting and gathering tribes, industrialized Japan, Americans—each is a society. But what does this mean? Exactly what is a society? In sociological terms, society refers to a group of people who live in a definable community and share the same culture. On a broader scale, society consists of the people and institutions around us, our shared beliefs, and our cultural ideas. Typically, more-advanced societies also share a political authority.
Sociologist Gerhard Lenski (1924–) defined societies in terms of their technological sophistication. As a society advances, so does its use of technology. Societies with rudimentary technology depend on the fluctuations of their environments, while industrialized societies have more control over the impact of their surroundings and thus develop different cultural features. This distinction is so important that sociologists generally classify societies along a spectrum of their level of industrialization—from preindustrial to industrial to postindustrial.
Preindustrial Societies
Before the Industrial Revolution and the widespread use of machines, societies were small, rural, and dependent largely on local resources. Economic production was limited to the amount of labor a human being could provide, and there were few specialized occupations. The very first occupation was that of hunter-gatherer.
Hunter-Gatherer
Hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate the strongest dependence on the environment of the various types of preindustrial societies. As the basic structure of human society until about 10,000–12,000 years ago, these groups were based around kinship or tribes. Hunter-gatherers relied on their surroundings for survival—they hunted wild animals and foraged for uncultivated plants for food. When resources became scarce, the group moved to a new area to find sustenance, meaning they were nomadic. These societies were common until several hundred years ago, but today only a few hundred remain in existence, such as indigenous Australian tribes sometimes referred to as “aborigines,” or the Bambuti, a group of pygmy hunter-gatherers residing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hunter-gatherer groups are quickly disappearing as the world’s population explodes.
Pastoral
Changing conditions and adaptations led some societies to rely on the domestication of animals where circumstances permitted. Roughly 7,500 years ago, human societies began to recognize their ability to tame and breed animals and to grow and cultivate their own plants. Pastoral societies, such as the Maasai villagers, rely on the domestication of animals as a resource for survival. Unlike earlier hunter-gatherers who depended entirely on existing resources to stay alive, pastoral groups were able to breed livestock for food, clothing, and transportation, and they created a surplus of goods. Herding, or pastoral, societies remained nomadic because they were forced to follow their animals to fresh feeding grounds. Around the time that pastoral societies emerged, specialized occupations began to develop, and societies commenced trading with local groups.
WHERE SOCIETIES MEET—THE WORST AND THE BEST
When cultures meet, technology can help, hinder, and even destroy. The Exxon Valdez oil spillage in Alaska nearly destroyed the local inhabitant’s entire way of life. Oil spills in the Nigerian Delta have forced many of the Ogoni tribe from their land and forced removal has meant that over 100,000 Ogoni have sought refuge in the country of Benin (University of Michigan, n.d.). And the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2006 drew great attention as it occurred in what is the most developed country, the United States. Environmental disasters continue as Western technology and its need for energy expands into less developed (peripheral) regions of the globe.
Of course not all technology is bad. We take electric light for granted in the United States, Europe, and the rest of the developed world. Such light extends the day and allows us to work, read, and travel at night. It makes us safer and more productive. But regions in India, Africa, and elsewhere are not so fortunate. Meeting the challenge, one particular organization, Barefoot College, located in District Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, works with numerous less developed nations to bring solar electricity, water solutions, and education. The focus for the solar projects is the village elders. The elders agree to select two grandmothers to be trained as solar engineers and choose a village committee composed of men and women to help operate the solar program.
The program has brought light to over 450,000 people in 1,015 villages. The environmental rewards include a large reduction in the use of kerosene and in carbon dioxide emissions. The fact that the villagers are operating the projects themselves helps minimize their sense of dependence.
Horticultural
Around the same time that pastoral societies were on the rise, another type of society developed, based on the newly developed capacity for people to grow and cultivate plants. Previously, the depletion of a region’s crops or water supply forced pastoral societies to relocate in search of food sources for their livestock. Horticultural societies formed in areas where rainfall and other conditions allowed them to grow stable crops. They were similar to hunter-gatherers in that they largely depended on the environment for survival, but since they didn’t have to abandon their location to follow resources, they were able to start permanent settlements. This created more stability and more material goods and became the basis for the first revolution in human survival.
Agricultural
While pastoral and horticultural societies used small, temporary tools such as digging sticks or hoes, agricultural societiesrelied on permanent tools for survival. Around 3000 B.C.E., an explosion of new technology known as the Agricultural Revolution made farming possible—and profitable. Farmers learned to rotate the types of crops grown on their fields and to reuse waste products such as fertilizer, which led to better harvests and bigger surpluses of food. New tools for digging and harvesting were made of metal, and this made them more effective and longer lasting. Human settlements grew into towns and cities, and particularly bountiful regions became centers of trade and commerce.
This is also the age in which people had the time and comfort to engage in more contemplative and thoughtful activities, such as music, poetry, and philosophy. This period became referred to as the “dawn of civilization” by some because of the development of leisure and humanities. Craftspeople were able to support themselves through the production of creative, decorative, or thought-provoking aesthetic objects and writings.
As resources became more plentiful, social classes became more divisive. Those who had more resources could afford better living and developed into a class of nobility. Difference in social standing between men and women increased. As cities expanded, ownership and preservation of resources became a pressing concern.
Feudal
The ninth century gave rise to feudal societies. These societies contained a strict hierarchical system of power based around land ownership and protection. The nobility, known as lords, placed vassals in charge of pieces of land. In return for the resources that the land provided, vassals promised to fight for their lords.
These individual pieces of land, known as fiefdoms, were cultivated by the lower class. In return for maintaining the land, peasants were guaranteed a place to live and protection from outside enemies. Power was handed down through family lines, with peasant families serving lords for generations and generations. Ultimately, the social and economic system of feudalism failed and was replaced by capitalism and the technological advances of the industrial era.
Industrial Society
In the eighteenth century, Europe experienced a dramatic rise in technological invention, ushering in an era known as the Industrial Revolution. What made this period remarkable was the number of new inventions that influenced people’s daily lives. Within a generation, tasks that had until this point required months of labor became achievable in a matter of days. Before the Industrial Revolution, work was largely person- or animal-based, and relied on human workers or horses to power mills and drive pumps. In 1782, James Watt and Matthew Boulton created a steam engine that could do the work of twelve horses by itself.
Steam power began appearing everywhere. Instead of paying artisans to painstakingly spin wool and weave it into cloth, people turned to textile mills that produced fabric quickly at a better price and often with better quality. Rather than planting and harvesting fields by hand, farmers were able to purchase mechanical seeders and threshing machines that caused agricultural productivity to soar. Products such as paper and glass became available to the average person, and the quality and accessibility of education and health care soared. Gas lights allowed increased visibility in the dark, and towns and cities developed a nightlife.
One of the results of increased productivity and technology was the rise of urban centers. Workers flocked to factories for jobs, and the populations of cities became increasingly diverse. The new generation became less preoccupied with maintaining family land and traditions and more focused on acquiring wealth and achieving upward mobility for themselves and their families. People wanted their children and their children’s children to continue to rise to the top, and as capitalism increased, so did social mobility.
It was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Industrial Revolution that sociology was born. Life was changing quickly and the long-established traditions of the agricultural eras did not apply to life in the larger cities. Masses of people were moving to new environments and often found themselves faced with horrendous conditions of filth, overcrowding, and poverty. Social scientists emerged to study the relationship between the individual members of society and society as a whole.
It was during this time that power moved from the hands of the aristocracy and “old money” to business-savvy newcomers who amassed fortunes in their lifetimes. Families such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts became the new power players and used their influence in business to control aspects of government as well. Eventually, concerns over the exploitation of workers led to the formation of labor unions and laws that set mandatory conditions for employees. Although the introduction of new technology at the end of the nineteenth century ended the industrial age, much of our social structure and social ideas—like family, childhood, and time standardization—have a basis in industrial society.
Postindustrial Society
Information societies, sometimes known as postindustrial or digital societies, are a recent development. Unlike industrial societies that are rooted in the production of material goods, information societies are based on the production of information and services.
Digital technology is the steam engine of information societies, and computer moguls such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are its John D. Rockefellers and Cornelius Vanderbilts. Since the economy of information societies is driven by knowledge and not material goods, power lies with those in charge of storing and distributing information. Members of a postindustrial society are likely to be employed as sellers of services—software programmers or business consultants, for example—instead of producers of goods. Social classes are divided by access to education, since without technical skills, people in an information society lack the means for success.
Summary
Societies are classified according to their development and use of technology. For most of human history, people lived in preindustrial societies characterized by limited technology and low production of goods. After the Industrial Revolution, many societies based their economies around mechanized labor, leading to greater profits and a trend toward greater social mobility. At the turn of the new millennium, a new type of society emerged. This postindustrial, or information, society is built on digital technology and nonmaterial goods.
Section Quiz
Which of the following fictional societies is an example of a pastoral society?
1. The Deswan people, who live in small tribes and base their economy on the production and trade of textiles
2. The Rositian Clan, a small community of farmers who have lived on their family’s land for centuries
3. The Hunti, a wandering group of nomads who specialize in breeding and training horses
4. The Amaganda, an extended family of warriors who serve a single noble family
Answer
C
Which of the following occupations is a person of power most likely to have in an information society?
1. Software engineer
2. Coal miner
3. Children’s book author
4. Sharecropper
Answer
A
Which of the following societies were the first to have permanent residents?
1. Industrial
2. Hunter-gatherer
3. Horticultural
4. Feudal
Answer
C
Short Answer
In which type or types of societies do the benefits seem to outweigh the costs? Explain your answer, and cite social and economic reasons.
Is Gerhard Lenski right in classifying societies based on technological advances? What other criteria might be appropriate, based on what you have read?
Further Research
The Maasai are a modern pastoral society with an economy largely structured around herds of cattle. Read more about the Maasai people and see pictures of their daily lives here: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/The-Maasai
Glossary
agricultural societies
societies that rely on farming as a way of life
feudal societies
societies that operate on a strict hierarchical system of power based around land ownership and protection
horticultural societies
societies based around the cultivation of plants
hunter-gatherer societies
societies that depend on hunting wild animals and gathering uncultivated plants for survival
industrial societies
societies characterized by a reliance on mechanized labor to create material goods
information societies
societies based on the production of nonmaterial goods and services
pastoral societies
societies based around the domestication of animals
society
a group of people who live in a definable community and share the same culture
• i | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Society_and_Social_Interaction/4.02%3A_Types_of_Societies.txt |
While many sociologists have contributed to research on society and social interaction, three thinkers form the base of modern-day perspectives. Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber developed different theoretical approaches to help us understand the way societies function.
Émile Durkheim and Functionalism
As a functionalist, Émile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) perspective on society stressed the necessary interconnectivity of all of its elements. To Durkheim, society was greater than the sum of its parts. He asserted that individual behavior was not the same as collective behavior and that studying collective behavior was quite different from studying an individual’s actions. Durkheim called the communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society the collective conscience. In his quest to understand what causes individuals to act in similar and predictable ways, he wrote, “If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment” (Durkheim 1895). Durkheim also believed that social integration, or the strength of ties that people have to their social groups, was a key factor in social life.
Following the ideas of Comte and Spencer, Durkheim likened society to that of a living organism, in which each organ plays a necessary role in keeping the being alive. Even the socially deviant members of society are necessary, Durkheim argued, as punishments for deviance affirm established cultural values and norms. That is, punishment of a crime reaffirms our moral consciousness. “A crime is a crime because we condemn it,” Durkheim wrote in 1893. “An act offends the common consciousness not because it is criminal, but it is criminal because it offends that consciousness” (Durkheim 1893). Durkheim called these elements of society “social facts.” By this, he meant that social forces were to be considered real and existed outside the individual.
As an observer of his social world, Durkheim was not entirely satisfied with the direction of society in his day. His primary concern was that the cultural glue that held society together was failing, and people were becoming more divided. In his book The Division of Labor in Society (1893), Durkheim argued that as society grew more complex, social order made the transition from mechanical to organic.
Preindustrial societies, Durkheim explained, were held together by mechanical solidarity, a type of social order maintained by the collective consciousness of a culture. Societies with mechanical solidarity act in a mechanical fashion; things are done mostly because they have always been done that way. This type of thinking was common in preindustrial societies where strong bonds of kinship and a low division of labor created shared morals and values among people, such as hunter-gatherer groups. When people tend to do the same type of work, Durkheim argued, they tend to think and act alike.
In industrial societies, mechanical solidarity is replaced with organic solidarity, which is social order based around an acceptance of economic and social differences. In capitalist societies, Durkheim wrote, division of labor becomes so specialized that everyone is doing different things. Instead of punishing members of a society for failure to assimilate to common values, organic solidarity allows people with differing values to coexist. Laws exist as formalized morals and are based on restitution rather than revenge.
While the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity is, in the long run, advantageous for a society, Durkheim noted that it can be a time of chaos and “normlessness.” One of the outcomes of the transition is something he called social anomie. Anomie—literally, “without law”—is a situation in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness. Collective norms are weakened. People, while more interdependent to accomplish complex tasks, are also alienated from each other. Anomie is experienced in times of social uncertainty, such as war or a great upturn or downturn in the economy. As societies reach an advanced stage of organic solidarity, they avoid anomie by redeveloping a set of shared norms. According to Durkheim, once a society achieves organic solidarity, it has finished its development.
Karl Marx and Conflict Theory
Karl Marx (1818–1883) is certainly among the most significant social thinkers in recent history. While there are many critics of his work, it is still widely respected and influential. For Marx, society’s constructions were predicated upon the idea of “base and superstructure.” This term refers to the idea that a society’s economic character forms its base, upon which rests the culture and social institutions, the superstructure. For Marx, it is the base (economy) that determines what a society will be like.
Additionally, Marx saw conflict in society as the primary means of change. Economically, he saw conflict existing between the owners of the means of production—the bourgeoisie—and the laborers, called the proletariat.
Marx maintained that these conflicts appeared consistently throughout history during times of social revolution. These revolutions or “class antagonisms” as he called them, were a result of one class dominating another. Most recently, with the end of feudalism, a new revolutionary class he called the bourgeoisie dominated the proletariat laborers. The bourgeoisie were revolutionary in the sense that they represented a radical change in the structure of society. In Marx’s words, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx and Engels 1848).
In the mid-nineteenth century, as industrialization was booming, industrial employers, the "owners of the means of production" in Marx's terms, became more and more exploitative toward the working class. The large manufacturers of steel were particularly ruthless, and their facilities became popularly dubbed “satanic mills” based on a poem by William Blake. Marx’s colleague and friend, Frederick Engels, wrote The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, which described in detail the horrid conditions.
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world.
Add to that the long hours, the use of child labor, and exposure to extreme conditions of heat, cold, and toxic chemicals, and it is no wonder that Marx and Engels referred to capitalism, which is a way of organizing an economy so that the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) are owned by individual people and companies rather than by the government, as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”
For Marx, what we do defines who we are. In historical terms, in spite of the persistent nature of one class dominating another, some element of humanity existed. There was at least some connection between the worker and the product, augmented by the natural conditions of seasons and the rise and fall of the sun, such as we see in an agricultural society. But with the bourgeoisie revolution and the rise of industry and capitalism, the worker now worked for wages alone. His relationship to his efforts was no longer of a human nature, but based on artificial conditions.
Marx described modern society in terms of alienation. Alienation refers to the condition in which the individual is isolated and divorced from his or her society, work, or the sense of self. Marx defined four specific types of alienation.
Alienation from the product of one’s labor. An industrial worker does not have the opportunity to relate to the product he labors on. Instead of training for years as a watchmaker, an unskilled worker can get a job at a watch factory pressing buttons to seal pieces together. The worker does not care if he is making watches or cars, simply that the job exists. In the same way, a worker may not even know or care what product to which he is contributing. A worker on a Ford assembly line may spend all day installing windows on car doors without ever seeing the rest of the car. A cannery worker can spend a lifetime cleaning fish without ever knowing what product they are used for.
Alienation from the process of one’s labor. A worker does not control the conditions of her job because she does not own the means of production. If a person is hired to work in a fast food restaurant, she is expected to make the food the way she is taught. All ingredients must be combined in a particular order and in a particular quantity; there is no room for creativity or change. An employee at Burger King cannot decide to change the spices used on the fries in the same way that an employee on a Ford assembly line cannot decide to place a car’s headlights in a different position. Everything is decided by the bourgeoisie who then dictate orders to the laborers.
Alienation from others. Workers compete, rather than cooperate. Employees vie for time slots, bonuses, and job security. Even when a worker clocks out at night and goes home, the competition does not end. As Marx commented in The Communist Manifesto (1848), “No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker.”
Alienation from one’s self. A final outcome of industrialization is a loss of connectivity between a worker and her occupation. Because there is nothing that ties a worker to her labor, there is no longer a sense of self. Instead of being able to take pride in an identity such as being a watchmaker, automobile builder, or chef, a person is simply a cog in the machine.
Taken as a whole, then, alienation in modern society means that an individual has no control over his life. Even in feudal societies, a person controlled the manner of his labor as to when and how it was carried out. But why, then, does the modern working class not rise up and rebel? (Indeed, Marx predicted that this would be the ultimate outcome and collapse of capitalism.)
Another idea that Marx developed is the concept of false consciousness. False consciousness is a condition in which the beliefs, ideals, or ideology of a person are not in the person’s own best interest. In fact, it is the ideology of the dominant class (here, the bourgeoisie capitalists) that is imposed upon the proletariat. Ideas such as the emphasis of competition over cooperation, or of hard work being its own reward, clearly benefit the owners of industry. Therefore, workers are less likely to question their place in society and assume individual responsibility for existing conditions.
In order for society to overcome false consciousness, Marx proposed that it be replaced with class consciousness, the awareness of one’s rank in society. Instead of existing as a “class in itself,” the proletariat must become a “class for itself” in order to produce social change (Marx and Engels 1848), meaning that instead of just being an inert strata of society, the class could become an advocate for social improvements. Only once society entered this state of political consciousness would it be ready for a social revolution.
Max Weber and Symbolic Interactionism
While Karl Marx may be one of the best-known thinkers of the nineteenth century, Max Weber is certainly one of the greatest influences in the field of sociology. Like the other social thinkers discussed here, he was concerned with the important changes taking place in Western society with the advent of industrialization. And, like Marx and Durkheim, he feared that industrialization would have negative effects on individuals.
Weber’s primary focus on the structure of society lay in the elements of class, status, and power. Similar to Marx, Weber saw class as economically determined. Society, he believed, was split between owners and laborers. Status, on the other hand, was based on noneconomic factors such as education, kinship, and religion. Both status and class determined an individual’s power, or influence over ideas. Unlike Marx, Weber believed that these ideas formed the base of society.
Weber’s analysis of modern society centered on the concept of rationalization. A rational society is one built around logic and efficiency rather than morality or tradition. To Weber, capitalism is entirely rational. Although this leads to efficiency and merit-based success, it can have negative effects when taken to the extreme. In some modern societies, this is seen when rigid routines and strict design lead to a mechanized work environment and a focus on producing identical products in every location.
Another example of the extreme conditions of rationality can be found in Charlie Chaplin’s classic film Modern Times (1936). Chaplin’s character performs a routine task to the point where he cannot stop his motions even while away from the job. Indeed, today we even have a recognized medical condition that results from such tasks, known as “repetitive stress syndrome.”
Weber was also unlike his predecessors in that he was more interested in how individuals experienced societal divisions than in the divisions themselves. The symbolic interactionism theory, the third of the three most recognized theories of sociology, is based on Weber’s early ideas that emphasize the viewpoint of the individual and how that individual relates to society. For Weber, the culmination of industrialization, rationalization, and the like results in what he referred to as the iron cage, in which the individual is trapped by institutions and bureaucracy. This leads to a sense of “disenchantment of the world,” a phrase Weber used to describe the final condition of humanity. Indeed a dark prediction, but one that has, at least to some degree, been borne out (Gerth and Mills 1918). In a rationalized, modern society, we have supermarkets instead of family-owned stores. We have chain restaurants instead of local eateries. Superstores that offer a multitude of merchandise have replaced independent businesses that focused on one product line, such as hardware, groceries, automotive repair, or clothing. Shopping malls offer retail stores, restaurants, fitness centers, even condominiums. This change may be rational, but is it universally desirable?
THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC
In a series of essays in 1904, Max Weber presented the idea of the Protestant work ethic, a new attitude toward work based on the Calvinist principle of predestination. In the sixteenth century, Europe was shaken by the Protestant Revolution. Religious leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin argued against the Catholic Church’s belief in salvation through obedience. While Catholic leaders emphasized the importance of religious dogma and performing good deeds as a gateway to Heaven, Protestants believed that inner grace, or faith in God, was enough to achieve salvation.
John Calvin in particular popularized the Christian concept of predestination, the idea that all events—including salvation—have already been decided by God. Because followers were never sure whether they had been chosen to enter Heaven or Hell, they looked for signs in their everyday lives. If a person was hard-working and successful, he was likely to be one of the chosen. If a person was lazy or simply indifferent, he was likely to be one of the damned.
Weber argued that this mentality encouraged people to work hard for personal gain; after all, why should one help the unfortunate if they were already damned? Over time, the Protestant work ethic spread and became the foundation for capitalism.
Summary
Émile Durkheim believed that as societies advance, they make the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity. For Karl Marx, society exists in terms of class conflict. With the rise of capitalism, workers become alienated from themselves and others in society. Sociologist Max Weber noted that the rationalization of society can be taken to unhealthy extremes.
Section Quiz
Organic solidarity is most likely to exist in which of the following types of societies?
1. Hunter-gatherer
2. Industrial
3. Agricultural
4. Feudal
Answer
B
According to Marx, the _____ own the means of production in a society.
1. proletariat
2. vassals
3. bourgeoisie
4. anomie
Answer
C
Which of the following best depicts Marx’s concept of alienation from the process of one’s labor?
1. A supermarket cashier always scans store coupons before company coupons because she was taught to do it that way.
2. A businessman feels that he deserves a raise, but is nervous to ask his manager for one; instead, he comforts himself with the idea that hard work is its own reward.
3. An associate professor is afraid that she won’t be given tenure and starts spreading rumors about one of her associates to make herself look better.
4. A construction worker is laid off and takes a job at a fast food restaurant temporarily, although he has never had an interest in preparing food before.
Answer
A
The Protestant work ethic is based on the concept of predestination, which states that ________.
1. performing good deeds in life is the only way to secure a spot in Heaven
2. salvation is only achievable through obedience to God
3. no person can be saved before he or she accepts Jesus Christ as his or her savior
4. God has already chosen those who will be saved and those who will be damned
Answer
D
The concept of the iron cage was popularized by which of the following sociological thinkers?
1. Max Weber
2. Karl Marx
3. Émile Durkheim
4. Friedrich Engels
Answer
A
Émile Durkheim’s ideas about society can best be described as ________.
1. functionalist
2. conflict theorist
3. symbolic interactionist
4. rationalist
Answer
A
Short Answer
Choose two of the three sociologists discussed here (Durkheim, Marx, Weber), and use their arguments to explain a current social event such as the Occupy movement. Do their theories hold up under modern scrutiny?
Think of the ways workers are alienated from the product and process of their jobs. How can these concepts be applied to students and their educations?
Further Research
One of the most influential pieces of writing in modern history was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. Visit this site to read the original document that spurred revolutions around the world: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Communist-Party
Glossary
alienation
an individual’s isolation from his society, his work, and his sense of self
anomie
a situation in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness
bourgeoisie
the owners of the means of production in a society
capitalism
a way of organizing an economy so that the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) are owned by individual people and companies rather than by the government
class consciousness
the awareness of one’s rank in society
collective conscience
the communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society
false consciousness
a person’s beliefs and ideology that are in conflict with her best interests
iron cage
a situation in which an individual is trapped by social institutions
mechanical solidarity
a type of social order maintained by the collective consciousness of a culture
organic solidarity
a type of social order based around an acceptance of economic and social differences
proletariat
the laborers in a society
rationalization
a belief that modern society should be built around logic and efficiency rather than morality or tradition
social integration
how strongly a person is connected to his or her social group | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Society_and_Social_Interaction/4.03%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Society.txt |
Until now, we’ve primarily discussed the differences between societies. Rather than discuss their problems and configurations, we’ll now explore how society came to be and how sociologists view social interaction.
In 1966 sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote a book called The Social Construction of Reality. In it, they argued that society is created by humans and human interaction, which they call habitualization. Habitualization describes how “any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be … performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort” (Berger and Luckmann 1966). Not only do we construct our own society but we also accept it as it is because others have created it before us. Society is, in fact, “habit.”
For example, your school exists as a school and not just as a building because you and others agree that it is a school. If your school is older than you are, it was created by the agreement of others before you. In a sense, it exists by consensus, both prior and current. This is an example of the process of institutionalization, the act of implanting a convention or norm into society. Bear in mind that the institution, while socially constructed, is still quite real.
Another way of looking at this concept is through W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which states, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928). That is, people’s behavior can be determined by their subjective construction of reality rather than by objective reality. For example, a teenager who is repeatedly given a label—overachiever, player, bum—might live up to the term even though it initially wasn’t a part of his character.
Like Berger and Luckmann in their description of habitualization, Thomas states that our moral codes and social norms are created by “successive definitions of the situation.” This concept is defined by sociologist Robert K. Merton as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Merton explains that with a self-fulfilling prophecy, even a false idea can become true if it is acted upon. One example he gives is of a “bank run.” Say for some reason, a number of people falsely fear that their bank is soon to be bankrupt. Because of this false notion, people run to their bank and demand all of their cash at once. As banks rarely, if ever, have that much money on hand, the bank does indeed run out of money, fulfilling the customers’ prophecy. Here, reality is constructed by an idea.
Symbolic interactionists offer another lens through which to analyze the social construction of reality. With a theoretical perspective focused on the symbols (like language, gestures, and artifacts) that people use to interact, this approach is interested in how people interpret those symbols in daily interactions. For example, we might feel fright at seeing a person holding a gun, unless, of course, it turns out to be a police officer. Interactionists also recognize that language and body language reflect our values. One has only to learn a foreign tongue to know that not every English word can be easily translated into another language. The same is true for gestures. While Americans might recognize a “thumbs up” as meaning “great,” in Germany it would mean “one” and in Japan it would mean “five.” Thus, our construction of reality is influenced by our symbolic interactions.
Roles and Status
As you can imagine, people employ many types of behaviors in day-to-day life. Roles are patterns of behavior that we recognize in each other that are representative of a person’s social status. Currently, while reading this text, you are playing the role of a student. However, you also play other roles in your life, such as “daughter,” “neighbor,” or “employee.” These various roles are each associated with a different status.
Sociologists use the term status to describe the responsibilities and benefits that a person experiences according to their rank and role in society. Some statuses are ascribed—those you do not select, such as son, elderly person, or female. Others, calledachieved statuses, are obtained by choice, such as a high school dropout, self-made millionaire, or nurse. As a daughter or son, you occupy a different status than as a neighbor or employee. One person can be associated with a multitude of roles and statuses. Even a single status such as “student” has a complex role-set, or array of roles, attached to it (Merton 1957).
If too much is required of a single role, individuals can experience role strain. Consider the duties of a parent: cooking, cleaning, driving, problem-solving, acting as a source of moral guidance—the list goes on. Similarly, a person can experience role conflictwhen one or more roles are contradictory. A parent who also has a full-time career can experience role conflict on a daily basis. When there is a deadline at the office but a sick child needs to be picked up from school, which comes first? When you are working toward a promotion but your children want you to come to their school play, which do you choose? Being a college student can conflict with being an employee, being an athlete, or even being a friend. Our roles in life have a great effect on our decisions and who we become.
Presentation of Self
Of course, it is impossible to look inside a person’s head and study what role they are playing. All we can observe is behavior, or role performance. Role performance is how a person expresses his or her role. Sociologist Erving Goffman presented the idea that a person is like an actor on a stage. Calling his theory dramaturgy, Goffman believed that we use “impression management” to present ourselves to others as we hope to be perceived. Each situation is a new scene, and individuals perform different roles depending on who is present (Goffman 1959). Think about the way you behave around your coworkers versus the way you behave around your grandparents versus the way you behave with a blind date. Even if you’re not consciously trying to alter your personality, your grandparents, coworkers, and date probably see different sides of you.
As in a play, the setting matters as well. If you have a group of friends over to your house for dinner, you are playing the role of a host. It is agreed upon that you will provide food and seating and probably be stuck with a lot of the cleanup at the end of the night. Similarly, your friends are playing the roles of guests, and they are expected to respect your property and any rules you may set forth (“Don’t leave the door open or the cat will get out.”). In any scene, there needs to be a shared reality between players. In this case, if you view yourself as a guest and others view you as a host, there are likely to be problems.
Impression management is a critical component of symbolic interactionism. For example, a judge in a courtroom has many “props” to create an impression of fairness, gravity, and control—like her robe and gavel. Those entering the courtroom are expected to adhere to the scene being set. Just imagine the “impression” that can be made by how a person dresses. This is the reason that attorneys frequently select the hairstyle and apparel for witnesses and defendants in courtroom proceedings.
Goffman’s dramaturgy ideas expand on the ideas of Charles Cooley and the looking-glass self. According to Cooley, we base our image on what we think other people see (Cooley 1902). We imagine how we must appear to others, then react to this speculation. We don certain clothes, prepare our hair in a particular manner, wear makeup, use cologne, and the like—all with the notion that our presentation of ourselves is going to affect how others perceive us. We expect a certain reaction, and, if lucky, we get the one we desire and feel good about it. But more than that, Cooley believed that our sense of self is based upon this idea: we imagine how we look to others, draw conclusions based upon their reactions to us, and then we develop our personal sense of self. In other words, people’s reactions to us are like a mirror in which we are reflected.
Summary
Society is based on the social construction of reality. How we define society influences how society actually is. Likewise, how we see other people influences their actions as well as our actions toward them. We all take on various roles throughout our lives, and our social interactions depend on what types of roles we assume, who we assume them with, and the scene where interaction takes place.
Section Quiz
Mary works full-time at an office downtown while her young children stay at a neighbor’s house. She’s just learned that the childcare provider is leaving the country. Mary has succumbed to pressure to volunteer at her church, plus her ailing mother-in-law will be moving in with her next month. Which of the following is likely to occur as Mary tries to balance her existing and new responsibilities?
1. Role strain
2. Self-fulfilling prophecy
3. Status conflict
4. Status strain
Answer
A
According to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, society is based on ________.
1. habitual actions
2. status
3. institutionalization
4. role performance
Answer
A
Paco knows that women find him attractive, and he’s never found it hard to get a date. But as he ages, he dyes his hair to hide the gray and wears clothes that camouflage the weight he has put on. Paco’s behavior can be best explained by the concept of ___________.
1. role strain
2. the looking-glass self
3. role performance
4. habitualization
Answer
B
Short Answer
Draw a large circle, and then “slice” the circle into pieces like a pie, labeling each piece with a role or status that you occupy. Add as many statuses, ascribed and achieved, that you have. Don’t forget things like dog owner, gardener, traveler, student, runner, employee. How many statuses do you have? In which ones are there role conflicts?
Think of a self-fulfilling prophecy that you’ve experienced. Based on this experience, do you agree with the Thomas theorem? Use examples from current events to support your answer as well.
Further Research
TV Tropes is a website where users identify concepts that are commonly used in literature, film, and other media. Although its tone is for the most part humorous, the site provides a good jumping-off point for research. Browse the list of examples under the entry of “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Pay careful attention to the real-life examples. Are there ones that surprised you or that you don’t agree with? http://openstaxcollege.org/l/tv-tropes
Glossary
achieved status
the status a person chooses, such as a level of education or income
ascribed status
the status outside of an individual’s control, such as sex or race
habitualization
the idea that society is constructed by us and those before us, and it is followed like a habit
institutionalization
the act of implanting a convention or norm into society
looking-glass self
our reflection of how we think we appear to others
roles
patterns of behavior that are representative of a person’s social status
role-set
an array of roles attached to a particular status
role conflict
a situation when one or more of an individual’s roles clash
role performance
the expression of a role
role strain
stress that occurs when too much is required of a single role
self-fulfilling prophecy
an idea that becomes true when acted upon
status
the responsibilities and benefits that a person experiences according to his or her rank and role in society
Thomas theorem
how a subjective reality can drive events to develop in accordance with that reality, despite being originally unsupported by objective reality
• i | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/04%3A_Society_and_Social_Interaction/4.04%3A_Social_Constructions_of_Reality.txt |
In the following sections, we will examine the importance of the complex process of socialization and how it takes place through interaction with many individuals, groups, and social institutions. We will explore how socialization is not only critical to children as they develop but how it is also a lifelong process through which we become prepared for new social environments and expectations in every stage of our lives. But first, we will turn to scholarship about self-development, the process of coming to recognize a sense of self, a “self” that is then able to be socialized.
• 5.1: Prelude to Socialization
Socialization is the process through which people are taught to be proficient members of a society. It describes the ways that people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values. Socialization is not the same as socializing (interacting with others, like family, friends, and coworkers); to be precise, it is a sociological process that occurs through socializing
• 5.2: Theories of Self-Development
When we are born, we have a genetic makeup and biological traits. However, who we are as human beings develops through social interaction. Many scholars, both in the fields of psychology and in sociology, have described the process of self-development as a precursor to understanding how that “self” becomes socialized.
• 5.3: Why Socialization Matters
Socialization is just as essential to us as individuals. Social interaction provides the means via which we gradually become able to see ourselves through the eyes of others, and how we learn who we are and how we fit into the world around us. In addition, to function successfully in society, we have to learn the basics of both material and nonmaterial culture, everything from how to dress ourselves to what’s suitable attire for a specific occasion or from when we sleep to what we sleep on.
• 5.4: Agents of Socialization
Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we learn to use the objects of our society’s material culture? How do we come to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial culture? This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and informal social institutions.
• 5.5: Socialization Across the Life Course
Socialization isn’t a one-time or even a short-term event. We aren’t “stamped” by some socialization machine as we move along a conveyor belt and thereby socialized once and for all. In fact, socialization is a lifelong process. In the United States, socialization throughout the life course is determined greatly by age norms and “time-related rules and regulations”. As we grow older, we encounter age-related transition points that require socialization into a new roles.
• 5.E: Socialization (Exercises)
05: Socialization
Socialization is the way we learn the norms and beliefs of our society. From our earliest family and play experiences, we are made aware of societal values and expectations. (Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks/flickr)
In the summer of 2005, police detective Mark Holste followed an investigator from the Department of Children and Families to a home in Plant City, Florida. They were there to look into a statement from the neighbor concerning a shabby house on Old Sydney Road. A small girl was reported peering from one of its broken windows. This seemed odd because no one in the neighborhood had seen a young child in or around the home, which had been inhabited for the past three years by a woman, her boyfriend, and two adult sons.
Who was the mystery girl in the window?
Entering the house, Detective Holste and his team were shocked. It was the worst mess they’d ever seen, infested with cockroaches, smeared with feces and urine from both people and pets, and filled with dilapidated furniture and ragged window coverings.
Detective Holste headed down a hallway and entered a small room. That’s where he found the little girl, with big, vacant eyes, staring into the darkness. A newspaper report later described the detective’s first encounter with the child: “She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side . . . her ribs and collarbone jutted out . . . her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin . . . She was naked—except for a swollen diaper. … Her name, her mother said, was Danielle. She was almost seven years old” (DeGregory 2008).
Detective Holste immediately carried Danielle out of the home. She was taken to a hospital for medical treatment and evaluation. Through extensive testing, doctors determined that, although she was severely malnourished, Danielle was able to see, hear, and vocalize normally. Still, she wouldn’t look anyone in the eyes, didn’t know how to chew or swallow solid food, didn’t cry, didn’t respond to stimuli that would typically cause pain, and didn’t know how to communicate either with words or simple gestures such as nodding “yes” or “no.” Likewise, although tests showed she had no chronic diseases or genetic abnormalities, the only way she could stand was with someone holding onto her hands, and she “walked sideways on her toes, like a crab” (DeGregory 2008).
What had happened to Danielle? Put simply: beyond the basic requirements for survival, she had been neglected. Based on their investigation, social workers concluded that she had been left almost entirely alone in rooms like the one where she was found. Without regular interaction—the holding, hugging, talking, the explanations and demonstrations given to most young children—she had not learned to walk or to speak, to eat or to interact, to play or even to understand the world around her. From a sociological point of view, Danielle had not been socialized.
Socialization is the process through which people are taught to be proficient members of a society. It describes the ways that people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values.Socialization is not the same as socializing (interacting with others, like family, friends, and coworkers); to be precise, it is a sociological process that occurs through socializing. As Danielle’s story illustrates, even the most basic of human activities are learned. You may be surprised to know that even physical tasks like sitting, standing, and walking had not automatically developed for Danielle as she grew. And without socialization, Danielle hadn’t learned about the material culture of her society (the tangible objects a culture uses): for example, she couldn’t hold a spoon, bounce a ball, or use a chair for sitting. She also hadn’t learned its nonmaterial culture, such as its beliefs, values, and norms. She had no understanding of the concept of “family,” didn’t know cultural expectations for using a bathroom for elimination, and had no sense of modesty. Most importantly, she hadn’t learned to use the symbols that make up language—through which we learn about who we are, how we fit with other people, and the natural and social worlds in which we live.
Sociologists have long been fascinated by circumstances like Danielle’s—in which a child receives sufficient human support to survive, but virtually no social interaction—because they highlight how much we depend on social interaction to provide the information and skills that we need to be part of society or even to develop a “self.”
The necessity for early social contact was demonstrated by the research of Harry and Margaret Harlow. From 1957 to 1963, the Harlows conducted a series of experiments studying how rhesus monkeys, which behave a lot like people, are affected by isolation as babies. They studied monkeys raised under two types of “substitute” mothering circumstances: a mesh and wire sculpture, or a soft terrycloth “mother.” The monkeys systematically preferred the company of a soft, terrycloth substitute mother (closely resembling a rhesus monkey) that was unable to feed them, to a mesh and wire mother that provided sustenance via a feeding tube. This demonstrated that while food was important, social comfort was of greater value (Harlow and Harlow 1962; Harlow 1971). Later experiments testing more severe isolation revealed that such deprivation of social contact led to significant developmental and social challenges later in life.
Baby rhesus monkeys, like humans, need to be raised with social contact for healthy development. (Photo courtesy of Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble/flickr)
In the following sections, we will examine the importance of the complex process of socialization and how it takes place through interaction with many individuals, groups, and social institutions. We will explore how socialization is not only critical to children as they develop but how it is also a lifelong process through which we become prepared for new social environments and expectations in every stage of our lives. But first, we will turn to scholarship about self-development, the process of coming to recognize a sense of self, a “self” that is then able to be socialized.
Glossary
socialization
the process wherein people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/05%3A_Socialization/5.01%3A_Prelude_to_Socialization.txt |
When we are born, we have a genetic makeup and biological traits. However, who we are as human beings develops through social interaction. Many scholars, both in the fields of psychology and in sociology, have described the process of self-development as a precursor to understanding how that “self” becomes socialized.
Psychological Perspectives on Self-Development
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was one of the most influential modern scientists to put forth a theory about how people develop a sense of self. He believed that personality and sexual development were closely linked, and he divided the maturation process into psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. He posited that people’s self-development is closely linked to early stages of development, like breastfeeding, toilet training, and sexual awareness (Freud 1905).
According to Freud, failure to properly engage in or disengage from a specific stage results in emotional and psychological consequences throughout adulthood. An adult with an oral fixation may indulge in overeating or binge drinking. An anal fixation may produce a neat freak (hence the term “anal retentive”), while a person stuck in the phallic stage may be promiscuous or emotionally immature. Although no solid empirical evidence supports Freud’s theory, his ideas continue to contribute to the work of scholars in a variety of disciplines.
SOCIOLOGY OR PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
You might be wondering: if sociologists and psychologists are both interested in people and their behavior, how are these two disciplines different? What do they agree on, and where do their ideas diverge? The answers are complicated, but the distinction is important to scholars in both fields.
As a general difference, we might say that while both disciplines are interested in human behavior, psychologists are focused on how the mind influences that behavior, while sociologists study the role of society in shaping behavior. Psychologists are interested in people’s mental development and how their minds process their world. Sociologists are more likely to focus on how different aspects of society contribute to an individual’s relationship with his world. Another way to think of the difference is that psychologists tend to look inward (mental health, emotional processes), while sociologists tend to look outward (social institutions, cultural norms, interactions with others) to understand human behavior.
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) was the first to make this distinction in research, when he attributed differences in suicide rates among people to social causes (religious differences) rather than to psychological causes (like their mental wellbeing) (Durkheim 1897). Today, we see this same distinction. For example, a sociologist studying how a couple gets to the point of their first kiss on a date might focus her research on cultural norms for dating, social patterns of sexual activity over time, or how this process is different for seniors than for teens. A psychologist would more likely be interested in the person’s earliest sexual awareness or the mental processing of sexual desire.
Sometimes sociologists and psychologists have collaborated to increase knowledge. In recent decades, however, their fields have become more clearly separated as sociologists increasingly focus on large societal issues and patterns, while psychologists remain honed in on the human mind. Both disciplines make valuable contributions through different approaches that provide us with different types of useful insights.
Psychologist Erik Erikson (1902–1994) created a theory of personality development based, in part, on the work of Freud. However, Erikson believed the personality continued to change over time and was never truly finished. His theory includes eight stages of development, beginning with birth and ending with death. According to Erikson, people move through these stages throughout their lives. In contrast to Freud’s focus on psychosexual stages and basic human urges, Erikson’s view of self-development gave credit to more social aspects, like the way we negotiate between our own base desires and what is socially accepted (Erikson 1982).
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a psychologist who specialized in child development who focused specifically on the role of social interactions in their development. He recognized that the development of self evolved through a negotiation between the world as it exists in one’s mind and the world that exists as it is experienced socially (Piaget 1954). All three of these thinkers have contributed to our modern understanding of self-development.
Sociological Theories of Self-Development
One of the pioneering contributors to sociological perspectives was Charles Cooley (1864–1929). He asserted that people’s self understanding is constructed, in part, by their perception of how others view them—a process termed “the looking glass self” (Cooley 1902).
Later, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) studied the self, a person’s distinct identity that is developed through social interaction. In order to engage in this process of “self,” an individual has to be able to view him or herself through the eyes of others. That’s not an ability that we are born with (Mead 1934). Through socialization we learn to put ourselves in someone else's shoes and look at the world through their perspective. This assists us in becoming self-aware, as we look at ourselves from the perspective of the "other." The case of Danielle, for example, illustrates what happens when social interaction is absent from early experience: Danielle had no ability to see herself as others would see her. From Mead’s point of view, she had no “self.”
How do we go from being newborns to being humans with “selves?” Mead believed that there is a specific path of development that all people go through. During the preparatory stage, children are only capable of imitation: they have no ability to imagine how others see things. They copy the actions of people with whom they regularly interact, such as their mothers and fathers. This is followed by the play stage, during which children begin to take on the role that one other person might have. Thus, children might try on a parent’s point of view by acting out “grownup” behavior, like playing “dress up” and acting out the “mom” role, or talking on a toy telephone the way they see their father do.
During the game stage, children learn to consider several roles at the same time and how those roles interact with each other. They learn to understand interactions involving different people with a variety of purposes. For example, a child at this stage is likely to be aware of the different responsibilities of people in a restaurant who together make for a smooth dining experience (someone seats you, another takes your order, someone else cooks the food, while yet another clears away dirty dishes).
Finally, children develop, understand, and learn the idea of the generalized other, the common behavioral expectations of general society. By this stage of development, an individual is able to imagine how he or she is viewed by one or many others—and thus, from a sociological perspective, to have a “self” (Mead 1934; Mead 1964).
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
Moral development is an important part of the socialization process. The term refers to the way people learn what society considered to be “good” and “bad,” which is important for a smoothly functioning society. Moral development prevents people from acting on unchecked urges, instead considering what is right for society and good for others. Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) was interested in how people learn to decide what is right and what is wrong. To understand this topic, he developed a theory of moral development that includes three levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
In the preconventional stage, young children, who lack a higher level of cognitive ability, experience the world around them only through their senses. It isn’t until the teen years that the conventional theory develops, when youngsters become increasingly aware of others’ feelings and take those into consideration when determining what’s “good” and “bad.” The final stage, called postconventional, is when people begin to think of morality in abstract terms, such as Americans believing that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At this stage, people also recognize that legality and morality do not always match up evenly (Kohlberg 1981). When hundreds of thousands of Egyptians turned out in 2011 to protest government corruption, they were using postconventional morality. They understood that although their government was legal, it was not morally correct.
Gilligan’s Theory of Moral Development and Gender
Another sociologist, Carol Gilligan (1936–), recognized that Kohlberg’s theory might show gender bias since his research was only conducted on male subjects. Would females study subjects have responded differently? Would a female social scientist notice different patterns when analyzing the research? To answer the first question, she set out to study differences between how boys and girls developed morality. Gilligan’s research demonstrated that boys and girls do, in fact, have different understandings of morality. Boys tend to have a justice perspective, by placing emphasis on rules and laws. Girls, on the other hand, have a care and responsibility perspective; they consider people’s reasons behind behavior that seems morally wrong.
Gilligan also recognized that Kohlberg’s theory rested on the assumption that the justice perspective was the right, or better, perspective. Gilligan, in contrast, theorized that neither perspective was “better”: the two norms of justice served different purposes. Ultimately, she explained that boys are socialized for a work environment where rules make operations run smoothly, while girls are socialized for a home environment where flexibility allows for harmony in caretaking and nurturing (Gilligan 1982; Gilligan 1990).
WHAT A PRETTY LITTLE LADY!
“What a cute dress!” “I like the ribbons in your hair.” “Wow, you look so pretty today.”
According to Lisa Bloom, author of Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World, most of us use pleasantries like these when we first meet little girls. “So what?” you might ask.
Bloom asserts that we are too focused on the appearance of young girls, and as a result, our society is socializing them to believe that how they look is of vital importance. And Bloom may be on to something. How often do you tell a little boy how attractive his outfit is, how nice looking his shoes are, or how handsome he looks today? To support her assertions, Bloom cites, as one example, that about 50 percent of girls ages three to six worry about being fat (Bloom 2011). We’re talking about kindergarteners who are concerned about their body image. Sociologists are acutely interested in of this type of gender socialization, by which societal expectations of how boys and girls should be—how they should behave, what toys and colors they should like, and how important their attire is—are reinforced.
One solution to this type of gender socialization is being experimented with at the Egalia preschool in Sweden, where children develop in a genderless environment. All the children at Egalia are referred to with neutral terms like “friend” instead of “he” or “she.” Play areas and toys are consciously set up to eliminate any reinforcement of gender expectations (Haney 2011). Egalia strives to eliminate all societal gender norms from these children’s preschool world.
Extreme? Perhaps. So what is the middle ground? Bloom suggests that we start with simple steps: when introduced to a young girl, ask about her favorite book or what she likes. In short, engage with her mind … not her outward appearance (Bloom 2011).
Summary
Psychological theories of self-development have been broadened by sociologists who explicitly study the role of society and social interaction in self-development. Charles Cooley and George Mead both contributed significantly to the sociological understanding of the development of self. Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan developed their ideas further and researched how our sense of morality develops. Gilligan added the dimension of gender differences to Kohlberg’s theory.
Section Quiz
Socialization, as a sociological term, describes:
1. how people interact during social situations
2. how people learn societal norms, beliefs, and values
3. a person’s internal mental state when in a group setting
4. the difference between introverts and extroverts
Answer
B
The Harlows’ study on rhesus monkeys showed that:
1. rhesus monkeys raised by other primate species are poorly socialized
2. monkeys can be adequately socialized by imitating humans
3. food is more important than social comfort
4. social comfort is more important than food
Answer
D
What occurs in Lawrence Kohlberg’s conventional level?
1. Children develop the ability to have abstract thoughts.
2. Morality is developed by pain and pleasure.
3. Children begin to consider what society considers moral and immoral.
4. Parental beliefs have no influence on children’s morality.
Answer
C
What did Carol Gilligan believe earlier researchers into morality had overlooked?
1. The justice perspective
2. Sympathetic reactions to moral situations
3. The perspective of females
4. How social environment affects how morality develops
Answer
C
What is one way to distinguish between psychology and sociology?
1. Psychology focuses on the mind, while sociology focuses on society.
2. Psychologists are interested in mental health, while sociologists are interested in societal functions.
3. Psychologists look inward to understand behavior while sociologists look outward.
4. All of the above
Answer
D
How did nearly complete isolation as a child affect Danielle’s verbal abilities?
1. She could not communicate at all.
2. She never learned words, but she did learn signs.
3. She could not understand much, but she could use gestures.
4. She could understand and use basic language like “yes” and “no.”
Answer
A
Short Answer
Think of a current issue or pattern that a sociologist might study. What types of questions would the sociologist ask, and what research methods might he employ? Now consider the questions and methods a psychologist might use to study the same issue. Comment on their different approaches.
Explain why it’s important to conduct research using both male and female participants. What sociological topics might show gender differences? Provide some examples to illustrate your ideas.
Further Research
Lawrence Kohlberg was most famous for his research using moral dilemmas. He presented dilemmas to boys and asked them how they would judge the situations. Visit http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Dilemma to read about Kohlberg’s most famous moral dilemma, known as the Heinz dilemma.
Glossary
generalized other
the common behavioral expectations of general society
moral development
the way people learn what is “good” and “bad” in society
self
a person’s distinct sense of identity as developed through social interaction | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/05%3A_Socialization/5.02%3A_Theories_of_Self-Development.txt |
Socialization is critical both to individuals and to the societies in which they live. It illustrates how completely intertwined human beings and their social worlds are. First, it is through teaching culture to new members that a society perpetuates itself. If new generations of a society don’t learn its way of life, it ceases to exist. Whatever is distinctive about a culture must be transmitted to those who join it in order for a society to survive. For U.S. culture to continue, for example, children in the United States must learn about cultural values related to democracy: they have to learn the norms of voting, as well as how to use material objects such as voting machines. Of course, some would argue that it’s just as important in U.S. culture for the younger generation to learn the etiquette of eating in a restaurant or the rituals of tailgate parties at football games. In fact, there are many ideas and objects that people in the United States teach children about in hopes of keeping the society’s way of life going through another generation.
Socialization teaches us our society’s expectations for dining out. The manners and customs of different cultures (When can you use your hands to eat? How should you compliment the cook? Who is the “head” of the table?) are learned through socialization. (Photo courtesy of Niyam Bhushan/flickr)
Socialization is just as essential to us as individuals. Social interaction provides the means via which we gradually become able to see ourselves through the eyes of others, and how we learn who we are and how we fit into the world around us. In addition, to function successfully in society, we have to learn the basics of both material and nonmaterial culture, everything from how to dress ourselves to what’s suitable attire for a specific occasion; from when we sleep to what we sleep on; and from what’s considered appropriate to eat for dinner to how to use the stove to prepare it. Most importantly, we have to learn language—whether it’s the dominant language or one common in a subculture, whether it’s verbal or through signs—in order to communicate and to think. As we saw with Danielle, without socialization we literally have no self.
Nature versus Nurture
Some experts assert that who we are is a result of nurture—the relationships and caring that surround us. Others argue that who we are is based entirely in genetics. According to this belief, our temperaments, interests, and talents are set before birth. From this perspective, then, who we are depends on nature.
One way researchers attempt to measure the impact of nature is by studying twins. Some studies have followed identical twins who were raised separately. The pairs shared the same genetics but in some cases were socialized in different ways. Instances of this type of situation are rare, but studying the degree to which identical twins raised apart are the same and different can give researchers insight into the way our temperaments, preferences, and abilities are shaped by our genetic makeup versus our social environment.
For example, in 1968, twin girls born to a mentally ill mother were put up for adoption, separated from each other, and raised in different households. The adoptive parents, and certainly the babies, did not realize the girls were one of five pairs of twins who were made subjects of a scientific study (Flam 2007).
In 2003, the two women, then age thirty-five, were reunited. Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein sat together in awe, feeling like they were looking into a mirror. Not only did they look alike but they also behaved alike, using the same hand gestures and facial expressions (Spratling 2007). Studies like these point to the genetic roots of our temperament and behavior.
Though genetics and hormones play an important role in human behavior, sociology’s larger concern is the effect society has on human behavior, the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate. What race were the twins? From what social class were their parents? What about gender? Religion? All these factors affected the lives of the twins as much as their genetic makeup and are critical to consider as we look at life through the sociological lens.
THE LIFE OF CHRIS LANGAN, THE SMARTEST MAN YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF
Bouncer. Firefighter. Factory worker. Cowboy. Chris Langan spent the majority of his adult life just getting by with jobs like these. He had no college degree, few resources, and a past filled with much disappointment. Chris Langan also had an IQ of over 195, nearly 100 points higher than the average person (Brabham 2001). So why didn’t Chris become a neurosurgeon, professor, or aeronautical engineer? According to Macolm Gladwell (2008) in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Chris didn’t possess the set of social skills necessary to succeed on such a high level—skills that aren’t innate but learned.
Gladwell looked to a recent study conducted by sociologist Annette Lareau in which she closely shadowed 12 families from various economic backgrounds and examined their parenting techniques. Parents from lower income families followed a strategy of “accomplishment of natural growth,” which is to say they let their children develop on their own with a large amount of independence; parents from higher-income families, however, “actively fostered and accessed a child’s talents, opinions, and skills” (Gladwell 2008). These parents were more likely to engage in analytical conversation, encourage active questioning of the establishment, and foster development of negotiation skills. The parents were also able to introduce their children to a wide range of activities, from sports to music to accelerated academic programs. When one middle-class child was denied entry to a gifted and talented program, the mother petitioned the school and arranged additional testing until her daughter was admitted. Lower-income parents, however, were more likely to unquestioningly obey authorities such as school boards. Their children were not being socialized to comfortably confront the system and speak up (Gladwell 2008).
What does this have to do with Chris Langan, deemed by some the smartest man in the world (Brabham 2001)? Chris was born in severe poverty, moving across the country with an abusive and alcoholic stepfather. His genius went largely unnoticed. After accepting a full scholarship to Reed College, he lost his funding after his mother failed to fill out necessary paperwork. Unable to successfully make his case to the administration, Chris, who had received straight A’s the previous semester, was given F’s on his transcript and forced to drop out. After he enrolled in Montana State, an administrator’s refusal to rearrange his class schedule left him unable to find the means necessary to travel the 16 miles to attend classes. What Chris had in brilliance, he lacked in practical intelligence, or what psychologist Robert Sternberg defines as “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect” (Sternberg et al. 2000). Such knowledge was never part of his socialization.
Chris gave up on school and began working an array of blue-collar jobs, pursuing his intellectual interests on the side. Though he’s recently garnered attention for his “Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe,” he remains weary of and resistant to the educational system.
As Gladwell concluded, “He’d had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses—ever makes it alone” (2008).
Sociologists all recognize the importance of socialization for healthy individual and societal development. But how do scholars working in the three major theoretical paradigms approach this topic? Structural functionalists would say that socialization is essential to society, both because it trains members to operate successfully within it and because it perpetuates culture by transmitting it to new generations. Without socialization, a society’s culture would perish as members died off. A conflict theorist might argue that socialization reproduces inequality from generation to generation by conveying different expectations and norms to those with different social characteristics. For example, individuals are socialized differently by gender, social class, and race. As in Chris Langan's case, this creates different (unequal) opportunities. An interactionist studying socialization is concerned with face-to-face exchanges and symbolic communication. For example, dressing baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink is one small way we convey messages about differences in gender roles.
Identical twins may look alike, but their differences can give us clues to the effects of socialization. (Photo courtesy of D. Flam/flickr)
Summary
Socialization is important because it helps uphold societies and cultures; it is also a key part of individual development. Research demonstrates that who we are is affected by both nature (our genetic and hormonal makeup) and nurture (the social environment in which we are raised). Sociology is most concerned with the way that society’s influence affects our behavior patterns, made clear by the way behavior varies across class and gender.
Section Quiz
Why do sociologists need to be careful when drawing conclusions from twin studies?
1. The results do not apply to singletons.
2. The twins were often raised in different ways.
3. The twins may turn out to actually be fraternal.
4. The sample sizes are often small.
Answer
D
From a sociological perspective, which factor does not greatly influence a person’s socialization?
1. Gender
2. Class
3. Blood type
4. Race
Answer
C
Chris Langan’s story illustrates that:
1. children raised in one-parent households tend to have higher IQs.
2. intelligence is more important than socialization.
3. socialization can be more important than intelligence.
4. neither socialization nor intelligence affects college admissions.
Answer
C
Short Answer
Why are twin studies an important way to learn about the relative effects of genetics and socialization on children? What questions about human development do you believe twin studies are best for answering? For what types of questions would twin studies not be as helpful?
Why do you think that people like Chris Langan continue to have difficulty even after they are helped through societal systems? What is it they’ve missed that prevents them from functioning successfully in the social world?
Further Research
Learn more about five other sets of twins who grew up apart and discovered each other later in life atopenstaxcollege.org/l/twins
Glossary
nature
the influence of our genetic makeup on self-development
nurture
the role that our social environment plays in self-development | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/05%3A_Socialization/5.03%3A_Why_Socialization_Matters.txt |
Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we learn to use the objects of our society’s material culture? How do we come to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial culture? This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and informal social institutions.
Social Group Agents
Social groups often provide the first experiences of socialization. Families, and later peer groups, communicate expectations and reinforce norms. People first learn to use the tangible objects of material culture in these settings, as well as being introduced to the beliefs and values of society.
Family
Family is the first agent of socialization. Mothers and fathers, siblings and grandparents, plus members of an extended family, all teach a child what he or she needs to know. For example, they show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”). As you are aware, either from your own experience as a child or from your role in helping to raise one, socialization includes teaching and learning about an unending array of objects and ideas.
Keep in mind, however, that families do not socialize children in a vacuum. Many social factors affect the way a family raises its children. For example, we can use sociological imagination to recognize that individual behaviors are affected by the historical period in which they take place. Sixty years ago, it would not have been considered especially strict for a father to hit his son with a wooden spoon or a belt if he misbehaved, but today that same action might be considered child abuse.
Sociologists recognize that race, social class, religion, and other societal factors play an important role in socialization. For example, poor families usually emphasize obedience and conformity when raising their children, while wealthy families emphasize judgment and creativity (National Opinion Research Center 2008). This may occur because working-class parents have less education and more repetitive-task jobs for which it is helpful to be able to follow rules and conform. Wealthy parents tend to have better educations and often work in managerial positions or careers that require creative problem solving, so they teach their children behaviors that are beneficial in these positions. This means children are effectively socialized and raised to take the types of jobs their parents already have, thus reproducing the class system (Kohn 1977). Likewise, children are socialized to abide by gender norms, perceptions of race, and class-related behaviors.
In Sweden, for instance, stay-at-home fathers are an accepted part of the social landscape. A government policy provides subsidized time off work—480 days for families with newborns—with the option of the paid leave being shared between mothers and fathers. As one stay-at-home dad says, being home to take care of his baby son “is a real fatherly thing to do. I think that’s very masculine” (Associated Press 2011). Close to 90 percent of Swedish fathers use their paternity leave (about 340,000 dads); on average they take seven weeks per birth (The Economist, 2014). How do U.S. policies—and our society’s expected gender roles—compare? How will Swedish children raised this way be socialized to parental gender norms? How might that be different from parental gender norms in the United States?
The socialized roles of dads (and moms) vary by society. (Photo courtesy of Nate Grigg/flickr)
Peer Groups
A peer group is made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests. Peer group socialization begins in the earliest years, such as when kids on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns, the rules of a game, or how to shoot a basket. As children grow into teenagers, this process continues. Peer groups are important to adolescents in a new way, as they begin to develop an identity separate from their parents and exert independence. Additionally, peer groups provide their own opportunities for socialization since kids usually engage in different types of activities with their peers than they do with their families. Peer groups provide adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the realm of their families. Interestingly, studies have shown that although friendships rank high in adolescents’ priorities, this is balanced by parental influence.
Institutional Agents
The social institutions of our culture also inform our socialization. Formal institutions—like schools, workplaces, and the government—teach people how to behave in and navigate these systems. Other institutions, like the media, contribute to socialization by inundating us with messages about norms and expectations.
School
Most U.S. children spend about seven hours a day, 180 days a year, in school, which makes it hard to deny the importance school has on their socialization (U.S. Department of Education 2004). Students are not in school only to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks.
These kindergarteners aren’t just learning to read and write; they are being socialized to norms like keeping their hands to themselves, standing in line, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. (Photo courtesy of Bonner Springs Library/flickr)
School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this aspect of schools as the hidden curriculum, the informal teaching done by schools.
For example, in the United States, schools have built a sense of competition into the way grades are awarded and the way teachers evaluate students (Bowles and Gintis 1976). When children participate in a relay race or a math contest, they learn there are winners and losers in society. When children are required to work together on a project, they practice teamwork with other people in cooperative situations. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world. Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn, and sitting still for hours during the day. Schools in different cultures socialize children differently in order to prepare them to function well in those cultures. The latent functions of teamwork and dealing with bureaucracy are features of U.S. culture.
Schools also socialize children by teaching them about citizenship and national pride. In the United States, children are taught to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Most districts require classes about U.S. history and geography. As academic understanding of history evolves, textbooks in the United States have been scrutinized and revised to update attitudes toward other cultures as well as perspectives on historical events; thus, children are socialized to a different national or world history than earlier textbooks may have done. For example, information about the mistreatment of African Americans and Native American Indians more accurately reflects those events than in textbooks of the past.
CONTROVERSIAL TEXTBOOKS
On August 13, 2001, twenty South Korean men gathered in Seoul. Each chopped off one of his own fingers because of textbooks. These men took drastic measures to protest eight middle school textbooks approved by Tokyo for use in Japanese middle schools. According to the Korean government (and other East Asian nations), the textbooks glossed over negative events in Japan’s history at the expense of other Asian countries.
In the early 1900s, Japan was one of Asia’s more aggressive nations. For instance, it held Korea as a colony between 1910 and 1945. Today, Koreans argue that the Japanese are whitewashing that colonial history through these textbooks. One major criticism is that they do not mention that, during World War II, the Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery. The textbooks describe the women as having been “drafted” to work, a euphemism that downplays the brutality of what actually occurred. Some Japanese textbooks dismiss an important Korean independence demonstration in 1919 as a “riot.” In reality, Japanese soldiers attacked peaceful demonstrators, leaving roughly 6,000 dead and 15,000 wounded (Crampton 2002).
Although it may seem extreme that people are so enraged about how events are described in a textbook that they would resort to dismemberment, the protest affirms that textbooks are a significant tool of socialization in state-run education systems.
The Workplace
Just as children spend much of their day at school, many U.S. adults at some point invest a significant amount of time at a place of employment. Although socialized into their culture since birth, workers require new socialization into a workplace, in terms of both material culture (such as how to operate the copy machine) and nonmaterial culture (such as whether it’s okay to speak directly to the boss or how to share the refrigerator).
Different jobs require different types of socialization. In the past, many people worked a single job until retirement. Today, the trend is to switch jobs at least once a decade. Between the ages of eighteen and forty-six, the average baby boomer of the younger set held 11.3 different jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). This means that people must become socialized to, and socialized by, a variety of work environments.
Religion
While some religions are informal institutions, here we focus on practices followed by formal institutions. Religion is an important avenue of socialization for many people. The United States is full of synagogues, temples, churches, mosques, and similar religious communities where people gather to worship and learn. Like other institutions, these places teach participants how to interact with the religion’s material culture (like a mezuzah, a prayer rug, or a communion wafer). For some people, important ceremonies related to family structure—like marriage and birth—are connected to religious celebrations. Many religious institutions also uphold gender norms and contribute to their enforcement through socialization. From ceremonial rites of passage that reinforce the family unit to power dynamics that reinforce gender roles, organized religion fosters a shared set of socialized values that are passed on through society.
Government
Although we do not think about it, many of the rites of passage people go through today are based on age norms established by the government. To be defined as an “adult” usually means being eighteen years old, the age at which a person becomes legally responsible for him- or herself. And sixty-five years old is the start of “old age” since most people become eligible for senior benefits at that point.
Each time we embark on one of these new categories—senior, adult, taxpayer—we must be socialized into our new role. Seniors must learn the ropes of Medicare, Social Security benefits, and senior shopping discounts. When U.S. males turn eighteen, they must register with the Selective Service System within thirty days to be entered into a database for possible military service. These government dictates mark the points at which we require socialization into a new category.
Mass Media
Mass media distribute impersonal information to a wide audience, via television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet. With the average person spending over four hours a day in front of the television (and children averaging even more screen time), media greatly influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005). People learn about objects of material culture (like new technology and transportation options), as well as nonmaterial culture—what is true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is expected (norms).
GIRLS AND MOVIES
Some people are concerned about the way girls today are socialized into a “princess culture.” (Photo courtesy of Jørgen Håland/flickr)
Pixar is one of the largest producers of children’s movies in the world and has released large box office draws, such as Toy Story, Cars, The Incredibles, and Up. What Pixar has never before produced is a movie with a female lead role. This changed with Pixar’s newest movie Brave, which was released in 2012. Before Brave, women in Pixar served as supporting characters and love interests. In Up, for example, the only human female character dies within the first ten minutes of the film. For the millions of girls watching Pixar films, there are few strong characters or roles for them to relate to. If they do not see possible versions of themselves, they may come to view women as secondary to the lives of men.
The animated films of Pixar’s parent company, Disney, have many female lead roles. Disney is well known for films with female leads, such as Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and Mulan. Many of Disney’s movies star a female, and she is nearly always a princess figure. If she is not a princess to begin with, she typically ends the movie by marrying a prince or, in the case of Mulan, a military general. Although not all “princesses” in Disney movies play a passive role in their lives, they typically find themselves needing to be rescued by a man, and the happy ending they all search for includes marriage.
Alongside this prevalence of princesses, many parents are expressing concern about the culture of princesses that Disney has created. Peggy Orenstein addresses this problem in her popular book,Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Orenstein wonders why every little girl is expected to be a “princess” and why pink has become an all-consuming obsession for many young girls. Another mother wondered what she did wrong when her three-year-old daughter refused to do “nonprincessy” things, including running and jumping. The effects of this princess culture can have negative consequences for girls throughout life. An early emphasis on beauty and sexiness can lead to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and risky sexual behavior among older girls.
What should we expect from Pixar’s new movie, the first starring a female character? Although Bravefeatures a female lead, she is still a princess. Will this film offer any new type of role model for young girls? (O’Connor 2011; Barnes 2010; Rose 2011).
Summary
Our direct interactions with social groups, like families and peers, teach us how others expect us to behave. Likewise, a society’s formal and informal institutions socialize its population. Schools, workplaces, and the media communicate and reinforce cultural norms and values.
Section Quiz
Why are wealthy parents more likely than poor parents to socialize their children toward creativity and problem solving?
1. Wealthy parents are socializing their children toward the skills of white-collar employment.
2. Wealthy parents are not concerned about their children rebelling against their rules.
3. Wealthy parents never engage in repetitive tasks.
4. Wealthy parents are more concerned with money than with a good education.
Answer
A
How do schools prepare children to one day enter the workforce?
1. With a standardized curriculum
2. Through the hidden curriculum
3. By socializing them in teamwork
4. All of the above
Answer
D
Which one of the following is not a way people are socialized by religion?
1. People learn the material culture of their religion.
2. Life stages and roles are connected to religious celebration.
3. An individual’s personal internal experience of a divine being leads to their faith.
4. Places of worship provide a space for shared group experiences.
Answer
C
Which of the following is a manifest function of schools?
1. Understanding when to speak up and when to be silent
2. Learning to read and write
3. Following a schedule
4. Knowing locker room etiquette
Answer
B
Which of the following is typically the earliest agent of socialization?
1. School
2. Family
3. Mass media
4. Workplace
Answer
B
Short Answer
Do you think it is important that parents discuss gender roles with their young children, or is gender a topic better left for later? How do parents consider gender norms when buying their children books, movies, and toys? How do you believe they should consider it?
Based on your observations, when are adolescents more likely to listen to their parents or to their peer groups when making decisions? What types of dilemmas lend themselves toward one social agent over another?
Further Research
Most societies expect parents to socialize children into gender norms. See the controversy surrounding one Canadian couple’s refusal to do so at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Baby-Storm
Glossary
hidden curriculum
the informal teaching done in schools that socializes children to societal norms
peer group
a group made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/05%3A_Socialization/5.04%3A_Agents_of_Socialization.txt |
Socialization isn’t a one-time or even a short-term event. We aren’t “stamped” by some socialization machine as we move along a conveyor belt and thereby socialized once and for all. In fact, socialization is a lifelong process. In the United States, socialization throughout the life course is determined greatly by age norms and “time-related rules and regulations” (Setterson 2002). As we grow older, we encounter age-related transition points that require socialization into a new role, such as becoming school age, entering the workforce, or retiring. For example, the U.S. government mandates that all children attend school. Child labor laws, enacted in the early twentieth century, nationally declared that childhood be a time of learning, not of labor. In countries such as Niger and Sierra Leone, however, child labor remains common and socially acceptable, with little legislation to regulate such practices (UNICEF 2012).
GAP YEAR: HOW DIFFERENT SOCIETIES SOCIALIZE YOUNG ADULTS
Have you ever heard of gap year? It’s a common custom in British society. When teens finish their secondary schooling (aka high school in the United States), they often take a year “off” before entering college. Frequently, they might take a job, travel, or find other ways to experience another culture. Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, spent his gap year practicing survival skills in Belize, teaching English in Chile, and working on a dairy farm in the United Kingdom (Prince of Wales 2012a). His brother, Prince Harry, advocated for AIDS orphans in Africa and worked as a jackeroo (a novice ranch hand) in Australia (Prince of Wales 2012b).
Age transition points require socialization into new roles that can vary widely between societies. Young adults in America are encouraged to enter college or the workforce right away, students in England and India can take a year off like British Princes William and Harry did, while young men in Singapore and Switzerland must serve time in the military. (Photo courtesy of Charles McCain/flickr)
In the United States, this life transition point is socialized quite differently, and taking a year off is generally frowned upon. Instead, U.S. youth are encouraged to pick career paths by their mid-teens, to select a college and a major by their late teens, and to have completed all collegiate schooling or technical training for their career by their early twenties.
In yet other nations, this phase of the life course is tied into conscription, a term that describes compulsory military service. Egypt, Switzerland, Turkey, and Singapore all have this system in place. Youth in these nations (often only the males) are expected to undergo a number of months or years of military training and service.
How might your life be different if you lived in one of these other countries? Can you think of similar social norms—related to life age-transition points—that vary from country to country?
Many of life’s social expectations are made clear and enforced on a cultural level. Through interacting with others and watching others interact, the expectation to fulfill roles becomes clear. While in elementary or middle school, the prospect of having a boyfriend or girlfriend may have been considered undesirable. The socialization that takes place in high school changes the expectation. By observing the excitement and importance attached to dating and relationships within the high school social scene, it quickly becomes apparent that one is now expected not only to be a child and a student, but also a significant other. Graduation from formal education—high school, vocational school, or college—involves socialization into a new set of expectations.
Educational expectations vary not only from culture to culture, but also from class to class. While middle- or upper-class families may expect their daughter or son to attend a four-year university after graduating from high school, other families may expect their child to immediately begin working full-time, as many within their family have done before.
THE LONG ROAD TO ADULTHOOD FOR MILLENNIALS
2008 was a year of financial upheaval in the United States. Rampant foreclosures and bank failures set off a chain of events sparking government distrust, loan defaults, and large-scale unemployment. How has this affected the United States’s young adults?
Millennials, sometimes also called Gen Y, is a term that describes the generation born during the early eighties to early nineties. While the recession was in full swing, many were in the process of entering, attending, or graduating from high school and college. With employment prospects at historical lows, large numbers of graduates were unable to find work, sometimes moving back in with their parents and struggling to pay back student loans.
According to the New York Times, this economic stall is causing the Millennials to postpone what most Americans consider to be adulthood: “The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life” (Henig 2010). The term Boomerang Generation describes recent college graduates, for whom lack of adequate employment upon college graduation often leads to a return to the parental home (Davidson, 2014).
The five milestones that define adulthood, Henig writes, are “completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying, and having a child” (Henig 2010). These social milestones are taking longer for Millennials to attain, if they’re attained at all. Sociologists wonder what long-term impact this generation’s situation may have on society as a whole.
In the process of socialization, adulthood brings a new set of challenges and expectations, as well as new roles to fill. As the aging process moves forward, social roles continue to evolve. Pleasures of youth, such as wild nights out and serial dating, become less acceptable in the eyes of society. Responsibility and commitment are emphasized as pillars of adulthood, and men and women are expected to “settle down.” During this period, many people enter into marriage or a civil union, bring children into their families, and focus on a career path. They become partners or parents instead of students or significant others.
Just as young children pretend to be doctors or lawyers, play house, and dress up, adults also engage in anticipatory socialization, the preparation for future life roles. Examples would include a couple who cohabitate before marriage or soon-to-be parents who read infant care books and prepare their home for the new arrival. As part of anticipatory socialization, adults who are financially able begin planning for their retirement, saving money, and looking into future healthcare options. The transition into any new life role, despite the social structure that supports it, can be difficult.
Resocialization
In the process of resocialization, old behaviors that were helpful in a previous role are removed because they are no longer of use. Resocialization is necessary when a person moves to a senior care center, goes to boarding school, or serves time in jail. In the new environment, the old rules no longer apply. The process of resocialization is typically more stressful than normal socialization because people have to unlearn behaviors that have become customary to them.
The most common way resocialization occurs is in a total institution where people are isolated from society and are forced to follow someone else’s rules. A ship at sea is a total institution, as are religious convents, prisons, or some cult organizations. They are places cut off from a larger society. The 6.9 million Americans who lived in prisons and penitentiaries at the end of 2012 are also members of this type of institution (U.S. Department of Justice 2012). As another example, every branch of the military is a total institution.
Many individuals are resocialized into an institution through a two-part process. First, members entering an institution must leave behind their old identity through what is known as a degradation ceremony. In a degradation ceremony, new members lose the aspects of their old identity and are given new identities. The process is sometimes gentle. To enter a senior care home, an elderly person often must leave a family home and give up many belongings which were part of his or her long-standing identity. Though caretakers guide the elderly compassionately, the process can still be one of loss. In many cults, this process is also gentle and happens in an environment of support and caring.
In other situations, the degradation ceremony can be more extreme. New prisoners lose freedom, rights (including the right to privacy), and personal belongings. When entering the army, soldiers have their hair cut short. Their old clothes are removed, and they wear matching uniforms. These individuals must give up any markers of their former identity in order to be resocialized into an identity as a “soldier.”
In basic training, members of the Air Force are taught to walk, move, and look like each other. (Photo courtesy of Staff Sergeant Desiree N. Palacios, U.S. Air Force/Wikimedia Commons)
After new members of an institution are stripped of their old identity, they build a new one that matches the new society. In the military, soldiers go through basic training together, where they learn new rules and bond with one another. They follow structured schedules set by their leaders. Soldiers must keep their areas clean for inspection, learn to march in correct formations, and salute when in the presence of superiors.
Learning to deal with life after having lived in a total institution requires yet another process of resocialization. In the U.S. military, soldiers learn discipline and a capacity for hard work. They set aside personal goals to achieve a mission, and they take pride in the accomplishments of their units. Many soldiers who leave the military transition these skills into excellent careers. Others find themselves lost upon leaving, uncertain about the outside world and what to do next. The process of resocialization to civilian life is not a simple one.
Summary
Socialization is a lifelong process that reoccurs as we enter new phases of life, such as adulthood or senior age. Resocialization is a process that removes the socialization we have developed over time and replaces it with newly learned rules and roles. Because it involves removing old habits that have been built up, resocialization can be a stressful and difficult process.
Section Quiz
Which of the following is not an age-related transition point when Americans must be socialized to new roles?
1. Infancy
2. School age
3. Adulthood
4. Senior citizen
Answer
A
Which of the following is true regarding U.S. socialization of recent high school graduates?
1. They are expected to take a year “off” before college.
2. They are required to serve in the military for one year.
3. They are expected to enter college, trade school, or the workforce shortly after graduation.
4. They are required to move away from their parents.
Answer
C
Short Answer
Consider a person who is joining a sorority or fraternity, attending college or boarding school, or even a child beginning kindergarten. How is the process the student goes through a form of socialization? What new cultural behaviors must the student adapt to?
Do you think resocialization requires a total institution? Why, or why not? Can you think of any other ways someone could be resocialized?
Further Research
Homelessness is an endemic problem among veterans. Many soldiers leave the military or return from war and have difficulty resocializing into civilian life. Learn more about this problem at openstaxcollege.org/l/Veteran-Homelessness oropenstaxcollege.org/l/NCHV
Glossary
anticipatory socialization
the way we prepare for future life roles
degradation ceremony
the process by which new members of a total institution lose aspects of their old identities and are given new ones
resocialization
the process by which old behaviors are removed and new behaviors are learned in their place | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/05%3A_Socialization/5.05%3A_Socialization_Across_the_Life_Course.txt |
• 6.1: Prelude to Groups and Organizations
Over the past decade, a grassroots effort to raise awareness of certain political issues has gained in popularity.
• 6.2: Types of Groups
Groups largely define how we think of ourselves. There are two main types of groups: primary and secondary. As the names suggest, the primary group is the long-term, complex one. People use groups as standards of comparison to define themselves—both who they are and who they are not. Sometimes groups can be used to exclude people or as a tool that strengthens prejudice.
• 6.3: Group Size and Structure
The size and dynamic of a group greatly affects how members act. Primary groups rarely have formal leaders, although there can be informal leadership. Groups generally are considered large when there are too many members for a simultaneous discussion. In secondary groups there are two types of leadership functions, with expressive leaders focused on emotional health and wellness, and instrumental leaders more focused on results. Further, there are different leadership styles.
• 6.4: Formal Organizations
Large organizations fall into three main categories: normative/voluntary, coercive, and utilitarian. We live in a time of contradiction: while the pace of change and technology are requiring people to be more nimble and less bureaucratic in their thinking, large bureaucracies like hospitals, schools, and governments are more hampered than ever by their organizational format. At the same time, the past few decades have seen the development of a trend to bureaucratize.
• 6.E: Groups and Organizations (Exercises)
06: Groups and Organizations
Over the past decade, a grassroots effort to raise awareness of certain political issues has gained in popularity. As a result, Tea Party groups have popped up in nearly every community across the country. The followers of the Tea Party have charged themselves with calling “awareness to any issue which challenges the security, sovereignty, or domestic tranquility of our beloved nation, the United States of America” (Tea Party, Inc. 2014). The group takes its name from the famous so-called Tea Party that occurred in Boston Harbor in 1773. Its membership includes people from all walks of life who are taking a stand to protect their values and beliefs. Their beliefs tend to be anti-tax, anti-big government, pro-gun, and generally politically conservative.
Their political stance is supported by what they refer to as their “15 Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs.”
1. Illegal aliens are here illegally.
2. Pro-domestic employment is indispensable.
3. A strong military is essential.
4. Special interests must be eliminated.
5. Gun ownership is sacred.
6. Government must be downsized.
7. The national budget must be balanced.
8. Deficit spending must end.
9. Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal.
10. Reducing personal income taxes is a must.
11. Reducing business income taxes is mandatory.
12. Political office must be available to average citizens.
13. Intrusive government must be stopped.
14. English as our core language is required.
15. Traditional family values are encouraged.
Tea Party politicians have been elected to several offices at the national, state, and local levels. In fact, Alabama, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas all had pro-Tea Party members win seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. On the national stage, Tea Partiers are actively seeking the impeachment of President Barrack Obama for what they refer to “flagrant violations,” including forcing national healthcare (Obamacare) on the country, gun grabbing, and failing to protect victims of the terror attack on U.S. diplomatic offices in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012.
At the local level, Tea Party supporters have taken roles as mayors, county commissioners, city council members, and the like. In a small, rural, Midwestern county with a population of roughly 160,000, the three county commissioners who oversee the operation and administration of county government were two Republicans and a Democrat for years. During the 2012 election, the Democrat lost his seat to an outspoken Tea Party Republican who campaigned as pro-gun and fiscally conservative. He vowed to reduce government spending and shrink the size of county government.
The national tour of the Tea Party Express visited Minnesota and held a rally outside the state capitol building. (Photo courtesy of Fibonacci Blue/flickr)
Groups like political parties are prevalent in our lives and provide a significant way we understand and define ourselves—both groups we feel a connection to and those we don’t. Groups also play an important role in society. As enduring social units, they help foster shared value systems and are key to the structure of society as we know it. There are three primary sociological perspectives for studying groups: Functionalist, Conflict, and Interactionist. We can look at the Tea Party movement through the lenses of these methods to better understand the roles and challenges that groups offer.
The Functionalist perspective is a big-picture, macro-level view that looks at how different aspects of society are intertwined. This perspective is based on the idea that society is a well-balanced system with all parts necessary to the whole, and it studies the roles these parts play in relation to the whole. In the case of the Tea Party Movement, a Functionalist might look at what macro-level needs the movement serves. For example, a Structural Functionalist might ask how the party forces people to pay attention to the economy.
The Conflict perspective is another macroanalytical view, one that focuses on the genesis and growth of inequality. A conflict theorist studying the Tea Party Movement might look at how business interests have manipulated the system over the last 30 years, leading to the gross inequality we see today. Or this perspective might explore how the massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class could lead to a two-class system reminiscent of Marxist ideas.
A third perspective is the Symbolic Interaction or Interactionist perspective. This method of analyzing groups takes a micro-level view. Instead of studying the big picture, these researchers look at the day-to-day interactions of groups. Studying these details, the Interactionist looks at issues like leadership style and group dynamics. In the case of the Tea Party Movement, Interactionists might ask, “How does the group dynamic in New York differ from that in Atlanta?” Or, “What dictates who becomes the de factoleader in different cities—geography, social dynamics, economic circumstances?” | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Groups_and_Organizations/6.01%3A_Prelude_to_Groups_and_Organizations.txt |
Most of us feel comfortable using the word “group” without giving it much thought. In everyday use, it can be a generic term, although it carries important clinical and scientific meanings. Moreover, the concept of a group is central to much of how we think about society and human interaction. Often, we might mean different things by using that word. We might say that a group of kids all saw the dog, and it could mean 250 students in a lecture hall or four siblings playing on a front lawn. In everyday conversation, there isn’t a clear distinguishing use. So how can we hone the meaning more precisely for sociological purposes?
Defining a Group
The term group is an amorphous one and can refer to a wide variety of gatherings, from just two people (think about a “group project” in school when you partner with another student), a club, a regular gathering of friends, or people who work together or share a hobby. In short, the term refers to any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share a sense that their identity is somehow aligned with the group. Of course, every time people are gathered it is not necessarily a group. A rally is usually a one-time event, for instance, and belonging to a political party doesn’t imply interaction with others. People who exist in the same place at the same time but who do not interact or share a sense of identity—such as a bunch of people standing in line at Starbucks—are considered an aggregate, or a crowd. Another example of a nongroup is people who share similar characteristics but are not tied to one another in any way. These people are considered a category, and as an example all children born from approximately 1980–2000 are referred to as “Millennials.” Why are Millennials a category and not a group? Because while some of them may share a sense of identity, they do not, as a whole, interact frequently with each other.
Interestingly, people within an aggregate or category can become a group. During disasters, people in a neighborhood (an aggregate) who did not know each other might become friendly and depend on each other at the local shelter. After the disaster ends and the people go back to simply living near each other, the feeling of cohesiveness may last since they have all shared an experience. They might remain a group, practicing emergency readiness, coordinating supplies for next time, or taking turns caring for neighbors who need extra help. Similarly, there may be many groups within a single category. Consider teachers, for example. Within this category, groups may exist like teachers’ unions, teachers who coach, or staff members who are involved with the PTA.
Types of Groups
Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) suggested that groups can broadly be divided into two categories: primary groups and secondary groups (Cooley 1909). According to Cooley, primary groups play the most critical role in our lives. The primary group is usually fairly small and is made up of individuals who generally engage face-to-face in long-term emotional ways. This group serves emotional needs: expressive functions rather than pragmatic ones. The primary group is usually made up of significant others, those individuals who have the most impact on our socialization. The best example of a primary group is the family.
Secondary groups are often larger and impersonal. They may also be task-focused and time-limited. These groups serve aninstrumental function rather than an expressive one, meaning that their role is more goal- or task-oriented than emotional. A classroom or office can be an example of a secondary group. Neither primary nor secondary groups are bound by strict definitions or set limits. In fact, people can move from one group to another. A graduate seminar, for example, can start as a secondary group focused on the class at hand, but as the students work together throughout their program, they may find common interests and strong ties that transform them into a primary group.
BEST FRIENDS SHE’S NEVER MET
Writer Allison Levy worked alone. While she liked the freedom and flexibility of working from home, she sometimes missed having a community of coworkers, both for the practical purpose of brainstorming and the more social “water cooler” aspect. Levy did what many do in the Internet age: she found a group of other writers online through a web forum. Over time, a group of approximately twenty writers, who all wrote for a similar audience, broke off from the larger forum and started a private invitation-only forum. While writers in general represent all genders, ages, and interests, it ended up being a collection of twenty- and thirty-something women who comprised the new forum; they all wrote fiction for children and young adults.
At first, the writers’ forum was clearly a secondary group united by the members’ professions and work situations. As Levy explained, “On the Internet, you can be present or absent as often as you want. No one is expecting you to show up.” It was a useful place to research information about different publishers and about who had recently sold what and to track industry trends. But as time passed, Levy found it served a different purpose. Since the group shared other characteristics beyond their writing (such as age and gender), the online conversation naturally turned to matters such as child-rearing, aging parents, health, and exercise. Levy found it was a sympathetic place to talk about any number of subjects, not just writing. Further, when people didn’t post for several days, others expressed concern, asking whether anyone had heard from the missing writers. It reached a point where most members would tell the group if they were traveling or needed to be offline for awhile.
The group continued to share. One member on the site who was going through a difficult family illness wrote, “I don’t know where I’d be without you women. It is so great to have a place to vent that I know isn’t hurting anyone.” Others shared similar sentiments.
So is this a primary group? Most of these people have never met each other. They live in Hawaii, Australia, Minnesota, and across the world. They may never meet. Levy wrote recently to the group, saying, “Most of my ‘real-life’ friends and even my husband don’t really get the writing thing. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Despite the distance and the lack of physical contact, the group clearly fills an expressive need.
Engineering and construction students gather around a job site. How do your academic interests define your in- and out-groups? (Photo courtesy of USACEpublicaffairs/flickr)
In-Groups and Out-Groups
One of the ways that groups can be powerful is through inclusion, and its inverse, exclusion. The feeling that we belong in an elite or select group is a heady one, while the feeling of not being allowed in, or of being in competition with a group, can be motivating in a different way. Sociologist William Sumner (1840–1910) developed the concepts of in-group and out-group to explain this phenomenon (Sumner 1906). In short, an in-group is the group that an individual feels she belongs to, and she believes it to be an integral part of who she is. An out-group, conversely, is a group someone doesn’t belong to; often we may feel disdain or competition in relationship to an out-group. Sports teams, unions, and sororities are examples of in-groups and out-groups; people may belong to, or be an outsider to, any of these. Primary groups consist of both in-groups and out-groups, as do secondary groups.
While group affiliations can be neutral or even positive, such as the case of a team sport competition, the concept of in-groups and out-groups can also explain some negative human behavior, such as white supremacist movements like the Ku Klux Klan, or the bullying of gay or lesbian students. By defining others as “not like us” and inferior, in-groups can end up practicing ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism—manners of judging others negatively based on their culture, race, sex, age, or sexuality. Often, in-groups can form within a secondary group. For instance, a workplace can have cliques of people, from senior executives who play golf together, to engineers who write code together, to young singles who socialize after hours. While these in-groups might show favoritism and affinity for other in-group members, the overall organization may be unable or unwilling to acknowledge it. Therefore, it pays to be wary of the politics of in-groups, since members may exclude others as a form of gaining status within the group.
BULLYING AND CYBERBULLYING: HOW TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED THE GAME
Most of us know that the old rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is inaccurate. Words can hurt, and never is that more apparent than in instances of bullying. Bullying has always existed and has often reached extreme levels of cruelty in children and young adults. People at these stages of life are especially vulnerable to others’ opinions of them, and they’re deeply invested in their peer groups. Today, technology has ushered in a new era of this dynamic. Cyberbullying is the use of interactive media by one person to torment another, and it is on the rise. Cyberbullying can mean sending threatening texts, harassing someone in a public forum (such as Facebook), hacking someone’s account and pretending to be him or her, posting embarrassing images online, and so on. A study by the Cyberbullying Research Center found that 20 percent of middle school students admitted to “seriously thinking about committing suicide” as a result of online bullying (Hinduja and Patchin 2010). Whereas bullying face-to-face requires willingness to interact with your victim, cyberbullying allows bullies to harass others from the privacy of their homes without witnessing the damage firsthand. This form of bullying is particularly dangerous because it’s widely accessible and therefore easier to accomplish.
Cyberbullying, and bullying in general, made international headlines in 2010 when a fifteen-year-old girl, Phoebe Prince, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied by girls at her school. In the aftermath of her death, the bullies were prosecuted in the legal system and the state passed anti-bullying legislation. This marked a significant change in how bullying, including cyberbullying, is viewed in the United States. Now there are numerous resources for schools, families, and communities to provide education and prevention on this issue. The White House hosted a Bullying Prevention summit in March 2011, and President and First Lady Obama have used Facebook and other social media sites to discuss the importance of the issue.
According to a report released in 2013 by the National Center for Educational Statistics, close to 1 in every 3 (27.8 percent) students report being bullied by their school peers. Seventeen percent of students reported being the victims of cyberbullying.
Will legislation change the behavior of would-be cyberbullies? That remains to be seen. But we can hope communities will work to protect victims before they feel they must resort to extreme measures.
Reference Groups
Athletes are often viewed as a reference group for young people. (Photo courtesy of Johnny Bivera/U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons)
A reference group is a group that people compare themselves to—it provides a standard of measurement. In U.S. society, peer groups are common reference groups. Kids and adults pay attention to what their peers wear, what music they like, what they do with their free time—and they compare themselves to what they see. Most people have more than one reference group, so a middle school boy might look not just at his classmates but also at his older brother’s friends and see a different set of norms. And he might observe the antics of his favorite athletes for yet another set of behaviors.
Some other examples of reference groups can be one’s cultural center, workplace, family gathering, and even parents. Often, reference groups convey competing messages. For instance, on television and in movies, young adults often have wonderful apartments and cars and lively social lives despite not holding a job. In music videos, young women might dance and sing in a sexually aggressive way that suggests experience beyond their years. At all ages, we use reference groups to help guide our behavior and show us social norms. So how important is it to surround yourself with positive reference groups? You may not recognize a reference group, but it still influences the way you act. Identifying your reference groups can help you understand the source of the social identities you aspire to or want to distance yourself from.
COLLEGE: A WORLD OF IN-GROUPS, OUT-GROUPS, AND REFERENCE GROUPS
Which fraternity or sorority would you fit into, if any? Sorority recruitment day offers students an opportunity to learn about these different groups. (Photo courtesy of Murray State/flickr)
For a student entering college, the sociological study of groups takes on an immediate and practical meaning. After all, when we arrive someplace new, most of us glance around to see how well we fit in or stand out in the ways we want. This is a natural response to a reference group, and on a large campus, there can be many competing groups. Say you are a strong athlete who wants to play intramural sports, and your favorite musicians are a local punk band. You may find yourself engaged with two very different reference groups.
These reference groups can also become your in-groups or out-groups. For instance, different groups on campus might solicit you to join. Are there fraternities and sororities at your school? If so, chances are they will try to convince students—that is, students they deem worthy—to join them. And if you love playing soccer and want to play on a campus team, but you’re wearing shredded jeans, combat boots, and a local band T-shirt, you might have a hard time convincing the soccer team to give you a chance. While most campus groups refrain from insulting competing groups, there is a definite sense of an in-group versus an out-group. “Them?” a member might say. “They’re all right, but their parties are nowhere near as cool as ours.” Or, “Only serious engineering geeks join that group.” This immediate categorization into in-groups and out-groups means that students must choose carefully, since whatever group they associate with won’t just define their friends—it may also define their enemies.
Summary
Groups largely define how we think of ourselves. There are two main types of groups: primary and secondary. As the names suggest, the primary group is the long-term, complex one. People use groups as standards of comparison to define themselves—both who they are and who they are not. Sometimes groups can be used to exclude people or as a tool that strengthens prejudice.
Section Quiz
What does a Functionalist consider when studying a phenomenon like the Occupy Wall Street movement?
1. The minute functions that every person at the protests plays in the whole
2. The internal conflicts that play out within such a diverse and leaderless group
3. How the movement contributes to the stability of society by offering the discontented a safe, controlled outlet for dissension
4. The factions and divisions that form within the movement
What is the largest difference between the Functionalist and Conflict perspectives and the Interactionist perspective?
1. The former two consider long-term repercussions of the group or situation, while the latter focuses on the present.
2. The first two are the more common sociological perspective, while the latter is a newer sociological model.
3. The first two focus on hierarchical roles within an organization, while the last takes a more holistic view.
4. The first two perspectives address large-scale issues facing groups, while the last examines more detailed aspects.
What role do secondary groups play in society?
1. They are transactional, task-based, and short-term, filling practical needs.
2. They provide a social network that allows people to compare themselves to others.
3. The members give and receive emotional support.
4. They allow individuals to challenge their beliefs and prejudices.
When a high school student gets teased by her basketball team for receiving an academic award, she is dealing with competing ______________.
1. primary groups
2. out-groups
3. reference groups
4. secondary groups
Which of the following is not an example of an in-group?
1. The Ku Klux Klan
2. A fraternity
3. A synagogue
4. A high school
What is a group whose values, norms, and beliefs come to serve as a standard for one's own behavior?
1. Secondary group
2. Formal organization
3. Reference group
4. Primary group
A parent who is worrying over her teenager’s dangerous and self-destructive behavior and low self-esteem may wish to look at her child’s:
1. reference group
2. in-group
3. out-group
4. All of the above
Answers
(1:C, 2:D, 3:A, 4:C, 5:D, 6:C, 7:D)
Short Answer
How has technology changed your primary groups and secondary groups? Do you have more (and separate) primary groups due to online connectivity? Do you believe that someone, like Levy, can have a true primary group made up of people she has never met? Why, or why not?
Compare and contrast two different political groups or organizations, such as the Occupy and Tea Party movements, or one of the Arab Spring uprisings. How do the groups differ in terms of leadership, membership, and activities? How do the group’s goals influence participants? Are any of them in-groups (and have they created out-groups)? Explain your answer.
The concept of hate crimes has been linked to in-groups and out-groups. Can you think of an example where people have been excluded or tormented due to this kind of group dynamic?
Further Research
For more information about cyberbullying causes and statistics, check out this website: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Cyberbullying
Glossary
aggregate
a collection of people who exist in the same place at the same time, but who don’t interact or share a sense of identity
category
people who share similar characteristics but who are not connected in any way
expressive function
a group function that serves an emotional need
group
any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share some sense of aligned identity
in-group
a group a person belongs to and feels is an integral part of his identity
instrumental function
being oriented toward a task or goal
out-group
a group that an individual is not a member of, and may even compete with
primary groups
small, informal groups of people who are closest to us
reference groups
groups to which an individual compares herself
secondary groups
larger and more impersonal groups that are task-focused and time limited | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Groups_and_Organizations/6.02%3A_Types_of_Groups.txt |
Dyads, Triads, and Large Groups
A small group is typically one where the collection of people is small enough that all members of the group know each other and share simultaneous interaction, such as a nuclear family, a dyad, or a triad. Georg Simmel (1858–1915) wrote extensively about the difference between a dyad, or two-member group, and a triad, which is a three-member group (Simmel 1902). In the former, if one person withdraws, the group can no longer exist. We can think of a divorce, which effectively ends the “group” of the married couple or of two best friends never speaking again. In a triad, however, the dynamic is quite different. If one person withdraws, the group lives on. A triad has a different set of relationships. If there are three in the group, two-against-one dynamics can develop, and there exists the potential for a majority opinion on any issue. Small groups generally have strong internal cohesiveness and a sense of connection. The challenge, however, is for small groups to achieve large goals. They can struggle to be heard or to be a force for change if they are pushing against larger groups. In short, they are easier to ignore.
It is difficult to define exactly when a small group becomes a large group. Perhaps it occurs when there are too many people to join in a simultaneous discussion. Or perhaps a group joins with other groups as part of a movement that unites them. These larger groups may share a geographic space, such as a fraternity or sorority on the same campus, or they might be spread out around the globe. The larger the group, the more attention it can garner, and the more pressure members can put toward whatever goal they wish to achieve. At the same time, the larger the group becomes, the more the risk grows for division and lack of cohesion.
Cadets illustrate how strongly conformity can define groups. (Photo courtesy David Spender/flickr)
Group Leadership
Often, larger groups require some kind of leadership. In small, primary groups, leadership tends to be informal. After all, most families don’t take a vote on who will rule the group, nor do most groups of friends. This is not to say that de facto leaders don’t emerge, but formal leadership is rare. In secondary groups, leadership is usually more overt. There are often clearly outlined roles and responsibilities, with a chain of command to follow. Some secondary groups, like the military, have highly structured and clearly understood chains of command, and many lives depend on those. After all, how well could soldiers function in a battle if they had no idea whom to listen to or if different people were calling out orders? Other secondary groups, like a workplace or a classroom, also have formal leaders, but the styles and functions of leadership can vary significantly.
Leadership function refers to the main focus or goal of the leader. An instrumental leader is one who is goal-oriented and largely concerned with accomplishing set tasks. We can imagine that an army general or a Fortune 500 CEO would be an instrumental leader. In contrast, expressive leaders are more concerned with promoting emotional strength and health, and ensuring that people feel supported. Social and religious leaders—rabbis, priests, imams, directors of youth homes and social service programs—are often perceived as expressive leaders. There is a longstanding stereotype that men are more instrumental leaders, and women are more expressive leaders. And although gender roles have changed, even today many women and men who exhibit the opposite-gender manner can be seen as deviants and can encounter resistance. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's experiences provide an example of the way society reacts to a high-profile woman who is an instrumental leader. Despite the stereotype, Boatwright and Forrest (2000) have found that both men and women prefer leaders who use a combination of expressive and instrumental leadership.
In addition to these leadership functions, there are three different leadership styles. Democratic leaders encourage group participation in all decision making. They work hard to build consensus before choosing a course of action and moving forward. This type of leader is particularly common, for example, in a club where the members vote on which activities or projects to pursue. Democratic leaders can be well liked, but there is often a danger that they will proceed slowly since consensus building is time-consuming. A further risk is that group members might pick sides and entrench themselves into opposing factions rather than reaching a solution. In contrast, a laissez-faire leader (French for “leave it alone”) is hands-off, allowing group members to self-manage and make their own decisions. An example of this kind of leader might be an art teacher who opens the art cupboard, leaves materials on the shelves, and tells students to help themselves and make some art. While this style can work well with highly motivated and mature participants who have clear goals and guidelines, it risks group dissolution and a lack of progress. As the name suggests, authoritarian leaders issue orders and assigns tasks. These leaders are clear instrumental leaders with a strong focus on meeting goals. Often, entrepreneurs fall into this mold, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Not surprisingly, the authoritarian leader risks alienating the workers. There are times, however, when this style of leadership can be required. In different circumstances, each of these leadership styles can be effective and successful. Consider what leadership style you prefer. Why? Do you like the same style in different areas of your life, such as a classroom, a workplace, and a sports team?
WOMEN LEADERS AND THE HILLARY CLINTON/SARAH PALIN PHENOMENON
The 2008 presidential election marked a dynamic change when two female politicians entered the race. Of the 200 people who have run for president during the country’s history, fewer than thirty have been women. Democratic presidential candidate and former First Lady Hillary Clinton was both famously polarizing and popular. She had almost as many passionate supporters as she did people who reviled her.
On the other side of the aisle was Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The former governor of Alaska, Palin was, to some, the perfect example of the modern woman. She juggled her political career with raising a growing family and relied heavily on the use of social media to spread her message.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton drew fire for her leadership style. (Photo courtesy marcn/flickr)
So what light did these candidates’ campaigns shed on the possibilities of a female presidency? According to some political analysts, women candidates face a paradox: They must be as tough as their male opponents on issues such as foreign policy, or they risk appearing weak. However, the stereotypical expectation of women as expressive leaders is still prevalent. Consider that Hillary Clinton’s popularity surged in her 2008 campaign after she cried on the campaign trail. It was enough for the New York Times to publish an editorial, “Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?” (Dowd 2008). Harsh, but her approval ratings soared afterward. In fact, many compared it to how politically likable she was in the aftermath of President Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal. Sarah Palin’s expressive qualities were promoted to a greater degree. While she has benefited from the efforts of feminists before her, she self-identified as a traditional woman with traditional values, a point she illustrated by frequently bringing her young children up on stage with her.
This gag gift demonstrates how female leaders may be viewed if they violate social norms. (Photo courtesy of istolethetv/flickr)
So what does this mean for women who would be president, and for those who would vote for them? On the positive side, a recent study of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old women that asked whether female candidates in the 2008 election made them believe a woman would be president during their lifetime found that the majority thought they would (Weeks 2011). And the more that young women demand female candidates, the more commonplace female contenders will become. Women as presidential candidates may no longer be a novelty with the focus of their campaign, no matter how obliquely, on their gender. Some, however, remain skeptical. As one political analyst said bluntly, “Women don’t succeed in politics––or other professions––unless they act like men. The standard for running for national office remains distinctly male” (Weeks 2011).
Conformity
We all like to fit in to some degree. Likewise, when we want to stand out, we want to choose how we stand out and for what reasons. For example, a woman who loves cutting-edge fashion and wants to dress in thought-provoking new styles likely wants to be noticed, but most likely she will want to be noticed within a framework of high fashion. She wouldn’t want people to think she was too poor to find proper clothes. Conformity is the extent to which an individual complies with group norms or expectations. As you might recall, we use reference groups to assess and understand how to act, to dress, and to behave. Not surprisingly, young people are particularly aware of who conforms and who does not. A high school boy whose mother makes him wear ironed button-down shirts might protest that he will look stupid––that everyone else wears T-shirts. Another high school boy might like wearing those shirts as a way of standing out. How much do you enjoy being noticed? Do you consciously prefer to conform to group norms so as not to be singled out? Are there people in your class who immediately come to mind when you think about those who don’t want to conform?
Psychologist Solomon Asch (1907–1996) conducted experiments that illustrated how great the pressure to conform is, specifically within a small group (1956). After reading about his work in the Sociological Research feature, ask yourself what you would do in Asch’s experiment. Would you speak up? What would help you speak up and what would discourage it?
CONFORMING TO EXPECTATIONS
In 1951, psychologist Solomon Asch sat a small group of about eight people around a table. Only one of the people sitting there was the true subject; the rest were associates of the experimenter. However, the subject was led to believe that the others were all, like him, people brought in for an experiment in visual judgments. The group was shown two cards, the first card with a single vertical line, and the second card with three vertical lines differing in length. The experimenter polled the group and asked each participant one at a time which line on the second card matched up with the line on the first card.
However, this was not really a test of visual judgment. Rather, it was Asch’s study on the pressures of conformity. He was curious to see what the effect of multiple wrong answers would be on the subject, who presumably was able to tell which lines matched. In order to test this, Asch had each planted respondent answer in a specific way. The subject was seated in such a way that he had to hear almost everyone else’s answers before it was his turn. Sometimes the nonsubject members would unanimously choose an answer that was clearly wrong.
So what was the conclusion? Asch found that thirty-seven out of fifty test subjects responded with an “obviously erroneous” answer at least once. When faced by a unanimous wrong answer from the rest of the group, the subject conformed to a mean of four of the staged answers. Asch revised the study and repeated it, wherein the subject still heard the staged wrong answers, but was allowed to write down his answer rather than speak it aloud. In this version, the number of examples of conformity––giving an incorrect answer so as not to contradict the group––fell by two thirds. He also found that group size had an impact on how much pressure the subject felt to conform.
The results showed that speaking up when only one other person gave an erroneous answer was far more common than when five or six people defended the incorrect position. Finally, Asch discovered that people were far more likely to give the correct answer in the face of near-unanimous consent if they had a single ally. If even one person in the group also dissented, the subject conformed only a quarter as often. Clearly, it was easier to be a minority of two than a minority of one.
Asch concluded that there are two main causes for conformity: people want to be liked by the group or they believe the group is better informed than they are. He found his study results disturbing. To him, they revealed that intelligent, well-educated people would, with very little coaxing, go along with an untruth. He believed this result highlighted real problems with the education system and values in our society (Asch 1956).
Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, had similar results in his experiment that is now known simply as the Milgram Experiment. In 1962, Milgram found that research subjects were overwhelmingly willing to perform acts that directly conflicted with their consciences when directed by a person of authority. In the experiment, subjects were willing to administer painful, even supposedly deadly, shocks to others who answered questions incorrectly.
To learn more about similar research, visit http://www.prisonexp.org/ and read an account of Philip Zimbardo's prison experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971.
Summary
The size and dynamic of a group greatly affects how members act. Primary groups rarely have formal leaders, although there can be informal leadership. Groups generally are considered large when there are too many members for a simultaneous discussion. In secondary groups there are two types of leadership functions, with expressive leaders focused on emotional health and wellness, and instrumental leaders more focused on results. Further, there are different leadership styles: democratic leaders, authoritarian leaders, and laissez-faire leaders.
Within a group, conformity is the extent to which people want to go along with the norm. A number of experiments have illustrated how strong the drive to conform can be. It is worth considering real-life examples of how conformity and obedience can lead people to ethically and morally suspect acts.
Section Quiz
Two people who have just had a baby have turned from a _______ to a _________.
1. primary group; secondary group
2. dyad; triad
3. couple; family
4. de facto group; nuclear family
Who is more likely to be an expressive leader?
1. The sales manager of a fast-growing cosmetics company
2. A high school teacher at a reform school
3. The director of a summer camp for chronically ill children
4. A manager at a fast-food restaurant
Which of the following is not an appropriate group for democratic leadership?
1. A fire station
2. A college classroom
3. A high school prom committee
4. A homeless shelter
In Asch’s study on conformity, what contributed to the ability of subjects to resist conforming?
1. A very small group of witnesses
2. The presence of an ally
3. The ability to keep one’s answer private
4. All of the above
Which type of group leadership has a communication pattern that flows from the top down?
1. Authoritarian
2. Democratic
3. Laissez-faire
4. Expressive
Answers
(1:B, 2:C, 3:A, 4:D, 5:A)
Short Answer
Think of a scenario where an authoritarian leadership style would be beneficial. Explain. What are the reasons it would work well? What are the risks?
Describe a time you were led by a leader using, in your opinion, a leadership style that didn’t suit the situation. When and where was it? What could she or he have done better?
Imagine you are in Asch’s study. Would you find it difficult to give the correct answer in that scenario? Why or why not? How would you change the study now to improve it?
What kind of leader do you tend to be? Do you embrace different leadership styles and functions as the situation changes? Give an example of a time you were in a position of leadership and what function and style you expressed.
Further Research
What is your leadership style? The website http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Leadership offers a quiz to help you find out!
Explore other experiments on conformity at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Stanford-Prison
Glossary
authoritarian leader
a leader who issues orders and assigns tasks
conformity
the extent to which an individual complies with group or societal norms
democratic leader
a leader who encourages group participation and consensus-building before moving into action
dyad
a two-member group
expressive leader
a leader who is concerned with process and with ensuring everyone’s emotional wellbeing
instrumental leader
a leader who is goal oriented with a primary focus on accomplishing tasks
laissez-faire leader
a hands-off leader who allows members of the group to make their own decisions
leadership function
the main focus or goal of a leader
leadership style
the style a leader uses to achieve goals or elicit action from group members
triad
a three-member group | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Groups_and_Organizations/6.03%3A_Group_Size_and_Structure.txt |
A complaint of modern life is that society is dominated by large and impersonal secondary organizations. From schools to businesses to healthcare to government, these organizations, referred to as formal organizations, are highly bureaucratized. Indeed, all formal organizations are, or likely will become, bureaucracies. A bureaucracy is an ideal type of formal organization. Ideal does not mean “best” in its sociological usage; it refers to a general model that describes a collection of characteristics, or a type that could describe most examples of the item under discussion. For example, if your professor were to tell the class to picture a car in their minds, most students will picture a car that shares a set of characteristics: four wheels, a windshield, and so on. Everyone’s car will be somewhat different, however. Some might picture a two-door sports car while others picture an SUV. The general idea of the car that everyone shares is the ideal type. We will discuss bureaucracies as an ideal type of organization.
Types of Formal Organizations
Sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1975) posited that formal organizations fall into three categories. Normative organizations, also called voluntary organizations, are based on shared interests. As the name suggests, joining them is voluntary and typically done because people find membership rewarding in an intangible way. The Audubon Society and a ski club are examples of normative organizations. Coercive organizations are groups that we must be coerced, or pushed, to join. These may include prison or a rehabilitation center. Symbolic interactionist Erving Goffman states that most coercive organizations are total institutions (1961). A total institution is one in which inmates or military soldiers live a controlled lifestyle and in which total resocialization takes place. The third type is utilitarian organizations, which, as the name suggests, are joined because of the need for a specific material reward. High school and the workplace fall into this category—one joined in pursuit of a diploma, the other in order to make money.
Girl Scout troops and correctional facilities are both formal organizations. (Photo (a) courtesy of moonlightbulb/flickr; Photo (b) courtesy of CxOxS/flickr)
Table of Formal Organizations. This table shows Etzioni’s three types of formal organizations. (Table courtesy of Etzioni 1975)
Normative or Voluntary Coercive Utilitarian
Benefit of Membership Intangible benefit Corrective benefit Tangible benefit
Type of Membership Volunteer basis Required Contractual basis
Feeling of Connectedness Shared affinity No affinity Some affinity
Bureaucracies
Bureaucracies are an ideal type of formal organization. Pioneer sociologist Max Weber popularly characterized a bureaucracy as having a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labor, explicit rules, and impersonality (1922). People often complain about bureaucracies––declaring them slow, rule-bound, difficult to navigate, and unfriendly. Let’s take a look at terms that define a bureaucracy to understand what they mean.
Hierarchy of authority refers to the aspect of bureaucracy that places one individual or office in charge of another, who in turn must answer to her own superiors. For example, as an employee at Walmart, your shift manager assigns you tasks. Your shift manager answers to his store manager, who must answer to her regional manager, and so on in a chain of command, up to the CEO who must answer to the board members, who in turn answer to the stockholders. Everyone in this bureaucracy follows the chain of command.
A clear division of labor refers to the fact that within a bureaucracy, each individual has a specialized task to perform. For example, psychology professors teach psychology, but they do not attempt to provide students with financial aid forms. In this case, it is a clear and commonsense division. But what about in a restaurant where food is backed up in the kitchen and a hostess is standing nearby texting on her phone? Her job is to seat customers, not to deliver food. Is this a smart division of labor?
The existence of explicit rules refers to the way in which rules are outlined, written down, and standardized. For example, at your college or university, the student guidelines are contained within the Student Handbook. As technology changes and campuses encounter new concerns like cyberbullying, identity theft, and other hot-button issues, organizations are scrambling to ensure their explicit rules cover these emerging topics.
Finally, bureaucracies are also characterized by impersonality, which takes personal feelings out of professional situations. This characteristic grew, to some extent, out of a desire to protect organizations from nepotism, backroom deals, and other types of favoritism, simultaneously protecting customers and others served by the organization. Impersonality is an attempt by large formal organizations to protect their members. Large business organizations like Walmart often situate themselves as bureaucracies. This allows them to effectively and efficiently serve volumes of customers quickly and with affordable products. This results in an impersonal organization. Customers frequently complain that stores like Walmart care little about individuals, other businesses, and the community at large.
Bureaucracies are, in theory at least, meritocracies, meaning that hiring and promotion is based on proven and documented skills, rather than on nepotism or random choice. In order to get into a prestigious college, you need to perform well on the SAT and have an impressive transcript. In order to become a lawyer and represent clients, you must graduate law school and pass the state bar exam. Of course, there are many well-documented examples of success by those who did not proceed through traditional meritocracies. Think about technology companies with founders who dropped out of college, or performers who became famous after a YouTube video went viral. How well do you think established meritocracies identify talent? Wealthy families hire tutors, interview coaches, test-prep services, and consultants to help their kids get into the best schools. This starts as early as kindergarten in New York City, where competition for the most highly-regarded schools is especially fierce. Are these schools, many of which have copious scholarship funds that are intended to make the school more democratic, really offering all applicants a fair shake?
There are several positive aspects of bureaucracies. They are intended to improve efficiency, ensure equal opportunities, and ensure that most people can be served. And there are times when rigid hierarchies are needed. But remember that many of our bureaucracies grew large at the same time that our school model was developed––during the Industrial Revolution. Young workers were trained, and organizations were built for mass production, assembly line work, and factory jobs. In these scenarios, a clear chain of command was critical. Now, in the information age, this kind of rigid training and adherence to protocol can actually decrease both productivity and efficiency.
Today’s workplace requires a faster pace, more problem solving, and a flexible approach to work. Too much adherence to explicit rules and a division of labor can leave an organization behind. And unfortunately, once established, bureaucracies can take on a life of their own. Maybe you have heard the expression “trying to turn a tanker around mid-ocean,” which refers to the difficulties of changing direction with something large and set in its ways. State governments and current budget crises are examples of this challenge. It is almost impossible to make quick changes, leading states to continue, year after year, with increasingly unbalanced budgets. Finally, bureaucracies, as mentioned, grew as institutions at a time when privileged white males held all the power. While ostensibly based on meritocracy, bureaucracies can perpetuate the existing balance of power by only recognizing the merit in traditionally male and privileged paths.
Exercise \(1\): Iron Rule of Oligarchy
Michels (1911) suggested that all large organizations are characterized by the Iron Rule of Oligarchy, wherein an entire organization is ruled by a few elites. Do you think this is true? Can a large organization be collaborative?
The McDonaldization of Society
The McDonaldization of Society (Ritzer 1993) refers to the increasing presence of the fast food business model in common social institutions. This business model includes efficiency (the division of labor), predictability, calculability, and control (monitoring). For example, in your average chain grocery store, people at the register check out customers while stockers keep the shelves full of goods and deli workers slice meats and cheese to order (efficiency). Whenever you enter a store within that grocery chain, you receive the same type of goods, see the same store organization, and find the same brands at the same prices (predictability). You will find that goods are sold by the pound, so that you can weigh your fruit and vegetable purchase rather than simply guessing at the price for that bag of onions, while the employees use a timecard to calculate their hours and receive overtime pay (calculability). Finally, you will notice that all store employees are wearing a uniform (and usually a name tag) so that they can be easily identified. There are security cameras to monitor the store, and some parts of the store, such as the stockroom, are generally considered off-limits to customers (control). While McDonaldization has resulted in improved profits and an increased availability of various goods and services to more people worldwide, it has also reduced the variety of goods available in the marketplace while rendering available products uniform, generic, and bland. Think of the difference between a mass-produced shoe and one made by a local cobbler, between a chicken from a family-owned farm and a corporate grower, or between a cup of coffee from the local diner and one from Starbucks.
This McDonald’s storefront in Egypt shows the McDonaldization of society. (Photo courtesy of s_w_ellis/flickr)
SECRETS OF THE MCJOB
We often talk about bureaucracies disparagingly, and no organization takes more heat than fast food restaurants. Several books and movies, such as Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schossler, paint an ugly picture of what goes in, what goes on, and what comes out of fast food chains. From their environmental impact to their role in the U.S. obesity epidemic, fast food chains are connected to numerous societal ills. Furthermore, working at a fast food restaurant is often disparaged, and even referred to dismissively, as having a McJob rather than a real job.
But business school professor Jerry Newman went undercover and worked behind the counter at seven fast food restaurants to discover what really goes on there. His book, My Secret Life on the McJob, documents his experience. Unlike Schossler, Newman found that these restaurants offer much good alongside the bad. Specifically, he asserted that the employees were honest and hardworking, that management was often impressive, and that the jobs required a lot more skill and effort than most people imagined. In the book, Newman cites a pharmaceutical executive who says a fast-food service job on an applicant’s résumé is a plus because it indicates the employee is reliable and can handle pressure.
Fast-food jobs are expected to grow more quickly than most industries. (Graph courtesy of U.S. BLS)
Businesses like Chipotle, Panera, and Costco attempt to combat many of the effects of McDonaldization. In fact, Costco is known for paying its employees an average of \$20 per hour, or slightly more than \$40,000.00 per year. Nearly 90% of their employees receive health insurance from Costco, a number that is unheard of in the retail sector. While Chipotle is not known for high wages of its employees, it is known for attempting to sell high-quality foods from responsibly sourced providers. This is a different approach from what Schossler describes among burger chains like McDonalds. So what do you think? Are these McJobs and the organizations that offer them still serving a role in the economy and people’s careers? Or are they dead-end jobs that typify all that is negative about large bureaucracies? Have you ever worked in one? Would you?
Summary
Large organizations fall into three main categories: normative/voluntary, coercive, and utilitarian. We live in a time of contradiction: while the pace of change and technology are requiring people to be more nimble and less bureaucratic in their thinking, large bureaucracies like hospitals, schools, and governments are more hampered than ever by their organizational format. At the same time, the past few decades have seen the development of a trend to bureaucratize and conventionalize local institutions. Increasingly, Main Streets across the country resemble each other; instead of a Bob’s Coffee Shop and Jane’s Hair Salon there is a Dunkin Donuts and a Supercuts. This trend has been referred to as the McDonaldization of society.
Section Quiz
Which is not an example of a normative organization?
1. A book club
2. A church youth group
3. A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protest group
4. A study hall
Which of these is an example of a total institution?
1. Jail
2. High school
3. Political party
4. A gym
Why do people join utilitarian organizations?
1. Because they feel an affinity with others there
2. Because they receive a tangible benefit from joining
3. Because they have no choice
4. Because they feel pressured to do so
Which of the following is not a characteristic of bureaucracies?
1. Coercion to join
2. Hierarchy of authority
3. Explicit rules
4. Division of labor
What are some of the intended positive aspects of bureaucracies?
1. Increased productivity
2. Increased efficiency
3. Equal treatment for all
4. All of the above
What is an advantage of the McDonaldization of society?
1. There is more variety of goods.
2. There is less theft.
3. There is more worldwide availability of goods.
4. There is more opportunity for businesses.
What is a disadvantage of the McDonaldization of society?
1. There is less variety of goods.
2. There is an increased need for employees with postgraduate degrees.
3. There is less competition so prices are higher.
4. There are fewer jobs so unemployment increases.
Answers
(1:D, 2:A, 3:B, 4:A, 5:D, 6:C, 7:A)
Short Answer
What do you think about the recent spotlight on fast food restaurants? Do you think they contribute to society’s ills? Do you believe they provide a needed service? Have you ever worked a job like this? What did you learn?
Do you consider today’s large companies like General Motors, Amazon, or Facebook to be bureaucracies? Why, or why not? Which of the main characteristics of bureaucracies do you see in them? Which are absent?
Where do you prefer to shop, eat out, or grab a cup of coffee? Large chains like Walmart or smaller retailers? Starbucks or a local restaurant? What do you base your decisions on? Does this section change how you think about these choices? Why, or why not?
Further Research
As mentioned above, the concept of McDonaldization is a growing one. The following link discusses this phenomenon further:openstaxcollege.org/l/McDonaldization
Glossary
bureaucracies
formal organizations characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labor, explicit rules, and impersonality.
clear division of labor
the fact that each individual in a bureaucracy has a specialized task to perform
coercive organizations
organizations that people do not voluntarily join, such as prison or a mental hospital
explicit rules
the types of rules in a bureaucracy; rules that are outlined, recorded, and standardized
formal organizations
large, impersonal organizations
hierarchy of authority
a clear chain of command found in a bureaucracy
impersonality
the removal of personal feelings from a professional situation
Iron Rule of Oligarchy
the theory that an organization is ruled by a few elites rather than through collaboration
McDonaldization of Society
the increasing presence of the fast food business model in common social institutions
meritocracy
a bureaucracy where membership and advancement is based on merit—proven and documented skills
normative or voluntary organizations
organizations that people join to pursue shared interests or because they provide some intangible rewards
total institution
an organization in which participants live a controlled lifestyle and in which total resocialization occurs
utilitarian organizations
organizations that are joined to fill a specific material need
6.E: Groups and Organizations (Exercises)
6.1: Types of Groups
Groups largely define how we think of ourselves. There are two main types of groups: primary and secondary. As the names suggest, the primary group is the long-term, complex one. People use groups as standards of comparison to define themselves—both who they are and who they are not. Sometimes groups can be used to exclude people or as a tool that strengthens prejudice.
6.2: Group Size and Structure
The size and dynamic of a group greatly affects how members act. Primary groups rarely have formal leaders, although there can be informal leadership. Groups generally are considered large when there are too many members for a simultaneous discussion. In secondary groups there are two types of leadership functions, with expressive leaders focused on emotional health and wellness, and instrumental leaders more focused on results. Further, there are different leadership styles.
6.3: Formal Organizations
Large organizations fall into three main categories: normative/voluntary, coercive, and utilitarian. We live in a time of contradiction: while the pace of change and technology are requiring people to be more nimble and less bureaucratic in their thinking, large bureaucracies like hospitals, schools, and governments are more hampered than ever by their organizational format. At the same time, the past few decades have seen the development of a trend to bureaucratize. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/06%3A_Groups_and_Organizations/6.04%3A_Formal_Organizations.txt |
Tattoos, vegan lifestyles, single parenthood, breast implants, and even jogging were once considered deviant but are now widely accepted. The change process usually takes some time and may be accompanied by significant disagreement, especially for social norms that are viewed as essential. For example, divorce affects the social institution of family, and so divorce carried a deviant and stigmatized status at one time. Marijuana use was once seen as deviant and criminal, but U.S. social norms on this issue are changing.
• 7.1: Prelude to Deviance, Crime, and Social Control
The Pew Research Center found that a majority of people in the United States (52 percent) now favor legalizing marijuana. This 2013 finding was the first time that a majority of survey respondents supported making marijuana legal. A question about marijuana’s legal status was first asked in a 1969 Gallup poll, and only 12 percent of U.S. adults favored legalization at that time.
• 7.2: Deviance and Control
“What is deviant behavior?” cannot be answered in a straightforward manner. Whether an act is labeled deviant or not depends on many factors, including location, audience, and the individual committing the act (Becker 1963). Listening to your iPod on the way to class is considered acceptable behavior. Listening to your iPod during your 2 p.m. sociology lecture is considered rude. Listening to your iPod when on the witness stand before a judge may cause you to be held in contempt of court and con
• 7.3: Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance
Why does deviance occur? How does it affect a society? Since the early days of sociology, scholars have developed theories that attempt to explain what deviance and crime mean to society. These theories can be grouped according to the three major sociological paradigms: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.
• 7.4: Crime and the Law
Although deviance is a violation of social norms, it’s not always punishable and it’s not necessarily bad. Crime, on the other hand, is a behavior that violates official law and is punishable through formal sanctions. Walking to class backward is a deviant behavior. Driving with a blood alcohol percentage over the state’s limit is a crime. Like other forms of deviance, however, ambiguity exists concerning what constitutes a crime and whether all crimes are, in fact, “bad” and deserve punishment.
Thumbnail: Latin Kings graffiti of the King Master along with the abbreviations "L" and "K" on the sides. The Latin Kings are the largest Hispanic street gang in the US. (Public Domain).
07: Deviance Crime and Social Control
Twenty-three states in the United States have passed measures legalizing marijuana in some form; the majority of these states approve only medical use of marijuana, but fourteen states have decriminalized marijuana use, and four states approve recreational use as well. Washington state legalized recreational use in 2012, and in the 2014 midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington DC supported ballot measures to allow recreational use in their states as well (Governing 2014). Florida’s 2014 medical marijuana proposal fell just short of the 60 percent needed to pass (CBS News 2014).
Washington is one of several states where marijuana use has been legalized, decriminalized, or approved for medical use. (Photo courtesy of Dominic Simpson/flickr)
The Pew Research Center found that a majority of people in the United States (52 percent) now favor legalizing marijuana. This 2013 finding was the first time that a majority of survey respondents supported making marijuana legal. A question about marijuana’s legal status was first asked in a 1969 Gallup poll, and only 12 percent of U.S. adults favored legalization at that time. Pew also found that 76 percent of those surveyed currently do not favor jail time for individuals convicted of minor possession of marijuana (Motel 2014).
Even though many people favor legalization, 45 percent do not agree (Motel 2014). Legalization of marijuana in any form remains controversial and is actively opposed; Citizen’s Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM) is one of the largest political action committees (PACs) working to prevent or repeal legalization measures. As in many aspects of sociology, there are no absolute answers about deviance. What people agree is deviant differs in various societies and subcultures, and it may change over time.
Tattoos, vegan lifestyles, single parenthood, breast implants, and even jogging were once considered deviant but are now widely accepted. The change process usually takes some time and may be accompanied by significant disagreement, especially for social norms that are viewed as essential. For example, divorce affects the social institution of family, and so divorce carried a deviant and stigmatized status at one time. Marijuana use was once seen as deviant and criminal, but U.S. social norms on this issue are changing. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/07%3A_Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control/7.01%3A_Prelude_to_Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control.txt |
What, exactly, is deviance? And what is the relationship between deviance and crime? According to sociologist William Graham Sumner, deviance is a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways, mores, or codified law (1906). It can be as minor as picking your nose in public or as major as committing murder. Although the word “deviance” has a negative connotation in everyday language, sociologists recognize that deviance is not necessarily bad (Schoepflin 2011). In fact, from a structural functionalist perspective, one of the positive contributions of deviance is that it fosters social change. For example, during the U.S. civil rights movement, Rosa Parks violated social norms when she refused to move to the “black section” of the bus, and the Little Rock Nine broke customs of segregation to attend an Arkansas public school.
Much of the appeal of watching entertainers perform in drag comes from the humor inherent in seeing everyday norms violated. (Photo courtesy of Cassiopeija/Wikimedia Commons)
“What is deviant behavior?” cannot be answered in a straightforward manner. Whether an act is labeled deviant or not depends on many factors, including location, audience, and the individual committing the act (Becker 1963). Listening to your iPod on the way to class is considered acceptable behavior. Listening to your iPod during your 2 p.m. sociology lecture is considered rude. Listening to your iPod when on the witness stand before a judge may cause you to be held in contempt of court and consequently fined or jailed.
As norms vary across culture and time, it makes sense that notions of deviance change also. Fifty years ago, public schools in the United States had strict dress codes that, among other stipulations, often banned women from wearing pants to class. Today, it’s socially acceptable for women to wear pants, but less so for men to wear skirts. In a time of war, acts usually considered morally reprehensible, such as taking the life of another, may actually be rewarded. Whether an act is deviant or not depends on society’s response to that act.
WHY I DRIVE A HEARSE
When sociologist Todd Schoepflin ran into his childhood friend Bill, he was shocked to see him driving a hearse instead of an ordinary car. A professionally trained researcher, Schoepflin wondered what effect driving a hearse had on his friend and what effect it might have on others on the road. Would using such a vehicle for everyday errands be considered deviant by most people?
Schoepflin interviewed Bill, curious first to know why he drove such an unconventional car. Bill had simply been on the lookout for a reliable winter car; on a tight budget, he searched used car ads and stumbled upon one for the hearse. The car ran well, and the price was right, so he bought it.
Bill admitted that others’ reactions to the car had been mixed. His parents were appalled, and he received odd stares from his coworkers. A mechanic once refused to work on it, and stated that it was “a dead person machine.” On the whole, however, Bill received mostly positive reactions. Strangers gave him a thumbs-up on the highway and stopped him in parking lots to chat about his car. His girlfriend loved it, his friends wanted to take it tailgating, and people offered to buy it. Could it be that driving a hearse isn’t really so deviant after all?
Schoepflin theorized that, although viewed as outside conventional norms, driving a hearse is such a mild form of deviance that it actually becomes a mark of distinction. Conformists find the choice of vehicle intriguing or appealing, while nonconformists see a fellow oddball to whom they can relate. As one of Bill’s friends remarked, “Every guy wants to own a unique car like this, and you can certainly pull it off.” Such anecdotes remind us that although deviance is often viewed as a violation of norms, it’s not always viewed in a negative light (Schoepflin 2011).
A hearse with the license plate “LASTRYD.” How would you view the owner of this car? (Photo courtesy of Brian Teutsch/flickr)
Social Control
When a person violates a social norm, what happens? A driver caught speeding can receive a speeding ticket. A student who wears a bathrobe to class gets a warning from a professor. An adult belching loudly is avoided. All societies practice social control, the regulation and enforcement of norms. The underlying goal of social control is to maintain social order, an arrangement of practices and behaviors on which society’s members base their daily lives. Think of social order as an employee handbook and social control as a manager. When a worker violates a workplace guideline, the manager steps in to enforce the rules; when an employee is doing an exceptionally good job at following the rules, the manager may praise or promote the employee.
The means of enforcing rules are known as sanctions. Sanctions can be positive as well as negative. Positive sanctions are rewards given for conforming to norms. A promotion at work is a positive sanction for working hard. Negative sanctions are punishments for violating norms. Being arrested is a punishment for shoplifting. Both types of sanctions play a role in social control.
Sociologists also classify sanctions as formal or informal. Although shoplifting, a form of social deviance, may be illegal, there are no laws dictating the proper way to scratch your nose. That doesn’t mean picking your nose in public won’t be punished; instead, you will encounter informal sanctions. Informal sanctions emerge in face-to-face social interactions. For example, wearing flip-flops to an opera or swearing loudly in church may draw disapproving looks or even verbal reprimands, whereas behavior that is seen as positive—such as helping an old man carry grocery bags across the street—may receive positive informal reactions, such as a smile or pat on the back.
Formal sanctions, on the other hand, are ways to officially recognize and enforce norm violations. If a student violates her college’s code of conduct, for example, she might be expelled. Someone who speaks inappropriately to the boss could be fired. Someone who commits a crime may be arrested or imprisoned. On the positive side, a soldier who saves a life may receive an official commendation.
The table below shows the relationship between different types of sanctions.
Informal/Formal Sanctions Formal and informal sanctions may be positive or negative. Informal sanctions arise in social interactions, whereas formal sanctions officially enforce norms.
Informal Formal
Positive An expression of thanks A promotion at work
Negative An angry comment A parking fine
Summary
Deviance is a violation of norms. Whether or not something is deviant depends on contextual definitions, the situation, and people’s response to the behavior. Society seeks to limit deviance through the use of sanctions that help maintain a system of social control.
Section Quiz
Which of the following best describes how deviance is defined?
1. Deviance is defined by federal, state, and local laws.
2. Deviance’s definition is determined by one’s religion.
3. Deviance occurs whenever someone else is harmed by an action.
4. Deviance is socially defined.
Answer
D
During the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks and other black protestors spoke out against segregation by refusing to sit at the back of the bus. This is an example of ________.
1. An act of social control
2. An act of deviance
3. A social norm
4. Criminal mores
Answer
B
A student has a habit of talking on her cell phone during class. One day, the professor stops his lecture and asks her to respect the other students in the class by turning off her phone. In this situation, the professor used __________ to maintain social control.
1. Informal negative sanctions
2. Informal positive sanctions
3. Formal negative sanctions
4. Formal positive sanctions
Answer
A
Societies practice social control to maintain ________.
1. formal sanctions
2. social order
3. cultural deviance
4. sanction labeling
Answer
B
One day, you decide to wear pajamas to the grocery store. While you shop, you notice people giving you strange looks and whispering to others. In this case, the grocery store patrons are demonstrating _______.
1. deviance
2. formal sanctions
3. informal sanctions
4. positive sanctions
Answer
C
Short Answer
If given the choice, would you purchase an unusual car such as a hearse for everyday use? How would your friends, family, or significant other react? Since deviance is culturally defined, most of the decisions we make are dependent on the reactions of others. Is there anything the people in your life encourage you to do that you don’t? Why don’t you?
Think of a recent time when you used informal negative sanctions. To what act of deviance were you responding? How did your actions affect the deviant person or persons? How did your reaction help maintain social control?
Further Research
Although we rarely think of it in this way, deviance can have a positive effect on society. Check out the Positive Deviance Initiative, a program initiated by Tufts University to promote social movements around the world that strive to improve people’s lives, atopenstaxcollege.org/l/Positive_Deviance.
Glossary
deviance
a violation of contextual, cultural, or social norms
formal sanctions
sanctions that are officially recognized and enforced
informal sanctions
sanctions that occur in face-to-face interactions
negative sanctions
punishments for violating norms
positive sanctions
rewards given for conforming to norms
sanctions
the means of enforcing rules
social control
the regulation and enforcement of norms
social order
an arrangement of practices and behaviors on which society’s members base their daily lives | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/07%3A_Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control/7.02%3A_Deviance_and_Control.txt |
Why does deviance occur? How does it affect a society? Since the early days of sociology, scholars have developed theories that attempt to explain what deviance and crime mean to society. These theories can be grouped according to the three major sociological paradigms: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.
Functionalism
Sociologists who follow the functionalist approach are concerned with the way the different elements of a society contribute to the whole. They view deviance as a key component of a functioning society. Strain theory, social disorganization theory, and cultural deviance theory represent three functionalist perspectives on deviance in society.
Émile Durkheim: The Essential Nature of Deviance
Émile Durkheim believed that deviance is a necessary part of a successful society. One way deviance is functional, he argued, is that it challenges people’s present views (1893). For instance, when black students across the United States participated in sit-ins during the civil rights movement, they challenged society’s notions of segregation. Moreover, Durkheim noted, when deviance is punished, it reaffirms currently held social norms, which also contributes to society (1893). Seeing a student given detention for skipping class reminds other high schoolers that playing hooky isn’t allowed and that they, too, could get detention.
Robert Merton: Strain Theory
Sociologist Robert Merton agreed that deviance is an inherent part of a functioning society, but he expanded on Durkheim’s ideas by developing strain theory, which notes that access to socially acceptable goals plays a part in determining whether a person conforms or deviates. From birth, we’re encouraged to achieve the “American Dream” of financial success. A woman who attends business school, receives her MBA, and goes on to make a million-dollar income as CEO of a company is said to be a success. However, not everyone in our society stands on equal footing. A person may have the socially acceptable goal of financial success but lack a socially acceptable way to reach that goal. According to Merton’s theory, an entrepreneur who can’t afford to launch his own company may be tempted to embezzle from his employer for start-up funds.
Merton defined five ways people respond to this gap between having a socially accepted goal and having no socially accepted way to pursue it.
1. Conformity: Those who conform choose not to deviate. They pursue their goals to the extent that they can through socially accepted means.
2. Innovation: Those who innovate pursue goals they cannot reach through legitimate means by instead using criminal or deviant means.
3. Ritualism: People who ritualize lower their goals until they can reach them through socially acceptable ways. These members of society focus on conformity rather than attaining a distant dream.
4. Retreatism: Others retreat and reject society’s goals and means. Some beggars and street people have withdrawn from society’s goal of financial success.
5. Rebellion: A handful of people rebel and replace a society’s goals and means with their own. Terrorists or freedom fighters look to overthrow a society’s goals through socially unacceptable means.
Social Disorganization Theory
Developed by researchers at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, social disorganization theory asserts that crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control. An individual who grows up in a poor neighborhood with high rates of drug use, violence, teenage delinquency, and deprived parenting is more likely to become a criminal than an individual from a wealthy neighborhood with a good school system and families who are involved positively in the community.
Social disorganization theory points to broad social factors as the cause of deviance. A person isn’t born a criminal but becomes one over time, often based on factors in his or her social environment. Research into social disorganization theory can greatly influence public policy. For instance, studies have found that children from disadvantaged communities who attend preschool programs that teach basic social skills are significantly less likely to engage in criminal activity.
Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay: Cultural Deviance Theory
Cultural deviance theory suggests that conformity to the prevailing cultural norms of lower-class society causes crime. Researchers Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (1942) studied crime patterns in Chicago in the early 1900s. They found that violence and crime were at their worst in the middle of the city and gradually decreased the farther someone traveled from the urban center toward the suburbs. Shaw and McKay noticed that this pattern matched the migration patterns of Chicago citizens. New immigrants, many of them poor and lacking knowledge of the English language, lived in neighborhoods inside the city. As the urban population expanded, wealthier people moved to the suburbs and left behind the less privileged.
Shaw and McKay concluded that socioeconomic status correlated to race and ethnicity resulted in a higher crime rate. The mix of cultures and values created a smaller society with different ideas of deviance, and those values and ideas were transferred from generation to generation.
The theory of Shaw and McKay has been further tested and expounded upon by Robert Sampson and Byron Groves (1989). They found that poverty, ethnic diversity, and family disruption in given localities had a strong positive correlation with social disorganization. They also determined that social disorganization was, in turn, associated with high rates of crime and delinquency—or deviance. Recent studies Sampson conducted with Lydia Bean (2006) revealed similar findings. High rates of poverty and single-parent homes correlated with high rates of juvenile violence.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theory looks to social and economic factors as the causes of crime and deviance. Unlike functionalists, conflict theorists don’t see these factors as positive functions of society. They see them as evidence of inequality in the system. They also challenge social disorganization theory and control theory and argue that both ignore racial and socioeconomic issues and oversimplify social trends (Akers 1991). Conflict theorists also look for answers to the correlation of gender and race with wealth and crime.
Karl Marx: An Unequal System
Conflict theory was greatly influenced by the work of German philosopher, economist, and social scientist Karl Marx. Marx believed that the general population was divided into two groups. He labeled the wealthy, who controlled the means of production and business, the bourgeois. He labeled the workers who depended on the bourgeois for employment and survival the proletariat. Marx believed that the bourgeois centralized their power and influence through government, laws, and other authority agencies in order to maintain and expand their positions of power in society. Though Marx spoke little of deviance, his ideas created the foundation for conflict theorists who study the intersection of deviance and crime with wealth and power.
C. Wright Mills: The Power Elite
In his book The Power Elite (1956), sociologist C. Wright Mills described the existence of what he dubbed the power elite, a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources. Wealthy executives, politicians, celebrities, and military leaders often have access to national and international power, and in some cases, their decisions affect everyone in society. Because of this, the rules of society are stacked in favor of a privileged few who manipulate them to stay on top. It is these people who decide what is criminal and what is not, and the effects are often felt most by those who have little power. Mills’ theories explain why celebrities such as Chris Brown and Paris Hilton, or once-powerful politicians such as Eliot Spitzer and Tom DeLay, can commit crimes and suffer little or no legal retribution.
Crime and Social Class
While crime is often associated with the underprivileged, crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful remain an under-punished and costly problem within society. The FBI reported that victims of burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft lost a total of \$15.3 billion dollars in 2009 (FB1 2010). In comparison, when former advisor and financier Bernie Madoff was arrested in 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reported that the estimated losses of his financial Ponzi scheme fraud were close to \$50 billion (SEC 2009).
This imbalance based on class power is also found within U.S. criminal law. In the 1980s, the use of crack cocaine (cocaine in its purest form) quickly became an epidemic that swept the country’s poorest urban communities. Its pricier counterpart, cocaine, was associated with upscale users and was a drug of choice for the wealthy. The legal implications of being caught by authorities with crack versus cocaine were starkly different. In 1986, federal law mandated that being caught in possession of 50 grams of crack was punishable by a ten-year prison sentence. An equivalent prison sentence for cocaine possession, however, required possession of 5,000 grams. In other words, the sentencing disparity was 1 to 100 (New York Times Editorial Staff 2011). This inequality in the severity of punishment for crack versus cocaine paralleled the unequal social class of respective users. A conflict theorist would note that those in society who hold the power are also the ones who make the laws concerning crime. In doing so, they make laws that will benefit them, while the powerless classes who lack the resources to make such decisions suffer the consequences. The crack-cocaine punishment disparity remained until 2010, when President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which decreased the disparity to 1 to 18 (The Sentencing Project 2010).
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach that can be used to explain how societies and/or social groups come to view behaviors as deviant or conventional. Labeling theory, differential association, social disorganization theory, and control theory fall within the realm of symbolic interactionism.
Labeling Theory
Although all of us violate norms from time to time, few people would consider themselves deviant. Those who do, however, have often been labeled “deviant” by society and have gradually come to believe it themselves. Labeling theory examines the ascribing of a deviant behavior to another person by members of society. Thus, what is considered deviant is determined not so much by the behaviors themselves or the people who commit them, but by the reactions of others to these behaviors. As a result, what is considered deviant changes over time and can vary significantly across cultures.
Sociologist Edwin Lemert expanded on the concepts of labeling theory and identified two types of deviance that affect identity formation. Primary deviance is a violation of norms that does not result in any long-term effects on the individual’s self-image or interactions with others. Speeding is a deviant act, but receiving a speeding ticket generally does not make others view you as a bad person, nor does it alter your own self-concept. Individuals who engage in primary deviance still maintain a feeling of belonging in society and are likely to continue to conform to norms in the future.
Sometimes, in more extreme cases, primary deviance can morph into secondary deviance. Secondary deviance occurs when a person’s self-concept and behavior begin to change after his or her actions are labeled as deviant by members of society. The person may begin to take on and fulfill the role of a “deviant” as an act of rebellion against the society that has labeled that individual as such. For example, consider a high school student who often cuts class and gets into fights. The student is reprimanded frequently by teachers and school staff, and soon enough, he develops a reputation as a “troublemaker.” As a result, the student starts acting out even more and breaking more rules; he has adopted the “troublemaker” label and embraced this deviant identity. Secondary deviance can be so strong that it bestows a master status on an individual. A master status is a label that describes the chief characteristic of an individual. Some people see themselves primarily as doctors, artists, or grandfathers. Others see themselves as beggars, convicts, or addicts.
THE RIGHT TO VOTE
Before she lost her job as an administrative assistant, Leola Strickland postdated and mailed a handful of checks for amounts ranging from \$90 to \$500. By the time she was able to find a new job, the checks had bounced, and she was convicted of fraud under Mississippi law. Strickland pleaded guilty to a felony charge and repaid her debts; in return, she was spared from serving prison time.
Strickland appeared in court in 2001. More than ten years later, she is still feeling the sting of her sentencing. Why? Because Mississippi is one of twelve states in the United States that bans convicted felons from voting (ProCon 2011).
To Strickland, who said she had always voted, the news came as a great shock. She isn’t alone. Some 5.3 million people in the United States are currently barred from voting because of felony convictions (ProCon 2009). These individuals include inmates, parolees, probationers, and even people who have never been jailed, such as Leola Strickland.
Under the Fourteenth Amendment, states are allowed to deny voting privileges to individuals who have participated in “rebellion or other crime” (Krajick 2004). Although there are no federally mandated laws on the matter, most states practice at least one form of felony disenfranchisement. At present, it’s estimated that approximately 2.4 percent of the possible voting population is disfranchised, that is, lacking the right to vote (ProCon 2011).
Is it fair to prevent citizens from participating in such an important process? Proponents of disfranchisement laws argue that felons have a debt to pay to society. Being stripped of their right to vote is part of the punishment for criminal deeds. Such proponents point out that voting isn’t the only instance in which ex-felons are denied rights; state laws also ban released criminals from holding public office, obtaining professional licenses, and sometimes even inheriting property (Lott and Jones 2008).
Opponents of felony disfranchisement in the United States argue that voting is a basic human right and should be available to all citizens regardless of past deeds. Many point out that felony disfranchisement has its roots in the 1800s, when it was used primarily to block black citizens from voting. Even nowadays, these laws disproportionately target poor minority members, denying them a chance to participate in a system that, as a social conflict theorist would point out, is already constructed to their disadvantage (Holding 2006). Those who cite labeling theory worry that denying deviants the right to vote will only further encourage deviant behavior. If ex-criminals are disenfranchised from voting, are they being disenfranchised from society?
Edwin Sutherland: Differential Association
In the early 1900s, sociologist Edwin Sutherland sought to understand how deviant behavior developed among people. Since criminology was a young field, he drew on other aspects of sociology including social interactions and group learning (Laub 2006). His conclusions established differential association theory, which suggested that individuals learn deviant behavior from those close to them who provide models of and opportunities for deviance. According to Sutherland, deviance is less a personal choice and more a result of differential socialization processes. A tween whose friends are sexually active is more likely to view sexual activity as acceptable.
Sutherland’s theory may explain why crime is multigenerational. A longitudinal study beginning in the 1960s found that the best predictor of antisocial and criminal behavior in children was whether their parents had been convicted of a crime (Todd and Jury 1996). Children who were younger than ten years old when their parents were convicted were more likely than other children to engage in spousal abuse and criminal behavior by their early thirties. Even when taking socioeconomic factors such as dangerous neighborhoods, poor school systems, and overcrowded housing into consideration, researchers found that parents were the main influence on the behavior of their offspring (Todd and Jury 1996).
Travis Hirschi: Control Theory
Continuing with an examination of large social factors, control theory states that social control is directly affected by the strength of social bonds and that deviance results from a feeling of disconnection from society. Individuals who believe they are a part of society are less likely to commit crimes against it.
Travis Hirschi (1969) identified four types of social bonds that connect people to society:
1. Attachment measures our connections to others. When we are closely attached to people, we worry about their opinions of us. People conform to society’s norms in order to gain approval (and prevent disapproval) from family, friends, and romantic partners.
2. Commitment refers to the investments we make in the community. A well-respected local businesswoman who volunteers at her synagogue and is a member of the neighborhood block organization has more to lose from committing a crime than a woman who doesn’t have a career or ties to the community.
3. Similarly, levels of involvement, or participation in socially legitimate activities, lessen a person’s likelihood of deviance. Children who are members of little league baseball teams have fewer family crises.
4. The final bond, belief, is an agreement on common values in society. If a person views social values as beliefs, he or she will conform to them. An environmentalist is more likely to pick up trash in a park, because a clean environment is a social value to him (Hirschi 1969).
Functionalism Associated Theorist Deviance arises from:
Strain Theory Robert Merton A lack of ways to reach socially accepted goals by accepted methods
Social Disorganization Theory University of Chicago researchers Weak social ties and a lack of social control; society has lost the ability to enforce norms with some groups
Cultural Deviance Theory Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay Conformity to the cultural norms of lower-class society
Conflict Theory Associated Theorist Deviance arises from:
Unequal System Karl Marx Inequalities in wealth and power that arise from the economic system
Power Elite C. Wright Mills Ability of those in power to define deviance in ways that maintain the status quo
Symbolic Interactionism Associated Theorist Deviance arises from:
Labeling Theory Edwin Lemert The reactions of others, particularly those in power who are able to determine labels
Differential Association Theory Edwin Sutherlin Learning and modeling deviant behavior seen in other people close to the individual
Control Theory Travis Hirschi Feelings of disconnection from society
Summary
The three major sociological paradigms offer different explanations for the motivation behind deviance and crime. Functionalists point out that deviance is a social necessity since it reinforces norms by reminding people of the consequences of violating them. Violating norms can open society’s eyes to injustice in the system. Conflict theorists argue that crime stems from a system of inequality that keeps those with power at the top and those without power at the bottom. Symbolic interactionists focus attention on the socially constructed nature of the labels related to deviance. Crime and deviance are learned from the environment and enforced or discouraged by those around us.
Section Quiz
A student wakes up late and realizes her sociology exam starts in five minutes. She jumps into her car and speeds down the road, where she is pulled over by a police officer. The student explains that she is running late, and the officer lets her off with a warning. The student’s actions are an example of _________.
1. primary deviance
2. positive deviance
3. secondary deviance
4. master deviance
Answer
A
According to C. Wright Mills, which of the following people is most likely to be a member of the power elite?
1. A war veteran
2. A senator
3. A professor
4. A mechanic
Answer
B
According to social disorganization theory, crime is most likely to occur where?
1. A community where neighbors don’t know each other very well
2. A neighborhood with mostly elderly citizens
3. A city with a large minority population
4. A college campus with students who are very competitive
Answer
A
Shaw and McKay found that crime is linked primarily to ________.
1. power
2. master status
3. family values
4. wealth
Answer
D
According to the concept of the power elite, why would a celebrity such as Charlie Sheen commit a crime?
1. Because his parents committed similar crimes
2. Because his fame protects him from retribution
3. Because his fame disconnects him from society
4. Because he is challenging socially accepted norms
Answer
B
A convicted sexual offender is released on parole and arrested two weeks later for repeated sexual crimes. How would labeling theory explain this?
1. The offender has been labeled deviant by society and has accepted a new master status.
2. The offender has returned to his old neighborhood and so reestablished his former habits.
3. The offender has lost the social bonds he made in prison and feels disconnected from society.
4. The offender is poor and responding to the different cultural values that exist in his community.
Answer
A
______ deviance is a violation of norms that ______result in a person being labeled a deviant.
1. Secondary; does not
2. Negative; does
3. Primary; does not
4. Primary; may or may not
Answer
C
Short Answer
Pick a famous politician, business leader, or celebrity who has been arrested recently. What crime did he or she allegedly commit? Who was the victim? Explain his or her actions from the point of view of one of the major sociological paradigms. What factors best explain how this person might be punished if convicted of the crime?
If we assume that the power elite’s status is always passed down from generation to generation, how would Edwin Sutherland explain these patterns of power through differential association theory? What crimes do these elite few get away with?
Further Research
The Skull and Bones Society made news in 2004 when it was revealed that then-President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, had both been members at Yale University. In the years since, conspiracy theorists have linked the secret society to numerous world events, arguing that many of the nation’s most powerful people are former Bonesmen. Although such ideas may raise a lot of skepticism, many influential people of the past century have been Skull and Bones Society members, and the society is sometimes described as a college version of the power elite. Journalist Rebecca Leung discusses the roots of the club and the impact its ties between decision-makers can have later in life. Read about it atopenstaxcollege.org/l/Skull_and_Bones.
Glossary
conflict theory
a theory that examines social and economic factors as the causes of criminal deviance
control theory
a theory that states social control is directly affected by the strength of social bonds and that deviance results from a feeling of disconnection from society
cultural deviance theory
a theory that suggests conformity to the prevailing cultural norms of lower-class society causes crime
differential association theory
a theory that states individuals learn deviant behavior from those close to them who provide models of and opportunities for deviance
labeling theory
the ascribing of a deviant behavior to another person by members of society
master status
a label that describes the chief characteristic of an individual
power elite
a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources
primary deviance
a violation of norms that does not result in any long-term effects on the individual’s self-image or interactions with others
secondary deviance
deviance that occurs when a person’s self-concept and behavior begin to change after his or her actions are labeled as deviant by members of society
social disorganization theory
a theory that asserts crime occurs in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control
strain theory
a theory that addresses the relationship between having socially acceptable goals and having socially acceptable means to reach those goals | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/07%3A_Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control/7.03%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Deviance.txt |
Although deviance is a violation of social norms, it’s not always punishable, and it’s not necessarily bad. Crime, on the other hand, is a behavior that violates official law and is punishable through formal sanctions. Walking to class backward is a deviant behavior. Driving with a blood alcohol percentage over the state’s limit is a crime. Like other forms of deviance, however, ambiguity exists concerning what constitutes a crime and whether all crimes are, in fact, “bad” and deserve punishment. For example, during the 1960s, civil rights activists often violated laws intentionally as part of their effort to bring about racial equality. In hindsight, we recognize that the laws that deemed many of their actions crimes—for instance, Rosa Parks taking a seat in the “whites only” section of the bus—were inconsistent with social equality.
How is a crime different from other types of deviance? (Photo courtesy of Duffman/Wikimedia Commons.)
As you have learned, all societies have informal and formal ways of maintaining social control. Within these systems of norms, societies have legal codes that maintain formal social control through laws, which are rules adopted and enforced by a political authority. Those who violate these rules incur negative formal sanctions. Normally, punishments are relative to the degree of the crime and the importance to society of the value underlying the law. As we will see, however, there are other factors that influence criminal sentencing.
Types of Crimes
Not all crimes are given equal weight. Society generally socializes its members to view certain crimes as more severe than others. For example, most people would consider murdering someone to be far worse than stealing a wallet and would expect a murderer to be punished more severely than a thief. In modern U.S. society, crimes are classified as one of two types based on their severity. Violent crimes (also known as “crimes against a person”) are based on the use of force or the threat of force. Rape, murder, and armed robbery fall under this category. Nonviolent crimes involve the destruction or theft of property but do not use force or the threat of force. Because of this, they are also sometimes called “property crimes.” Larceny, car theft, and vandalism are all types of nonviolent crimes. If you use a crowbar to break into a car, you are committing a nonviolent crime; if you mug someone with the crowbar, you are committing a violent crime.
When we think of crime, we often picture street crime, or offenses committed by ordinary people against other people or organizations, usually in public spaces. An often-overlooked category is corporate crime, or crime committed by white-collar workers in a business environment. Embezzlement, insider trading, and identity theft are all types of corporate crime. Although these types of offenses rarely receive the same amount of media coverage as street crimes, they can be far more damaging.
An often-debated third type of crime is victimless crime. Crimes are called victimless when the perpetrator is not explicitly harming another person. As opposed to battery or theft, which clearly have a victim, a crime like drinking a beer when someone is twenty years old or selling a sexual act do not result in injury to anyone other than the individual who engages in them, although they are illegal. While some claim acts like these are victimless, others argue that they actually do harm society. Prostitution may foster abuse toward women by clients or pimps. Drug use may increase the likelihood of employee absences. Such debates highlight how the deviant and criminal nature of actions develops through ongoing public discussion.
HATE CRIMES
On the evening of October 3, 2010, a seventeen-year-old boy from the Bronx was abducted by a group of young men from his neighborhood and taken to an abandoned row house. After being beaten, the boy admitted he was gay. His attackers seized his partner and beat him as well. Both victims were drugged, sodomized, and forced to burn one another with cigarettes. When questioned by police, the ringleader of the crime explained that the victims were gay and “looked like [they] liked it” (Wilson and Baker 2010).
Attacks based on a person’s race, religion, or other characteristics are known as hate crimes. Hate crimes in the United States evolved from the time of early European settlers and their violence toward Native Americans. Such crimes weren’t investigated until the early 1900s, when the Ku Klux Klan began to draw national attention for its activities against blacks and other groups. The term “hate crime,” however, didn’t become official until the 1980s (Federal Bureau of Investigations 2011).
In the United States, there were 8,336 reported victims of hate crimes in 2009. This represents less than five percent of the number of people who claimed to be victims of hate crimes when surveyed. (Graph courtesy of FBI 2010)
An average of 195,000 Americans fall victim to hate crimes each year, but fewer than five percent ever report the crime (FBI 2010). The majority of hate crimes are racially motivated, but many are based on religious (especially anti-Semitic) prejudice (FBI 2010). After incidents like the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998 and the tragic suicide of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi in 2010, there has been a growing awareness of hate crimes based on sexual orientation.
Crime Statistics
The FBI gathers data from approximately 17,000 law enforcement agencies, and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is the annual publication of this data (FBI 2011). The UCR has comprehensive information from police reports but fails to account for the many crimes that go unreported, often due to victims’ fear, shame, or distrust of the police. The quality of this data is also inconsistent because of differences in approaches to gathering victim data; important details are not always asked for or reported (Cantor and Lynch 2000).
Due to these issues, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes a separate self-report study known as the National Crime Victimization Report (NCVR). A self-report study is a collection of data gathered using voluntary response methods, such as questionnaires or telephone interviews. Self-report data are gathered each year, asking approximately 160,000 people in the United States about the frequency and types of crime they’ve experienced in their daily lives (BJS 2013). The NCVR reports a higher rate of crime than the UCR, likely picking up information on crimes that were experienced but never reported to the police. Age, race, gender, location, and income-level demographics are also analyzed (National Archive of Criminal Justice Data 2010).
The NCVR survey format allows people to more openly discuss their experiences and also provides a more-detailed examination of crimes, which may include information about consequences, relationship between victim and criminal, and substance abuse involved. One disadvantage is that the NCVR misses some groups of people, such as those who don't have telephones and those who move frequently. The quality of information may also be reduced by inaccurate victim recall of the crime (Cantor and Lynch 2000).
Public Perception of Crime
Neither the NCVR nor the UCS accounts for all crime in the United States, but general trends can be determined. Crime rates, particularly for violent and gun-related crimes, have been on the decline since peaking in the early 1990s (Cohn, Taylor, Lopez, Gallagher, Parker, and Maass 2013). However, the public believes crime rates are still high, or even worsening. Recent surveys (Saad 2011; Pew Research Center 2013, cited in Overburg and Hoyer 2013) have found U.S. adults believe crime is worse now than it was twenty years ago.
Inaccurate public perception of crime may be heightened by popular crime shows such as CSI, Criminal Minds and Law & Order(Warr 2008) and by extensive and repeated media coverage of crime. Many researchers have found that people who closely follow media reports of crime are likely to estimate the crime rate as inaccurately high and more likely to feel fearful about the chances of experiencing crime (Chiricos, Padgett, and Gertz 2000). Recent research has also found that people who reported watching news coverage of 9/11 or the Boston Marathon Bombing for more than an hour daily became more fearful of future terrorism (Holman, Garfin, and Silver 2014).
The U.S. Criminal Justice System
A criminal justice system is an organization that exists to enforce a legal code. There are three branches of the U.S. criminal justice system: the police, the courts, and the corrections system.
Police
Police are a civil force in charge of enforcing laws and public order at a federal, state, or community level. No unified national police force exists in the United States, although there are federal law enforcement officers. Federal officers operate under specific government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Federal officers can only deal with matters that are explicitly within the power of the federal government, and their field of expertise is usually narrow. A county police officer may spend time responding to emergency calls, working at the local jail, or patrolling areas as needed, whereas a federal officer would be more likely to investigate suspects in firearms trafficking or provide security for government officials.
Here, Afghan National Police Crisis Response Unit members train in Surobi, Afghanistan. (Photo courtesy of isafmedia/flickr)
State police have the authority to enforce statewide laws, including regulating traffic on highways. Local or county police, on the other hand, have a limited jurisdiction with authority only in the town or county in which they serve.
Courts
Once a crime has been committed and a violator has been identified by the police, the case goes to court. A court is a system that has the authority to make decisions based on law. The U.S. judicial system is divided into federal courts and state courts. As the name implies, federal courts (including the U.S. Supreme Court) deal with federal matters, including trade disputes, military justice, and government lawsuits. Judges who preside over federal courts are selected by the president with the consent of Congress.
State courts vary in their structure but generally include three levels: trial courts, appellate courts, and state supreme courts. In contrast to the large courtroom trials in TV shows, most noncriminal cases are decided by a judge without a jury present. Traffic court and small claims court are both types of trial courts that handle specific civil matters.
Criminal cases are heard by trial courts with general jurisdictions. Usually, a judge and jury are both present. It is the jury’s responsibility to determine guilt and the judge’s responsibility to determine the penalty, though in some states the jury may also decide the penalty. Unless a defendant is found “not guilty,” any member of the prosecution or defense (whichever is the losing side) can appeal the case to a higher court. In some states, the case then goes to a special appellate court; in others it goes to the highest state court, often known as the state supreme court.
This county courthouse in Kansas (left) is a typical setting for a state trial court. Compare this to the courtroom of the Michigan Supreme Court (right). (Photo (a) courtesy of Ammodramus/Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Steve & Christine/Wikimedia Commons)
Corrections
The corrections system, more commonly known as the prison system, is charged with supervising individuals who have been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for a criminal offense. At the end of 2010, approximately seven million U.S. men and women were behind bars (BJS 2011d).
The U.S. incarceration rate has grown considerably in the last hundred years. In 2008, more than 1 in 100 U.S. adults were in jail or prison, the highest benchmark in our nation’s history. And while the United States accounts for 5 percent of the global population, we have 25 percent of the world’s inmates, the largest number of prisoners in the world (Liptak 2008b).
Prison is different from jail. A jail provides temporary confinement, usually while an individual awaits trial or parole. Prisons are facilities built for individuals serving sentences of more than a year. Whereas jails are small and local, prisons are large and run by either the state or the federal government.
Parole refers to a temporary release from prison or jail that requires supervision and the consent of officials. Parole is different from probation, which is supervised time used as an alternative to prison. Probation and parole can both follow a period of incarceration in prison, especially if the prison sentence is shortened.
Summary
Crime is established by legal codes and upheld by the criminal justice system. In the United States, there are three branches of the justice system: police, courts, and corrections. Although crime rates increased throughout most of the twentieth century, they are now dropping.
Section Quiz
Which of the following is an example of corporate crime?
1. Embezzlement
2. Larceny
3. Assault
4. Burglary
Answer
A
Spousal abuse is an example of a ________.
1. street crime
2. corporate crime
3. violent crime
4. nonviolent crime
Answer
C
Which of the following situations best describes crime trends in the United States?
1. Rates of violent and nonviolent crimes are decreasing.
2. Rates of violent crimes are decreasing, but there are more nonviolent crimes now than ever before.
3. Crime rates have skyrocketed since the 1970s due to lax corrections laws.
4. Rates of street crime have gone up, but corporate crime has gone down.
Answer
A
What is a disadvantage of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)?
1. The NCVS doesn’t include demographic data, such as age or gender.
2. The NCVS may be unable to reach important groups, such as those without phones.
3. The NCVS doesn’t address the relationship between the criminal and the victim.
4. The NCVS only includes information collected by police officers.
Answer
B
Short Answer
Recall the crime statistics presented in this section. Do they surprise you? Are these statistics represented accurately in the media? Why, or why not?
Further Research
Is the U.S. criminal justice system confusing? You’re not alone. Check out this handy flowchart from the Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/US_Criminal_Justice_BJS
How is crime data collected in the United States? Read about the methods of data collection and take the National Crime Victimization Survey. Visit http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Victimization_Survey
Glossary
corporate crime
crime committed by white-collar workers in a business environment
corrections system
the system tasked with supervising individuals who have been arrested for, convicted of, or sentenced for criminal offenses
court
a system that has the authority to make decisions based on law
crime
a behavior that violates official law and is punishable through formal sanctions
criminal justice system
an organization that exists to enforce a legal code
hate crimes
attacks based on a person’s race, religion, or other characteristics
legal codes
codes that maintain formal social control through laws
nonviolent crimes
crimes that involve the destruction or theft of property, but do not use force or the threat of force
police
a civil force in charge of regulating laws and public order at a federal, state, or community level
self-report study
a collection of data acquired using voluntary response methods, such as questionnaires or telephone interviews
street crime
crime committed by average people against other people or organizations, usually in public spaces
victimless crime
activities against the law, but that do not result in injury to any individual other than the person who engages in them
violent crimes
crimes based on the use of force or the threat of force | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/07%3A_Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control/7.04%3A_Crime_and_the_Law.txt |
• 8.1: Prelude to Media and Technology
At the same time that technology is expanding the boundaries of our social circles, various media are also changing how we perceive and interact with each other. We don’t only use Facebook to keep in touch with friends; we also use it to “like” certain television shows, products, or celebrities. Even television is no longer a one-way medium; it is an interactive one. We are encouraged to tweet, text, or call in to vote for contestants in everything from singing competitions to matchmaking endeav
• 8.2: Technology Today
Technology is the application of science to address the problems of daily life. The fast pace of technological advancement means the advancements are continuous, but that not everyone has equal access. The gap created by this unequal access has been termed the digital divide. The knowledge gap refers to an effect of the digital divide: the lack of knowledge or information that keeps those who were not exposed to technology from gaining marketable skills
• 8.3: Media and Technology in Society
Media and technology have been interwoven from the earliest days of human communication. The printing press, the telegraph, and the Internet are all examples of their intersection. Mass media have allowed for more shared social experiences, but new media now create a seemingly endless amount of airtime for any and every voice that wants to be heard. Advertising has also changed with technology. New media allow consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues.
• 8.4: Global Implications of Media and Technology
Technology drives globalization, but what that means can be hard to decipher. While some economists see technological advances leading to a more level playing field where anyone anywhere can be a global contender, the reality is that opportunity still clusters in geographically advantaged areas. Still, technological diffusion has led to the spread of more and more technology across borders into peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. However, true technological global equality is a long way off.
• 8.5: Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology
There are myriad theories about how society, technology, and media will progress. Functionalism sees the contribution that technology and media provide to the stability of society, from facilitating leisure time to increasing productivity. Conflict theorists are more concerned with how technology reinforces inequalities among communities. They also look at how media typically give voice to the most powerful, and how new media might offer tools to help those who are disenfranchised.
Thumbnail: SKY Sport24 news channel production control room. (CC-SA-BY 3.0; Morningfrost)
08: Media and Technology
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are just a few examples of social media that increasingly shape how we interact with the world. (Photo courtesy of Khalid Albaih/flickr)
How many good friends do you have? How many people do you meet up with for coffee or a movie? How many would you call with news about an illness or invite to your wedding? Now, how many “friends” do you have on Facebook? How often do you post a "selfie" online? How often do you check e-mail? How often do you meet friends for a meal and spend your time texting other people instead of talking to each other? Technology has changed how we interact with each other. It has turned “friend” into a verb and has made it possible to share mundane news (“My dog just threw up under the bed! Ugh!”) with hundreds or even thousands of people who might know you only slightly, if at all. You might be glued to your cell phone, even when you should be focused on driving your car, or you might text in class instead of listening to the professor's lecture. When we have the ability to stay constantly connected to a data stream, it is easy to lose focus on the here and now.
At the same time that technology is expanding the boundaries of our social circles, various media are also changing how we perceive and interact with each other. We don’t only use Facebook to keep in touch with friends; we also use it to “like” certain television shows, products, or celebrities. Even television is no longer a one-way medium; it is an interactive one. We are encouraged to tweet, text, or call in to vote for contestants in everything from singing competitions to matchmaking endeavors—bridging the gap between our entertainment and our own lives.
How does technology change our lives for the better? Or does it? When you tweet a social cause, share an ice bucket challenge video on YouTube, or cut and paste a status update about cancer awareness on Facebook, are you promoting social change? Does the immediate and constant flow of information mean we are more aware and engaged than any society before us? Or areKeeping Up With the Kardashians and The Real Housewives franchise today’s version of ancient Rome’s “bread and circuses”––distractions and entertainment to keep the working classes complacent about the inequities of their society?
These are some of the questions that interest sociologists. How might we examine these issues from a sociological perspective? A functionalist would probably focus on what social purposes technology and media serve. For example, the web is both a form of technology and of media, and it links individuals and nations in a communication network that facilitates both small family discussions and global trade networks. A functionalist would also be interested in the manifest functions of media and technology, as well as their role in social dysfunction. Someone applying the conflict perspective would probably focus on the systematic inequality created by differential access to media and technology. For example, how can middle-class U.S. citizens be sure the news they hear is an objective account of reality, unsullied by moneyed political interests? Someone applying the interactionist perspective to technology and the media might seek to understand the difference between the real lives we lead and the reality depicted on “reality” television shows, such as The Bachelor. Throughout this chapter, we will use our sociological imagination to explore how media and technology impact society. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/08%3A_Media_and_Technology/8.01%3A_Prelude_to_Media_and_Technology.txt |
It is easy to look at the latest sleek Apple product and think technology is a recent addition to our world. But from the steam engine to the most cutting-edge robotic surgery tools, technology has described the application of science to address the problems of daily life. We might look back at the enormous and clunky computers of the 1970s that had about as much storage as an iPod Shuffle and roll our eyes in disbelief. But chances are thirty years from now our skinny laptops and iPods will look just as archaic.
Technology is the application of science to address the problems of daily life, from hunting tools and agricultural advances, to manual and electronic ways of computing, to today’s tablets and smartphones. (Photo (a) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Martin Pettitt/flickr; Photo (c) courtesy of Whitefield d./flickr; Photo (d) courtesy of Andrew Parnell/flickr; Photo (e) courtesy of Jemimus/flickr; Photo (f) courtesy of Kārlis Dambrāns/flickr)
What Is Technology?
While most people probably picture computers and cell phones when the subject of technology comes up, technology is not merely a product of the modern era. For example, fire and stone tools were important forms that technology developed during the Stone Age. Just as the availability of digital technology shapes how we live today, the creation of stone tools changed how premodern humans lived and how well they ate. From the first calculator, invented in 2400 B.C.E. Babylon in the form of an abacus, to the predecessor of the modern computer, created in 1882 by Charles Babbage, all of our technological innovations are advancements on previous iterations. And indeed, all aspects of our lives today are influenced by technology. In agriculture, the introduction of machines that can till, thresh, plant, and harvest greatly reduced the need for manual labor, which in turn meant there were fewer rural jobs. This led to the urbanization of society, as well as lowered birthrates because there was less need for large families to work the farms. In the criminal justice system, the ability to ascertain innocence through DNA testing has saved the lives of people on death row. The examples are endless: technology plays a role in absolutely every aspect of our lives.
Technological Inequality
Some schools sport cutting-edge computer labs, while others sport barbed wire. Is your academic technology at the cusp of innovation, relatively disadvantaged, or somewhere in between? (Photo courtesy of Carlos Martinez/flickr)
As with any improvement to human society, not everyone has equal access. Technology, in particular, often creates changes that lead to ever greater inequalities. In short, the gap gets wider faster. This technological stratification has led to a new focus on ensuring better access for all.
There are two forms of technological stratification. The first is differential class-based access to technology in the form of the digital divide. This digital divide has led to the second form, a knowledge gap, which is, as it sounds, an ongoing and increasing gap in information for those who have less access to technology. Simply put, students in well-funded schools receive more exposure to technology than students in poorly funded schools. Those students with more exposure gain more proficiency, which makes them far more marketable in an increasingly technology-based job market and leaves our society divided into those with technological knowledge and those without. Even as we improve access, we have failed to address an increasingly evident gap ine-readiness—the ability to sort through, interpret, and process knowledge (Sciadas 2003).
Since the beginning of the millennium, social science researchers have tried to bring attention to the digital divide, the uneven access to technology among different races, classes, and geographic areas. The term became part of the common lexicon in 1996, when then Vice President Al Gore used it in a speech. This was the point when personal computer use shifted dramatically, from 300,000 users in 1991 to more than 10 million users by 1996 (Rappaport 2009). In part, the issue of the digital divide had to do with communities that received infrastructure upgrades that enabled high-speed Internet access, upgrades that largely went to affluent urban and suburban areas, leaving out large swaths of the country.
At the end of the twentieth century, technology access was also a big part of the school experience for those whose communities could afford it. Early in the millennium, poorer communities had little or no technology access, while well-off families had personal computers at home and wired classrooms in their schools. In the 2000s, however, the prices for low-end computers dropped considerably, and it appeared the digital divide was naturally ending. Research demonstrates that technology use and Internet access still vary a great deal by race, class, and age in the United States, though most studies agree that there is minimal difference in Internet use by adult men and adult women.
Data from the Pew Research Center (2011) suggests the emergence of yet another divide. As technological devices gets smaller and more mobile, larger percentages of minority groups (such as Latinos and African Americans) are using their phones to connect to the Internet. In fact, about 50 percent of people in these minority groups connect to the web via such devices, whereas only one-third of whites do (Washington 2011). And while it might seem that the Internet is the Internet, regardless of how you get there, there’s a notable difference. Tasks like updating a résumé or filling out a job application are much harder on a cell phone than on a wired computer in the home. As a result, the digital divide might mean no access to computers or the Internet, but could mean access to the kind of online technology that allows for empowerment, not just entertainment (Washington 2011).
Mossberger, Tolbert, and Gilbert (2006) demonstrated that the majority of the digital divide for African Americans could be explained by demographic and community-level characteristics, such as socioeconomic status and geographic location. For the Latino population, ethnicity alone, regardless of economics or geography, seemed to limit technology use. Liff and Shepard (2004) found that women, who are accessing technology shaped primarily by male users, feel less confident in their Internet skills and have less Internet access at both work and home. Finally, Guillen and Suarez (2005) found that the global digital divide resulted from both the economic and sociopolitical characteristics of countries.
Use of Technology and Social Media in Society by Individuals
Do you own an e-reader or tablet? What about your parents or your friends? How often do you check social media or your cell phone? Does all this technology have a positive or negative impact on your life? When it comes to cell phones, 67 percent of users check their phones for messages or calls even when the phone wasn’t ringing. In addition, “44% of cell owners have slept with their phone next to their bed because they wanted to make sure they didn’t miss any calls, text messages, or other updates during the night and 29% of cell owners describe their cell phone as ‘something they can’t imagine living without’” (Smith 2012).
While people report that cell phones make it easier to stay in touch, simplify planning and scheduling their daily activities, and increase their productivity, that’s not the only impact of increased cell phone ownership in the United States. Smith also reports that “roughly one in five cell owners say that their phone has made it at least somewhat harder to forget about work at home or on the weekends; to give people their undivided attention; or to focus on a single task without being distracted” (Smith 2012).
A new survey from the Pew Research Center reported that 73 percent of adults engage in some sort of social networking online. Facebook was the most popular platform, and both Facebook users and Instagram users check their sites on a daily basis. Over a third of users check their sites more than once a day (Duggan and Smith 2013).
With so many people using social media both in the United States and abroad, it is no surprise that social media is a powerful force for social change. You will read more about the fight for democracy in the Middle East embodied in the Arab Spring in Chapters 17 and 21, but spreading democracy is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using social media to incite change. For example, McKenna Pope, a thirteen-year-old girl, used the Internet to successfully petition Hasbro to fight gender stereotypes by creating a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven instead of using only the traditional pink color (Kumar 2014). Meanwhile in Latvia, two twenty-three-year-olds used a U.S. State Department grant to create an e-petition platform so citizens could submit ideas directly to the Latvian government. If at least 20 percent of the Latvian population (roughly 407,200 people) supports a petition, the government will look at it (Kumar 2014).
Online Privacy and Security
As we increase our footprints on the web by going online more often to connect socially, share material, conduct business, and store information, we also increase our vulnerability to those with criminal intent. The Pew Research Center recently published a report that indicated the number of Internet users who express concern over the extent of personal information about them available online jumped 17 percent between 2009 and 2013. In that same survey, 12 percent of respondents indicated they had been harassed online, and 11 percent indicated that personal information, such as their Social Security number, had been stolen (Rainie, Kiesler, Kang, and Madden 2013).
Online privacy and security is a key organizational concern as well. Recent large-scale data breaches at retailers such as Target, financial powerhouses such as JP Morgan, the government health insurance site Healthcare.gov, and cell phone providers such as Verizon, exposed millions of people to the threat of identity theft when hackers got access to personal information by compromising website security.
For example, in late August 2014, hackers breached the iCloud data storage site and promptly leaked wave after wave of nude photos from the private accounts of actors such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst (Lewis 2014). While large-scale data breaches that affect corporations and celebrities are more likely to make the news, individuals may put their personal information at risk simply by clicking a suspect link in an official sounding e-mail.
How can individuals protect their data? Numerous facts sheets available through the government, nonprofits, and the private sector outline common safety measures, including the following: become familiar with privacy rights; read privacy policies when making a purchase (rather than simply clicking “accept”); give out only the minimum information requested by any source; ask why information is being collected, how it is going to be used, and who will have access it; and monitor your credit history for red flags that indicate your identity has been compromised.
Net Neutrality
The issue of net neutrality, the principle that all Internet data should be treated equally by Internet service providers, is part of the national debate about Internet access and the digital divide. On one side of this debate is the belief that those who provide Internet service, like those who provide electricity and water, should be treated as common carriers, legally prohibited from discriminating based on the customer or nature of the goods. Supporters of net neutrality suggest that without such legal protections, the Internet could be divided into “fast” and “slow” lanes. A conflict perspective theorist might suggest that this discrimination would allow bigger corporations, such as Amazon, to pay Internet providers a premium for faster service, which could lead to gaining an advantage that would drive small, local competitors out of business.
The other side of the debate holds the belief that designating Internet service providers as common carriers would constitute an unreasonable regulatory burden and limit the ability of telecommunication companies to operate profitably. A functional perspective theorist might point out that, without profits, companies would not invest in making improvements to their Internet service or expanding those services to underserved areas. The final decision rests with the Federal Communications Commission and the federal government, which must decide how to fairly regulate broadband providers without dividing the Internet into haves and have-nots.
Summary
Technology is the application of science to address the problems of daily life. The fast pace of technological advancement means the advancements are continuous, but that not everyone has equal access. The gap created by this unequal access has been termed the digital divide. The knowledge gap refers to an effect of the digital divide: the lack of knowledge or information that keeps those who were not exposed to technology from gaining marketable skills
Section Quiz
Jerome is able to use the Internet to select reliable sources for his research paper, but Charlie just copies large pieces of web pages and pastes them into his paper. Jerome has _____________ while Charlie does not.
1. a functional perspective
2. the knowledge gap
3. e-readiness
4. a digital divide
Answer
C
The ________ can be directly attributed to the digital divide, because differential ability to access the internet leads directly to a differential ability to use the knowledge found on the Internet.
1. digital divide
2. knowledge gap
3. feminist perspective
4. e-gap
Answer
B
The fact that your cell phone is using outdated technology within a year or two of purchase is an example of ____________.
1. the conflict perspective
2. conspicuous consumption
3. media
4. planned obsolescence
Answer
D
The history of technology began _________.
1. in the early stages of human societies
2. with the invention of the computer
3. during the Renaissance
4. during the nineteenth century
Answer
A
Short Answer
Can you think of people in your own life who support or defy the premise that access to technology leads to greater opportunities? How have you noticed technology use and opportunity to be linked, or does your experience contradict this idea?
Should the U.S. government be responsible for providing all citizens with access to the Internet? Or is gaining Internet access an individual responsibility?
How have digital media changed social interactions? Do you believe it has deepened or weakened human connections? Defend your answer.
Conduct sociological research. Google yourself. How much information about you is available to the public? How many and what types of companies offer private information about you for a fee? Compile the data and statistics you find. Write a paragraph or two about the social issues and behaviors you notice.
Further Research
To learn more about the digital divide and why it matters, check out these web sites: openstaxcollege.org/l/Digital_Divideand http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Digital_Divide2
To find out more about Internet privacy and security, check out the web site below: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/2EPrivacy
Glossary
digital divide
the uneven access to technology around race, class, and geographic lines
e-readiness
the ability to sort through, interpret, and process digital knowledge
knowledge gap
the gap in information that builds as groups grow up without access to technology
net neutrality
the principle that all Internet data should be treated equally by internet service providers
planned obsolescence
the act of a technology company planning for a product to be obsolete or unable from the time it’s created
technology
the application of science to solve problems in daily life | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/08%3A_Media_and_Technology/8.02%3A_Technology_Today.txt |
Technology and the media are interwoven, and neither can be separated from contemporary society in most core and semi-peripheral nations. Media is a term that refers to all print, digital, and electronic means of communication. From the time the printing press was created (and even before), technology has influenced how and where information is shared. Today, it is impossible to discuss media and the ways societies communicate without addressing the fast-moving pace of technology change. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to share news of your baby’s birth or a job promotion, you phoned or wrote letters. You might tell a handful of people, but you probably wouldn’t call up several hundred, including your old high school chemistry teacher, to let them know. Now, you might join an online community of parents-to-be even before you announce your pregnancy via a staged Instagram picture. The circle of communication is wider than ever and when we talk about how societies engage with technology, we must take media into account, and vice versa.
In the coming future, there is no doubt that robots are going to play a large role in all aspects of our lives. (Photo courtesy of shay sowden/flickr)
Technology creates media. The comic book you bought your daughter is a form of media, as is the movie you streamed for family night, the web site you used to order takeout, the billboard you passed on the way to pick up your food, and the newspaper you read while you were waiting for it. Without technology, media would not exist, but remember, technology is more than just the media we are exposed to.
Categorizing Technology
There is no one way of dividing technology into categories. Whereas once it might have been simple to classify innovations such as machine-based or drug-based or the like, the interconnected strands of technological development mean that advancement in one area might be replicated in dozens of others. For simplicity’s sake, we will look at how the U.S. Patent Office, which receives patent applications for nearly all major innovations worldwide, addresses patents. This regulatory body will patent three types of innovation. Utility patents are the first type. These are granted for the invention or discovery of any new and useful process, product, or machine, or for a significant improvement to existing technologies. The second type of patent is a design patent. Commonly conferred in architecture and industrial design, this means someone has invented a new and original design for a manufactured product. Plant patents, the final type, recognize the discovery of new plant types that can be asexually reproduced. While genetically modified food is the hot-button issue within this category, farmers have long been creating new hybrids and patenting them. A more modern example might be food giant Monsanto, which patents corn with built-in pesticide (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 2011).
Anderson and Tushman (1990) suggest an evolutionary model of technological change, in which a breakthrough in one form of technology leads to a number of variations. Once those are assessed, a prototype emerges, and then a period of slight adjustments to the technology, interrupted by a breakthrough. For example, floppy disks were improved and upgraded, then replaced by Zip disks, which were in turn improved to the limits of the technology and were then replaced by flash drives. This is essentially a generational model for categorizing technology, in which first-generation technology is a relatively unsophisticated jumping-off point that leads to an improved second generation, and so on.
VIOLENCE IN MEDIA AND VIDEO GAMES: DOES IT MATTER?
A glance through popular video game and movie titles geared toward children and teens shows the vast spectrum of violence that is displayed, condoned, and acted out. As a way to guide parents in their programming choices, the motion picture industry put a rating system in place in the 1960s. But new media—video games in particular—proved to be uncharted territory. In 1994, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ERSB) set a ratings system for games that addressed issues of violence, sexuality, drug use, and the like. California took it a step further by making it illegal to sell video games to underage buyers. The case led to a heated debate about personal freedoms and child protection, and in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the California law, stating it violated freedom of speech (ProCon 2012).
One of the most popular video games, Grand Theft Auto, has frequently been at the center of debate about gratuitous violence in the gaming world. (Photo courtesy of Meddy Garnet/flickr)
Children’s play has often involved games of aggression—from cowboys and Indians, to cops and robbers, to fake sword fights. Many articles report on the controversy surrounding the suggested link between violent video games and violent behavior. Is the link real? Psychologists Anderson and Bushman (2001) reviewed forty-plus years of research on the subject and, in 2003, determined that there are causal linkages between violent video game use and aggression. They found that children who had just played a violent video game demonstrated an immediate increase in hostile or aggressive thoughts, an increase in aggressive emotions, and physiological arousal that increased the chances of acting out aggressive behavior (Anderson 2003).
Ultimately, repeated exposure to this kind of violence leads to increased expectations that violence is a solution, increased violent behavioral scripts, and an increased cognitive accessibility to violent behavior (Anderson 2003). In short, people who play a lot of these games find it easier to imagine and access violent solutions than nonviolent ones, and they are less socialized to see violence as a negative. While these facts do not mean there is no role for video games, it should give players pause. In 2013, The American Psychological Association began an expansive meta-analysis of peer-reviewed research analyzing the effect of media violence. Results are expected in 2014.
Types of Media and Technology
Media and technology have evolved hand in hand, from early print to modern publications, from radio to television to film. New media emerge constantly, such as we see in the online world.
Print Newspaper
Early forms of print media, found in ancient Rome, were hand-copied onto boards and carried around to keep the citizenry informed. With the invention of the printing press, the way that people shared ideas changed, as information could be mass produced and stored. For the first time, there was a way to spread knowledge and information more efficiently; many credit this development as leading to the Renaissance and ultimately the Age of Enlightenment. This is not to say that newspapers of old were more trustworthy than the Weekly World News and National Enquirer are today. Sensationalism abounded, as did censorship that forbade any subjects that would incite the populace.
The invention of the telegraph, in the mid-1800s, changed print media almost as much as the printing press. Suddenly information could be transmitted in minutes. As the nineteenth century became the twentieth, U.S. publishers such as Hearst redefined the world of print media and wielded an enormous amount of power to socially construct national and world events. Of course, even as the media empires of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were growing, print media also allowed for the dissemination of countercultural or revolutionary materials. Internationally, Vladimir Lenin’s Irksa (The Spark) newspaper was published in 1900 and played a role in Russia’s growing communist movement (World Association of Newspapers 2004).
With the invention and widespread use of television in the mid-twentieth century, newspaper circulation steadily dropped off, and in the 21st century, circulation has dropped further as more people turn to internet news sites and other forms of new media to stay informed. According to the Pew Research Center, 2009 saw an unprecedented drop in newspaper circulation––down 10.6 percent from the year before (Pew 2010).
This shift away from newspapers as a source of information has profound effects on societies. When the news is given to a large diverse conglomerate of people, it must maintain some level of broad-based reporting and balance in order to appeal to a broad audience and keep them subscribing. As newspapers decline, news sources become more fractured, so each segment of the audience can choose specifically what it wants to hear and what it wants to avoid. Increasingly, newspapers are shifting online in an attempt to remain relevant. It is hard to tell what impact new media platforms will have on the way we receive and process information.
Increasingly, newspapers are shifting online in an attempt to remain relevant. It is hard to tell what impact new media platforms will have on the way we receive and process information. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (2013) reported that audiences for all the major news magazines declined in 2012, though digital ad revenue increased. The same report suggested that, while newspaper circulation is holding steady at around \$10 billion after years of decline, it is digital pay plans that allow newspapers to keep their heads above water, and the digital ad revenue that is increasing for news magazines is not enough to compensate for print revenue loss in newspapers.
A 2014 report suggested that U.S. adults read a median of five books per year in 2013, which is about average. But are they reading traditional print or e-books? About 69 percent of people said they had read at least one printed book in the past year, versus 28 percent who said they’d read an e-book (DeSilver 2014). Is print more effective at conveying information? In recent study, Mangen, Walgermo, and Bronnick (2013) found that students who read on paper performed slightly better than those who read an e-book on an open-book reading comprehension exam of multiple-choice and short-answer questions. While a meta-analysis of research by Andrews (1992) seemed to confirm that people read more slowly and comprehend less when reading from screens, a meta-analysis of more recent research on this topic does not show anything definite (Noyes and Garland 2008).
Television and Radio
Radio programming obviously preceded television, but both shaped people’s lives in much the same way. In both cases, information (and entertainment) could be enjoyed at home, with a kind of immediacy and community that newspapers could not offer. For instance, many people in the United States might remember when they saw on television or heard on the radio that the Twin Towers in New York City had been attacked in 2001. Even though people were in their own homes, media allowed them to share these moments in real time. This same kind of separate-but-communal approach occurred with entertainment too. School-aged children and office workers gathered to discuss the previous night’s installment of a serial television or radio show.
Right up through the 1970s, U.S. television was dominated by three major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) that competed for ratings and advertising dollars. The networks also exerted a lot of control over what people watched. Public television, in contrast, offered an educational nonprofit alternative to the sensationalization of news spurred by the network competition for viewers and advertising dollars. Those sources—PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), the BBC (British Broadcasting Company), and CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company)—garnered a worldwide reputation for high-quality programming and a global perspective. Al Jazeera, the Arabic independent news station, has joined this group as a similar media force that broadcasts to people worldwide.
The impact of television on U.S. society is hard to overstate. By the late 1990s, 98 percent of U.S. homes had at least one television set, and the average person watched between two and a half and five hours of television daily. All this television has a powerful socializing effect, providing reference groups while reinforcing social norms, values, and beliefs.
Film
The film industry took off in the 1930s, when color and sound were first integrated into feature films. Like television, early films were unifying for society: as people gathered in theaters to watch new releases, they would laugh, cry, and be scared together. Movies also act as time capsules or cultural touchstones for society. From Westerns starring the tough-talking Clint Eastwood to the biopic of Facebook founder and Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, movies illustrate society’s dreams, fears, and experiences. While many consider Hollywood the epicenter of moviemaking, India’s Bollywood actually produces more films per year, speaking to the cultural aspirations and norms of Indian society. Increasingly, people are watching films online via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other streaming services. While most streaming video companies keep their user data secret, Nielsen estimated that 38 percent of U.S. citizens accessed Netflix in 2013. In 2013, Google, Inc. reported that YouTube served 1 billion unique viewers every month—an impressive number, considering that it amounts to one-third of the estimated 3 billion accessing the Internet every month (Reuters 2013; International Telecommunication Union 2014).
New Media
Netflix, one form of new media, exchanges information in the form of DVDs to users in the comfort of their own homes. (Photo courtesy of Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar/flickr)
New media encompasses all interactive forms of information exchange. These include social networking sites, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and virtual worlds. Clearly, the list grows almost daily. However, there is no guarantee that the information offered is accurate. In fact, the immediacy of new media coupled with the lack of oversight means we must be more careful than ever to ensure our news is coming from accurate sources.
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE: TECHNOLOGY THAT’S BUILT TO CRASH
People have trouble keeping up with technological innovation. But people may not be to blame, as manufacturers intentionally develop products with short life spans. (Photo courtesy of Mathias F. Svendsen/flickr)
Chances are your mobile phone company, as well as the makers of your laptop and your household appliances, are all counting on their products to fail. Not too quickly, of course, or consumers wouldn't stand for it—but frequently enough that you might find that it costs far more to fix a device than to replace it with a newer model. Or you find the phone company e-mails you saying that you’re eligible for a free new phone, because yours is a whopping two years old. And appliance repair people say that while they might be fixing some machines that are twenty years old, they generally aren’t fixing those that are seven years old; newer models are built to be thrown out. This strategy is called planned obsolescence, and it is the business practice of planning for a product to be obsolete or unusable from the time it is created.
To some extent, planned obsolescence is a natural extension of new and emerging technologies. After all, who is going to cling to an enormous and slow desktop computer from 2000 when a few hundred dollars can buy one that is significantly faster and better? But the practice is not always so benign. The classic example of planned obsolescence is the nylon stocking. Women’s stockings—once an everyday staple of women’s lives––get “runs” or “ladders” after only a few wearings. This requires the stockings to be discarded and new ones purchased. Not surprisingly, the garment industry did not invest heavily in finding a rip-proof fabric; it was in manufacturers' best interest that their product be regularly replaced.
Those who use Microsoft Windows might feel that like the women who purchased endless pairs of stockings, they are victims of planned obsolescence. Every time Windows releases a new operating system, there are typically not many innovations in it that consumers feel they must have. However, the software programs are upwardly compatible only. This means that while the new versions can read older files, the old version cannot read the newer ones. In short order, those who have not upgraded right away find themselves unable to open files sent by colleagues or friends, and they usually wind up upgrading as well.
Ultimately, whether you are getting rid of your old product because you are being offered a shiny new free one (like the latest smartphone model), or because it costs more to fix than to replace (like the iPod model), or because not doing so leaves you out of the loop (like the Windows model), the result is the same. It might just make you nostalgic for your old Sony Discman and simple DVD player.
Product Advertising
Companies use advertising to sell to us, but the way they reach us is changing. Naomi Klein identified the destructive impact of corporate branding her 1999 text, No Logo, an antiglobalization treatise that focused on sweatshops, corporate power, and anticonsumerist social movements. In the post-millennial society, synergistic advertising practices ensure you are receiving the same message from a variety of sources and on a variety of platforms. For example, you may see billboards for Miller beer on your way to a stadium, sit down to watch a game preceded by a Miller commercial on the big screen, and watch a halftime ad in which people are shown holding up the trademark bottles. Chances are you can guess which brand of beer is for sale at the concession stand.
Advertising has changed, as technology and media have allowed consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues. From the invention of the remote control, which allows us to skip television advertising without leaving our seats, to recording devices that let us watch programs but skip the ads, conventional television advertising is on the wane. And print media is no different. Advertising revenue in newspapers and on television fell significantly in 2009, which shows that companies need new ways of getting their messages to consumers.
One model companies are considering to address this advertising downturn uses the same philosophy as celebrity endorsements, just on a different scale. Companies are hiring college students to be their on-campus representatives, and they are looking for popular students engaged in high-profile activities like sports, fraternities, and music. The marketing team is betting that if we buy perfume because Beyoncé tells us to, we’ll also choose our cell phone or smoothie brand if a popular student encourages that choice. According to an article in the New York Times, fall semester 2011 saw an estimated 10,000 U.S. college students working on campus as brand ambassadors for products from Red Bull energy drinks to Hewlett-Packard computers (Singer 2011). As the companies figure it, college students will trust one source of information above all: other students.
Homogenization and Fragmentation
Despite the variety of media at hand, the mainstream news and entertainment you enjoy are increasingly homogenized. Research by McManus (1995) suggests that different news outlets all tell the same stories, using the same sources, resulting in the same message, presented with only slight variations. So whether you are reading the New York Times or the CNN’s web site, the coverage of national events like a major court case or political issue will likely be the same.
Simultaneously with this homogenization among the major news outlets, the opposite process is occurring in the newer media streams. With so many choices, people increasingly customize their news experience, minimizing their opportunity to encounter information that does not jive with their worldview (Prior 2005). For instance, those who are staunchly Republican can avoid centrist or liberal-leaning cable news shows and web sites that would show Democrats in a favorable light. They know to seek out Fox News over MSNBC, just as Democrats know to do the opposite. Further, people who want to avoid politics completely can choose to visit web sites that deal only with entertainment or that will keep them up to date on sports scores. They have an easy way to avoid information they do not wish to hear.
Summary
Media and technology have been interwoven from the earliest days of human communication. The printing press, the telegraph, and the Internet are all examples of their intersection. Mass media have allowed for more shared social experiences, but new media now create a seemingly endless amount of airtime for any and every voice that wants to be heard. Advertising has also changed with technology. New media allow consumers to bypass traditional advertising venues and cause companies to be more innovative and intrusive as they try to gain our attention.
Section Quiz
When it comes to technology, media, and society, which of the following is true?
1. Media can influence technology, but not society.
2. Technology created media, but society has nothing to do with these.
3. Technology, media, and society are bound and cannot be separated.
4. Society influences media but is not connected to technology.
Answer
C
If the U.S. Patent Office were to issue a patent for a new type of tomato that tastes like a jellybean, it would be issuing a _________ patent?
1. utility patent
2. plant patent
3. design patent
4. The U.S. Patent Office does not issue a patent for plants.
Answer
B
Which of the following is the primary component of the evolutionary model of technological change?
1. Technology should not be subject to patenting.
2. Technology and the media evolve together.
3. Technology can be traced back to the early stages of human society.
4. A breakthrough in one form of technology leads to a number of variations, and technological developments.
Answer
D
Which of the following is not a form of new media?
1. The cable television program Dexter
2. Wikipedia
3. Facebook
4. A cooking blog written by Rachael Ray
Answer
A
Research regarding video game violence suggests that _________.
1. boys who play violent video games become more aggressive, but girls do not
2. girls who play violent video games become more aggressive, but boys do not
3. violent video games have no connection to aggressive behavior
4. violent video games lead to an increase in aggressive thought and behavior
Answer
D
Comic books, Wikipedia, MTV, and a commercial for Coca-Cola are all examples of:
1. media
2. symbolic interaction perspective
3. e-readiness
4. the digital divide
Answer
A
Short Answer
Where and how do you get your news? Do you watch network television? Read the newspaper? Go online? How about your parents or grandparents? Do you think it matters where you seek out information? Why, or why not?
Do you believe new media allows for the kind of unifying moments that television and radio programming used to? If so, give an example.
Where are you most likely to notice advertisements? What causes them to catch your attention?
Further Research
To get a sense of the timeline of technology, check out this web site: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Tech_History
To learn more about new media, click here: openstaxcollege.org/l/new_media
To understand how independent media coverage differs from major corporate affiliated news outlets, review material from the Democracy Now! website: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/2EDemoNow
Glossary
design patents
patents that are granted when someone has invented a new and original design for a manufactured product
evolutionary model of technological change
a breakthrough in one form of technology that leads to a number of variations, from which a prototype emerges, followed by a period of slight adjustments to the technology, interrupted by a breakthrough
media
all print, digital, and electronic means of communication
new media
all interactive forms of information exchange
plant patents
patents that recognize the discovery of new plant types that can be asexually reproduced
utility patents
patents that are granted for the invention or discovery of any new and useful process, product, or machine | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/08%3A_Media_and_Technology/8.03%3A_Media_and_Technology_in_Society.txt |
These Twitter updates—a revolution in real time—show the role social media can play on the political stage. (Photo courtesy of Cambodia4kidsorg/flickr)
Technology, and increasingly media, has always driven globalization. In a landmark book, Thomas Friedman (2005), identified several ways in which technology “flattened” the globe and contributed to our global economy. The first edition of The World Is Flat, written in 2005, posits that core economic concepts were changed by personal computing and high-speed Internet. Access to these two technological shifts has allowed core-nation corporations to recruit workers in call centers located in China or India. Using examples like a Midwestern U.S. woman who runs a business from her home via the call centers of Bangalore, India, Friedman warns that this new world order will exist whether core-nation businesses are ready or not, and that in order to keep its key economic role in the world, the United States will need to pay attention to how it prepares workers of the twenty-first century for this dynamic.
Of course not everyone agrees with Friedman’s theory. Many economists pointed out that in reality innovation, economic activity, and population still gather in geographically attractive areas, and they continue to create economic peaks and valleys, which are by no means flattened out to mean equality for all. China’s hugely innovative and powerful cities of Shanghai and Beijing are worlds away from the rural squalor of the country’s poorest denizens.
It is worth noting that Friedman is an economist, not a sociologist. His work focuses on the economic gains and risks this new world order entails. In this section, we will look more closely at how media globalization and technological globalization play out in a sociological perspective. As the names suggest, media globalization is the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, while technological globalization refers to the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology.
Media Globalization
Lyons (2005) suggests that multinational corporations are the primary vehicle of media globalization, and these corporations control global mass-media content and distribution (Compaine 2005). It is true, when looking at who controls which media outlets, that there are fewer independent news sources as larger and larger conglomerates develop. The United States offers about 1,500 newspapers, 2,600 book publishers, and an equal number of television stations, plus 6,000 magazines and a whopping 10,000 radio outlets (Bagdikian 2004).
On the surface, there is endless opportunity to find diverse media outlets. But the numbers are misleading. Media consolidationis a process in which fewer and fewer owners control the majority of media outlets. This creates an oligopoly in which a few firms dominate the media marketplace. In 1983, a mere 50 corporations owned the bulk of mass-media outlets. Today in the United States (which has no government-owned media) just five companies control 90 percent of media outlets (McChesney 1999). Ranked by 2014 company revenue, Comcast is the biggest, followed by the Disney Corporation, Time Warner, CBS, and Viacom (Time.com 2014). What impact does this consolidation have on the type of information to which the U.S. public is exposed? Does media consolidation deprive the public of multiple viewpoints and limit its discourse to the information and opinions shared by a few sources? Why does it matter?
Monopolies matter because less competition typically means consumers are less well served since dissenting opinions or diverse viewpoints are less likely to be found. Media consolidation results in the following dysfunctions. First, consolidated media owes more to its stockholders than to the public. Publicly traded Fortune 500 companies must pay more attention to their profitability and to government regulators than to the public's right to know. The few companies that control most of the media, because they are owned by the power elite, represent the political and social interests of only a small minority. In an oligopoly there are fewer incentives to innovate, improve services, or decrease prices.
While some social scientists predicted that the increase in media forms would create a global village (McLuhan 1964), current research suggests that the public sphere accessing the global village will tend to be rich, Caucasoid, and English-speaking (Jan 2009). As shown by the spring 2011 uprisings throughout the Arab world, technology really does offer a window into the news of the world. For example, here in the United States we saw internet updates of Egyptian events in real time, with people tweeting, posting, and blogging on the ground in Tahrir Square.
Still, there is no question that the exchange of technology from core nations to peripheral and semi-peripheral ones leads to a number of complex issues. For instance, someone using a conflict theorist approach might focus on how much political ideology and cultural colonialism occurs with technological growth. In theory at least, technological innovations are ideology-free; a fiber optic cable is the same in a Muslim country as a secular one, a communist country or a capitalist one. But those who bring technology to less-developed nations—whether they are nongovernment organizations, businesses, or governments—usually have an agenda. A functionalist, in contrast, might focus on the ways technology creates new means to share information about successful crop-growing programs, or on the economic benefits of opening a new market for cell phone use. Either way, cultural and societal assumptions and norms are being delivered along with those high-speed wires.
Cultural and ideological bias are not the only risks of media globalization. In addition to the risk of cultural imperialism and the loss of local culture, other problems come with the benefits of a more interconnected globe. One risk is the potential for censoring by national governments that let in only the information and media they feel serve their message, as is occurring in China. In addition, core nations such as the United States risk the use of international media by criminals to circumvent local laws against socially deviant and dangerous behaviors such as gambling, child pornography, and the sex trade. Offshore or international web sites allow U.S. citizens (and others) to seek out whatever illegal or illicit information they want, from twenty-four hour online gambling sites that do not require proof of age, to sites that sell child pornography. These examples illustrate the societal risks of unfettered information flow.
CHINA AND THE INTERNET: AN UNCOMFORTABLE FRIENDSHIP
What information is accessible to these patrons of an internet café in China? What is censored from their view? (Photo Courtesy of Kai Hendry/flickr)
In the United States, the Internet is used to access illegal gambling and pornography sites, as well as to research stocks, crowd-source what car to buy, or keep in touch with childhood friends. Can we allow one or more of those activities, while restricting the rest? And who decides what needs restricting? In a country with democratic principles and an underlying belief in free-market capitalism, the answer is decided in the court system. But globally, the questions––and the government’s responses––are very different.
China is in many ways the global poster child for the uncomfortable relationship between Internet freedom and government control. China, which is a country with a tight rein on the dissemination of information, has long worked to suppress what it calls “harmful information,” including dissent concerning government politics, dialogue about China’s role in Tibet, or criticism of the government’s handling of events.
With sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube blocked in China, the nation’s Internet users––some 500 million strong in 2011––turn to local media companies for their needs. Renren.com is China’s answer to Facebook. Perhaps more importantly from a social-change perspective, Sina Weibo is China’s version of Twitter. Microblogging, or Weibo, acts like Twitter in that users can post short messages that can be read by their subscribers. And because these services move so quickly and with such wide scope, it is difficult for government overseers to keep up. This tool was used to criticize government response to a deadly rail crash and to protest a chemical plant. It was also credited with the government’s decision to report more accurately on the air pollution in Beijing, which occurred after a high-profile campaign by a well-known property developer (Pierson 2012).
There is no question of China’s authoritarian government ruling over this new form of Internet communication. The nation blocks the use of certain terms, such as human rights, and passes new laws that require people to register with their real names and make it more dangerous to criticize government actions. Indeed, fifty-six-year-old microblogger Wang Lihong was recently sentenced to nine months in prison for “stirring up trouble,” as her government described her work helping people with government grievances (Bristow 2011). But the government cannot shut down this flow of information completely. Foreign companies, seeking to engage with the increasingly important Chinese consumer market, have their own accounts: the NBA has more than 5 million followers, and Tom Cruise’s Weibo account boasts almost 3 million followers (Zhang 2011). The government, too, uses Weibo to get its own message across. As the millennium progresses, China’s approach to social media and the freedoms it offers will be watched anxiously––on Sina Weibo and beyond––by the rest of the world.
Technological Globalization
Technological globalization is speeded in large part by technological diffusion, the spread of technology across borders. In the last two decades, there has been rapid improvement in the spread of technology to peripheral and semi-peripheral nations, and a 2008 World Bank report discusses both the benefits and ongoing challenges of this diffusion. In general, the report found that technological progress and economic growth rates were linked, and that the rise in technological progress has helped improve the situations of many living in absolute poverty (World Bank 2008). The report recognizes that rural and low-tech products such as corn can benefit from new technological innovations, and that, conversely, technologies like mobile banking can aid those whose rural existence consists of low-tech market vending. In addition, technological advances in areas like mobile phones can lead to competition, lowered prices, and concurrent improvements in related areas such as mobile banking and information sharing.
However, the same patterns of social inequality that create a digital divide in the United States also create digital divides within peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. While the growth of technology use among countries has increased dramatically over the past several decades, the spread of technology within countries is significantly slower among peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. In these countries, far fewer people have the training and skills to take advantage of new technology, let alone access it. Technological access tends to be clustered around urban areas and leaves out vast swaths of peripheral-nation citizens. While the diffusion of information technologies has the potential to resolve many global social problems, it is often the population most in need that is most affected by the digital divide. For example, technology to purify water could save many lives, but the villages in peripheral nations most in need of water purification don’t have access to the technology, the funds to purchase it, or the technological comfort level to introduce it as a solution.
THE MIGHTY CELL PHONE: HOW MOBILE PHONES ARE IMPACTING SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Many of Africa’s poorest countries suffer from a marked lack of infrastructure including poor roads, limited electricity, and minimal access to education and telephones. But while landline use has not changed appreciably during the past ten years, there’s been a fivefold increase in mobile phone access; more than a third of people in Sub-Saharan Africa have the ability to access a mobile phone (Katine 2010). Even more can use a “village phone”—through a shared-phone program created by the Grameen Foundation. With access to mobile phone technology, a host of benefits become available that have the potential to change the dynamics in these poorest nations. Sometimes that change is as simple as being able to make a phone call to neighboring market towns. By finding out which markets have vendors interested in their goods, fishers and farmers can ensure they travel to the market that will serve them best and avoid a wasted trip. Others can use mobile phones and some of the emerging money-sending systems to securely send money to a family member or business partner elsewhere (Katine 2010).
These shared-phone programs are often funded by businesses like Germany’s Vodafone or Britain’s Masbabi, which hope to gain market share in the region. Phone giant Nokia points out that there are 4 billion mobile phone users worldwide—that’s more than twice as many people as have bank accounts—meaning there is ripe opportunity to connect banking companies with people who need their services (ITU Telecom 2009). Not all access is corporate-based, however. Other programs are funded by business organizations that seek to help peripheral nations with tools for innovation and entrepreneurship.
But this wave of innovation and potential business comes with costs. There is, certainly, the risk of cultural imperialism, and the assumption that core nations (and core-nation multinationals) know what is best for those struggling in the world’s poorest communities. Whether well intentioned or not, the vision of a continent of Africans successfully chatting on their iPhone may not be ideal. Like all aspects of global inequity, access to technology in Africa requires more than just foreign investment. There must be a concerted effort to ensure the benefits of technology get to where they are needed most.
Summary
Technology drives globalization, but what that means can be hard to decipher. While some economists see technological advances leading to a more level playing field where anyone anywhere can be a global contender, the reality is that opportunity still clusters in geographically advantaged areas. Still, technological diffusion has led to the spread of more and more technology across borders into peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. However, true technological global equality is a long way off.
Section Quiz
When Japanese scientists develop a new vaccine for swine flu and offer that technology to U.S. pharmaceutical companies, __________ has taken place.
1. media globalization
2. technological diffusion
3. monetizing
4. planned obsolescence
Answer
B
In the mid-90s, the U.S. government grew concerned that Microsoft was a _______________, exercising disproportionate control over the available choices and prices of computers.
1. monopoly
2. conglomerate
3. oligopoly
4. technological globalization
Answer
A
The movie Babel featured an international cast and was filmed on location in various nations. When it screened in theaters worldwide, it introduced a number of ideas and philosophies about cross-cultural connections. This might be an example of:
1. technology
2. conglomerating
3. symbolic interaction
4. media globalization
Answer
D
Which of the following is not a risk of media globalization?
1. The creation of cultural and ideological biases
2. The creation of local monopolies
3. The risk of cultural imperialism
4. The loss of local culture
Answer
B
The government of __________ blocks citizens’ access to popular new media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
1. China
2. India
3. Afghanistan
4. Australia
Answer
A
Short Answer
Do you believe that technology has indeed flattened the world in terms of providing opportunity? Why, or why not? Give examples to support your reason.
Where do you get your news? Is it owned by a large conglomerate (you can do a web search and find out!)? Does it matter to you who owns your local news outlets? Why, or why not?
Who do you think is most likely to bring innovation and technology (like cell phone businesses) to Sub-Saharan Africa: nonprofit organizations, governments, or businesses? Why?
Further Research
Check out more on the global digital divide here: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Global_Digital_Divide
Glossary
media consolidation
a process by which fewer and fewer owners control the majority of media outlets
media globalization
the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas
oligopoly
a situation in which a few firms dominate a marketplace
technological diffusion
the spread of technology across borders
technological globalization
the cross-cultural development and exchange of technology | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/08%3A_Media_and_Technology/8.04%3A_Global_Implications_of_Media_and_Technology.txt |
It is difficult to conceive of any one theory or theoretical perspective that can explain the variety of ways in which people interact with technology and the media. Technology runs the gamut from the match you strike to light a candle all the way up to sophisticated nuclear power plants that might power the factory where that candle was made. Media could refer to the television you watch, the ads wrapping the bus you take to work or school, or the magazines you flip through in a dentist's waiting room, not to mention all the forms of new media, including Instagram, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, and the like. Are media and technology critical to the forward march of humanity? Are they pernicious capitalist tools that lead to the exploitation of workers worldwide? Are they the magic bullet the world has been waiting for to level the playing field and raise the world’s poor out of extreme poverty? Choose any opinion and you will find studies and scholars who agree with you––and those who disagree.
Functionalism
Because functionalism focuses on how media and technology contribute to the smooth functioning of society, a good place to begin understanding this perspective is to write a list of functions you perceive media and technology to perform. Your list might include the ability to find information on the Internet, television’s entertainment value, or how advertising and product placement contribute to social norms.
Commercial Function
TV commercials can carry significant cultural currency. For some, the ads during the Super Bowl are more water cooler-worthy than the game itself. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Yang/flickr)
As you might guess, with nearly every U.S. household possessing a television, and the 250 billion hours of television watched annually by people in the United States, companies that wish to connect with consumers find television an irresistible platform to promote their goods and services (Nielsen 2012). Television advertising is a highly functional way to meet a market demographic where it lives. Sponsors can use the sophisticated data gathered by network and cable television companies regarding their viewers and target their advertising accordingly. Whether you are watching cartoons on Nick Jr. or a cooking show on Telemundo, chances are advertisers have a plan to reach you.
And it certainly doesn’t stop with television. Commercial advertising precedes movies in theaters and shows up on and inside public transportation, as well as on the sides of building and roadways. Major corporations such as Coca-Cola bring their advertising into public schools, by sponsoring sports fields or tournaments, as well as filling the halls and cafeterias of those schools with vending machines hawking their goods. With rising concerns about childhood obesity and attendant diseases, the era of soda machines in schools may be numbered. In fact, as part of the United States Department of Agriculture's Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act and Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Initiative, a ban on junk food in school began in July 2014.
Entertainment Function
An obvious manifest function of media is its entertainment value. Most people, when asked why they watch television or go to the movies, would answer that they enjoy it. And the numbers certainly illustrate that. While 2012 Nielsen research shows a slight reduction of U.S. homes with televisions, the reach of television is still vast. And the amount of time spent watching is equally large. Clearly, enjoyment is paramount. On the technology side, as well, there is a clear entertainment factor to the use of new innovations. From online gaming to chatting with friends on Facebook, technology offers new and more exciting ways for people to entertain themselves.
Social Norm Functions
Even while the media is selling us goods and entertaining us, it also serves to socialize us, helping us pass along norms, values, and beliefs to the next generation. In fact, we are socialized and resocialized by media throughout our whole lives. All forms of media teach us what is good and desirable, how we should speak, how we should behave, and how we should react to events. Media also provide us with cultural touchstones during events of national significance. How many of your older relatives can recall watching the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on television? How many of those reading this textbook followed the events of September 11 or Hurricane Katrina on television or the Internet?
Just as in Anderson and Bushman's (2011) evidence in the Violence in Media and Video Games: Does It Matter? feature, debate still exists over the extent and impact of media socialization. One recent study (Krahe et al. 2011) demonstrated that violent media content does have a desensitizing affect and is correlated with aggressive thoughts. Another group of scholars (Gentile, Mathieson, and Crick 2011) found that among children exposure to media violence led to an increase in both physical and relational aggression. Yet, a meta-analysis study covering four decades of research (Savage 2003) could not establish a definitive link between viewing violence and committing criminal violence.
It is clear from watching people emulate the styles of dress and talk that appear in media that media has a socializing influence. What is not clear, despite nearly fifty years of empirical research, is how much socializing influence the media has when compared to other agents of socialization, which include any social institution that passes along norms, values, and beliefs (such as peers, family, religious institutions, and the like).
Life-Changing Functions
Like media, many forms of technology do indeed entertain us, provide a venue for commercialization, and socialize us. For example, some studies suggest the rising obesity rate is correlated with the decrease in physical activity caused by an increase in use of some forms of technology, a latent function of the prevalence of media in society (Kautiainen et al. 2011). Without a doubt, a manifest function of technology is to change our lives, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Think of how the digital age has improved the ways we communicate. Have you ever used Skype or another webcast to talk to a friend or family member far away? Or maybe you have organized a fund drive, raising thousands of dollars, all from your desk chair.
Of course, the downside to this ongoing information flow is the near impossibility of disconnecting from technology that leads to an expectation of constant convenient access to information and people. Such a fast-paced dynamic is not always to our benefit. Some sociologists assert that this level of media exposure leads to narcotizing dysfunction, a result in which people are too overwhelmed with media input to really care about the issue, so their involvement becomes defined by awareness instead of by action (Lazerfeld and Merton 1948).
Conflict Perspective
In contrast to theories in the functional perspective, the conflict perspective focuses on the creation and reproduction of inequality—social processes that tend to disrupt society rather than contribute to its smooth operation. When we take a conflict perspective, one major focus is the differential access to media and technology embodied in the digital divide. Conflict theorists also look at who controls the media, and how media promotes the norms of upper-middle-class white people in the United States while minimizing the presence of the working class, especially people of color.
Control of Media and Technology
Powerful individuals and social institutions have a great deal of influence over which forms of technology are released, when and where they are released, and what kind of media is available for our consumption, which is a form of gatekeeping. Shoemaker and Voss (2009) define gatekeeping as the sorting process by which thousands of possible messages are shaped into a mass media-appropriate form and reduced to a manageable amount. In other words, the people in charge of the media decide what the public is exposed to, which, as C. Wright Mills (1956) famously noted, is the heart of media’s power. Take a moment to think of the way “new media” evolve and replace traditional forms of hegemonic media. With hegemonic media, a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one race, gender, or class that manipulates the media to impose its worldview as a societal norm. New media weakens the gatekeeper role in information distribution. Popular sites such as YouTube and Facebook not only allow more people to freely share information but also engage in a form of self-policing. Users are encouraged to report inappropriate behavior that moderators will then address.
In addition, some conflict theorists suggest that the way U.S. media are generated results in an unbalanced political arena. Those with the most money can buy the most media exposure, run smear campaigns against their competitors, and maximize their visual presence. Almost a year before the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the candidates––Barack Obama for the Democrats and numerous Republican contenders––had raised more than \$186 million (Carmi et al. 2012). Some would say that the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee is a major contributing factor to our unbalanced political arena. In Citizens United, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of outside groups, including Super Political Action Committees (SuperPACs) with undisclosed donor lists, to spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads as long as they don't coordinate with the candidate's campaign or specifically advocate for a candidate. What do you think a conflict perspective theorist would suggest about the potential for the non-rich to be heard in politics, especially when SuperPACs ensure that the richest groups have the most say?
Technological Social Control and Digital Surveillance
Social scientists take the idea of the surveillance society so seriously that there is an entire journal devoted to its study,Surveillance and Society. The panoptic surveillance envisioned by Jeremy Bentham, depicted in the form of an all-powerful, all-seeing government by George Orwell in 1984, and later analyzed by Michel Foucault (1975) is increasingly realized in the form of technology used to monitor our every move. This surveillance was imagined as a form of constant monitoring in which the observation posts are decentralized and the observed is never communicated with directly. Today, digital security cameras capture our movements, observers can track us through our cell phones, and police forces around the world use facial-recognition software.
Feminist Perspective
What types of women are we exposed to in the media? Some would argue that the range of female images is misleadingly narrow. (Photo courtesy of Cliff1066/flickr)
Take a look at popular television shows, advertising campaigns, and online game sites. In most, women are portrayed in a particular set of parameters and tend to have a uniform look that society recognizes as attractive. Most are thin, white or light-skinned, beautiful, and young. Why does this matter? Feminist perspective theorists believe this idealized image is crucial in creating and reinforcing stereotypes. For example, Fox and Bailenson (2009) found that online female avatars conforming to gender stereotypes enhance negative attitudes toward women, and Brasted (2010) found that media (advertising in particular) promotes gender stereotypes. As early as 1990, Ms. magazine instituted a policy to publish without any commercial advertising.
The gender gap in tech-related fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) is no secret. A 2011 U.S. Department of Commerce Report suggested that gender stereotyping is one reason for this gap which acknowledges the bias toward men as keepers of technological knowledge (US Department of Commerce 2011). But gender stereotypes go far beyond the use of technology. Press coverage in the media reinforces stereotypes that subordinate women; it gives airtime to looks over skills, and coverage disparages women who defy accepted norms.
Recent research in new media has offered a mixed picture of its potential to equalize the status of men and women in the arenas of technology and public discourse. A European agency, the Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women (2010), issued an opinion report suggesting that while there is the potential for new media forms to perpetuate gender stereotypes and the gender gap in technology and media access, at the same time new media could offer alternative forums for feminist groups and the exchange of feminist ideas. Still, the committee warned against the relatively unregulated environment of new media and the potential for antifeminist activities, from pornography to human trafficking, to flourish there.
Increasingly prominent in the discussion of new media and feminism is cyberfeminism, the application to, and promotion of, feminism online. Research on cyberfeminism runs the gamut from the liberating use of blogs by women living in Iraq during the second Gulf War (Peirce 2011) to an investigation of the Suicide Girls web site (Magnet 2007).
Symbolic Interactionism
Technology itself may act as a symbol for many. The kind of computer you own, the kind of car you drive, your ability to afford the latest Apple product—these serve as a social indicator of wealth and status. Neo-Luddites are people who see technology as symbolizing the coldness and alienation of modern life. But for technophiles, technology symbolizes the potential for a brighter future. For those adopting an ideological middle ground, technology might symbolize status (in the form of a massive flat-screen television) or failure (ownership of a basic old mobile phone with no bells or whistles).
Social Construction of Reality
Meanwhile, media create and spread symbols that become the basis for our shared understanding of society. Theorists working in the interactionist perspective focus on this social construction of reality, an ongoing process in which people subjectively create and understand reality. Media constructs our reality in a number of ways. For some, the people they watch on a screen can become a primary group, meaning the small informal groups of people who are closest to them. For many others, media becomes a reference group: a group that influences an individual and to which an individual compares himself or herself, and by which we judge our successes and failures. We might do very well without the latest smartphone, until we see characters using it on our favorite television show or our classmates whipping it out between classes.
While media may indeed be the medium to spread the message of rich white males, Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson (1992) point out that some forms of media discourse allow competing constructions of reality to appear. For example, advertisers find new and creative ways to sell us products we don’t need and probably wouldn’t want without their prompting, but some networking sites such as Freecycle offer a commercial-free way of requesting and trading items that would otherwise be discarded. The web is also full of blogs chronicling lives lived “off the grid,” or without participation in the commercial economy.
Social Networking and Social Construction
While Tumblr and Facebook encourage us to check in and provide details of our day through online social networks, corporations can just as easily promote their products on these sites. Even supposedly crowd-sourced sites like Yelp (which aggregates local reviews) are not immune to corporate shenanigans. That is, we think we are reading objective observations when in reality we may be buying into one more form of advertising.
Facebook, which started as a free social network for college students, is increasingly a monetized business, selling you goods and services in subtle ways. But chances are you don’t think of Facebook as one big online advertisement. What started out as a symbol of coolness and insider status, unavailable to parents and corporate shills, now promotes consumerism in the form of games and fandom. For example, think of all the money spent to upgrade popular Facebook games like Candy Crush. And notice that whenever you become a “fan,” you likely receive product updates and special deals that promote online and real-world consumerism. It is unlikely that millions of people want to be “friends” with Pampers. But if it means a weekly coupon, they will, in essence, rent out space on their Facebook pages for Pampers to appear. Thus, we develop both new ways to spend money and brand loyalties that will last even after Facebook is considered outdated and obsolete.
Summary
There are myriad theories about how society, technology, and media will progress. Functionalism sees the contribution that technology and media provide to the stability of society, from facilitating leisure time to increasing productivity. Conflict theorists are more concerned with how technology reinforces inequalities among communities, both within and among countries. They also look at how media typically give voice to the most powerful, and how new media might offer tools to help those who are disenfranchised. Symbolic interactionists see the symbolic uses of technology as signs of everything from a sterile futuristic world to a successful professional life.
Section Quiz
A parent secretly monitoring the babysitter through the use of GPS, site blocker, and nanny cam is a good example of:
1. the social construction of reality
2. technophilia
3. a neo-Luddite
4. panoptic surveillance
Answer
D
The use of Facebook to create an online persona by only posting images that match your ideal self exemplifies the_____________ that can occur in forms of new media.
1. social construction of reality
2. cyberfeminism
3. market segmentation
4. referencing
Answer
A
_________ tend to be more pro-technology, while _______ view technology as a symbol of the coldness of modern life.
1. Luddites; technophiles
2. technophiles; Luddites
3. cyberfeminists; technophiles
4. liberal feminists; conflict theorists
Answer
B
When it comes to media and technology, a functionalist would focus on:
1. the symbols created and reproduced by the media
2. the association of technology and technological skill with men
3. the way that various forms of media socialize users
4. the digital divide between the technological haves and have-nots
Answer
C
When all media sources report a simplified version of the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, with no effort to convey the hard science and complicated statistical data behind the story, ___________ is probably occurring.
1. gatekeeping
2. the digital divide
3. technophilia
4. market segmentation
Answer
A
Short Answer
Contrast a functionalist viewpoint of digital surveillance with a conflict perspective viewpoint.
In what ways has the Internet affected how you view reality? Explain using a symbolic interactionist perspective.
Describe how a cyberfeminist might address the fact that powerful female politicians are often demonized in traditional media.
The issue of airplane-pilot exhaustion is an issue of growing media concern. Select a theoretical perspective, and describe how it would explain this.
Would you characterize yourself as a technophile or a Luddite? Explain, and use examples.
Further Research
To learn more about cyberfeminism, check out the interdisciplinary artist collective, subRosa:http://openstaxcollege.org/l/cyberfeminism
To explore the implications of panoptic surveillance, review some surveillance studies at the free, open source Surveillance and Society site: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Surveillance
Read an example of socialist media from Jacobin magazine here: openstaxcollege.org/l/2EJacobin
Glossary
cyberfeminism
the application to and promotion of feminism online
gatekeeping
the sorting process by which thousands of possible messages are shaped into a mass media-appropriate form and reduced to a manageable amount
neo-Luddites
those who see technology as a symbol of the coldness of modern life
panoptic surveillance
a form of constant monitoring in which the observation posts are decentralized and the observed is never communicated with directly
technophiles
those who see technology as symbolizing the potential for a brighter future | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/08%3A_Media_and_Technology/8.05%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Media_and_Technology.txt |
Thumbnail: This house, formerly owned by the famous television producer, Aaron Spelling, was for a time listed for \$150 million dollars. It is considered one of the most extravagant homes in the United States, and is a testament to the wealth generated in some industries. (Photo courtesy of Atwater Village Newbie/flickr).
09: Social Stratification in the United States
This house, formerly owned by the famous television producer, Aaron Spelling, was for a time listed for \$150 million dollars. It is considered one of the most extravagant homes in the United States, and is a testament to the wealth generated in some industries. (Photo courtesy of Atwater Village Newbie/flickr)
Aaron grew up on a farm in rural Ohio, left home to serve in the Army, and returned a few years later to take over the family farm. He moved into the same house he had grown up in and soon married a young woman with whom he had attended high school. As they began to have children, they quickly realized that the income from the farm was no longer sufficient to meet their needs. Aaron, with little experience beyond the farm, accepted a job as a clerk at a local grocery store. It was there that his life and the lives of his wife and children were changed forever.
One of the managers at the store liked Aaron, his attitude, and his work ethic. He took Aaron under his wing and began to groom him for advancement at the store. Aaron rose through the ranks with ease. Then the manager encouraged him to take a few classes at a local college. This was the first time Aaron had seriously thought about college. Could he be successful, Aaron wondered? Could he actually be the first one in his family to earn a degree? Fortunately, his wife also believed in him and supported his decision to take his first class. Aaron asked his wife and his manager to keep his college enrollment a secret. He did not want others to know about it in case he failed.
Aaron was nervous on his first day of class. He was older than the other students, and he had never considered himself college material. Through hard work and determination, however, he did very well in the class. While he still doubted himself, he enrolled in another class. Again, he performed very well. As his doubt began to fade, he started to take more and more classes. Before he knew it, he was walking across the stage to receive a Bachelor’s degree with honors. The ceremony seemed surreal to Aaron. He couldn’t believe he had finished college, which once seemed like an impossible feat.
Shortly after graduation, Aaron was admitted into a graduate program at a well-respected university where he earned a Master’s degree. He had not only become the first from his family to attend college but also he had earned a graduate degree. Inspired by Aaron’s success, his wife enrolled at a technical college, obtained a degree in nursing, and became a registered nurse working in a local hospital’s labor and delivery department. Aaron and his wife both worked their way up the career ladder in their respective fields and became leaders in their organizations. They epitomized the American Dream—they worked hard and it paid off.
This story may sound familiar. After all, nearly one in three first-year college students is a first-generation degree candidate, and it is well documented that many are not as successful as Aaron. According to the Center for Student Opportunity, a national nonprofit, 89 percent of first-generation students will not earn an undergraduate degree within six years of starting their studies. In fact, these students “drop out of college at four times the rate of peers whose parents have postsecondary degrees” (Center for Student Opportunity quoted in Huot 2014).
Why do students with parents who have completed college tend to graduate more often than those students whose parents do not hold degrees? That question and many others will be answered as we explore social stratification. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/09%3A_Social_Stratification_in_the_United_States/9.01%3A_Introduction_to_Social_Stratification_in_the_United_States.txt |
Sociologists use the term social stratification to describe the system of social standing. Social stratification refers to a society’s categorization of its people into rankings of socioeconomic tiers based on factors like wealth, income, race, education, and power.
In the upper echelons of the working world, people with the most power reach the top. These people make the decisions and earn the most money. The majority of Americans will never see the view from the top. (Photo courtesy of Alex Proimos/flickr)
You may remember the word “stratification” from geology class. The distinct vertical layers found in rock, called stratification, are a good way to visualize social structure. Society’s layers are made of people, and society’s resources are distributed unevenly throughout the layers. The people who have more resources represent the top layer of the social structure of stratification. Other groups of people, with progressively fewer and fewer resources, represent the lower layers of our society.
Strata in rock illustrate social stratification. People are sorted, or layered, into social categories. Many factors determine a person’s social standing, such as income, education, occupation, as well as age, race, gender, and even physical abilities. (Photo courtesy of Just a Prairie Boy/flickr)
In the United States, people like to believe everyone has an equal chance at success. To a certain extent, Aaron illustrates the belief that hard work and talent—not prejudicial treatment or societal values—determine social rank. This emphasis on self-effort perpetuates the belief that people control their own social standing.
However, sociologists recognize that social stratification is a society-wide system that makes inequalities apparent. While there are always inequalities between individuals, sociologists are interested in larger social patterns. Stratification is not about individual inequalities, but about systematic inequalities based on group membership, classes, and the like. No individual, rich or poor, can be blamed for social inequalities. The structure of society affects a person's social standing. Although individuals may support or fight inequalities, social stratification is created and supported by society as a whole.
The people who live in these houses most likely share similar levels of income and education. Neighborhoods often house people of the same social standing. Wealthy families do not typically live next door to poorer families, though this varies depending on the particular city and country. (Photo courtesy of Orin Zebest/flickr)
Factors that define stratification vary in different societies. In most societies, stratification is an economic system, based onwealth, the net value of money and assets a person has, and income, a person’s wages or investment dividends. While people are regularly categorized based on how rich or poor they are, other important factors influence social standing. For example, in some cultures, wisdom and charisma are valued, and people who have them are revered more than those who don’t. In some cultures, the elderly are esteemed; in others, the elderly are disparaged or overlooked. Societies’ cultural beliefs often reinforce the inequalities of stratification.
One key determinant of social standing is the social standing of our parents. Parents tend to pass their social position on to their children. People inherit not only social standing but also the cultural norms that accompany a certain lifestyle. They share these with a network of friends and family members. Social standing becomes a comfort zone, a familiar lifestyle, and an identity. This is one of the reasons first-generation college students do not fare as well as other students.
Other determinants are found in a society’s occupational structure. Teachers, for example, often have high levels of education but receive relatively low pay. Many believe that teaching is a noble profession, so teachers should do their jobs for love of their profession and the good of their students—not for money. Yet no successful executive or entrepreneur would embrace that attitude in the business world, where profits are valued as a driving force. Cultural attitudes and beliefs like these support and perpetuate social inequalities.
Recent Economic Changes and U.S. Stratification
As a result of the Great Recession that rocked our nation’s economy in the last few years, many families and individuals found themselves struggling like never before. The nation fell into a period of prolonged and exceptionally high unemployment. While no one was completely insulated from the recession, perhaps those in the lower classes felt the impact most profoundly. Before the recession, many were living paycheck to paycheck or even had been living comfortably. As the recession hit, they were often among the first to lose their jobs. Unable to find replacement employment, they faced more than loss of income. Their homes were foreclosed, their cars were repossessed, and their ability to afford healthcare was taken away. This put many in the position of deciding whether to put food on the table or fill a needed prescription.
While we’re not completely out of the woods economically, there are several signs that we’re on the road to recovery. Many of those who suffered during the recession are back to work and are busy rebuilding their lives. The Affordable Health Care Act has provided health insurance to millions who lost or never had it.
But the Great Recession, like the Great Depression, has changed social attitudes. Where once it was important to demonstrate wealth by wearing expensive clothing items like Calvin Klein shirts and Louis Vuitton shoes, now there’s a new, thriftier way of thinking. In many circles, it has become hip to be frugal. It’s no longer about how much we spend, but about how much we don't spend. Think of shows like Extreme Couponing on TLC and songs like Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.”
Systems of Stratification
Sociologists distinguish between two types of systems of stratification. Closed systems accommodate little change in social position. They do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relationships between levels. Open systems, which are based on achievement, allow movement and interaction between layers and classes. Different systems reflect, emphasize, and foster certain cultural values and shape individual beliefs. Stratification systems include class systems and caste systems, as well as meritocracy.
The Caste System
Caste systems are closed stratification systems in which people can do little or nothing to change their social standing. A caste system is one in which people are born into their social standing and will remain in it their whole lives. People are assigned occupations regardless of their talents, interests, or potential. There are virtually no opportunities to improve a person's social position.
India used to have a rigid caste system. The people in the lowest caste suffered from extreme poverty and were shunned by society. Some aspects of India’s defunct caste system remain socially relevant. In this photo, an Indian woman of a specific Hindu caste works in construction, and she demolishes and builds houses. (Photo courtesy of Elessar/flickr)
In the Hindu caste tradition, people were expected to work in the occupation of their caste and to enter into marriage according to their caste. Accepting this social standing was considered a moral duty. Cultural values reinforced the system. Caste systems promote beliefs in fate, destiny, and the will of a higher power, rather than promoting individual freedom as a value. A person who lived in a caste society was socialized to accept his or her social standing.
Although the caste system in India has been officially dismantled, its residual presence in Indian society is deeply embedded. In rural areas, aspects of the tradition are more likely to remain, while urban centers show less evidence of this past. In India’s larger cities, people now have more opportunities to choose their own career paths and marriage partners. As a global center of employment, corporations have introduced merit-based hiring and employment to the nation.
The Class System
A class system is based on both social factors and individual achievement. A class consists of a set of people who share similar status with regard to factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. Unlike caste systems, class systems are open. People are free to gain a different level of education or employment than their parents. They can also socialize with and marry members of other classes, which allows people to move from one class to another.
In a class system, occupation is not fixed at birth. Though family and other societal models help guide a person toward a career, personal choice plays a role.
In class systems, people have the option to form exogamous marriages, unions of spouses from different social categories. Marriage in these circumstances is based on values such as love and compatibility rather than on social standing or economics. Though social conformities still exist that encourage people to choose partners within their own class, people are not as pressured to choose marriage partners based solely on those elements. Marriage to a partner from the same social background is an endogamous union.
Meritocracy
Meritocracy is an ideal system based on the belief that social stratification is the result of personal effort—or merit—that determines social standing. High levels of effort will lead to a high social position, and vice versa. The concept of meritocracy is an ideal—because a society has never existed where social rank was based purely on merit. Because of the complex structure of societies, processes like socialization, and the realities of economic systems, social standing is influenced by multiple factors—not merit alone. Inheritance and pressure to conform to norms, for instance, disrupt the notion of a pure meritocracy. While a meritocracy has never existed, sociologists see aspects of meritocracies in modern societies when they study the role of academic and job performance and the systems in place for evaluating and rewarding achievement in these areas.
Status Consistency
Social stratification systems determine social position based on factors like income, education, and occupation. Sociologists use the term status consistency to describe the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual’s rank across these factors. Caste systems correlate with high status consistency, whereas the more flexible class system has lower status consistency.
To illustrate, let’s consider Susan. Susan earned her high school degree but did not go to college. That factor is a trait of the lower-middle class. She began doing landscaping work, which, as manual labor, is also a trait of lower-middle class or even lower class. However, over time, Susan started her own company. She hired employees. She won larger contracts. She became a business owner and earned a lot of money. Those traits represent the upper-middle class. There are inconsistencies between Susan’s educational level, her occupation, and her income. In a class system, a person can work hard and have little education and still be in middle or upper class, whereas in a caste system that would not be possible. In a class system, low status consistency correlates with having more choices and opportunities.
THE COMMONER WHO COULD BE QUEEN
On April 29, 2011, in London, England, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, married Catherine Middleton, a commoner. It is rare, though not unheard of, for a member of the British royal family to marry a commoner. Kate Middleton has an upper-class background, but does not have royal ancestry. Her father was a former flight dispatcher and her mother a former flight attendant and owner of Party Pieces. According to Grace Wong's 2011 article titled, "Kate Middleton: A family business that built a princess," "[t]he business grew to the point where [her father] quit his job . . . and it's evolved from a mom-and-pop outfit run out of a shed . . . into a venture operated out of three converted farm buildings in Berkshire." Kate and William met when they were both students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland (Köhler 2010).
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who is in line to be king of England, married Catherine Middleton, a so-called commoner, meaning she does not have royal ancestry. (Photo courtesy of UK_repsome/flickr)
Britain’s monarchy arose during the Middle Ages. Its social hierarchy placed royalty at the top and commoners on the bottom. This was generally a closed system, with people born into positions of nobility. Wealth was passed from generation to generation through primogeniture, a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son. If the family had no son, the land went to the next closest male relation. Women could not inherit property, and their social standing was primarily determined through marriage.
The arrival of the Industrial Revolution changed Britain’s social structure. Commoners moved to cities, got jobs, and made better livings. Gradually, people found new opportunities to increase their wealth and power. Today, the government is a constitutional monarchy with the prime minister and other ministers elected to their positions, and with the royal family’s role being largely ceremonial. The long-ago differences between nobility and commoners have blurred, and the modern class system in Britain is similar to that of the United States (McKee 1996).
Today, the royal family still commands wealth, power, and a great deal of attention. When Queen Elizabeth II retires or passes away, Prince Charles will be first in line to ascend the throne. If he abdicates (chooses not to become king) or dies, the position will go to Prince William. If that happens, Kate Middleton will be called Queen Catherine and hold the position of queen consort. She will be one of the few queens in history to have earned a college degree (Marquand 2011).
There is a great deal of social pressure on her not only to behave as a royal but also to bear children. In fact, Kate and Prince William welcomed their first son, Prince George, on July 22, 2013 and are expecting their second child. The royal family recently changed its succession laws to allow daughters, not just sons, to ascend the throne. Kate’s experience—from commoner to potential queen—demonstrates the fluidity of social position in modern society.
Summary
Stratification systems are either closed, meaning they allow little change in social position, or open, meaning they allow movement and interaction between the layers. A caste system is one in which social standing is based on ascribed status or birth. Class systems are open, with achievement playing a role in social position. People fall into classes based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. A meritocracy is a system of social stratification that confers standing based on personal worth, rewarding effort.
Section Quiz
What factor makes caste systems closed?
1. They are run by secretive governments.
2. People cannot change their social standings.
3. Most have been outlawed.
4. They exist only in rural areas.
Answer
B
What factor makes class systems open?
1. They allow for movement between the classes.
2. People are more open-minded.
3. People are encouraged to socialize within their class.
4. They do not have clearly defined layers.
Answer
A
Which of these systems allows for the most social mobility?
1. Caste
2. Monarchy
3. Endogamy
4. Class
Answer
D
Which person best illustrates opportunities for upward social mobility in the United States?
1. First-shift factory worker
2. First-generation college student
3. Firstborn son who inherits the family business
4. First-time interviewee who is hired for a job
Answer
B
Which statement illustrates low status consistency?
1. A suburban family lives in a modest ranch home and enjoys a nice vacation each summer.
2. A single mother receives food stamps and struggles to find adequate employment.
3. A college dropout launches an online company that earns millions in its first year.
4. A celebrity actress owns homes in three countries.
Answer
C
Based on meritocracy, a physician’s assistant would:
1. receive the same pay as all the other physician’s assistants
2. be encouraged to earn a higher degree to seek a better position
3. most likely marry a professional at the same level
4. earn a pay raise for doing excellent work
Answer
D
Short Answer
Track the social stratification of your family tree. Did the social standing of your parents differ from the social standing of your grandparents and great-grandparents? What social traits were handed down by your forebears? Are there any exogamous marriages in your history? Does your family exhibit status consistencies or inconsistencies?
What defines communities that have low status consistency? What are the ramifications, both positive and negative, of cultures with low status consistency? Try to think of specific examples to support your ideas.
Review the concept of stratification. Now choose a group of people you have observed and been a part of—for example, cousins, high school friends, classmates, sport teammates, or coworkers. How does the structure of the social group you chose adhere to the concept of stratification?
Further Research
The New York Times investigated social stratification in their series of articles called “Class Matters.” The online accompaniment to the series includes an interactive graphic called “How Class Works,” which tallies four factors—occupation, education, income, and wealth—and places an individual within a certain class and percentile. What class describes you? Test your class rank on the interactive site: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/NY_Times_how_class_works
Glossary
caste system
a system in which people are born into a social standing that they will retain their entire lives
class
a group who shares a common social status based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation
class system
social standing based on social factors and individual accomplishments
endogamous marriages
unions of people within the same social category
exogamous unions
unions of spouses from different social categories
income
the money a person earns from work or investments
meritocracy
an ideal system in which personal effort—or merit—determines social standing
primogeniture
a law stating that all property passes to the firstborn son
social stratification
a socioeconomic system that divides society’s members into categories ranking from high to low, based on things like wealth, power, and prestige
status consistency
the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual’s rank across social categories like income, education, and occupation
wealth
the value of money and assets a person has from, for example, inheritance | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/09%3A_Social_Stratification_in_the_United_States/9.02%3A_What_Is_Social_Stratification.txt |
Most sociologists define social class as a grouping based on similar social factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. These factors affect how much power and prestige a person has. Social stratification reflects an unequal distribution of resources. In most cases, having more money means having more power or more opportunities. Stratification can also result from physical and intellectual traits. Categories that affect social standing include family ancestry, race, ethnicity, age, and gender. In the United States, standing can also be defined by characteristics such as IQ, athletic abilities, appearance, personal skills, and achievements.
Standard of Living
In the last century, the United States has seen a steady rise in its standard of living, the level of wealth available to a certain socioeconomic class in order to acquire the material necessities and comforts to maintain its lifestyle. The standard of living is based on factors such as income, employment, class, poverty rates, and housing affordability. Because standard of living is closely related to quality of life, it can represent factors such as the ability to afford a home, own a car, and take vacations.
In the United States, a small portion of the population has the means to the highest standard of living. A Federal Reserve Bank study shows that a mere one percent of the population holds one-third of our nation’s wealth (Kennickell 2009). Wealthy people receive the most schooling, have better health, and consume the most goods and services. Wealthy people also wield decision-making power. Many people think of the United States as a “middle-class society.” They think a few people are rich, a few are poor, and most are fairly well off, existing in the middle of the social strata. But as the study mentioned above indicates, there is not an even distribution of wealth. Millions of women and men struggle to pay rent, buy food, find work, and afford basic medical care. Women who are single heads of household tend to have a lower income and lower standard of living than their married or male counterparts. This is a worldwide phenomenon known as the “feminization of poverty”—which acknowledges that women disproportionately make up the majority of individuals in poverty across the globe.
In the United States, as in most high-income nations, social stratifications and standards of living are in part based on occupation (Lin and Xie 1988). Aside from the obvious impact that income has on someone’s standard of living, occupations also influence social standing through the relative levels of prestige they afford. Employment in medicine, law, or engineering confers high status. Teachers and police officers are generally respected, though not considered particularly prestigious. At the other end of the scale, some of the lowest rankings apply to positions like waitress, janitor, and bus driver.
The most significant threat to the relatively high standard of living we’re accustomed to in the United States is the decline of the middle class. The size, income, and wealth of the middle class have all been declining since the 1970s. This is occurring at a time when corporate profits have increased more than 141 percent, and CEO pay has risen by more than 298 percent (Popken 2007).
G. William Domhoff, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, reports that “In 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff 2013).
While several economic factors can be improved in the United States (inequitable distribution of income and wealth, feminization of poverty, stagnant wages for most workers while executive pay and profits soar, declining middle class), we are fortunate that the poverty experienced here is most often relative poverty and not absolute poverty. Whereas absolute poverty is deprivation so severe that it puts survival in jeopardy, relative poverty is not having the means to live the lifestyle of the average person in your country.
As a wealthy developed country, the United States has the resources to provide the basic necessities to those in need through a series of federal and state social welfare programs. The best-known of these programs is likely the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is administered by the United States Department of Agriculture. (This used to be known as the food stamp program.)
The program began in the Great Depression, when unmarketable or surplus food was distributed to the hungry. It was not until 1961 that President John F. Kennedy initiated a food stamp pilot program. His successor Lyndon B. Johnson was instrumental in the passage of the Food Stamp Act in 1964. In 1965, more than 500,000 individuals received food assistance. In March 2008, on the precipice of the Great Recession, participation hovered around 28 million people. During the recession, that number escalated to more than 40 million (USDA).
Social Classes in the United States
Does a person’s appearance indicate class? Can you tell a man’s education level based on his clothing? Do you know a woman’s income by the car she drives?
Does taste or fashion sense indicate class? Is there any way to tell if this young man comes from an upper-, middle-, or lower-class background? (Photo courtesy of Kelly Bailey/flickr)
For sociologists, categorizing class is a fluid science. Sociologists generally identify three levels of class in the United States: upper, middle, and lower class. Within each class, there are many subcategories. Wealth is the most significant way of distinguishing classes, because wealth can be transferred to one’s children and perpetuate the class structure. One economist, J.D. Foster, defines the 20 percent of U.S. citizens’ highest earners as “upper income,” and the lower 20 percent as “lower income.” The remaining 60 percent of the population make up the middle class. But by that distinction, annual household incomes for the middle class range between \$25,000 and \$100,000 (Mason and Sullivan 2010).
One sociological perspective distinguishes the classes, in part, according to their relative power and control over their lives. The upper class not only have power and control over their own lives but also their social status gives them power and control over others’ lives. The middle class doesn’t generally control other strata of society, but its members do exert control over their own lives. In contrast, the lower class has little control over their work or lives. Below, we will explore the major divisions of U.S. social class and their key subcategories.
Upper Class
The upper class is considered the top, and only the powerful elite get to see the view from there. In the United States, people with extreme wealth make up 1 percent of the population, and they own one-third of the country’s wealth (Beeghley 2008).
Members of the upper class can afford to live, work, and play in exclusive places designed for luxury and comfort. (Photo courtesy of PrimeImageMedia.com/flickr)
Money provides not just access to material goods, but also access to a lot of power. As corporate leaders, members of the upper class make decisions that affect the job status of millions of people. As media owners, they influence the collective identity of the nation. They run the major network television stations, radio broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and sports franchises. As board members of the most influential colleges and universities, they influence cultural attitudes and values. As philanthropists, they establish foundations to support social causes they believe in. As campaign contributors, they sway politicians and fund campaigns, sometimes to protect their own economic interests.
U.S. society has historically distinguished between “old money” (inherited wealth passed from one generation to the next) and “new money” (wealth you have earned and built yourself). While both types may have equal net worth, they have traditionally held different social standings. People of old money, firmly situated in the upper class for generations, have held high prestige. Their families have socialized them to know the customs, norms, and expectations that come with wealth. Often, the very wealthy don’t work for wages. Some study business or become lawyers in order to manage the family fortune. Others, such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, capitalize on being a rich socialite and transform that into celebrity status, flaunting a wealthy lifestyle.
However, new-money members of the upper class are not oriented to the customs and mores of the elite. They haven’t gone to the most exclusive schools. They have not established old-money social ties. People with new money might flaunt their wealth, buying sports cars and mansions, but they might still exhibit behaviors attributed to the middle and lower classes.
The Middle Class
Many people consider themselves middle class, but there are differing ideas about what that means. People with annual incomes of \$150,000 call themselves middle class, as do people who annually earn \$30,000. That helps explain why, in the United States, the middle class is broken into upper and lower subcategories.
These members of a club likely consider themselves middle class. (Photo courtesy of United Way Canada-Centraide Canada/flickr)
Upper-middle-class people tend to hold bachelor’s and postgraduate degrees. They’ve studied subjects such as business, management, law, or medicine. Lower-middle-class members hold bachelor’s degrees from four-year colleges or associate’s degrees from two-year community or technical colleges.
Comfort is a key concept to the middle class. Middle-class people work hard and live fairly comfortable lives. Upper-middle-class people tend to pursue careers that earn comfortable incomes. They provide their families with large homes and nice cars. They may go skiing or boating on vacation. Their children receive high-quality education and healthcare (Gilbert 2010).
In the lower middle class, people hold jobs supervised by members of the upper middle class. They fill technical, lower-level management or administrative support positions. Compared to lower-class work, lower-middle-class jobs carry more prestige and come with slightly higher paychecks. With these incomes, people can afford a decent, mainstream lifestyle, but they struggle to maintain it. They generally don’t have enough income to build significant savings. In addition, their grip on class status is more precarious than in the upper tiers of the class system. When budgets are tight, lower-middle-class people are often the ones to lose their jobs.
The Lower Class
The lower class is also referred to as the working class. Just like the middle and upper classes, the lower class can be divided into subsets: the working class, the working poor, and the underclass. Compared to the lower middle class, lower-class people have less of an educational background and earn smaller incomes. They work jobs that require little prior skill or experience and often do routine tasks under close supervision.
This man is a custodian at a restaurant. His job, which is crucial to the business, is considered lower class. (Photo courtesy of Frederick Md Publicity/flickr)
Working-class people, the highest subcategory of the lower class, often land decent jobs in fields like custodial or food service. The work is hands-on and often physically demanding, such as landscaping, cooking, cleaning, or building.
Beneath the working class is the working poor. Like the working class, they have unskilled, low-paying employment. However, their jobs rarely offer benefits such as healthcare or retirement planning, and their positions are often seasonal or temporary. They work as sharecroppers, migrant farm workers, housecleaners, and day laborers. Some are high school dropouts. Some are illiterate, unable to read job ads.
How can people work full-time and still be poor? Even working full-time, millions of the working poor earn incomes too meager to support a family. Minimum wage varies from state to state, but in many states it is approaching \$8.00 per hour (Department of Labor 2014). At that rate, working 40 hours a week earns \$320. That comes to \$16,640 a year, before tax and deductions. Even for a single person, the pay is low. A married couple with children will have a hard time covering expenses.
The underclass is the United States’ lowest tier. Members of the underclass live mainly in inner cities. Many are unemployed or underemployed. Those who do hold jobs typically perform menial tasks for little pay. Some of the underclass are homeless. For many, welfare systems provide a much-needed support through food assistance, medical care, housing, and the like.
Social Mobility
Social mobility refers to the ability to change positions within a social stratification system. When people improve or diminish their economic status in a way that affects social class, they experience social mobility.
Individuals can experience upward or downward social mobility for a variety of reasons. Upward mobility refers to an increase—or upward shift—in social class. In the United States, people applaud the rags-to-riches achievements of celebrities like Jennifer Lopez or Michael Jordan. Bestselling author Stephen King worked as a janitor prior to being published. Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi before becoming a powerful media personality. There are many stories of people rising from modest beginnings to fame and fortune. But the truth is that relative to the overall population, the number of people who rise from poverty to wealth is very small. Still, upward mobility is not only about becoming rich and famous. In the United States, people who earn a college degree, get a job promotion, or marry someone with a good income may move up socially. In contrast, downward mobility indicates a lowering of one’s social class. Some people move downward because of business setbacks, unemployment, or illness. Dropping out of school, losing a job, or getting a divorce may result in a loss of income or status and, therefore, downward social mobility.
It is not uncommon for different generations of a family to belong to varying social classes. This is known as intergenerational mobility. For example, an upper-class executive may have parents who belonged to the middle class. In turn, those parents may have been raised in the lower class. Patterns of intergenerational mobility can reflect long-term societal changes.
Similarly, intragenerational mobility refers to changes in a person's social mobility over the course of his or her lifetime. For example, the wealth and prestige experienced by one person may be quite different from that of his or her siblings.
Structural mobility happens when societal changes enable a whole group of people to move up or down the social class ladder. Structural mobility is attributable to changes in society as a whole, not individual changes. In the first half of the twentieth century, industrialization expanded the U.S. economy, raising the standard of living and leading to upward structural mobility. In today’s work economy, the recent recession and the outsourcing of jobs overseas have contributed to high unemployment rates. Many people have experienced economic setbacks, creating a wave of downward structural mobility.
When analyzing the trends and movements in social mobility, sociologists consider all modes of mobility. Scholars recognize that mobility is not as common or easy to achieve as many people think. In fact, some consider social mobility a myth.
Class Traits
Class traits, also called class markers, are the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class. Class traits indicate the level of exposure a person has to a wide range of cultures. Class traits also indicate the amount of resources a person has to spend on items like hobbies, vacations, and leisure activities.
People may associate the upper class with enjoyment of costly, refined, or highly cultivated tastes—expensive clothing, luxury cars, high-end fund-raisers, and opulent vacations. People may also believe that the middle and lower classes are more likely to enjoy camping, fishing, or hunting, shopping at large retailers, and participating in community activities. While these descriptions may identify class traits, they may also simply be stereotypes. Moreover, just as class distinctions have blurred in recent decades, so too have class traits. A very wealthy person may enjoy bowling as much as opera. A factory worker could be a skilled French cook. A billionaire might dress in ripped jeans, and a low-income student might own designer shoes.
TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY “SOCIAL PROBLEM NOVELS”: SOCIOLOGICAL GOLD MINES
Class distinctions were sharper in the nineteenth century and earlier, in part because people easily accepted them. The ideology of social order made class structure seem natural, right, and just.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. and British novelists played a role in changing public perception. They published novels in which characters struggled to survive against a merciless class system. These dissenting authors used gender and morality to question the class system and expose its inequalities. They protested the suffering of urbanization and industrialization, drawing attention to these issues.
These “social problem novels,” sometimes called Victorian realism, forced middle-class readers into an uncomfortable position: they had to question and challenge the natural order of social class.
For speaking out so strongly about the social issues of class, authors were both praised and criticized. Most authors did not want to dissolve the class system. They wanted to bring about an awareness that would improve conditions for the lower classes, while maintaining their own higher class positions (DeVine 2005).
Soon, middle-class readers were not their only audience. In 1870, Forster’s Elementary Education Act required all children ages five through twelve in England and Wales to attend school. The act increased literacy levels among the urban poor, causing a rise in sales of cheap newspapers and magazines. The increasing number of people who rode public transit systems created a demand for “railway literature,” as it was called (Williams 1984). These reading materials are credited with the move toward democratization in England. By 1900 the British middle class had established a rigid definition for itself, and England’s working class also began to self-identify and demand a better way of life.
Many of the novels of that era are seen as sociological goldmines. They are studied as existing sources because they detail the customs and mores of the upper, middle, and lower classes of that period in history.
Examples of “social problem” novels include Charles Dickens’s The Adventures of Oliver Twist(1838), which shocked readers with its brutal portrayal of the realities of poverty, vice, and crime. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) was considered revolutionary by critics for its depiction of working-class women (DeVine 2005), and U.S. novelist Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie(1900) portrayed an accurate and detailed description of early Chicago.
Summary
There are three main classes in the United States: upper, middle, and lower class. Social mobility describes a shift from one social class to another. Class traits, also called class markers, are the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class.
Section Quiz
In the United States, most people define themselves as:
1. middle class
2. upper class
3. lower class
4. no specific class
Answer
A
Structural mobility occurs when:
1. an individual moves up the class ladder
2. an individual moves down the class ladder
3. a large group moves up or down the class ladder due to societal changes
4. a member of a family belongs to a different class than his or her siblings
Answer
C
The behaviors, customs, and norms associated with a class are known as:
1. class traits
2. power
3. prestige
4. underclass
Answer
A
Which of the following scenarios is an example of intragenerational mobility?
1. A janitor belongs to the same social class as his grandmother did.
2. An executive belongs to a different class than her parents.
3. An editor shares the same social class as his cousin.
4. A lawyer belongs to a different class than her sister.
Answer
B
Occupational prestige means that jobs are:
1. all equal in status
2. not equally valued
3. assigned to a person for life
4. not part of a person’s self-identity
Answer
B
Short Answer
Which social class do you and your family belong to? Are you in a different social class than your grandparents and great-grandparents? Does your class differ from your social standing, and, if so, how? What aspects of your societal situation establish you in a social class?
What class traits define your peer group? For example, what speech patterns or clothing trends do you and your friends share? What cultural elements, such as taste in music or hobbies, define your peer group? How do you see this set of class traits as different from other classes either above or below yours?
Write a list of ten to twenty class traits that describe the environment of your upbringing. Which of these seem like true class traits, and which seem like stereotypes? What items might fall into both categories? How do you imagine a sociologist might address the conflation of class traits and stereotypes?
Further Research
PBS made a documentary about social class called “People Like Us: Social Class in America.” The filmmakers interviewed people who lived in Park Avenue penthouses and Appalachian trailer parks. The accompanying web site is full of information, interactive games, and life stories from those who participated. Read about it at openstaxcollege.org/l/social_class_in_America
Glossary
class traits
the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class (also called class markers)
downward mobility
a lowering of one’s social class
intergenerational mobility
a difference in social class between different generations of a family
intragenerational mobility
a difference in social class between different members of the same generation
social mobility
the ability to change positions within a social stratification system
standard of living
the level of wealth available to acquire material goods and comforts to maintain a particular socioeconomic lifestyle
structural mobility
a societal change that enables a whole group of people to move up or down the class ladder
upward mobility
an increase—or upward shift—in social class | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/09%3A_Social_Stratification_in_the_United_States/9.03%3A_Social_Stratification_and_Mobility_in_the_United_States.txt |
Global stratification compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries across the world. Global stratification highlights worldwide patterns of social inequality. In the early years of civilization, hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies lived off the earth and rarely interacted with other societies. When explorers began traveling, societies began trading goods, as well as ideas and customs.
A family lives in this grass hut in Ethiopia. Another family lives in a single-wide trailer in the trailer park in the United States. Both families are considered poor, or lower class. With such differences in global stratification, what constitutes poverty? (Photo (a) courtesy of Canned Muffins/flickr; Photo (b) courtesy of Herb Neufeld/flickr)
In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth in Western Europe and North America. Due to mechanical inventions and new means of production, people began working in factories—not only men, but women and children as well. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, industrial technology had gradually raised the standard of living for many people in the United States and Europe.
The Industrial Revolution also saw the rise of vast inequalities between countries that were industrialized and those that were not. As some nations embraced technology and saw increased wealth and goods, others maintained their ways; as the gap widened, the nonindustrialized nations fell further behind. Some social researchers, such as Walt Rostow, suggest that the disparity also resulted from power differences. Applying a conflict theory perspective, he asserts that industrializing nations took advantage of the resources of traditional nations. As industrialized nations became rich, other nations became poor (Rostow 1960).
Sociologists studying global stratification analyze economic comparisons between nations. Income, purchasing power, and wealth are used to calculate global stratification. Global stratification also compares the quality of life that a country’s population can have.
Poverty levels have been shown to vary greatly. The poor in wealthy countries like the United States or Europe are much better off than the poor in less-industrialized countries such as Mali or India. In 2002, the UN implemented the Millennium Project, an attempt to cut poverty worldwide by the year 2015. To reach the project’s goal, planners in 2006 estimated that industrialized nations must set aside 0.7 percent of their gross national income—the total value of the nation’s good and service, plus or minus income received from and sent to other nations—to aid in developing countries (Landler and Sanger, 2009; Millennium Project 2006).
Models of Global Stratification
Luxury vacation resorts can contribute to a poorer country’s economy. This one, in Jamaica, attracts middle and upper-middle class people from wealthier nations. The resort is a source of income and provides jobs for local people. Just outside its borders, however, are poverty-stricken neighborhoods. (Photo courtesy of gailf548/flickr)
Various models of global stratification all have one thing in common: they rank countries according to their relative economic status, or gross national product (GNP). Traditional models, now considered outdated, used labels to describe the stratification of the different areas of the world. Simply put, they were named “first world, “second world,” and “third world.” First and second world described industrialized nations, while third world referred to “undeveloped” countries (Henslin 2004). When researching existing historical sources, you may still encounter these terms, and even today people still refer to some nations as the “third world.”
Another model separates countries into two groups: more developed and less developed. More-developed nations have higher wealth, such as Canada, Japan, and Australia. Less-developed nations have less wealth to distribute among higher populations, including many countries in central Africa, South America, and some island nations.
Yet another system of global classification defines countries based on the per capita gross domestic product (GDP), a country’s average national wealth per person. The GDP is calculated (usually annually) one of two ways: by totaling either the income of all citizens or the value of all goods and services produced in the country during the year. It also includes government spending. Because the GDP indicates a country’s productivity and performance, comparing GDP rates helps establish a country’s economic health in relation to other countries.
The figures also establish a country’s standard of living. According to this analysis, a GDP standard of a middle-income nation represents a global average. In low-income countries, most people are poor relative to people in other countries. Citizens have little access to amenities such as electricity, plumbing, and clean water. People in low-income countries are not guaranteed education, and many are illiterate. The life expectancy of citizens is lower than in high-income countries.
THE BIG PICTURE: CALCULATING GLOBAL STRATIFICATION
A few organizations take on the job of comparing the wealth of nations. The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is one of them. Besides a focus on population data, the PRB publishes an annual report that measures the relative economic well-being of all the world’s countries. It’s called the Gross National Income (GNI) and Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
The GNI measures the current value of goods and services produced by a country. The PPP measures the relative power a country has to purchase those same goods and services. So, GNI refers to productive output and PPP refers to buying power. The total figure is divided by the number of residents living in a country to establish the average income of a resident of that country.
Because costs of goods and services vary from one country to the next, the GNI PPP converts figures into a relative international unit. Calculating GNI PPP figures helps researchers accurately compare countries’ standard of living. They allow the United Nations and Population Reference Bureau to compare and rank the wealth of all countries and consider international stratification issues (nationsonline.org).
Summary
Global stratification compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries as a whole. By comparing income and productivity between nations, researchers can better identify global inequalities.
Section Quiz
Social stratification is a system that:
1. ranks society members into categories
2. destroys competition between society members
3. allows society members to choose their social standing
4. reflects personal choices of society members
Answer
A
Which graphic concept best illustrates the concept of social stratification?
1. Pie chart
2. Flag poles
3. Planetary movement
4. Pyramid
Answer
D
The GNI PPP figure represents:
1. a country’s total accumulated wealth
2. annual government spending
3. the average annual income of a country’s citizens
4. a country’s debt
Answer
C
Short Answer
Why is it important to understand and be aware of global stratification? Make a list of specific issues that are related to global stratification. For inspiration, turn on a news channel or read the newspaper. Next, choose a topic from your list, and look at it more closely. Who is affected by this issue? How is the issue specifically related to global stratification?
Compare a family that lives in a grass hut in Ethiopia to an American family living in a trailer home in the Unites States. Assuming both exist at or below the poverty levels established by their country, how are the families’ lifestyles and economic situations similar and how are they different?
Further Research
Nations Online refers to itself as “among other things, a more or less objective guide to the world, a statement for the peaceful, nonviolent coexistence of nations.” The website provides a variety of cultural, financial, historical, and ethnic information on countries and peoples throughout the world: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Nations_Online.
Glossary
global stratification
a comparison of the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries as a whole | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/09%3A_Social_Stratification_in_the_United_States/9.04%3A_Global_Stratification_and_Inequality.txt |
Basketball is one of the highest-paying professional sports. There is stratification even among teams. For example, the Minnesota Timberwolves hand out the lowest annual payroll, while the Los Angeles Lakers reportedly pay the highest. Kobe Bryant, a Lakers shooting guard, is one of the highest paid athletes in the NBA, earning around \$30.5 million a year (Forbes 2014). Even within specific fields, layers are stratified and members are ranked.
In sociology, even an issue such as NBA salaries can be seen from various points of view. Functionalists will examine the purpose of such high salaries, while conflict theorists will study the exorbitant salaries as an unfair distribution of money. Social stratification takes on new meanings when it is examined from different sociological perspectives—functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.
Functionalism
In sociology, the functionalist perspective examines how society’s parts operate. According to functionalism, different aspects of society exist because they serve a needed purpose. What is the function of social stratification?
In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the Davis-Moore thesis, which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others. Qualified people who fill those positions must be rewarded more than others.
According to Davis and Moore, a firefighter’s job is more important than, for instance, a grocery store cashier’s. The cashier position does not require the same skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer.
Davis and Moore stated that, in most cases, the degree of skill required for a job determines that job’s importance. They also stated that the more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. The employees don’t need a college degree. Other work, like designing a highway system or delivering a baby, requires immense skill.
In 1953, Melvin Tumin countered the Davis-Moore thesis in “Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis.” Tumin questioned what determined a job’s degree of importance. The Davis-Moore thesis does not explain, he argued, why a media personality with little education, skill, or talent becomes famous and rich on a reality show or a campaign trail. The thesis also does not explain inequalities in the education system or inequalities due to race or gender. Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles (Tumin 1953). For example, an underprivileged youth has less chance of becoming a scientist, no matter how smart she is, because of the relative lack of opportunity available to her. The Davis-Moore thesis also does not explain why a basketball player earns millions of dollars a year when a doctor who saves lives, a soldier who fights for others’ rights, and a teacher who helps form the minds of tomorrow will likely not make millions over the course of their careers.
The Davis-Moore thesis, though open for debate, was an early attempt to explain why stratification exists. The thesis states that social stratification is necessary to promote excellence, productivity, and efficiency, thus giving people something to strive for. Davis and Moore believed that the system serves society as a whole because it allows everyone to benefit to a certain extent.
Conflict Theory
These people are protesting a decision made by Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, to lay off custodians and outsource the jobs to a private firm to avoid paying employee benefits. Private job agencies often pay lower hourly wages. Is the decision fair? (Photo courtesy of Brian Stansberry/Wikimedia Commons)
Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society. For instance, to a conflict theorist, it seems wrong that a basketball player is paid millions for an annual contract while a public school teacher earns \$35,000 a year. Stratification, conflict theorists believe, perpetuates inequality. Conflict theorists try to bring awareness to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members.
Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx. During the nineteenth-century era of industrialization, Marx believed social stratification resulted from people’s relationship to production. People were divided by a single line: they either owned factories or worked in them. In Marx’s time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land, as they still do today. Proletariats were the workers who performed the manual labor to produce goods. Upper-class capitalists raked in profits and got rich, while working-class proletariats earned skimpy wages and struggled to survive. With such opposing interests, the two groups were divided by differences of wealth and power. Marx saw workers experience deep alienation, isolation and misery resulting from powerless status levels (Marx 1848). Marx argued that proletariats were oppressed by the money-hungry bourgeois.
Today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to make business owners rich and keep workers poor. According to conflict theorists, the resulting stratification creates class conflict. If he were alive in today’s economy, as it recovers from a prolonged recession, Marx would likely have argued that the recession resulted from the greed of capitalists, satisfied at the expense of working people.
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a theory that uses everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people’s social standing affects their everyday interactions.
In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves, people who share their same income level, educational background, or racial background, and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups people together. This is one of the reasons why it was rare for a royal prince like England’s Prince William to marry a commoner.
Symbolic interactionists also note that people’s appearance reflects their perceived social standing. Housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and personal style.
(a) A group of construction workers on the job site, and (b) a group of businessmen. What categories of stratification do these construction workers share? How do construction workers differ from executives or custodians? Who is more skilled? Who has greater prestige in society? (Photo (a) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Chun Kit/flickr)
To symbolically communicate social standing, people often engage in conspicuous consumption, which is the purchase and use of certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person’s social standing. Some people buy expensive trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A \$17,000 car provides transportation as easily as a \$100,000 vehicle, but the luxury car makes a social statement that the less expensive car can’t live up to. All these symbols of stratification are worthy of examination by an interactionist.
Summary
Social stratification can be examined from different sociological perspectives—functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. The functionalist perspective states that systems exist in society for good reasons. Conflict theorists observe that stratification promotes inequality, such as between rich business owners and poor workers. Symbolic interactionists examine stratification from a micro-level perspective. They observe how social standing affects people’s everyday interactions and how the concept of “social class” is constructed and maintained through everyday interactions.
Section Quiz
The basic premise of the Davis-Moore thesis is that the unequal distribution of rewards in social stratification:
1. is an outdated mode of societal organization
2. is an artificial reflection of society
3. serves a purpose in society
4. cannot be justified
Answer
C
Unlike Davis and Moore, Melvin Tumin believed that, because of social stratification, some qualified people were _______ higher-level job positions.
1. denied the opportunity to obtain
2. encouraged to train for
3. often fired from
4. forced into
Answer
A
Which statement represents stratification from the perspective of symbolic interactionism?
1. Men often earn more than women, even working the same job.
2. After work, Pat, a janitor, feels more comfortable eating in a truck stop than a French restaurant.
3. Doctors earn more money because their job is more highly valued.
4. Teachers continue to struggle to keep benefits such as health insurance.
Answer
B
When Karl Marx said workers experience alienation, he meant that workers:
1. must labor alone, without companionship
2. do not feel connected to their work
3. move from one geographical location to another
4. have to put forth self-effort to get ahead
Answer
B
Conflict theorists view capitalists as those who:
1. are ambitious
2. fund social services
3. spend money wisely
4. get rich while workers stay poor
Answer
D
Short Answer
Analyze the Davis-Moore thesis. Do you agree with Davis and Moore? Does social stratification play an important function in society? What examples can you think of that support the thesis? What examples can you think of that refute the thesis?
Consider social stratification from the symbolic interactionist perspective. How does social stratification influence the daily interactions of individuals? How do systems of class, based on factors such as prestige, power, income, and wealth, influence your own daily routines, as well as your beliefs and attitudes? Illustrate your ideas with specific examples and anecdotes from your own life and the lives of people in your community.
Glossary
conspicuous consumption
the act of buying and using products to make a statement about social standing
Davis-Moore thesis
a thesis that argues some social stratification is a social necessity | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/09%3A_Social_Stratification_in_the_United_States/9.05%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Social_Stratification.txt |
While you read this chapter, think about the global system that allows U.S. companies to outsource their manufacturing to peripheral nations, where many women and children work in conditions that some characterize as slave labor. Do people in the United States have a responsibility to foreign workers? Should U.S. corporations be held accountable for what happens to garment factory workers who make their clothing? What can you do as a consumer to help such workers?
• 10.1: Introduction to Global Inequality
The April 24, 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 people, was the deadliest garment factory accident in history, and it was preventable. When some of the garment workers refused to enter the building, they were threatened with the loss of a month’s pay. Most were young women, aged twenty or younger. They typically worked over thirteen hours a day, with two days off each month. For this work, they took home between twelve and twenty-two cents an hour.
• 10.2: Global Stratification and Classification
Stratification refers to the gaps in resources both between nations and within nations. While economic equality is of great concern, so is social equality, like the discrimination stemming from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and/or sexual orientation. While global inequality is nothing new, several factors make it more relevant than ever, like the global marketplace and the pace of information sharing.
• 10.3: Global Wealth and Poverty
What does it mean to be poor? Does it mean being a single mother with two kids in New York City, waiting for the next paycheck in order to buy groceries? Does it mean living with almost no furniture in your apartment because your income doesn’t allow for extras like beds or chairs? Or does it mean having to live with the distended bellies of the chronically malnourished throughout the peripheral nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? Poverty has a thousand faces and a thousand gradations.
• 10.4: Theoretical Perspectives on Global Stratification
Modernization theory and dependency theory are two of the most common lenses sociologists use when looking at the issues of global inequality. Modernization theory posits that countries go through evolutionary stages and that industrialization and improved technology are the keys to forward movement. Dependency theory, on the other hand, sees modernization theory as Eurocentric and patronizing.
• 10.E: Global Inequality (Exercises)
Thumbnail : A young boy sits over an open sewer in the Kibera slum, Nairobi (CC BY 2.0; Trocaire).
10: Global Inequality
The April 24, 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 people, was the deadliest garment factory accident in history, and it was preventable (International Labour Organization, Department of Communication 2014).
Contemporary economic development often follows a similar pattern around the world, best described as a growing gap between the have and have-nots. (Photo courtesy of Alicia Nijdam/Wikimedia Commons)
In addition to garment factories employing about 5,000 people, the building contained a bank, apartments, childcare facilities, and a variety of shops. Many of these closed the day before the collapse when cracks were discovered in the building walls. When some of the garment workers refused to enter the building, they were threatened with the loss of a month’s pay. Most were young women, aged twenty or younger. They typically worked over thirteen hours a day, with two days off each month. For this work, they took home between twelve and twenty-two cents an hour, or \$10.56 to \$12.48 a week. Without that pay, most would have been unable to feed their children. In contrast, the U.S. federal minimum wage is \$7.25 an hour, and workers receive wages at time-and-a-half rates for work in excess of forty hours a week.
Did you buy clothes from Walmart in 2012? What about at The Children’s Place? Did you ever think about where those clothes came from? Of the outsourced garments made in the garment factories, thirty-two were intended for U.S, Canadian, and European stores. In the aftermath of the collapse, it was revealed that Walmart jeans were made in the Ether Tex garment factory on the fifth floor of the Rana Plaza building, while 120,000 pounds of clothing for The Children’s Place were produced in the New Wave Style Factory, also located in the building. Afterward, Walmart and The Children’s Place pledged \$1 million and \$450,000 (respectively) to the Rana Plaza Trust Fund, but fifteen other companies with clothing made in the building have contributed nothing, including U.S. companies Cato and J.C. Penney (Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights 2014).
While you read this chapter, think about the global system that allows U.S. companies to outsource their manufacturing to peripheral nations, where many women and children work in conditions that some characterize as slave labor. Do people in the United States have a responsibility to foreign workers? Should U.S. corporations be held accountable for what happens to garment factory workers who make their clothing? What can you do as a consumer to help such workers? | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/10%3A_Global_Inequality/10.01%3A_Introduction_to_Global_Inequality.txt |
Just as the United States' wealth is increasingly concentrated among its richest citizens while the middle class slowly disappears,global inequality is concentrating resources in certain nations and is significantly affecting the opportunities of individuals in poorer and less powerful countries. In fact, a recent Oxfam (2014) report that suggested the richest eighty-five people in the world are worth more than the poorest 3.5 billion combined. The GINI coefficient measures income inequality between countries using a 100-point scale on which 1 represents complete equality and 100 represents the highest possible inequality. In 2007, the global GINI coefficient that measured the wealth gap between the core nations in the northern part of the world and the mostly peripheral nations in the southern part of the world was 75.5 percent (Korseniewicz and Moran 2009). But before we delve into the complexities of global inequality, let’s consider how the three major sociological perspectives might contribute to our understanding of it.
The functionalist perspective is a macroanalytical view that focuses on the way that all aspects of society are integral to the continued health and viability of the whole. A functionalist might focus on why we have global inequality and what social purposes it serves. This view might assert, for example, that we have global inequality because some nations are better than others at adapting to new technologies and profiting from a globalized economy, and that when core nation companies locate in peripheral nations, they expand the local economy and benefit the workers.
Conflict theory focuses on the creation and reproduction of inequality. A conflict theorist would likely address the systematic inequality created when core nations exploit the resources of peripheral nations. For example, how many U.S. companies take advantage of overseas workers who lack the constitutional protection and guaranteed minimum wages that exist in the United States? Doing so allows them to maximize profits, but at what cost?
The symbolic interaction perspective studies the day-to-day impact of global inequality, the meanings individuals attach to global stratification, and the subjective nature of poverty. Someone applying this view to global inequality would probably focus on understanding the difference between what someone living in a core nation defines as poverty (relative poverty, defined as being unable to live the lifestyle of the average person in your country) and what someone living in a peripheral nation defines as poverty (absolute poverty, defined as being barely able, or unable, to afford basic necessities, such as food).
Global Stratification
While stratification in the United States refers to the unequal distribution of resources among individuals, global stratificationrefers to this unequal distribution among nations. There are two dimensions to this stratification: gaps between nations and gaps within nations. When it comes to global inequality, both economic inequality and social inequality may concentrate the burden of poverty among certain segments of the earth’s population (Myrdal 1970). As the chart below illustrates, people’s life expectancy depends heavily on where they happen to be born.
Statistics such as infant mortality rates and life expectancy vary greatly by country of origin. (Central Intelligence Agency 2011)
Country Infant Mortality Rate Life Expectancy
Norway 2.48 deaths per 1000 live births 81 years
The United States 6.17 deaths per 1000 live births 79 years
North Korea 24.50 deaths per 1000 live births 70 years
Afghanistan 117.3 deaths per 1000 live births 50 years
Most of us are accustomed to thinking of global stratification as economic inequality. For example, we can compare the United States’ average worker’s wage to America’s average wage. Social inequality, however, is just as harmful as economic discrepancies. Prejudice and discrimination—whether against a certain race, ethnicity, religion, or the like—can create and aggravate conditions of economic equality, both within and between nations. Think about the inequity that existed for decades within the nation of South Africa. Apartheid, one of the most extreme cases of institutionalized and legal racism, created a social inequality that earned it the world’s condemnation.
Gender inequity is another global concern. Consider the controversy surrounding female genital mutilation. Nations that practice this female circumcision procedure defend it as a longstanding cultural tradition in certain tribes and argue that the West shouldn’t interfere. Western nations, however, decry the practice and are working to stop it.
Inequalities based on sexual orientation and gender identity exist around the globe. According to Amnesty International, a number of crimes are committed against individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles or sexual orientations (however those are culturally defined). From culturally sanctioned rape to state-sanctioned executions, the abuses are serious. These legalized and culturally accepted forms of prejudice and discrimination exist everywhere—from the United States to Somalia to Tibet—restricting the freedom of individuals and often putting their lives at risk (Amnesty International 2012).
Global Classification
A major concern when discussing global inequality is how to avoid an ethnocentric bias implying that less-developed nations want to be like those who’ve attained post-industrial global power. Terms such as developing (nonindustrialized) and developed (industrialized) imply that unindustrialized countries are somehow inferior, and must improve to participate successfully in the global economy, a label indicating that all aspects of the economy cross national borders. We must take care how we delineate different countries. Over time, terminology has shifted to make way for a more inclusive view of the world.
Cold War Terminology
Cold War terminology was developed during the Cold War era (1945–1980). Familiar and still used by many, it classifies countries into first world, second world, and third world nations based on their respective economic development and standards of living. When this nomenclature was developed, capitalistic democracies such as the United States and Japan were considered part of the first world. The poorest, most undeveloped countries were referred to as the third world and included most of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The second world was the in-between category: nations not as limited in development as the third world, but not as well off as the first world, having moderate economies and standard of living, such as China or Cuba. Later, sociologist Manual Castells (1998) added the term fourth world to refer to stigmatized minority groups that were denied a political voice all over the globe (indigenous minority populations, prisoners, and the homeless, for example).
Also during the Cold War, global inequality was described in terms of economic development. Along with developing and developed nations, the terms less-developed nation and underdeveloped nation were used. This was the era when the idea of noblesse oblige (first-world responsibility) took root, suggesting that the so-termed developed nations should provide foreign aid to the less-developed and underdeveloped nations in order to raise their standard of living.
Immanuel Wallerstein: World Systems Approach
Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1979) world systems approach uses an economic basis to understand global inequality. Wallerstein conceived of the global economy as a complex system that supports an economic hierarchy that placed some nations in positions of power with numerous resources and other nations in a state of economic subordination. Those that were in a state of subordination faced significant obstacles to mobilization.
Core nations are dominant capitalist countries, highly industrialized, technological, and urbanized. For example, Wallerstein contends that the United States is an economic powerhouse that can support or deny support to important economic legislation with far-reaching implications, thus exerting control over every aspect of the global economy and exploiting both semi-peripheral and peripheral nations. We can look at free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as an example of how a core nation is able to leverage its power to gain the most advantageous position in the matter of global trade.
Peripheral nations have very little industrialization; what they do have often represents the outdated castoffs of core nations or the factories and means of production owned by core nations. They typically have unstable governments, inadequate social programs, and are economically dependent on core nations for jobs and aid. There are abundant examples of countries in this category, such as Vietnam and Cuba. We can be sure the workers in a Cuban cigar factory, for example, which are owned or leased by global core nation companies, are not enjoying the same privileges and rights as U.S. workers.
Semi-peripheral nations are in-between nations, not powerful enough to dictate policy but nevertheless acting as a major source for raw material and an expanding middle-class marketplace for core nations, while also exploiting peripheral nations. Mexico is an example, providing abundant cheap agricultural labor to the U.S., and supplying goods to the United States market at a rate dictated by the U.S. without the constitutional protections offered to United States workers.
World Bank Economic Classification by Income
While the World Bank is often criticized, both for its policies and its method of calculating data, it is still a common source for global economic data. Along with tracking the economy, the World Bank tracks demographics and environmental health to provide a complete picture of whether a nation is high income, middle income, or low income.
This world map shows advanced, transitioning, less, and least developed countries. (Map courtesy of Sbw01f, data obtained from the CIA World Factbook/Wikimedia Commons)
High-Income Nations
The World Bank defines high-income nations as having a gross national income of at least \$12,746 per capita. The OECD (Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development) countries make up a group of thirty-four nations whose governments work together to promote economicgrowth and sustainability. According to the World Bank (2014b), in 2013, the average gross national income (GNI) per capita, or the mean income of the people in a nation, found by dividing total GNI by the total population, of a high-income nation belonging to the OECD was \$43,903 per capita and the total population was over one billion (1.045 billion); on average, 81 percent of the population in these nations was urban. Some of these countries include the United States, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom (World Bank 2014b).
High-income countries face two major issues: capital flight and deindustrialization. Capital flight refers to the movement (flight) of capital from one nation to another, as when General Motors automotive company closed U.S. factories in Michigan and opened factories in Mexico. Deindustrialization, a related issue, occurs as a consequence of capital flight, as no new companies open to replace jobs lost to foreign nations. As expected, global companies move their industrial processes to the places where they can get the most production with the least cost, including the building of infrastructure, training of workers, shipping of goods, and, of course, paying employee wages. This means that as emerging economies create their own industrial zones, global companies see the opportunity for existing infrastructure and much lower costs. Those opportunities lead to businesses closing the factories that provide jobs to the middle class within core nations and moving their industrial production to peripheral and semi-peripheral nations.
CAPITAL FLIGHT, OUTSOURCING, AND JOBS IN THE UNITED STATES
This dilapidated auto supply store in Detroit is a victim of auto industry outsourcing. (Photo courtesy of Bob Jagendorf/flickr)
Capital flight describes jobs and infrastructure moving from one nation to another. Look at the U.S. automobile industry. In the early twentieth century, the cars driven in the United States were made here, employing thousands of workers in Detroit and in the companies that produced everything that made building cars possible. However, once the fuel crisis of the 1970s hit and people in the United States increasingly looked to imported cars with better gas mileage, U.S. auto manufacturing began to decline. During the 2007–2009 recession, the U.S. government bailed out the three main auto companies, underscoring their vulnerability. At the same time, Japanese-owned Toyota and Honda and South Korean Kia maintained stable sales levels.
Capital flight also occurs when services (as opposed to manufacturing) are relocated. Chances are if you have called the tech support line for your cell phone or Internet provider, you’ve spoken to someone halfway across the globe. This professional might tell you her name is Susan or Joan, but her accent makes it clear that her real name might be Parvati or Indira. It might be the middle of the night in that country, yet these service providers pick up the line saying, “Good morning,” as though they are in the next town over. They know everything about your phone or your modem, often using a remote server to log in to your home computer to accomplish what is needed. These are the workers of the twenty-first century. They are not on factory floors or in traditional sweatshops; they are educated, speak at least two languages, and usually have significant technology skills. They are skilled workers, but they are paid a fraction of what similar workers are paid in the United States. For U.S. and multinational companies, the equation makes sense. India and other semi-peripheral countries have emerging infrastructures and education systems to fill their needs, without core nation costs.
Is this international call center the wave of the future? (Photo courtesy of Vilma.com/flickr)
As services are relocated, so are jobs. In the United States, unemployment is high. Many college-educated people are unable to find work, and those with only a high school diploma are in even worse shape. We have, as a country, outsourced ourselves out of jobs, and not just menial jobs, but white-collar work as well. But before we complain too bitterly, we must look at the culture of consumerism that we embrace. A flat screen television that might have cost \$1,000 a few years ago is now \$350. That cost savings has to come from somewhere. When consumers seek the lowest possible price, shop at big box stores for the biggest discount they can get, and generally ignore other factors in exchange for low cost, they are building the market for outsourcing. And as the demand is built, the market will ensure it is met, even at the expense of the people who wanted it in the first place.
Middle-Income Nations
The World Bank defines middle-income economies areas those with a GNI per capita of more than \$1,045 but less than \$12,746. According to the World Bank (2014), in 2013, the average GNI per capita of an upper middle income nation was \$7,594 per capita with a total population of 2.049 billion, of which 62 percent was urban. Thailand, China, and Namibia are examples of middle-income nations (World Bank 2014a).
Perhaps the most pressing issue for middle-income nations is the problem of debt accumulation. As the name suggests, debt accumulation is the buildup of external debt, wherein countries borrow money from other nations to fund their expansion or growth goals. As the uncertainties of the global economy make repaying these debts, or even paying the interest on them, more challenging, nations can find themselves in trouble. Once global markets have reduced the value of a country’s goods, it can be very difficult to ever manage the debt burden. Such issues have plagued middle-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as East Asian and Pacific nations (Dogruel and Dogruel 2007). By way of example, even in the European Union, which is composed of more core nations than semi-peripheral nations, the semi-peripheral nations of Italy and Greece face increasing debt burdens. The economic downturns in both Greece and Italy still threaten the economy of the entire European Union.
Low-Income Nations
The World Bank defines low-income countries as nations whose per capita GNI was \$1,045 per capita or less in 2013. According to the World Bank (2014a), in 2013, the average per capita GNI of a low-income nation was \$528 per capita and the total population was 796,261,360, with 28 percent located in urban areas. For example, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Somalia are considered low-income countries. Low-income economies are primarily found in Asia and Africa (World Bank 2014a), where most of the world’s population lives. There are two major challenges that these countries face: women are disproportionately affected by poverty (in a trend toward a global feminization of poverty) and much of the population lives in absolute poverty.
Summary
Stratification refers to the gaps in resources both between nations and within nations. While economic equality is of great concern, so is social equality, like the discrimination stemming from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and/or sexual orientation. While global inequality is nothing new, several factors make it more relevant than ever, like the global marketplace and the pace of information sharing. Researchers try to understand global inequality by classifying it according to factors such as how industrialized a nation is, whether a country serves as a means of production or as an owner, and what income a nation produces.
Further Research
Glossary
capital flight
the movement (flight) of capital from one nation to another, via jobs and resources
core nations
dominant capitalist countries
debt accumulation
the buildup of external debt, wherein countries borrow money from other nations to fund their expansion or growth goals
deindustrialization
the loss of industrial production, usually to peripheral and semi-peripheral nations where the costs are lower
first world
a term from the Cold War era that is used to describe industrialized capitalist democracies
fourth world
a term that describes stigmatized minority groups who have no voice or representation on the world stage
GINI coefficient
a measure of income inequality between countries using a 100-point scale, in which 1 represents complete equality and 100 represents the highest possible inequality
global inequality
the concentration of resources in core nations and in the hands of a wealthy minority
global feminization of poverty
a pattern that occurs when women bear a disproportionate percentage of the burden of poverty
global stratification
the unequal distribution of resources between countries
gross national income (GNI)
the income of a nation calculated based on goods and services produced, plus income earned by citizens and corporations headquartered in that country
peripheral nations
nations on the fringes of the global economy, dominated by core nations, with very little industrialization
second world
a term from the Cold War era that describes nations with moderate economies and standards of living
semi-peripheral nations
in-between nations, not powerful enough to dictate policy but acting as a major source of raw materials and an expanding middle class marketplace
third world
a term from the Cold War era that refers to poor, unindustrialized countries | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/10%3A_Global_Inequality/10.02%3A_Global_Stratification_and_Classification.txt |
What does it mean to be poor? Does it mean being a single mother with two kids in New York City, waiting for the next paycheck in order to buy groceries? Does it mean living with almost no furniture in your apartment because your income doesn’t allow for extras like beds or chairs? Or does it mean having to live with the distended bellies of the chronically malnourished throughout the peripheral nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? Poverty has a thousand faces and a thousand gradations; there is no single definition that pulls together every part of the spectrum. You might feel you are poor if you can’t afford cable television or buy your own car. Every time you see a fellow student with a new laptop and smartphone you might feel that you, with your ten-year-old desktop computer, are barely keeping up. However, someone else might look at the clothes you wear and the calories you consume and consider you rich.
How poor is poor for these beggar children in Vietnam? (Photo courtesy of Augapfel/flickr)
Types of Poverty
Social scientists define global poverty in different ways and take into account the complexities and the issues of relativism described above. Relative poverty is a state of living where people can afford necessities but are unable to meet their society’s average standard of living. People often disparage “keeping up with the Joneses”—the idea that you must keep up with the neighbors’ standard of living to not feel deprived. But it is true that you might feel ”poor” if you are living without a car to drive to and from work, without any money for a safety net should a family member fall ill, and without any “extras” beyond just making ends meet.
Contrary to relative poverty, people who live in absolute poverty lack even the basic necessities, which typically include adequate food, clean water, safe housing, and access to healthcare. Absolute poverty is defined by the World Bank (2014a) as when someone lives on less than \$1.25 a day. According to the most recent estimates, in 2011, about 17 percent of people in the developing world lived at or below \$1.25 a day, a decrease of 26 percent compared to ten years ago, and an overall decrease of 35 percent compared to twenty years ago. A shocking number of people––88 million––live in absolute poverty, and close to 3 billion people live on less than \$2.50 a day (Shah 2011). If you were forced to live on \$2.50 a day, how would you do it? What would you deem worthy of spending money on, and what could you do without? How would you manage the necessities—and how would you make up the gap between what you need to live and what you can afford?
Slums in India illustrate absolute poverty all too well. (Photo courtesy of Emmanuelle Dyan/flickr)
Subjective poverty describes poverty that is composed of many dimensions; it is subjectively present when your actual income does not meet your expectations and perceptions. With the concept of subjective poverty, the poor themselves have a greater say in recognizing when it is present. In short, subjective poverty has more to do with how a person or a family defines themselves. This means that a family subsisting on a few dollars a day in Nepal might think of themselves as doing well, within their perception of normal. However, a westerner traveling to Nepal might visit the same family and see extreme need.
THE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY AROUND THE WORLD
What do the driver of an unlicensed hack cab in New York, a piecework seamstress working from her home in Mumbai, and a street tortilla vendor in Mexico City have in common? They are all members of the underground economy, a loosely defined unregulated market unhindered by taxes, government permits, or human protections. Official statistics before the worldwide recession posit that the underground economy accounted for over 50 percent of nonagricultural work in Latin America; the figure went as high as 80 percent in parts of Asia and Africa (Chen 2001). A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses the challenges, parameters, and surprising benefits of this informal marketplace. The wages earned in most underground economy jobs, especially in peripheral nations, are a pittance––a few rupees for a handmade bracelet at a market, or maybe 250 rupees (\$5 U.S.) for a day’s worth of fruit and vegetable sales (Barta 2009). But these tiny sums mark the difference between survival and extinction for the world’s poor.
The underground economy has never been viewed very positively by global economists. After all, its members don’t pay taxes, don’t take out loans to grow their businesses, and rarely earn enough to put money back into the economy in the form of consumer spending. But according to the International Labor Organization (an agency of the United Nations), some 52 million people worldwide will lose their jobs due to the ongoing worldwide recession. And while those in core nations know that high unemployment rates and limited government safety nets can be frightening, their situation is nothing compared to the loss of a job for those barely eking out an existence. Once that job disappears, the chance of staying afloat is very slim.
Within the context of this recession, some see the underground economy as a key player in keeping people alive. Indeed, an economist at the World Bank credits jobs created by the informal economy as a primary reason why peripheral nations are not in worse shape during this recession. Women in particular benefit from the informal sector. The majority of economically active women in peripheral nations are engaged in the informal sector, which is somewhat buffered from the economic downturn. The flip side, of course, is that it is equally buffered from the possibility of economic growth.
Even in the United States, the informal economy exists, although not on the same scale as in peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. It might include under-the-table nannies, gardeners, and housecleaners, as well as unlicensed street vendors and taxi drivers. There are also those who run informal businesses, like daycares or salons, from their houses. Analysts estimate that this type of labor may make up 10 percent of the overall U.S. economy, a number that will likely grow as companies reduce head counts, leaving more workers to seek other options. In the end, the article suggests that, whether selling medicinal wines in Thailand or woven bracelets in India, the workers of the underground economy at least have what most people want most of all: a chance to stay afloat (Barta 2009).
Who Are the Impoverished?
Who are the impoverished? Who is living in absolute poverty? The truth that most of us would guess that the richest countries are often those with the least people. Compare the United States, which possesses a relatively small slice of the population pie and owns by far the largest slice of the wealth pie, with India. These disparities have the expected consequence. The poorest people in the world are women and those in peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. For women, the rate of poverty is particularly worsened by the pressure on their time. In general, time is one of the few luxuries the very poor have, but study after study has shown that women in poverty, who are responsible for all family comforts as well as any earnings they can make, have less of it. The result is that while men and women may have the same rate of economic poverty, women are suffering more in terms of overall wellbeing (Buvinic 1997). It is harder for females to get credit to expand businesses, to take the time to learn a new skill, or to spend extra hours improving their craft so as to be able to earn at a higher rate.
Global Feminization of Poverty
In some ways, the phrase "global feminization of poverty" says it all: around the world, women are bearing a disproportionate percentage of the burden of poverty. This means more women live in poor conditions, receive inadequate healthcare, bear the brunt of malnutrition and inadequate drinking water, and so on. Throughout the 1990s, data indicated that while overall poverty rates were rising, especially in peripheral nations, the rates of impoverishment increased for women nearly 20 percent more than for men (Mogadham 2005).
Why is this happening? While myriad variables affect women's poverty, research specializing in this issue identifies three causes (Mogadham 2005):
• The expansion in the number of female-headed households
• The persistence and consequences of intra-household inequalities and biases against women
• The implementation of neoliberal economic policies around the world
While women are living longer and healthier lives today compared to ten years ago, around the world many women are denied basic rights, particularly in the workplace. In peripheral nations, they accumulate fewer assets, farm less land, make less money, and face restricted civil rights and liberties. Women can stimulate the economic growth of peripheral nations, but they are often undereducated and lack access to credit needed to start small businesses.
In 2013, the United Nations assessed its progress toward achieving its Millennium Development Goals. Goal 3 was to promote gender equality and empower women, and there were encouraging advances in this area. While women’s employment outside the agricultural sector remains under 20 percent in Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Asia, worldwide it increased from 35–40 percent over the twenty-year period ending in 2010 (United Nations 2013).
Africa
The majority of the poorest countries in the world are in Africa. That is not to say there is not diversity within the countries of that continent; countries like South Africa and Egypt have much lower rates of poverty than Angola and Ethiopia, for instance. Overall, African income levels have been dropping relative to the rest of the world, meaning that Africa as a whole is getting relatively poorer. Making the problem worse, 2014 saw an outbreak of the Ebola virus in western Africa, leading to a public health crisis and an economic downturn due to loss of workers and tourist dollars.
Why is Africa in such dire straits? Much of the continent’s poverty can be traced to the availability of land, especially arable land (land that can be farmed). Centuries of struggle over land ownership have meant that much useable land has been ruined or left unfarmed, while many countries with inadequate rainfall have never set up an infrastructure to irrigate. Many of Africa’s natural resources were long ago taken by colonial forces, leaving little agricultural and mineral wealth on the continent.
Further, African poverty is worsened by civil wars and inadequate governance that are the result of a continent re-imagined with artificial colonial borders and leaders. Consider the example of Rwanda. There, two ethnic groups cohabitated with their own system of hierarchy and management until Belgians took control of the country in 1915 and rigidly confined members of the population into two unequal ethnic groups. While, historically, members of the Tutsi group held positions of power, the involvement of Belgians led to the Hutu’s seizing power during a 1960s revolt. This ultimately led to a repressive government and genocide against Tutsis that left hundreds of thousands of Rwandans dead or living in diaspora (U.S. Department of State 2011c). The painful rebirth of a self-ruled Africa has meant many countries bear ongoing scars as they try to see their way towards the future (World Poverty 2012a).
Asia
While the majority of the world’s poorest countries are in Africa, the majority of the world’s poorest people are in Asia. As in Africa, Asia finds itself with disparity in the distribution of poverty, with Japan and South Korea holding much more wealth than India and Cambodia. In fact, most poverty is concentrated in South Asia. One of the most pressing causes of poverty in Asia is simply the pressure that the size of the population puts on its resources. In fact, many believe that China’s success in recent times has much to do with its draconian population control rules. According to the U.S. State department, China’s market-oriented reforms have contributed to its significant reduction of poverty and the speed at which it has experienced an increase in income levels (U.S. Department of State 2011b). However, every part of Asia is feeling the current global recession, from the poorest countries whose aid packages will be hit, to the more industrialized ones whose own industries are slowing down. These factors make the poverty on the ground unlikely to improve any time soon (World Poverty 2012b).
MENA
The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) includes oil-rich countries in the Gulf, such as Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait, but also countries that are relatively resource-poor in relationship to their populations, such as Morocco and Yemen. These countries are predominately Islamic. For the last quarter-century, economic growth was slower in MENA than in other developing economies, and almost a quarter of the 300 million people who make up the population live on less than \$2.00 a day (World Bank 2013).
The International Labour Organization tracks the way income inequality influences social unrest. The two regions with the highest risk of social unrest are Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region (International Labour Organization 2012). Increasing unemployment and high socioeconomic inequality in MENA were major factors in the Arab Spring, which—beginning in 2010—toppled dictatorships throughout the Middle East in favor of democratically elected government; unemployment and income inequalities are still being blamed on immigrants, foreign nationals, and ethnic/religious minorities.
SWEATSHOPS AND STUDENT PROTESTS: WHO’S MAKING YOUR TEAM SPIRIT?
Most of us don’t pay too much attention to where our favorite products are made. And certainly when you’re shopping for a college sweatshirt or ball cap to wear to a school football game, you probably don’t turn over the label, check who produced the item, and then research whether or not the company has fair labor practices. But for the members of USAS––United Students Against Sweatshops––that’s exactly what they do. The organization, which was founded in 1997, has waged countless battles against both apparel makers and other multinational corporations that do not meet what USAS considers fair working conditions and wages (USAS 2009).
This protester seeks to bring attention to the issue of sweatshops. (Photo courtesy of Ohio AFL-CIO Labor 2008/flickr)
Sometimes their demonstrations take on a sensationalist tone, as in 2006 when twenty Penn State students protested while naked or nearly naked, in order to draw attention to the issue of sweatshop labor. The school is actually already a member of an independent monitoring organization called Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) that monitors working conditions and works to assist colleges and universities with maintaining compliance with their labor code. But the students were protesting in order to have the same code of conduct applied to the factories that provide materials for the goods, not just where the final product is assembled (Chronicle of Higher Education 2006).
The USAS organization has chapters on over 250 campuses in the United States and Canada and has waged countless campaigns against companies like Nike and Forever 21 apparel, Taco Bell restaurants, and Sodexo food service. In 2000, members of USAS helped to create the WRC. Schools that affiliate with WRC pay annual fees that help offset the organization’s costs. Over 180 schools are affiliated with the organization. Yet, USAS still sees signs of inequality everywhere. And its members feel that, as current and future workers, they are responsible for ensuring that workers of the world are treated fairly. For them, at least, the global inequality we see everywhere should not be ignored for a team spirit sweatshirt.
Consequences of Poverty
Not surprisingly, the consequences of poverty are often also causes. The poor often experience inadequate healthcare, limited education, and the inaccessibility of birth control. But those born into these conditions are incredibly challenged in their efforts to break out since these consequences of poverty are also causes of poverty, perpetuating a cycle of disadvantage.
For this child at a refugee camp in Ethiopia, poverty and malnutrition are a way of life. (Photo courtesy of DFID - UK Department for International Development/flickr)
According to sociologists Neckerman and Torche (2007) in their analysis of global inequality studies, the consequences of poverty are many. Neckerman and Torche have divided them into three areas. The first, termed “the sedimentation of global inequality,” relates to the fact that once poverty becomes entrenched in an area, it is typically very difficult to reverse. As mentioned above, poverty exists in a cycle where the consequences and causes are intertwined. The second consequence of poverty is its effect on physical and mental health. Poor people face physical health challenges, including malnutrition and high infant mortality rates. Mental health is also detrimentally affected by the emotional stresses of poverty, with relative deprivation carrying the most robust effect. Again, as with the ongoing inequality, the effects of poverty on mental and physical health become more entrenched as time goes on. Neckerman and Torche’s third consequence of poverty is the prevalence of crime. Cross-nationally, crime rates are higher, particularly for violent crime, in countries with higher levels of income inequality (Fajnzylber, Lederman, and Loayza 2002).
Slavery
While most of us are accustomed to thinking of slavery in terms of the antebellum South, modern day slavery goes hand-in-hand with global inequality. In short, slavery refers to any situation in which people are sold, treated as property, or forced to work for little or no pay. Just as in the pre-Civil War United States, these humans are at the mercy of their employers. Chattel slavery, the form of slavery once practiced in the American South, occurs when one person owns another as property. Child slavery, which may include child prostitution, is a form of chattel slavery. In debt bondage, or bonded labor, the poor pledge themselves as servants in exchange for the cost of basic necessities like transportation, room, and board. In this scenario, people are paid less than they are charged for room and board. When travel is required, they can arrive in debt for their travel expenses and be unable to work their way free, since their wages do not allow them to ever get ahead.
The global watchdog group Anti-Slavery International recognizes other forms of slavery: human trafficking (in which people are moved away from their communities and forced to work against their will), child domestic work and child labor, and certain forms of servile marriage, in which women are little more than chattel slaves (Anti-Slavery International 2012).
Summary
When looking at the world’s poor, we first have to define the difference between relative poverty, absolute poverty, and subjective poverty. While those in relative poverty might not have enough to live at their country’s standard of living, those in absolute poverty do not have, or barely have, basic necessities such as food. Subjective poverty has more to do with one’s perception of one’s situation. North America and Europe are home to fewer of the world’s poor than Africa, which has most poor countries, or Asia, which has the most people living in poverty. Poverty has numerous negative consequences, from increased crime rates to a detrimental impact on physical and mental health.
Further Research
Students often think that the United States is immune to the atrocity of human trafficking. Check out the following link to learn more about trafficking in the United States: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/human_trafficking_in_US
For more information about the ongoing practices of slavery in the modern world click here: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/anti-slavery
Glossary
absolute poverty
the state where one is barely able, or unable, to afford basic necessities
chattel slavery
a form of slavery in which one person owns another
debt bondage
the act of people pledging themselves as servants in exchange for money for passage, and are subsequently paid too little to regain their freedom
relative poverty
the state of poverty where one is unable to live the lifestyle of the average person in the country
subjective poverty
a state of poverty composed of many dimensions, subjectively present when one’s actual income does not meet one’s expectations
underground economy
an unregulated economy of labor and goods that operates outside of governance, regulatory systems, or human protections | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/10%3A_Global_Inequality/10.03%3A_Global_Wealth_and_Poverty.txt |
As with any social issue, global or otherwise, scholars have developed a variety of theories to study global stratification. The two most widely applied perspectives are modernization theory and dependency theory.
Modernization Theory
According to modernization theory, low-income countries are affected by their lack of industrialization and can improve their global economic standing through (Armer and Katsillis 2010):
1. an adjustment of cultural values and attitudes to work
2. industrialization and other forms of economic growth
Critics point out the inherent ethnocentric bias of this theory. It supposes all countries have the same resources and are capable of following the same path. In addition, it assumes that the goal of all countries is to be as “developed” as possible. There is no room within this theory for the possibility that industrialization and technology are not the best goals.
There is, of course, some basis for this assumption. Data show that core nations tend to have lower maternal and child mortality rates, longer life spans, and less absolute poverty. It is also true that in the poorest countries, millions of people die from the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, which are benefits most of us take for granted. At the same time, the issue is more complex than the numbers might suggest. Cultural equality, history, community, and local traditions are all at risk as modernization pushes into peripheral countries. The challenge, then, is to allow the benefits of modernization while maintaining a cultural sensitivity to what already exists.
Dependency Theory
Dependency theory was created in part as a response to the Western-centric mindset of modernization theory. It states that global inequality is primarily caused by core nations (or high-income nations) exploiting semi-peripheral and peripheral nations (or middle-income and low-income nations), which creates a cycle of dependence (Hendricks 2010). As long as peripheral nations are dependent on core nations for economic stimulus and access to a larger piece of the global economy, they will never achieve stable and consistent economic growth. Further, the theory states that since core nations, as well as the World Bank, choose which countries to make loans to, and for what they will loan funds, they are creating highly segmented labor markets that are built to benefit the dominant market countries.
At first glance, it seems this theory ignores the formerly low-income nations that are now considered middle-income nations and are on their way to becoming high-income nations and major players in the global economy, such as China. But some dependency theorists would state that it is in the best interests of core nations to ensure the long-term usefulness of their peripheral and semi-peripheral partners. Following that theory, sociologists have found that entities are more likely to outsource a significant portion of a company’s work if they are the dominant player in the equation; in other words, companies want to see their partner countries healthy enough to provide work, but not so healthy as to establish a threat (Caniels and Roeleveld 2009).
FACTORY GIRLS
We’ve examined functionalist and conflict theorist perspectives on global inequality, as well as modernization and dependency theories. How might a symbolic interactionist approach this topic?
The book Factory Girls: From Village to City in Changing China, by Leslie T. Chang, provides this opportunity. Chang follows two young women (Min and Chunming) employed at a handbag plant. They help manufacture coveted purses and bags for the global market. As part of the growing population of young people who are leaving behind the homesteads and farms of rural China, these female factory workers are ready to enter the urban fray and pursue an ambitious income.
Although Chang’s study is based in a town many have never heard of (Dongguan), this city produces one-third of all shoes on the planet (Nike and Reebok are major manufacturers here) and 30 percent of the world’s computer disk drives, in addition to an abundance of apparel (Chang 2008).
But Chang’s focus is centered less on this global phenomenon on a large scale, than on how it affects these two women. As a symbolic interactionist would do, Chang examines the daily lives and interactions of Min and Chunming—their workplace friendships, family relationships, gadgets and goods—in this evolving global space where young women can leave tradition behind and fashion their own futures. Their story is one that all people, not just scholars, can learn from as we contemplate sociological issues like global economies, cultural traditions and innovations, and opportunities for women in the workforce.
Summary
Modernization theory and dependency theory are two of the most common lenses sociologists use when looking at the issues of global inequality. Modernization theory posits that countries go through evolutionary stages and that industrialization and improved technology are the keys to forward movement. Dependency theory, on the other hand, sees modernization theory as Eurocentric and patronizing. With this theory, global inequality is the result of core nations creating a cycle of dependence by exploiting resources and labor in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries.
Further Research
For more information about economic modernization, check out the Hudson Institute atopenstaxcollege.org/l/Hudson_Institute
Learn more about economic dependency at the University of Texas Inequality Project:http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Texas_inequality_project
Glossary
dependency theory
a theory which states that global inequity is due to the exploitation of peripheral and semi-peripheral nations by core nations
modernization theory
a theory that low-income countries can improve their global economic standing by industrialization of infrastructure and a shift in cultural attitudes towards work | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/10%3A_Global_Inequality/10.04%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Global_Stratification.txt |
10.1: Global Stratification and Classification
Stratification refers to the gaps in resources both between nations and within nations. While economic equality is of great concern, so is social equality, like the discrimination stemming from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and/or sexual orientation. While global inequality is nothing new, several factors make it more relevant than ever, like the global marketplace and the pace of information sharing.
Section Quiz
A sociologist who focuses on the way that multinational corporations headquartered in core nations exploit the local workers in their peripheral nation factories is using a _________ perspective to understand the global economy.
1. functional
2. conflict theory
3. feminist
4. symbolic interactionist
Answer
B
A ____________ perspective theorist might find it particularly noteworthy that wealthy corporations improve the quality of life in peripheral nations by providing workers with jobs, pumping money into the local economy, and improving transportation infrastructure.
1. functional
2. conflict
3. feminist
4. symbolic interactionist
Answer
A
A sociologist working from a symbolic interaction perspective would:
1. study how inequality is created and reproduced
2. study how corporations can improve the lives of their low-income workers
3. try to understand how companies provide an advantage to high-income nations compared to low-income nations
4. want to interview women working in factories to understand how they manage the expectations of their supervisors, make ends meet, and support their households on a day-to-day basis
Answer
D
France might be classified as which kind of nation?
1. Global
2. Core
3. Semi-peripheral
4. Peripheral
Answer
B
In the past, the United States manufactured clothes. Many clothing corporations have shut down their U.S. factories and relocated to China. This is an example of:
1. conflict theory
2. OECD
3. global inequality
4. capital flight
Answer
D
Short Answer
Consider the matter of rock-bottom prices at Walmart. What would a functionalist think of Walmart's model of squeezing vendors to get the absolute lowest prices so it can pass them along to core nation consumers?
Why do you think some scholars find Cold War terminology (“first world” and so on) objectionable?
Give an example of the feminization of poverty in core nations. How is it the same or different in peripheral nations?
Pretend you are a sociologist studying global inequality by looking at child labor manufacturing Barbie dolls in China. What do you focus on? How will you find this information? What theoretical perspective might you use?
10.2: Global Wealth and Poverty
What does it mean to be poor? Does it mean being a single mother with two kids in New York City, waiting for the next paycheck in order to buy groceries? Does it mean living with almost no furniture in your apartment because your income doesn’t allow for extras like beds or chairs? Or does it mean having to live with the distended bellies of the chronically malnourished throughout the peripheral nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? Poverty has a thousand faces and a thousand gradations.
Section Quiz
Slavery in the pre-Civil War U.S. South most closely resembled
1. chattel slavery
2. debt bondage
3. relative poverty
4. peonage
Answer
A
Maya is a twelve-year-old girl living in Thailand. She is homeless, and often does not know where she will sleep or when she will eat. We might say that Maya lives in _________ poverty.
1. subjective
2. absolute
3. relative
4. global
Answer
B
Mike, a college student, rents a studio apartment. He cannot afford a television and lives on cheap groceries like dried beans and ramen noodles. Since he does not have a regular job, he does not own a car. Mike is living in:
1. global poverty
2. absolute poverty
3. subjective poverty
4. relative poverty
Answer
D
Faith has a full-time job and two children. She has enough money for the basics and can pay her rent each month, but she feels that, with her education and experience, her income should be enough for her family to live much better than they do. Faith is experiencing:
1. global poverty
2. subjective poverty
3. absolute poverty
4. relative poverty
Answer
B
In a U.S. town, a mining company owns all the stores and most of the houses. It sells goods to the workers at inflated prices, offers house rentals for twice what a mortgage would be, and makes sure to always pay the workers less than needed to cover food and rent. Once the workers are in debt, they have no choice but to continue working for the company, since their skills will not transfer to a new position. This situation most closely resembles:
1. child slavery
2. chattel slavery
3. debt slavery
4. servile marriage
Answer
C
Short Answer
Consider the concept of subjective poverty. Does it make sense that poverty is in the eye of the beholder? When you see a homeless person, is your reaction different if he or she is seemingly content versus begging? Why?
Think of people among your family, your friends, or your classmates who are relatively unequal in terms of wealth. What is their relationship like? What factors come into play?
Go to your campus bookstore or visit its web site. Find out who manufactures apparel and novelty items with your school’s insignias. In what countries are these produced? Conduct some research to determine how well your school adheres to the principles advocated by USAS.
10.3: Theoretical Perspectives on Global Stratification
Modernization theory and dependency theory are two of the most common lenses sociologists use when looking at the issues of global inequality. Modernization theory posits that countries go through evolutionary stages and that industrialization and improved technology are the keys to forward movement. Dependency theory, on the other hand, sees modernization theory as Eurocentric and patronizing.
Section Quiz
One flaw in dependency theory is the unwillingness to recognize _______.
1. that previously low-income nations such as China have successfully developed their economies and can no longer be classified as dependent on core nations
2. that previously high-income nations such as China have been economically overpowered by low-income nations entering the global marketplace
3. that countries such as China are growing more dependent on core nations
4. that countries such as China do not necessarily want to be more like core nations
Answer
A
One flaw in modernization theory is the unwillingness to recognize _________.
1. that semi-peripheral nations are incapable of industrializing
2. that peripheral nations prevent semi-peripheral nations from entering the global market
3. its inherent ethnocentric bias
4. the importance of semi-peripheral nations industrializing
Answer
C
If a sociologist says that nations evolve toward more advanced technology and more complex industry as their citizens learn cultural values that celebrate hard work and success, she is using _______ theory to study the global economy.
1. modernization theory
2. dependency theory
3. modern dependency theory
4. evolutionary dependency theory
Answer
A
If a sociologist points out that core nations dominate the global economy, in part by creating global interest rates and international tariffs that will inevitably favor high-income nations over low-income nations, he is a:
1. functionalist
2. dependency theorist
3. modernization theorist
4. symbolic interactionist
Answer
B
Dependency theorists explain global inequality and global stratification by focusing on the way that:
1. core nations and peripheral nations exploit semi-peripheral nations
2. semi-peripheral nations exploit core nations
3. peripheral nations exploit core nations
4. core nations exploit peripheral nations
Answer
D
Short Answer
There is much criticism that modernization theory is Eurocentric. Do you think dependency theory is also biased? Why, or why not?
Compare and contrast modernization theory and dependency theory. Which do you think is more useful for explaining global inequality? Explain, using examples. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/10%3A_Global_Inequality/10.E%3A_Global_Inequality_%28Exercises%29.txt |
• 11.1: Introduction to Race and Ethnicity
Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old black teenager. On the evening of February 26, 2012, he was visiting with his father and his father’s fiancée in the Sanford, Florida multi-ethnic gated community where his father's fiancée lived. Trayvon left her home on foot to buy a snack from a nearby convenience store. As he was returning, George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic male and the community’s neighborhood watch program coordinator, noticed him.
• 11.2: Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups
While many students first entering a sociology classroom are accustomed to conflating the terms “race,” “ethnicity,” and “minority group,” these three terms have distinct meanings for sociologists. The idea of race refers to superficial physical differences that a particular society considers significant, while ethnicity describes shared culture. And the term "minority groups" describe groups that are subordinate, or that lack power in society regardless of skin color or country of origin.
• 11.3: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
The terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. Let us explore the differences between these concepts. Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people. Stereotypes can be based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation—almost any characteristic. They may be positive but are often negative. In either case, the stereotype is a generalization that doesn’t take individual differences into account.
• 11.4: Theories of Race and Ethnicity
We can examine issues of race and ethnicity through three major sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. As you read through these theories, ask yourself which one makes the most sense and why. Do we need more than one theory to explain racism, prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination?
• 11.5: Intergroup Relationships
Intergroup relations (relationships between different groups of people) range along a spectrum between tolerance and intolerance. The most tolerant form of intergroup relations is pluralism, in which no distinction is made between minority and majority groups, but instead there’s equal standing. At the other end of the continuum are amalgamation, expulsion, and even genocide—stark examples of intolerant intergroup relations.
• 11.6: Race and Ethnicity in the United States
When colonists came to the New World, they found a land that did not need “discovering” since it was already occupied. While the first wave of immigrants came from Western Europe, eventually the bulk of people entering North America were from Northern Europe, then Eastern Europe, then Latin America and Asia. And let us not forget the forced immigration of African slaves. Most of these groups underwent a period of disenfranchisement before they managed to achieve social mobility.
Thumbnail: Robert De Niro and his wife Grace Hightower are a prominent interracial couple, shown here at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival (CC BY 3.0; David Shankbone).
11: Race and Ethnicity
Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old black teenager. On the evening of February 26, 2012, he was visiting with his father and his father’s fiancée in the Sanford, Florida multi-ethnic gated community where his father's fiancée lived. Trayvon left her home on foot to buy a snack from a nearby convenience store. As he was returning, George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic male and the community’s neighborhood watch program coordinator, noticed him. In light of a recent rash of break-ins, Zimmerman called the police to report a person acting suspiciously, which he had done on many other occasions. The 911 operator told Zimmerman not to follow the teen, but soon after Zimmerman and Martin had a physical confrontation. According to Zimmerman, Martin attacked him, and in the ensuing scuffle Martin was shot and killed (CNN Library 2014).
Do you think race played a role in Trayvon Martin’s death or in the public reaction to it? Do you think race had any influence on the initial decision not to arrest George Zimmerman, or on his later acquittal? (Photo courtesy of Ryan Vaarsi/flickr)
A public outcry followed Martin’s death. There were allegations of racial profiling—the use by law enforcement of race alone to determine whether to stop and detain someone—a national discussion about “Stand Your Ground Laws,” and a failed lawsuit in which Zimmerman accused NBC of airing an edited version of the 911 call that made him appear racist. Zimmerman was not arrested until April 11, when he was charged with second-degree murder by special prosecutor Angela Corey. In the ensuing trial, he was found not guilty (CNN Library 2014).
The shooting, the public response, and the trial that followed offer a snapshot of the sociology of race. Do you think race played a role in Martin’s death or in the public reaction to it? Do you think race had any influence on the initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman, or on his later acquittal? Does society fear black men, leading to racial profiling at an institutional level? What about the role of the media? Was there a deliberate attempt to manipulate public opinion? If you were a member of the jury, would you have convicted George Zimmerman?
Glossary
racial profiling
the use by law enforcement of race alone to determine whether to stop and detain someone | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/11.01%3A_Introduction_to_Race_and_Ethnicity.txt |
While many students first entering a sociology classroom are accustomed to conflating the terms “race,” “ethnicity,” and “minority group,” these three terms have distinct meanings for sociologists. The idea of race refers to superficial physical differences that a particular society considers significant, while ethnicity describes shared culture. And the term "minority groups" describe groups that are subordinate, or that lack power in society regardless of skin color or country of origin. For example, in modern U.S. history, the elderly might be considered a minority group due to a diminished status that results from popular prejudice and discrimination against them. Ten percent of nursing home staff admitted to physically abusing an elderly person in the past year, and 40 percent admitted to committing psychological abuse (World Health Organization 2011). In this chapter we focus on racial and ethnic minorities.
What Is Race?
Historically, the concept of race has changed across cultures and eras, and has eventually become less connected with ancestral and familial ties, and more concerned with superficial physical characteristics. In the past, theorists have posited categories of race based on various geographic regions, ethnicities, skin colors, and more. Their labels for racial groups have connoted regions (Mongolia and the Caucus Mountains, for instance) or skin tones (black, white, yellow, and red, for example).
Social science organizations including the American Association of Anthropologists, the American Sociological Association, and the American Psychological Association have all taken an official position rejecting the biological explanations of race. Over time, the typology of race that developed during early racial science has fallen into disuse, and the social construction of race is a more sociological way of understanding racial categories. Research in this school of thought suggests that race is not biologically identifiable and that previous racial categories were arbitrarily assigned, based on pseudoscience, and used to justify racist practices (Omi and Winant 1994; Graves 2003). When considering skin color, for example, the social construction of race perspective recognizes that the relative darkness or fairness of skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the available sunlight in different regions of the world. Contemporary conceptions of race, therefore, which tend to be based on socioeconomic assumptions, illuminate how far removed modern understanding of race is from biological qualities. In modern society, some people who consider themselves “white” actually have more melanin (a pigment that determines skin color) in their skin than other people who identify as ”black.” Consider the case of the actress Rashida Jones. She is the daughter of a black man (Quincy Jones), and her best-known roles include Ann Perkins on Parks and Recreation, Karen Filippelli on The Office, and Zooey Rice inI Love You Man, none of whom are black characters. In some countries, such as Brazil, class is more important than skin color in determining racial categorization. People with high levels of melanin may consider themselves "white" if they enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. On the other hand, someone with low levels of melanin might be assigned the identity of "black" if he or she has little education or money.
The social construction of race is also reflected in the way names for racial categories change with changing times. It’s worth noting that race, in this sense, is also a system of labeling that provides a source of identity; specific labels fall in and out of favor during different social eras. For example, the category ”negroid,” popular in the nineteenth century, evolved into the term “negro” by the 1960s, and then this term fell from use and was replaced with “African American.” This latter term was intended to celebrate the multiple identities that a black person might hold, but the word choice is a poor one: it lumps together a large variety of ethnic groups under an umbrella term while excluding others who could accurately be described by the label but who do not meet the spirit of the term. For example, actress Charlize Theron is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “African American.” She was born in South Africa and later became a U.S. citizen. Is her identity that of an “African American” as most of us understand the term?
What Is Ethnicity?
Ethnicity is a term that describes shared culture—the practices, values, and beliefs of a group. This culture might include shared language, religion, and traditions, among other commonalities. Like race, the term ethnicity is difficult to describe and its meaning has changed over time. And as with race, individuals may be identified or self-identify with ethnicities in complex, even contradictory, ways. For example, ethnic groups such as Irish, Italian American, Russian, Jewish, and Serbian might all be groups whose members are predominantly included in the “white” racial category. Conversely, the ethnic group British includes citizens from a multiplicity of racial backgrounds: black, white, Asian, and more, plus a variety of race combinations. These examples illustrate the complexity and overlap of these identifying terms. Ethnicity, like race, continues to be an identification method that individuals and institutions use today—whether through the census, affirmative action initiatives, nondiscrimination laws, or simply in personal day-to-day relations.
What Are Minority Groups?
Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority group as “any group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.” The term minority connotes discrimination, and in its sociological use, the term subordinate group can be used interchangeably with the term minority, while the term dominant group is often substituted for the group that’s in the majority. These definitions correlate to the concept that the dominant group is that which holds the most power in a given society, while subordinate groups are those who lack power compared to the dominant group.
Note that being a numerical minority is not a characteristic of being a minority group; sometimes larger groups can be considered minority groups due to their lack of power. It is the lack of power that is the predominant characteristic of a minority, or subordinate group. For example, consider apartheid in South Africa, in which a numerical majority (the black inhabitants of the country) were exploited and oppressed by the white minority.
According to Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris (1958), a minority group is distinguished by five characteristics: (1) unequal treatment and less power over their lives, (2) distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language, (3) involuntary membership in the group, (4) awareness of subordination, and (5) high rate of in-group marriage. Additional examples of minority groups might include the LBGT community, religious practitioners whose faith is not widely practiced where they live, and people with disabilities.
Scapegoat theory, developed initially from Dollard’s (1939) Frustration-Aggression theory, suggests that the dominant group will displace its unfocused aggression onto a subordinate group. History has shown us many examples of the scapegoating of a subordinate group. An example from the last century is the way Adolf Hitler was able to blame the Jewish population for Germany’s social and economic problems. In the United States, recent immigrants have frequently been the scapegoat for the nation’s—or an individual’s—woes. Many states have enacted laws to disenfranchise immigrants; these laws are popular because they let the dominant group scapegoat a subordinate group.
Summary
Race is fundamentally a social construct. Ethnicity is a term that describes shared culture and national origin. Minority groups are defined by their lack of power.
Section Quiz
1. The racial term “African American” can refer to:
1. a black person living in the United States
2. people whose ancestors came to the United States through the slave trade
3. a white person who originated in Africa and now lives in the United States
4. any of the above
Answer
D
1. What is the one defining feature of a minority group?
1. Self-definition
2. Numerical minority
3. Lack of power
4. Strong cultural identity
Answer
C
1. Ethnicity describes shared:
1. beliefs
2. language
3. religion
4. any of the above
Answer
D
1. Which of the following is an example of a numerical majority being treated as a subordinate group?
1. Jewish people in Germany
2. Creoles in New Orleans
3. White people in Brazil
4. Blacks under apartheid in South Africa
Answer
D
1. Scapegoat theory shows that:
1. subordinate groups blame dominant groups for their problems
2. dominant groups blame subordinate groups for their problems
3. some people are predisposed to prejudice
4. all of the above
Answer
B
Short Answer
1. Why do you think the term “minority” has persisted when the word “subordinate” is more descriptive?
2. How do you describe your ethnicity? Do you include your family’s country of origin? Do you consider yourself multiethnic? How does your ethnicity compare to that of the people you spend most of your time with?
Further Research
Explore aspects of race and ethnicity at PBS’s site, “What Is Race?”: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/PBS_what_is_race
Glossary
dominant group
a group of people who have more power in a society than any of the subordinate groups
ethnicity
shared culture, which may include heritage, language, religion, and more
minority group
any group of people who are singled out from the others for differential and unequal treatment
scapegoat theory
a theory that suggests that the dominant group will displace its unfocused aggression onto a subordinate group
social construction of race
the school of thought that race is not biologically identifiable
subordinate group
a group of people who have less power than the dominant group | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/11.02%3A_Racial_Ethnic_and_Minority_Groups.txt |
The terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. Let us explore the differences between these concepts. Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people. Stereotypes can be based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation—almost any characteristic. They may be positive (usually about one’s own group, such as when women suggest they are less likely to complain about physical pain) but are often negative (usually toward other groups, such as when members of a dominant racial group suggest that a subordinate racial group is stupid or lazy). In either case, the stereotype is a generalization that doesn’t take individual differences into account.
Where do stereotypes come from? In fact new stereotypes are rarely created; rather, they are recycled from subordinate groups that have assimilated into society and are reused to describe newly subordinate groups. For example, many stereotypes that are currently used to characterize black people were used earlier in American history to characterize Irish and Eastern European immigrants.
Prejudice and Racism
Prejudice refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group. A prejudice is not based on experience; instead, it is a prejudgment, originating outside actual experience. A 1970 documentary called Eye of the Storm illustrates the way in which prejudice develops, by showing how defining one category of people as superior (children with blue eyes) results in prejudice against people who are not part of the favored category.
While prejudice is not necessarily specific to race, racism is a stronger type of prejudice used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others; it is also a set of practices used by a racial majority to disadvantage a racial minority. The Ku Klux Klan is an example of a racist organization; its members' belief in white supremacy has encouraged over a century of hate crime and hate speech.
Institutional racism refers to the way in which racism is embedded in the fabric of society. For example, the disproportionate number of black men arrested, charged, and convicted of crimes may reflect racial profiling, a form of institutional racism.
Colorism is another kind of prejudice, in which someone believes one type of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group. Studies suggest that darker skinned African Americans experience more discrimination than lighter skinned African Americans (Herring, Keith, and Horton 2004; Klonoff and Landrine 2000). For example, if a white employer believes a black employee with a darker skin tone is less capable than a black employer with lighter skin tone, that is colorism. At least one study suggested the colorism affected racial socialization, with darker-skinned black male adolescents receiving more warnings about the danger of interacting with members of other racial groups than did lighter-skinned black male adolescents (Landor et al. 2013).
Discrimination
While prejudice refers to biased thinking, discrimination consists of actions against a group of people. Discrimination can be based on age, religion, health, and other indicators; race-based laws against discrimination strive to address this set of social problems.
Discrimination based on race or ethnicity can take many forms, from unfair housing practices to biased hiring systems. Overt discrimination has long been part of U.S. history. In the late nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for business owners to hang signs that read, "Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply." And southern Jim Crow laws, with their "Whites Only" signs, exemplified overt discrimination that is not tolerated today.
However, we cannot erase discrimination from our culture just by enacting laws to abolish it. Even if a magic pill managed to eradicate racism from each individual's psyche, society itself would maintain it. Sociologist Émile Durkheim calls racism a social fact, meaning that it does not require the action of individuals to continue. The reasons for this are complex and relate to the educational, criminal, economic, and political systems that exist in our society.
For example, when a newspaper identifies by race individuals accused of a crime, it may enhance stereotypes of a certain minority. Another example of racist practices is racial steering, in which real estate agents direct prospective homeowners toward or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. Racist attitudes and beliefs are often more insidious and harder to pin down than specific racist practices.
Prejudice and discrimination can overlap and intersect in many ways. To illustrate, here are four examples of how prejudice and discrimination can occur. Unprejudiced nondiscriminators are open-minded, tolerant, and accepting individuals. Unprejudiced discriminators might be those who unthinkingly practice sexism in their workplace by not considering females for certain positions that have traditionally been held by men. Prejudiced nondiscriminators are those who hold racist beliefs but don't act on them, such as a racist store owner who serves minority customers. Prejudiced discriminators include those who actively make disparaging remarks about others or who perpetuate hate crimes.
Discrimination also manifests in different ways. The scenarios above are examples of individual discrimination, but other types exist. Institutional discrimination occurs when a societal system has developed with embedded disenfranchisement of a group, such as the U.S. military's historical nonacceptance of minority sexualities (the "don't ask, don't tell" policy reflected this norm).
Institutional discrimination can also include the promotion of a group's status, such in the case of white privilege, which is the benefits people receive simply by being part of the dominant group.
While most white people are willing to admit that nonwhite people live with a set of disadvantages due to the color of their skin, very few are willing to acknowledge the benefits they receive.
Racial Tensions in the United States
The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO on August 9, 2014 illustrates racial tensions in the United States as well as the overlap between prejudice, discrimination, and institutional racism. On that day, Brown, a young unarmed black man, was killed by a white police officer named Darren Wilson. During the incident, Wilson directed Brown and his friend to walk on the sidewalk instead of in the street. While eyewitness accounts vary, they agree that an altercation occurred between Wilson and Brown. Wilson’s version has him shooting Brown in self-defense after Brown assaulted him, while Dorian Johnson, a friend of Brown also present at the time, claimed that Brown first ran away, then turned with his hands in the air to surrender, after which Johnson shot him repeatedly (Nobles and Bosman 2014). Three autopsies independently confirmed that Brown was shot six times (Lowery and Fears 2014).
The shooting focused attention on a number of race-related tensions in the United States. First, members of the predominantly black community viewed Brown’s death as the result of a white police officer racially profiling a black man (Nobles and Bosman 2014). In the days after, it was revealed that only three members of the town’s fifty-three-member police force were black (Nobles and Bosman 2014). The national dialogue shifted during the next few weeks, with some commentators pointing to a nationwidesedimentation of racial inequality and identifying redlining in Ferguson as a cause of the unbalanced racial composition in the community, in local political establishments, and in the police force (Bouie 2014). Redlining is the practice of routinely refusing mortgages for households and businesses located in predominately minority communities, while sedimentation of racial inequality describes the intergenerational impact of both practical and legalized racism that limits the abilities of black people to accumulate wealth.
Ferguson’s racial imbalance may explain in part why, even though in 2010 only about 63 percent of its population was black, in 2013 blacks were detained in 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches, and 93 percent of arrests (Missouri Attorney General’s Office 2014). In addition, de facto segregation in Ferguson’s schools, a race-based wealth gap, urban sprawl, and a black unemployment rate three times that of the white unemployment rate worsened existing racial tensions in Ferguson while also reflecting nationwide racial inequalities (Bouie 2014).
Multiple Identities
Golfer Tiger Woods has Chinese, Thai, African American, Native American, and Dutch heritage. Individuals with multiple ethnic backgrounds are becoming more common. (Photo courtesy of familymwr/flickr)
Prior to the twentieth century, racial intermarriage (referred to as miscegenation) was extremely rare, and in many places, illegal. In the later part of the twentieth century and in the twenty-first century, as Figure shows, attitudes have changed for the better. While the sexual subordination of slaves did result in children of mixed race, these children were usually considered black, and therefore, property. There was no concept of multiple racial identities with the possible exception of the Creole. Creole society developed in the port city of New Orleans, where a mixed-race culture grew from French and African inhabitants. Unlike in other parts of the country, “Creoles of color” had greater social, economic, and educational opportunities than most African Americans.
Increasingly during the modern era, the removal of miscegenation laws and a trend toward equal rights and legal protection against racism have steadily reduced the social stigma attached to racial exogamy (exogamy refers to marriage outside a person’s core social unit). It is now common for the children of racially mixed parents to acknowledge and celebrate their various ethnic identities. Golfer Tiger Woods, for instance, has Chinese, Thai, African American, Native American, and Dutch heritage; he jokingly refers to his ethnicity as “Cablinasian,” a term he coined to combine several of his ethnic backgrounds. While this is the trend, it is not yet evident in all aspects of our society. For example, the U.S. Census only recently added additional categories for people to identify themselves, such as non-white Hispanic. A growing number of people chose multiple races to describe themselves on the 2010 Census, paving the way for the 2020 Census to provide yet more choices.
THE CONFEDERATE FLAG VS. THE FIRST AMENDMENT
To some, the Confederate flag is a symbol of pride in Southern history. To others, it is a grim reminder of a degrading period of the United States’ past. (Photo courtesy of Eyeliam/flickr)
In January 2006, two girls walked into Burleson High School in Texas carrying purses that displayed large images of Confederate flags. School administrators told the girls that they were in violation of the dress code, which prohibited apparel with inappropriate symbolism or clothing that discriminated based on race. To stay in school, they’d have to have someone pick up their purses or leave them in the office. The girls chose to go home for the day but then challenged the school’s decision, appealing first to the principal, then to the district superintendent, then to the U.S. District Court, and finally to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Why did the school ban the purses, and why did it stand behind that ban, even when being sued? Why did the girls, identified anonymously in court documents as A.M. and A.T., pursue such strong legal measures for their right to carry the purses? The issue, of course, is not the purses: it is the Confederate flag that adorns them. The parties in this case join a long line of people and institutions that have fought for their right to display it, saying such a display is covered by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. In the end, the court sided with the district and noted that the Confederate flag carried symbolism significant enough to disrupt normal school activities.
While many young people in the United States like to believe that racism is mostly in the country’s past, this case illustrates how racism and discrimination are quite alive today. If the Confederate flag is synonymous with slavery, is there any place for its display in modern society? Those who fight for their right to display the flag say such a display should be covered by the First Amendment: the right to free speech. But others say the flag is equivalent to hate speech. Do you think that displaying the Confederate flag should considered free speech or hate speech?
Summary
Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people. Prejudice refers to thoughts and feelings, while discrimination refers to actions. Racism refers to the belief that one race is inherently superior or inferior to other races.
Section Quiz
1. Stereotypes can be based on:
1. race
2. ethnicity
3. gender
4. all of the above
Answer
D
1. What is discrimination?
1. Biased thoughts against an individual or group
2. Biased actions against an individual or group
3. Belief that a race different from yours is inferior
4. Another word for stereotyping
Answer
B
1. Which of the following is the best explanation of racism as a social fact?
1. It needs to be eradicated by laws.
2. It is like a magic pill.
3. It does not need the actions of individuals to continue.
4. None of the above
Answer
C
Short Answer
1. How do redlining and racial steering contribute to institutionalized racism?
2. Give an example of stereotyping that you see in everyday life. Explain what would need to happen for this to be eliminated.
Further Research
How far should First Amendment rights extend? Read more about the subject at the First Amendment Center:openstaxcollege.org/l/first_amendment_center
Learn more about institutional racism at www.splcenter.org
Learn more about how prejudice develops by watching the short documentary “Eye of the Storm”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjSHOaugO-0
Glossary
colorism
the belief that one type of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group
discrimination
prejudiced action against a group of people
institutional racism
racism embedded in social institutions
prejudice
biased thought based on flawed assumptions about a group of people
racial steering
the act of real estate agents directing prospective homeowners toward or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race
racism
a set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that are used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others
redlining
the practice of routinely refusing mortgages for households and business located in predominately minority communities
sedimentation of racial inequality
the intergenerational impact of de facto and de jure racism that limits the abilities of black people to accumulate wealth
stereotypes
oversimplified ideas about groups of people
white privilege
the benefits people receive simply by being part of the dominant group | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/11.03%3A_Stereotypes_Prejudice_and_Discrimination.txt |
Theoretical Perspectives
We can examine issues of race and ethnicity through three major sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. As you read through these theories, ask yourself which one makes the most sense and why. Do we need more than one theory to explain racism, prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination?
Functionalism
In the view of functionalism, racial and ethnic inequalities must have served an important function in order to exist as long as they have. This concept, of course, is problematic. How can racism and discrimination contribute positively to society? A functionalist might look at “functions” and “dysfunctions” caused by racial inequality. Nash (1964) focused his argument on the way racism is functional for the dominant group, for example, suggesting that racism morally justifies a racially unequal society. Consider the way slave owners justified slavery in the antebellum South, by suggesting black people were fundamentally inferior to white and preferred slavery to freedom.
Another way to apply the functionalist perspective to racism is to discuss the way racism can contribute positively to the functioning of society by strengthening bonds between in-groups members through the ostracism of out-group members. Consider how a community might increase solidarity by refusing to allow outsiders access. On the other hand, Rose (1951) suggested that dysfunctions associated with racism include the failure to take advantage of talent in the subjugated group, and that society must divert from other purposes the time and effort needed to maintain artificially constructed racial boundaries. Consider how much money, time, and effort went toward maintaining separate and unequal educational systems prior to the civil rights movement.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. A conflict theory perspective of U.S. history would examine the numerous past and current struggles between the white ruling class and racial and ethnic minorities, noting specific conflicts that have arisen when the dominant group perceived a threat from the minority group. In the late nineteenth century, the rising power of black Americans after the Civil War resulted in draconian Jim Crow laws that severely limited black political and social power. For example, Vivien Thomas (1910–1985), the black surgical technician who helped develop the groundbreaking surgical technique that saves the lives of “blue babies” was classified as a janitor for many years, and paid as such, despite the fact that he was conducting complicated surgical experiments. The years since the Civil War have showed a pattern of attempted disenfranchisement, with gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts aimed at predominantly minority neighborhoods.
Feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1990) developed intersection theory, which suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes. When we examine race and how it can bring us both advantages and disadvantages, it is important to acknowledge that the way we experience race is shaped, for example, by our gender and class. Multiple layers of disadvantage intersect to create the way we experience race. For example, if we want to understand prejudice, we must understand that the prejudice focused on a white woman because of her gender is very different from the layered prejudice focused on a poor Asian woman, who is affected by stereotypes related to being poor, being a woman, and her ethnic status.
Interactionism
For symbolic interactionists, race and ethnicity provide strong symbols as sources of identity. In fact, some interactionists propose that the symbols of race, not race itself, are what lead to racism. Famed Interactionist Herbert Blumer (1958) suggested that racial prejudice is formed through interactions between members of the dominant group: Without these interactions, individuals in the dominant group would not hold racist views. These interactions contribute to an abstract picture of the subordinate group that allows the dominant group to support its view of the subordinate group, and thus maintains the status quo. An example of this might be an individual whose beliefs about a particular group are based on images conveyed in popular media, and those are unquestionably believed because the individual has never personally met a member of that group. Another way to apply the interactionist perspective is to look at how people define their races and the race of others. As we discussed in relation to the social construction of race, since some people who claim a white identity have a greater amount of skin pigmentation than some people who claim a black identity, how did they come to define themselves as black or white?
Culture of Prejudice
Culture of prejudice refers to the theory that prejudice is embedded in our culture. We grow up surrounded by images of stereotypes and casual expressions of racism and prejudice. Consider the casually racist imagery on grocery store shelves or the stereotypes that fill popular movies and advertisements. It is easy to see how someone living in the Northeastern United States, who may know no Mexican Americans personally, might gain a stereotyped impression from such sources as Speedy Gonzalez or Taco Bell’s talking Chihuahua. Because we are all exposed to these images and thoughts, it is impossible to know to what extent they have influenced our thought processes.
Summary
Functionalist views of race study the role dominant and subordinate groups play to create a stable social structure. Conflict theorists examine power disparities and struggles between various racial and ethnic groups. Interactionists see race and ethnicity as important sources of individual identity and social symbolism. The concept of culture of prejudice recognizes that all people are subject to stereotypes that are ingrained in their culture.
Section Quiz
1. As a Caucasian in the United States, being reasonably sure that you will be dealing with authority figures of the same race as you is a result of:
1. intersection theory
2. conflict theory
3. white privilege
4. scapegoating theory
Answer
C
1. Speedy Gonzalez is an example of:
1. intersection theory
2. stereotyping
3. interactionist view
4. culture of prejudice
Answer
B
Short Answer
1. Give three examples of white privilege. Do you know people who have experienced this? From what perspective?
2. What is the worst example of culture of prejudice you can think of? What are your reasons for thinking it is the worst?
Further Research
Do you know someone who practices white privilege? Do you practice it? Explore the concept with this checklist:openstaxcollege.org/l/white_p...lege_checklist to see how much of it holds true for you or others.
Glossary
culture of prejudice
the theory that prejudice is embedded in our culture
intersection theory
theory that suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/11.04%3A_Theories_of_Race_and_Ethnicity.txt |
Intergroup relations (relationships between different groups of people) range along a spectrum between tolerance and intolerance. The most tolerant form of intergroup relations is pluralism, in which no distinction is made between minority and majority groups, but instead there’s equal standing. At the other end of the continuum are amalgamation, expulsion, and even genocide—stark examples of intolerant intergroup relations.
Genocide
Genocide, the deliberate annihilation of a targeted (usually subordinate) group, is the most toxic intergroup relationship. Historically, we can see that genocide has included both the intent to exterminate a group and the function of exterminating of a group, intentional or not.
Possibly the most well-known case of genocide is Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish people in the first part of the twentieth century. Also known as the Holocaust, the explicit goal of Hitler’s “Final Solution” was the eradication of European Jewry, as well as the destruction of other minority groups such as Catholics, people with disabilities, and homosexuals. With forced emigration, concentration camps, and mass executions in gas chambers, Hitler’s Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of 12 million people, 6 million of whom were Jewish. Hitler’s intent was clear, and the high Jewish death toll certainly indicates that Hitler and his regime committed genocide. But how do we understand genocide that is not so overt and deliberate?
The treatment of aboriginal Australians is also an example of genocide committed against indigenous people. Historical accounts suggest that between 1824 and 1908, white settlers killed more than 10,000 native aborigines in Tasmania and Australia (Tatz 2006). Another example is the European colonization of North America. Some historians estimate that Native American populations dwindled from approximately 12 million people in the year 1500 to barely 237,000 by the year 1900 (Lewy 2004). European settlers coerced American Indians off their own lands, often causing thousands of deaths in forced removals, such as occurred in the Cherokee or Potawatomi Trail of Tears. Settlers also enslaved Native Americans and forced them to give up their religious and cultural practices. But the major cause of Native American death was neither slavery nor war nor forced removal: it was the introduction of European diseases and Indians’ lack of immunity to them. Smallpox, diphtheria, and measles flourished among indigenous American tribes who had no exposure to the diseases and no ability to fight them. Quite simply, these diseases decimated the tribes. How planned this genocide was remains a topic of contention. Some argue that the spread of disease was an unintended effect of conquest, while others believe it was intentional citing rumors of smallpox-infected blankets being distributed as “gifts” to tribes.
Genocide is not a just a historical concept; it is practiced today. Recently, ethnic and geographic conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. As part of an ongoing land conflict, the Sudanese government and their state-sponsored Janjaweed militia have led a campaign of killing, forced displacement, and systematic rape of Darfuri people. Although a treaty was signed in 2011, the peace is fragile.
Expulsion
Expulsion refers to a subordinate group being forced, by a dominant group, to leave a certain area or country. As seen in the examples of the Trail of Tears and the Holocaust, expulsion can be a factor in genocide. However, it can also stand on its own as a destructive group interaction. Expulsion has often occurred historically with an ethnic or racial basis. In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in 1942, after the Japanese government’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The Order authorized the establishment of internment camps for anyone with as little as one-eighth Japanese ancestry (i.e., one great-grandparent who was Japanese). Over 120,000 legal Japanese residents and Japanese U.S. citizens, many of them children, were held in these camps for up to four years, despite the fact that there was never any evidence of collusion or espionage. (In fact, many Japanese Americans continued to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States by serving in the U.S. military during the War.) In the 1990s, the U.S. executive branch issued a formal apology for this expulsion; reparation efforts continue today.
Segregation
Segregation refers to the physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions. It is important to distinguish between de jure segregation (segregation that is enforced by law) and de facto segregation (segregation that occurs without laws but because of other factors). A stark example of de jure segregation is the apartheid movement of South Africa, which existed from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, black South Africans were stripped of their civil rights and forcibly relocated to areas that segregated them physically from their white compatriots. Only after decades of degradation, violent uprisings, and international advocacy was apartheid finally abolished.
De jure segregation occurred in the United States for many years after the Civil War. During this time, many former Confederate states passed Jim Crow laws that required segregated facilities for blacks and whites. These laws were codified in 1896’s landmark Supreme Court case Plessey v. Ferguson, which stated that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional. For the next five decades, blacks were subjected to legalized discrimination, forced to live, work, and go to school in separate—butunequal—facilities. It wasn’t until 1954 and the Brown v. Board of Education case that the Supreme Court declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” thus ending de jure segregation in the United States.
In the “Jim Crow” South, it was legal to have “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites. (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons)
De facto segregation, however, cannot be abolished by any court mandate. Segregation is still alive and well in the United States, with different racial or ethnic groups often segregated by neighborhood, borough, or parish. Sociologists use segregation indices to measure racial segregation of different races in different areas. The indices employ a scale from zero to 100, where zero is the most integrated and 100 is the least. In the New York metropolitan area, for instance, the black-white segregation index was seventy-nine for the years 2005–2009. This means that 79 percent of either blacks or whites would have to move in order for each neighborhood to have the same racial balance as the whole metro region (Population Studies Center 2010).
Pluralism
Pluralism is represented by the ideal of the United States as a “salad bowl”: a great mixture of different cultures where each culture retains its own identity and yet adds to the flavor of the whole. True pluralism is characterized by mutual respect on the part of all cultures, both dominant and subordinate, creating a multicultural environment of acceptance. In reality, true pluralism is a difficult goal to reach. In the United States, the mutual respect required by pluralism is often missing, and the nation’s past pluralist model of a melting pot posits a society where cultural differences aren’t embraced as much as erased.
Assimilation
Assimilation describes the process by which a minority individual or group gives up its own identity by taking on the characteristics of the dominant culture. In the United States, which has a history of welcoming and absorbing immigrants from different lands, assimilation has been a function of immigration.
For many immigrants to the United States, the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of freedom and a new life. Unfortunately, they often encounter prejudice and discrimination. (Photo courtesy of Mark Heard/flickr)
Most people in the United States have immigrant ancestors. In relatively recent history, between 1890 and 1920, the United States became home to around 24 million immigrants. In the decades since then, further waves of immigrants have come to these shores and have eventually been absorbed into U.S. culture, sometimes after facing extended periods of prejudice and discrimination. Assimilation may lead to the loss of the minority group’s cultural identity as they become absorbed into the dominant culture, but assimilation has minimal to no impact on the majority group’s cultural identity.
Some groups may keep only symbolic gestures of their original ethnicity. For instance, many Irish Americans may celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, many Hindu Americans enjoy a Diwali festival, and many Mexican Americans may celebrate Cinco de Mayo (a May 5 commemoration of Mexican independence and heritage). However, for the rest of the year, other aspects of their originating culture may be forgotten.
Assimilation is antithetical to the “salad bowl” created by pluralism; rather than maintaining their own cultural flavor, subordinate cultures give up their own traditions in order to conform to their new environment. Sociologists measure the degree to which immigrants have assimilated to a new culture with four benchmarks: socioeconomic status, spatial concentration, language assimilation, and intermarriage. When faced with racial and ethnic discrimination, it can be difficult for new immigrants to fully assimilate. Language assimilation, in particular, can be a formidable barrier, limiting employment and educational options and therefore constraining growth in socioeconomic status.
Amalgamation
Amalgamation is the process by which a minority group and a majority group combine to form a new group. Amalgamation creates the classic “melting pot” analogy; unlike the “salad bowl,” in which each culture retains its individuality, the “melting pot” ideal sees the combination of cultures that results in a new culture entirely.
Amalgamation, also known as miscegenation, is achieved through intermarriage between races. In the United States, antimiscegenation laws flourished in the South during the Jim Crow era. It wasn’t until 1967’s Loving v. Virginia that the last antimiscegenation law was struck from the books, making these laws unconstitutional.
Summary
Intergroup relations range from a tolerant approach of pluralism to intolerance as severe as genocide. In pluralism, groups retain their own identity. In assimilation, groups conform to the identity of the dominant group. In amalgamation, groups combine to form a new group identity.
Section Quiz
1. Which intergroup relation displays the least tolerance?
1. Segregation
2. Assimilation
3. Genocide
4. Expulsion
Answer
C
1. What doctrine justified legal segregation in the South?
1. Jim Crow
2. Plessey v. Ferguson
3. De jure
4. Separate but equal
Answer
D
1. What intergroup relationship is represented by the “salad bowl” metaphor?
1. Assimilation
2. Pluralism
3. Amalgamation
4. Segregation
Answer
B
1. Amalgamation is represented by the _____________ metaphor.
1. melting pot
2. Statue of Liberty
3. salad bowl
4. separate but equal
Answer
A
Short Answer
1. Do you believe immigration laws should foster an approach of pluralism, assimilation, or amalgamation? Which perspective do you think is most supported by current U.S. immigration policies?
2. Which intergroup relation do you think is the most beneficial to the subordinate group? To society as a whole? Why?
Further Research
So you think you know your own assumptions? Check and find out with the Implicit Association Test:http://openstaxcollege.org/l/implici...sociation_test
What do you know about the treatment of Australia’s aboriginal population? Find out more by viewing the feature-length documentary Our Generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcq4oGL0wlI
Glossary
amalgamation
the process by which a minority group and a majority group combine to form a new group
assimilation
the process by which a minority individual or group takes on the characteristics of the dominant culture
expulsion
the act of a dominant group forcing a subordinate group to leave a certain area or even the country
genocide
the deliberate annihilation of a targeted (usually subordinate) group
pluralism
the ideal of the United States as a “salad bowl:” a mixture of different cultures where each culture retains its own identity and yet adds to the “flavor” of the whole
segregation
the physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/11.05%3A_Intergroup_Relationships.txt |
When colonists came to the New World, they found a land that did not need “discovering” since it was already occupied. While the first wave of immigrants came from Western Europe, eventually the bulk of people entering North America were from Northern Europe, then Eastern Europe, then Latin America and Asia. And let us not forget the forced immigration of African slaves. Most of these groups underwent a period of disenfranchisement in which they were relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy before they managed (for those who could) to achieve social mobility. Today, our society is multicultural, although the extent to which this multiculturality is embraced varies, and the many manifestations of multiculturalism carry significant political repercussions. The sections below will describe how several groups became part of U.S. society, discuss the history of intergroup relations for each faction, and assess each group’s status today.
Native Americans
The only nonimmigrant ethnic group in the United States, Native Americans once numbered in the millions but by 2010 made up only 0.9 percent of U.S. populace; see above (U.S. Census 2010). Currently, about 2.9 million people identify themselves as Native American alone, while an additional 2.3 million identify them as Native American mixed with another ethnic group (Norris, Vines, and Hoeffel 2012).
SPORTS TEAMS WITH NATIVE AMERICAN NAMES
The sports world abounds with team names like the Indians, the Warriors, the Braves, and even the Savages and Redskins. These names arise from historically prejudiced views of Native Americans as fierce, brave, and strong savages: attributes that would be beneficial to a sports team, but are not necessarily beneficial to people in the United States who should be seen as more than just fierce savages.
Many Native Americans (and others) believe sports teams with names like the Indians, Braves, and Warriors perpetuate unwelcome stereotypes. (Photo (a) courtesy of public domain/Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Chris Brown/flickr)
Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) has been campaigning against the use of such mascots, asserting that the “warrior savage myth . . . reinforces the racist view that Indians are uncivilized and uneducated and it has been used to justify policies of forced assimilation and destruction of Indian culture” (NCAI Resolution #TUL-05-087 2005). The campaign has met with only limited success. While some teams have changed their names, hundreds of professional, college, and K–12 school teams still have names derived from this stereotype. Another group, American Indian Cultural Support (AICS), is especially concerned with the use of such names at K–12 schools, influencing children when they should be gaining a fuller and more realistic understanding of Native Americans than such stereotypes supply.
What do you think about such names? Should they be allowed or banned? What argument would a symbolic interactionist make on this topic?
How and Why They Came
The earliest immigrants to America arrived millennia before European immigrants. Dates of the migration are debated with estimates ranging from between 45,000 and 12,000 BCE. It is thought that early Indians migrated to this new land in search of big game to hunt, which they found in huge herds of grazing herbivores in the Americas. Over the centuries and then the millennia, Native American culture blossomed into an intricate web of hundreds of interconnected tribes, each with its own customs, traditions, languages, and religions.
History of Intergroup Relations
Native American culture prior to European settlement is referred to as Pre-Columbian: that is, prior to the coming of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Mistakenly believing that he had landed in the East Indies, Columbus named the indigenous people “Indians,” a name that has persisted for centuries despite being a geographical misnomer and one used to blanket 500 distinct groups who each have their own languages and traditions.
The history of intergroup relations between European colonists and Native Americans is a brutal one. As discussed in the section on genocide, the effect of European settlement of the Americans was to nearly destroy the indigenous population. And although Native Americans’ lack of immunity to European diseases caused the most deaths, overt mistreatment of Native Americans by Europeans was devastating as well.
From the first Spanish colonists to the French, English, and Dutch who followed, European settlers took what land they wanted and expanded across the continent at will. If indigenous people tried to retain their stewardship of the land, Europeans fought them off with superior weapons. A key element of this issue is the indigenous view of land and land ownership. Most tribes considered the earth a living entity whose resources they were stewards of, the concepts of land ownership and conquest didn’t exist in Native American society. Europeans’ domination of the Americas was indeed a conquest; one scholar points out that Native Americans are the only minority group in the United States whose subordination occurred purely through conquest by the dominant group (Marger 1993).
After the establishment of the United States government, discrimination against Native Americans was codified and formalized in a series of laws intended to subjugate them and keep them from gaining any power. Some of the most impactful laws are as follows:
• The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced the relocation of any native tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river.
• The Indian Appropriation Acts funded further removals and declared that no Indian tribe could be recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with which the U.S. government would have to make treaties. This made it even easier for the U.S. government to take land it wanted.
• The Dawes Act of 1887 reversed the policy of isolating Native Americans on reservations, instead forcing them onto individual properties that were intermingled with white settlers, thereby reducing their capacity for power as a group.
Native American culture was further eroded by the establishment of Indian boarding schools in the late nineteenth century. These schools, run by both Christian missionaries and the United States government, had the express purpose of “civilizing” Native American children and assimilating them into white society. The boarding schools were located off-reservation to ensure that children were separated from their families and culture. Schools forced children to cut their hair, speak English, and practice Christianity. Physical and sexual abuses were rampant for decades; only in 1987 did the Bureau of Indian Affairs issue a policy on sexual abuse in boarding schools. Some scholars argue that many of the problems that Native Americans face today result from almost a century of mistreatment at these boarding schools.
Current Status
The eradication of Native American culture continued until the 1960s, when Native Americans were able to participate in and benefit from the civil rights movement. The Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 guaranteed Indian tribes most of the rights of the United States Bill of Rights. New laws like the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975 and the Education Assistance Act of the same year recognized tribal governments and gave them more power. Indian boarding schools have dwindled to only a few, and Native American cultural groups are striving to preserve and maintain old traditions to keep them from being lost forever.
However, Native Americans (some of whom now wished to be called American Indians so as to avoid the “savage” connotations of the term “native”) still suffer the effects of centuries of degradation. Long-term poverty, inadequate education, cultural dislocation, and high rates of unemployment contribute to Native American populations falling to the bottom of the economic spectrum. Native Americans also suffer disproportionately with lower life expectancies than most groups in the United States.
African Americans
As discussed in the section on race, the term African American can be a misnomer for many individuals. Many people with dark skin may have their more recent roots in Europe or the Caribbean, seeing themselves as Dominican American or Dutch American. Further, actual immigrants from Africa may feel that they have more of a claim to the term African American than those who are many generations removed from ancestors who originally came to this country. This section will focus on the experience of the slaves who were transported from Africa to the United States, and their progeny. Currently, the U.S. Census Bureau (2014) estimates that 13.2 percent of the United States' population is black.
How and Why They Came
If Native Americans are the only minority group whose subordinate status occurred by conquest, African Americans are the exemplar minority group in the United States whose ancestors did not come here by choice. A Dutch sea captain brought the first Africans to the Virginia colony of Jamestown in 1619 and sold them as indentured servants. This was not an uncommon practice for either blacks or whites, and indentured servants were in high demand. For the next century, black and white indentured servants worked side by side. But the growing agricultural economy demanded greater and cheaper labor, and by 1705, Virginia passed the slave codes declaring that any foreign-born non-Christian could be a slave, and that slaves were considered property.
The next 150 years saw the rise of U.S. slavery, with black Africans being kidnapped from their own lands and shipped to the New World on the trans-Atlantic journey known as the Middle Passage. Once in the Americas, the black population grew until U.S.-born blacks outnumbered those born in Africa. But colonial (and later, U.S.) slave codes declared that the child of a slave was a slave, so the slave class was created. By 1869, the slave trade was internal in the United States, with slaves being bought and sold across state lines like livestock.
History of Intergroup Relations
There is no starker illustration of the dominant-subordinate group relationship than that of slavery. In order to justify their severely discriminatory behavior, slaveholders and their supporters had to view blacks as innately inferior. Slaves were denied even the most basic rights of citizenship, a crucial factor for slaveholders and their supporters. Slavery poses an excellent example of conflict theory’s perspective on race relations; the dominant group needed complete control over the subordinate group in order to maintain its power. Whippings, executions, rapes, denial of schooling and health care were all permissible and widely practiced.
Slavery eventually became an issue over which the nation divided into geographically and ideologically distinct factions, leading to the Civil War. And while the abolition of slavery on moral grounds was certainly a catalyst to war, it was not the only driving force. Students of U.S. history will know that the institution of slavery was crucial to the Southern economy, whose production of crops like rice, cotton, and tobacco relied on the virtually limitless and cheap labor that slavery provided. In contrast, the North didn’t benefit economically from slavery, resulting in an economic disparity tied to racial/political issues.
A century later, the civil rights movement was characterized by boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and freedom rides: demonstrations by a subordinate group that would no longer willingly submit to domination. The major blow to America’s formally institutionalized racism was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Act, which is still followed today, banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Some sociologists, however, would argue that institutionalized racism persists.
Current Status
Although government-sponsored, formalized discrimination against African Americans has been outlawed, true equality does not yet exist. The National Urban League’s 2011 Equality Index reports that blacks’ overall equality level with whites has dropped in the past year, from 71.5 percent to 71.1 percent in 2010. The Index, which has been published since 2005, notes a growing trend of increased inequality with whites, especially in the areas of unemployment, insurance coverage, and incarceration. Blacks also trail whites considerably in the areas of economics, health, and education.
To what degree do racism and prejudice contribute to this continued inequality? The answer is complex. 2008 saw the election of this country’s first African American president: Barack Hussein Obama. Despite being popularly identified as black, we should note that President Obama is of a mixed background that is equally white, and although all presidents have been publicly mocked at times (Gerald Ford was depicted as a klutz, Bill Clinton as someone who could not control his libido), a startling percentage of the critiques of Obama have been based on his race. The most blatant of these was the controversy over his birth certificate, where the “birther” movement questioned his citizenship and right to hold office. Although blacks have come a long way from slavery, the echoes of centuries of disempowerment are still evident.
Asian Americans
Like many groups this section discusses, Asian Americans represent a great diversity of cultures and backgrounds. The experience of a Japanese American whose family has been in the United States for three generations will be drastically different from a Laotian American who has only been in the United States for a few years. This section primarily discusses Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese immigrants and shows the differences between their experiences. The most recent estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau (2014) suggest about 5.3 percent of the population identify themselves as Asian.
How and Why They Came
The national and ethnic diversity of Asian American immigration history is reflected in the variety of their experiences in joining U.S. society. Asian immigrants have come to the United States in waves, at different times, and for different reasons.
The first Asian immigrants to come to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century were Chinese. These immigrants were primarily men whose intention was to work for several years in order to earn incomes to support their families in China. Their main destination was the American West, where the Gold Rush was drawing people with its lure of abundant money. The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was underway at this time, and the Central Pacific section hired thousands of migrant Chinese men to complete the laying of rails across the rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range. Chinese men also engaged in other manual labor like mining and agricultural work. The work was grueling and underpaid, but like many immigrants, they persevered.
Japanese immigration began in the 1880s, on the heels of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Many Japanese immigrants came to Hawaii to participate in the sugar industry; others came to the mainland, especially to California. Unlike the Chinese, however, the Japanese had a strong government that negotiated with the U.S. government to ensure the well-being of their immigrants. Japanese men were able to bring their wives and families to the United States, and were thus able to produce second- and third-generation Japanese Americans more quickly than their Chinese counterparts.
The most recent large-scale Asian immigration came from Korea and Vietnam and largely took place during the second half of the twentieth century. While Korean immigration has been fairly gradual, Vietnamese immigration occurred primarily post-1975, after the fall of Saigon and the establishment of restrictive communist policies in Vietnam. Whereas many Asian immigrants came to the United States to seek better economic opportunities, Vietnamese immigrants came as political refugees, seeking asylum from harsh conditions in their homeland. The Refugee Act of 1980 helped them to find a place to settle in the United States.
Thirty-five Vietnamese refugees wait to be taken aboard the amphibious USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19). They are being rescued from a thirty-five-foot fishing boat 350 miles northeast of Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, after spending eight days at sea. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons)
History of Intergroup Relations
Chinese immigration came to an abrupt end with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This act was a result of anti-Chinese sentiment burgeoned by a depressed economy and loss of jobs. White workers blamed Chinese migrants for taking jobs, and the passage of the Act meant the number of Chinese workers decreased. Chinese men did not have the funds to return to China or to bring their families to the United States, so they remained physically and culturally segregated in the Chinatowns of large cities. Later legislation, the Immigration Act of 1924, further curtailed Chinese immigration. The Act included the race-based National Origins Act, which was aimed at keeping U.S. ethnic stock as undiluted as possible by reducing “undesirable” immigrants. It was not until after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that Chinese immigration again increased, and many Chinese families were reunited.
Although Japanese Americans have deep, long-reaching roots in the United States, their history here has not always been smooth. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 was aimed at them and other Asian immigrants, and it prohibited aliens from owning land. An even uglier action was the Japanese internment camps of World War II, discussed earlier as an illustration of expulsion.
Current Status
Asian Americans certainly have been subject to their share of racial prejudice, despite the seemingly positive stereotype as the model minority. The model minority stereotype is applied to a minority group that is seen as reaching significant educational, professional, and socioeconomic levels without challenging the existing establishment.
This stereotype is typically applied to Asian groups in the United States, and it can result in unrealistic expectations, by putting a stigma on members of this group that do not meet the expectations. Stereotyping all Asians as smart and capable can also lead to a lack of much-needed government assistance and to educational and professional discrimination.
Hispanic Americans
Hispanic Americans have a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities. The segment of the U.S. population that self-identifies as Hispanic in 2013 was recently estimated at 17.1 percent of the total (U.S. Census Bureau 2014). According to the 2010 U.S. Census, about 75 percent of the respondents who identify as Hispanic report being of Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban origin. Of the total Hispanic group, 60 percent reported as Mexican, 44 percent reported as Cuban, and 9 percent reported as Puerto Rican. Remember that the U.S. Census allows people to report as being more than one ethnicity.
Not only are there wide differences among the different origins that make up the Hispanic American population, but there are also different names for the group itself. The 2010 U.S. Census states that “Hispanic” or “Latino” refers to a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.” There have been some disagreements over whether Hispanic or Latino is the correct term for a group this diverse, and whether it would be better for people to refer to themselves as being of their origin specifically, for example, Mexican American or Dominican American. This section will compare the experiences of Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans.
How and Why They Came
Mexican Americans form the largest Hispanic subgroup and also the oldest. Mexican migration to the United States started in the early 1900s in response to the need for cheap agricultural labor. Mexican migration was often circular; workers would stay for a few years and then go back to Mexico with more money than they could have made in their country of origin. The length of Mexico’s shared border with the United States has made immigration easier than for many other immigrant groups.
Cuban Americans are the second-largest Hispanic subgroup, and their history is quite different from that of Mexican Americans. The main wave of Cuban immigration to the United States started after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and reached its crest with the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Castro’s Cuban Revolution ushered in an era of communism that continues to this day. To avoid having their assets seized by the government, many wealthy and educated Cubans migrated north, generally to the Miami area.
History of Intergroup Relations
For several decades, Mexican workers crossed the long border into the United States, both legally and illegally, to work in the fields that provided produce for the developing United States. Western growers needed a steady supply of labor, and the 1940s and 1950s saw the official federal Bracero Program (bracero is Spanish for strong-arm) that offered protection to Mexican guest workers. Interestingly, 1954 also saw the enactment of “Operation Wetback,” which deported thousands of illegal Mexican workers. From these examples, we can see the U.S. treatment of immigration from Mexico has been ambivalent at best.
Sociologist Douglas Massey (2006) suggests that although the average standard of living in Mexico may be lower in the United States, it is not so low as to make permanent migration the goal of most Mexicans. However, the strengthening of the border that began with 1986’s Immigration Reform and Control Act has made one-way migration the rule for most Mexicans. Massey argues that the rise of illegal one-way immigration of Mexicans is a direct outcome of the law that was intended to reduce it.
Cuban Americans, perhaps because of their relative wealth and education level at the time of immigration, have fared better than many immigrants. Further, because they were fleeing a Communist country, they were given refugee status and offered protection and social services. The Cuban Migration Agreement of 1995 has curtailed legal immigration from Cuba, leading many Cubans to try to immigrate illegally by boat. According to a 2009 report from the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. government applies a “wet foot/dry foot” policy toward Cuban immigrants; Cubans who are intercepted while still at sea will be returned to Cuba, while those who reach the shore will be permitted to stay in the United States.
Current Status
Mexican Americans, especially those who are here illegally, are at the center of a national debate about immigration. Myers (2007) observes that no other minority group (except the Chinese) has immigrated to the United States in such an environment of illegality. He notes that in some years, three times as many Mexican immigrants may have entered the United States illegally as those who arrived legally. It should be noted that this is due to enormous disparity of economic opportunity on two sides of an open border, not because of any inherent inclination to break laws. In his report, “Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States,” Jacob Vigdor (2008) states that Mexican immigrants experience relatively low rates of economic and civil assimilation. He further suggests that “the slow rates of economic and civic assimilation set Mexicans apart from other immigrants, and may reflect the fact that the large numbers of Mexican immigrants residing in the United States illegally have few opportunities to advance themselves along these dimensions.”
By contrast, Cuban Americans are often seen as a model minority group within the larger Hispanic group. Many Cubans had higher socioeconomic status when they arrived in this country, and their anti-Communist agenda has made them welcome refugees to this country. In south Florida, especially, Cuban Americans are active in local politics and professional life. As with Asian Americans, however, being a model minority can mask the issue of powerlessness that these minority groups face in U.S. society.
ARIZONA’S SENATE BILL 1070
Protesters in Arizona dispute the harsh new anti-immigration law. (Photo courtesy of rprathap/flickr)
As both legal and illegal immigrants, and with high population numbers, Mexican Americans are often the target of stereotyping, racism, and discrimination. A harsh example of this is in Arizona, where a stringent immigration law—known as SB 1070 (for Senate Bill 1070)—has caused a nationwide controversy. The law requires that during a lawful stop, detention, or arrest, Arizona police officers must establish the immigration status of anyone they suspect may be here illegally. The law makes it a crime for individuals to fail to have documents confirming their legal status, and it gives police officers the right to detain people they suspect may be in the country illegally.
To many, the most troublesome aspect of this law is the latitude it affords police officers in terms of whose citizenship they may question. Having “reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States” is reason enough to demand immigration papers (Senate Bill 1070 2010). Critics say this law will encourage racial profiling (the illegal practice of law enforcement using race as a basis for suspecting someone of a crime), making it hazardous to be caught “Driving While Brown,” a takeoff on the legal term Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) or the slang reference of “Driving While Black.” Driving While Brown refers to the likelihood of getting pulled over just for being nonwhite.
SB 1070 has been the subject of many lawsuits, from parties as diverse as Arizona police officers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and even the federal government, which is suing on the basis of Arizona contradicting federal immigration laws (ACLU 2011). The future of SB 1070 is uncertain, but many other states have tried or are trying to pass similar measures. Do you think such measures are appropriate?
Arab Americans
If ever a category was hard to define, the various groups lumped under the name “Arab American” is it. After all, Hispanic Americans or Asian Americans are so designated because of their counties of origin. But for Arab Americans, their country of origin—Arabia—has not existed for centuries. In addition, Arab Americans represent all religious practices, despite the stereotype that all Arabic people practice Islam. As Myers (2007) asserts, not all Arabs are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arab, complicating the stereotype of what it means to be an Arab American. Geographically, the Arab region comprises the Middle East and parts of northern Africa. People whose ancestry lies in that area or who speak primarily Arabic may consider themselves Arabs.
The U.S. Census has struggled with the issue of Arab identity. The 2010 Census, as in previous years, did not offer an “Arab” box to check under the question of race. Individuals who want to be counted as Arabs had to check the box for “Some other race” and then write in their race. However, when the Census data is tallied, they will be marked as white. This is problematic, however, denying Arab Americans opportunities for federal assistance. According to the best estimates of the U.S. Census Bureau, the Arabic population in the United States grew from 850,000 in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2000, an increase of .07 percent (Asi and Beaulieu 2013).
Why They Came
The first Arab immigrants came to this country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were predominantly Syrian, Lebanese, and Jordanian Christians, and they came to escape persecution and to make a better life. These early immigrants and their descendants, who were more likely to think of themselves as Syrian or Lebanese than Arab, represent almost half of the Arab American population today (Myers 2007). Restrictive immigration policies from the 1920s until 1965 curtailed all immigration, but Arab immigration since 1965 has been steady. Immigrants from this time period have been more likely to be Muslim and more highly educated, escaping political unrest and looking for better opportunities.
History of Intergroup Relations
Relations between Arab Americans and the dominant majority have been marked by mistrust, misinformation, and deeply entrenched beliefs. Helen Samhan of the Arab American Institute suggests that Arab-Israeli conflicts in the 1970s contributed significantly to cultural and political anti-Arab sentiment in the United States (2001). The United States has historically supported the State of Israel, while some Middle Eastern countries deny the existence of the Israeli state. Disputes over these issues have involved Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine.
As is often the case with stereotyping and prejudice, the actions of extremists come to define the entire group, regardless of the fact that most U.S. citizens with ties to the Middle Eastern community condemn terrorist actions, as do most inhabitants of the Middle East. Would it be fair to judge all Catholics by the events of the Inquisition? Of course, the United States was deeply affected by the events of September 11, 2001. This event has left a deep scar on the American psyche, and it has fortified anti-Arab sentiment for a large percentage of Americans. In the first month after 9/11, hundreds of hate crimes were perpetrated against people who looked like they might be of Arab descent.
The proposed Park51 Muslim Community Center generated heated controversy due to its close proximity to Ground Zero. In these photos, people march in protest against the center, while counter-protesters demonstrate their support. (Photos (a) and (b) courtesy of David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)
Current Status
Although the rate of hate crimes against Arab Americans has slowed, Arab Americans are still victims of racism and prejudice. Racial profiling has proceeded against Arab Americans as a matter of course since 9/11. Particularly when engaged in air travel, being young and Arab-looking is enough to warrant a special search or detainment. This Islamophobia (irrational fear of or hatred against Muslims) does not show signs of abating. Scholars noted that white domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, who detonated a bomb at an Oklahoma courthouse in 1995, have not inspired similar racial profiling or hate crimes against whites.
White Ethnic Americans
As we have seen, there is no minority group that fits easily in a category or that can be described simply. While sociologists believe that individual experiences can often be understood in light of their social characteristics (such as race, class, or gender), we must balance this perspective with awareness that no two individuals’ experiences are alike. Making generalizations can lead to stereotypes and prejudice. The same is true for white ethnic Americans, who come from diverse backgrounds and have had a great variety of experiences. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2014), 77.7 percent of U.S. adults currently identify themselves as white alone. In this section, we will focus on German, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants.
Why They Came
White ethnic Europeans formed the second and third great waves of immigration, from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. They joined a newly minted United States that was primarily made up of white Protestants from England. While most immigrants came searching for a better life, their experiences were not all the same.
The first major influx of European immigrants came from Germany and Ireland, starting in the 1820s. Germans came both for economic opportunity and to escape political unrest and military conscription, especially after the Revolutions of 1848. Many German immigrants of this period were political refugees: liberals who wanted to escape from an oppressive government. They were well-off enough to make their way inland, and they formed heavily German enclaves in the Midwest that exist to this day.
The Irish immigrants of the same time period were not always as well off financially, especially after the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. Irish immigrants settled mainly in the cities of the East Coast, where they were employed as laborers and where they faced significant discrimination.
German and Irish immigration continued into the late 19th century and earlier 20th century, at which point the numbers for Southern and Eastern European immigrants started growing as well. Italians, mainly from the Southern part of the country, began arriving in large numbers in the 1890s. Eastern European immigrants—people from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary—started arriving around the same time. Many of these Eastern Europeans were peasants forced into a hardscrabble existence in their native lands; political unrest, land shortages, and crop failures drove them to seek better opportunities in the United States. The Eastern European immigration wave also included Jewish people escaping pogroms (anti-Jewish uprisings) of Eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement in what was then Poland and Russia.
History of Intergroup Relations
In a broad sense, German immigrants were not victimized to the same degree as many of the other subordinate groups this section discusses. While they may not have been welcomed with open arms, they were able to settle in enclaves and establish roots. A notable exception to this was during the lead up to World War I and through World War II, when anti-German sentiment was virulent.
Irish immigrants, many of whom were very poor, were more of an underclass than the Germans. In Ireland, the English had oppressed the Irish for centuries, eradicating their language and culture and discriminating against their religion (Catholicism). Although the Irish had a larger population than the English, they were a subordinate group. This dynamic reached into the new world, where Anglo Americans saw Irish immigrants as a race apart: dirty, lacking ambition, and suitable for only the most menial jobs. In fact, Irish immigrants were subject to criticism identical to that with which the dominant group characterized African Americans. By necessity, Irish immigrants formed tight communities segregated from their Anglo neighbors.
The later wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was also subject to intense discrimination and prejudice. In particular, the dominant group—which now included second- and third-generation Germans and Irish—saw Italian immigrants as the dregs of Europe and worried about the purity of the American race (Myers 2007). Italian immigrants lived in segregated slums in Northeastern cities, and in some cases were even victims of violence and lynchings similar to what African Americans endured. They worked harder and were paid less than other workers, often doing the dangerous work that other laborers were reluctant to take on.
Current Status
The U.S. Census from 2008 shows that 16.5 percent of respondents reported being of German descent: the largest group in the country. For many years, German Americans endeavored to maintain a strong cultural identity, but they are now culturally assimilated into the dominant culture.
There are now more Irish Americans in the United States than there are Irish in Ireland. One of the country’s largest cultural groups, Irish Americans have slowly achieved acceptance and assimilation into the dominant group.
Myers (2007) states that Italian Americans’ cultural assimilation is “almost complete, but with remnants of ethnicity.” The presence of “Little Italy” neighborhoods—originally segregated slums where Italians congregated in the nineteenth century—exist today. While tourists flock to the saints’ festivals in Little Italies, most Italian Americans have moved to the suburbs at the same rate as other white groups.
Summary
The history of the U.S. people contains an infinite variety of experiences that sociologist understand follow patterns. From the indigenous people who first inhabited these lands to the waves of immigrants over the past 500 years, migration is an experience with many shared characteristics. Most groups have experienced various degrees of prejudice and discrimination as they have gone through the process of assimilation.
Section Quiz
1. What makes Native Americans unique as a subordinate group in the United States?
1. They are the only group that experienced expulsion.
2. They are the only group that was segregated.
3. They are the only group that was enslaved.
4. They are the only group that did not come here as immigrants.
Answer
D
1. Which subordinate group is often referred to as the “model minority?”
1. African Americans
2. Asian Americans
3. White ethnic Americans
4. Native Americans
Answer
B
1. Which federal act or program was designed to allow more Hispanic American immigration, not block it?
1. The Bracero Program
2. Immigration Reform and Control Act
3. Operation Wetback
4. SB 1070
Answer
A
1. Many Arab Americans face _______________, especially after 9/11.
1. racism
2. segregation
3. Islamophobia
4. prejudice
Answer
C
1. Why did most white ethnic Americans come to the United States?
1. For a better life
2. To escape oppression
3. Because they were forced out of their own countries
4. A and B only
Answer
D
Short Answer
1. In your opinion, which group had the easiest time coming to this country? Which group had the hardest time? Why?
2. Which group has made the most socioeconomic gains? Why do you think that group has had more success than others?
Further Research
Are people interested in reclaiming their ethnic identities? Read this article and decide:
The White Ethnic Revival: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/ethnic_revival
What is the current racial composition of the United States? Review up-to-the minute statistics at the United States Census Bureau here: http://www.census.gov/
Glossary
model minority
the stereotype applied to a minority group that is seen as reaching higher educational, professional, and socioeconomic levels without protest against the majority establishment | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/11.06%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_United_States.txt |
In this chapter, we will discuss the differences between sex and gender, along with issues like gender identity and sexuality. We will also explore various theoretical perspectives on the subjects of gender and sexuality, including the social construction of sexuality and queer theory.
• 12.1: Prelude to Gender, Sex, and Sexuality
ou may be thinking that distinguishing biological maleness from biological femaleness is surely a simple matter—just conduct some DNA or hormonal testing, throw in a physical examination, and you’ll have the answer. But it is not that simple. Both biologically male and biologically female people produce a certain amount of testosterone, and different laboratories have different testing methods, which makes it difficult to set a specific threshold for the amount of male hormones produced by a fem
• 12.2: Sex and Gender
You may not have realized that sex and gender are not the same. However, sociologists and most other social scientists view them as conceptually distinct. Sex refers to physical or physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and secondary characteristics such as height and muscularity. Gender refers to behaviors, personal traits, and social positions that society attributes to being female or male.
• 12.3: Gender
Children learn at a young age that there are distinct expectations for boys and girls. Cross-cultural studies reveal that children are aware of gender roles by age two or three. At four or five, most children are firmly entrenched in culturally appropriate gender roles. Children acquire these roles through socialization, a process in which people learn to behave in a particular way as dictated by societal values, beliefs, and attitudes.
• 12.4: Sex and Sexuality
In the area of sexuality, sociologists focus their attention on sexual attitudes and practices, not on physiology or anatomy. Sexuality is viewed as a person’s capacity for sexual feelings. Studying sexual attitudes and practices is a particularly interesting field of sociology because sexual behavior is a cultural universal. Throughout time and place, the vast majority of human beings have participated in sexual relationships.
Thumbnail: Major Alan G. Rogers holding hands with his partner on the left at a same-sex wedding ceremony on June 28, 2006 (Public Domain; Stagedoorjohnny).
12: Gender Sex and Sexuality
In 2009, the eighteen-year old South African athlete, Caster Semenya, won the women’s 800-meter world championship in Track and Field. Her time of 1:55:45, a surprising improvement from her 2008 time of 2:08:00, caused officials from the International Association of Athletics Foundation (IAAF) to question whether her win was legitimate. If this questioning were based on suspicion of steroid use, the case would be no different from that of Roger Clemens or Mark McGuire, or even Track and Field Olympic gold medal winner Marion Jones. But the questioning and eventual testing were based on allegations that Caster Semenya, no matter what gender identity she possessed, was biologically a male.
Some children may learn at an early age that their gender does not correspond with their sex. (Photo courtesy of Rajesh Kumar/flickr)
You may be thinking that distinguishing biological maleness from biological femaleness is surely a simple matter—just conduct some DNA or hormonal testing, throw in a physical examination, and you’ll have the answer. But it is not that simple. Both biologically male and biologically female people produce a certain amount of testosterone, and different laboratories have different testing methods, which makes it difficult to set a specific threshold for the amount of male hormones produced by a female that renders her sex male. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) criteria for determining eligibility for sex-specific events are not intended to determine biological sex. “Instead these regulations are designed to identify circumstances in which a particular athlete will not be eligible (by reason of hormonal characteristics) to participate in the 2012 Olympic Games" in the female category (International Olympic Committee 2012).
To provide further context, during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, eight female athletes with XY chromosomes underwent testing and were ultimately confirmed as eligible to compete as women (Maugh 2009). To date, no males have undergone this sort of testing. Doesn’t that imply that when women perform better than expected, they are “too masculine,” but when men perform well they are simply superior athletes? Can you imagine Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, being examined by doctors to prove he was biologically male based solely on his appearance and athletic ability?
Can you explain how sex, sexuality, and gender are different from each other?
In this chapter, we will discuss the differences between sex and gender, along with issues like gender identity and sexuality. We will also explore various theoretical perspectives on the subjects of gender and sexuality, including the social construction of sexuality and queer theory. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/12%3A_Gender_Sex_and_Sexuality/12.01%3A__Prelude_to_Gender_Sex_and_Sexuality.txt |
When filling out a document such as a job application or school registration form you are often asked to provide your name, address, phone number, birth date, and sex or gender. But have you ever been asked to provide your sex and your gender? Like most people, you may not have realized that sex and gender are not the same. However, sociologists and most other social scientists view them as conceptually distinct. Sex refers to physical or physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and secondary characteristics such as height and muscularity. Gender refers to behaviors, personal traits, and social positions that society attributes to being female or male.
Figure \(1\): While the biological differences between males and females are fairly straightforward, the social and cultural aspects of being a man or woman can be complicated. (Photo courtesy of FaceMePLS/flickr)
A person’s sex, as determined by his or her biology, does not always correspond with his or her gender. Therefore, the terms sexand gender are not interchangeable. A baby boy who is born with male genitalia will be identified as male. As he grows, however, he may identify with the feminine aspects of his culture. Since the term sex refers to biological or physical distinctions, characteristics of sex will not vary significantly between different human societies. Generally, persons of the female sex, regardless of culture, will eventually menstruate and develop breasts that can lactate. Characteristics of gender, on the other hand, may vary greatly between different societies. For example, in U.S. culture, it is considered feminine (or a trait of the female gender) to wear a dress or skirt. However, in many Middle Eastern, Asian, and African cultures, dresses or skirts (often referred to as sarongs, robes, or gowns) are considered masculine. The kilt worn by a Scottish male does not make him appear feminine in his culture.
The dichotomous view of gender (the notion that someone is either male or female) is specific to certain cultures and is not universal. In some cultures gender is viewed as fluid. In the past, some anthropologists used the term berdache to refer to individuals who occasionally or permanently dressed and lived as a different gender. The practice has been noted among certain Native American tribes (Jacobs, Thomas, and Lang 1997). Samoan culture accepts what Samoans refer to as a “third gender.”Fa’afafine, which translates as “the way of the woman,” is a term used to describe individuals who are born biologically male but embody both masculine and feminine traits. Fa’afafines are considered an important part of Samoan culture. Individuals from other cultures may mislabel them as homosexuals because fa’afafines have a varied sexual life that may include men and women (Poasa 1992).
THE LEGALESE OF SEX AND GENDER
The terms sex and gender have not always been differentiated in the English language. It was not until the 1950s that U.S. and British psychologists and other professionals working with intersex and transsexual patients formally began distinguishing between sex and gender. Since then, psychological and physiological professionals have increasingly used the term gender (Moi 2005). By the end of the twenty-first century, expanding the proper usage of the term gender to everyday language became more challenging—particularly where legal language is concerned. In an effort to clarify usage of the terms sex and gender, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 1994 briefing, “The word gender has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male” (J.E.B. v. Alabama, 144 S. Ct. 1436 [1994]). Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a different take, however. Viewing the words as synonymous, she freely swapped them in her briefings so as to avoid having the word “sex” pop up too often. It is thought that her secretary supported this practice by suggestions to Ginsberg that “those nine men” (the other Supreme Court justices), “hear that word and their first association is not the way you want them to be thinking” (Case 1995). This anecdote reveals that both sex and gender are actually socially defined variables whose definitions change over time.
Sexual Orientation
A person’s sexual orientation is his or her physical, mental, emotional, and sexual attraction to a particular sex (male or female). Sexual orientation is typically divided into four categories: heterosexuality, the attraction to individuals of the other sex;homosexuality, the attraction to individuals of the same sex; bisexuality, the attraction to individuals of either sex; and asexuality, no attraction to either sex. Heterosexuals and homosexuals may also be referred to informally as “straight” and “gay,” respectively. The United States is a heteronormative society, meaning it assumes sexual orientation is biologically determined and unambiguous. Consider that homosexuals are often asked, “When did you know you were gay?” but heterosexuals are rarely asked, “When did you know that you were straight?” (Ryle 2011).
According to current scientific understanding, individuals are usually aware of their sexual orientation between middle childhood and early adolescence (American Psychological Association 2008). They do not have to participate in sexual activity to be aware of these emotional, romantic, and physical attractions; people can be celibate and still recognize their sexual orientation. Homosexual women (also referred to as lesbians), homosexual men (also referred to as gays), and bisexuals of both genders may have very different experiences of discovering and accepting their sexual orientation. At the point of puberty, some may be able to announce their sexual orientations, while others may be unready or unwilling to make their homosexuality or bisexuality known since it goes against U.S. society’s historical norms (APA 2008).
Alfred Kinsey was among the first to conceptualize sexuality as a continuum rather than a strict dichotomy of gay or straight. He created a six-point rating scale that ranges from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. See the figure below. In his 1948 work Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Kinsey writes, “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats … The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects” (Kinsey 1948).
Figure \(2\): The Kinsey scale indicates that sexuality can be measured by more than just heterosexuality and homosexuality.
Later scholarship by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick expanded on Kinsey’s notions. She coined the term “homosocial” to oppose “homosexual,” describing nonsexual same-sex relations. Sedgwick recognized that in U.S. culture, males are subject to a clear divide between the two sides of this continuum, whereas females enjoy more fluidity. This can be illustrated by the way women in the United States can express homosocial feelings (nonsexual regard for people of the same sex) through hugging, handholding, and physical closeness. In contrast, U.S. males refrain from these expressions since they violate the heteronormative expectation that male sexual attraction should be exclusively for females. Research suggests that it is easier for women violate these norms than men, because men are subject to more social disapproval for being physically close to other men (Sedgwick 1985).
There is no scientific consensus regarding the exact reasons why an individual holds a heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual orientation. Research has been conducted to study the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, but there has been no evidence that links sexual orientation to one factor (APA 2008). Research, however, does present evidence showing that homosexuals and bisexuals are treated differently than heterosexuals in schools, the workplace, and the military. In 2011, for example, Sears and Mallory used General Social Survey data from 2008 to show that 27 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) respondents reported experiencing sexual orientation-based discrimination during the five years prior to the survey. Further, 38 percent of openly LGB people experienced discrimination during the same time.
Much of this discrimination is based on stereotypes and misinformation. Some is based on heterosexism, which Herek (1990) suggests is both an ideology and a set of institutional practices that privilege heterosexuals and heterosexuality over other sexual orientations. Much like racism and sexism, heterosexism is a systematic disadvantage embedded in our social institutions, offering power to those who conform to hetereosexual orientation while simultaneously disadvantaging those who do not.Homophobia, an extreme or irrational aversion to homosexuals, accounts for further stereotyping and discrimination. Major policies to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation have not come into effect until the last few years. In 2011, President Obama overturned “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a controversial policy that required homosexuals in the US military to keep their sexuality undisclosed. The Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which ensures workplace equality regardless of sexual orientation, is still pending full government approval. Organizations such as GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) advocate for homosexual rights and encourage governments and citizens to recognize the presence of sexual discrimination and work to prevent it. Other advocacy agencies frequently use the acronyms LBGT and LBGTQ, which stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender” (and “Queer” or “Questioning” when the Q is added).
Sociologically, it is clear that gay and lesbian couples are negatively affected in states where they are denied the legal right to marriage. In 1996, The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed, explicitly limiting the definition of “marriage” to a union between one man and one woman. It also allowed individual states to choose whether or not they recognized same-sex marriages performed in other states. Imagine that you married an opposite-sex partner under similar conditions—if you went on a cross-country vacation the validity of your marriage would change every time you crossed state lines. In another blow to same-sex marriage advocates, in November 2008 California passed Proposition 8, a state law that limited marriage to unions of opposite-sex partners.
Over time, advocates for same-sex marriage have won several court cases, laying the groundwork for legalized same-sex marriage across the United States, including the June 2013 decision to overturn part of DOMA in Windsor v. United States, and the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Hollingsworth v. Perry, affirming the August 2010 ruling that found California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. In October 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals to rulings against same-sex marriage bans, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, Colorado, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming (Freedom to Marry, Inc. 2014). Same-sex marriage is now legal across most of the United States. The next few years will determine whether the right to same-sex marriage is affirmed, depending on whether the U.S. Supreme Court takes a judicial step to guarantee the freedom to marry as a civil right.
Gender Roles
As we grow, we learn how to behave from those around us. In this socialization process, children are introduced to certain roles that are typically linked to their biological sex. The term gender role refers to society’s concept of how men and women are expected to look and how they should behave. These roles are based on norms, or standards, created by society. In U.S. culture, masculine roles are usually associated with strength, aggression, and dominance, while feminine roles are usually associated with passivity, nurturing, and subordination. Role learning starts with socialization at birth. Even today, our society is quick to outfit male infants in blue and girls in pink, even applying these color-coded gender labels while a baby is in the womb.
One way children learn gender roles is through play. Parents typically supply boys with trucks, toy guns, and superhero paraphernalia, which are active toys that promote motor skills, aggression, and solitary play. Daughters are often given dolls and dress-up apparel that foster nurturing, social proximity, and role play. Studies have shown that children will most likely choose to play with “gender appropriate” toys (or same-gender toys) even when cross-gender toys are available because parents give children positive feedback (in the form of praise, involvement, and physical closeness) for gender normative behavior (Caldera, Huston, and O’Brien 1998).
Figure \(13\): Fathers tend to be more involved when their sons engage in gender-appropriate activities such as sports. (Photo courtesy of Shawn Lea/flickr)
The drive to adhere to masculine and feminine gender roles continues later in life. Men tend to outnumber women in professions such as law enforcement, the military, and politics. Women tend to outnumber men in care-related occupations such as childcare, healthcare (even though the term “doctor” still conjures the image of a man), and social work. These occupational roles are examples of typical U.S. male and female behavior, derived from our culture’s traditions. Adherence to them demonstrates fulfillment of social expectations but not necessarily personal preference (Diamond 2002).
Gender Identity
U.S. society allows for some level of flexibility when it comes to acting out gender roles. To a certain extent, men can assume some feminine roles and women can assume some masculine roles without interfering with their gender identity. Gender identityis a person’s deeply held internal perception of his or her gender.
Individuals who identify with the role that is the different from their biological sex are called transgender. Transgender is not the same as homosexual, and many homosexual males view both their sex and gender as male. Transgender males are males who have such a strong emotional and psychological connection to the feminine aspects of society that they identify their gender as female. The parallel connection to masculinity exists for transgender females. It is difficult to determine the prevalence of transgenderism in society. However, it is estimated that two to five percent of the U.S. population is transgender (Transgender Law and Policy Institute 2007).
Transgender individuals who attempt to alter their bodies through medical interventions such as surgery and hormonal therapy—so that their physical being is better aligned with gender identity—are called transsexuals. They may also be known as male-to-female (MTF) or female-to-male (FTM). Not all transgender individuals choose to alter their bodies: many will maintain their original anatomy but may present themselves to society as another gender. This is typically done by adopting the dress, hairstyle, mannerisms, or other characteristic typically assigned to another gender. It is important to note that people who cross-dress, or wear clothing that is traditionally assigned to a gender different from their biological sex, are not necessarily transgender. Cross-dressing is typically a form of self-expression, entertainment, or personal style, and it is not necessarily an expression against one’s assigned gender (APA 2008).
There is no single, conclusive explanation for why people are transgender. Transgender expressions and experiences are so diverse that it is difficult to identify their origin. Some hypotheses suggest biological factors such as genetics or prenatal hormone levels as well as social and cultural factors such as childhood and adulthood experiences. Most experts believe that all of these factors contribute to a person’s gender identity (APA 2008).
After years of controversy over the treatment of sex and gender in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (Drescher 2010), the most recent edition, DSM-5, responds to allegations that the term “Gender Identity Disorder” is stigmatizing by replacing it with “Gender Dysphoria.” Gender Identity Disorder as a diagnostic category stigmatized the patient by implying there was something “disordered” about them. Gender Dysphoria, on the other hand, removes some of that stigma by taking the word "disorder" out while maintaining a category that will protect patient access to care, including hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery. In the DSM-5, Gender Dysphoria is a condition of people whose gender at birth is contrary to the one they identify with. For a person to be diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria, there must be a marked difference between the individual’s expressed/experienced gender and the gender others would assign him or her, and it must continue for at least six months. In children, the desire to be of the other gender must be present and verbalized. This diagnosis is now a separate category from sexual dysfunction and paraphilia, another important part of removing stigma from the diagnosis (APA 2013).
Changing the clinical description may contribute to a larger acceptance of transgender people in society. Studies show that people who identify as transgender are twice as likely to experience assault or discrimination as nontransgender individuals; they are also one and a half times more likely to experience intimidation (National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs 2010; Giovanniello 2013). Organizations such as the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs and Global Action for Trans Equality work to prevent, respond to, and end all types of violence against transgender, transsexual, and homosexual individuals. These organizations hope that by educating the public about gender identity and empowering transgender and transsexual individuals, this violence will end.
FREAKY FRIDAY
What if you had to live as a sex you were not biologically born to? If you are a man, imagine that you were forced to wear frilly dresses, dainty shoes, and makeup to special occasions, and you were expected to enjoy romantic comedies and daytime talk shows. If you are a woman, imagine that you were forced to wear shapeless clothing, put only minimal effort into your personal appearance, not show emotion, and watch countless hours of sporting events and sports-related commentary. It would be pretty uncomfortable, right? Well, maybe not. Many people enjoy participating in activities, whether they are associated with their biological sex or not, and would not mind if some of the cultural expectations for men and women were loosened.
Figure \(4\): Chaz Bono is the transgender son of Cher and Sonny Bono. While he was born female, he considers himself male. Being transgender is not about clothing or hairstyles; it is about self-perception. (Photo courtesy of Greg Hernandez/flickr)
Now, imagine that when you look at your body in the mirror, you feel disconnected. You feel your genitals are shameful and dirty, and you feel as though you are trapped in someone else’s body with no chance of escape. As you get older, you hate the way your body is changing, and, therefore, you hate yourself. These elements of disconnect and shame are important to understand when discussing transgender individuals. Fortunately, sociological studies pave the way for a deeper and more empirically grounded understanding of the transgender experience.
Summary
The terms “sex” and “gender” refer to two different identifiers. Sex denotes biological characteristics differentiating males and females, while gender denotes social and cultural characteristics of masculine and feminine behavior. Sex and gender are not always synchronous. Individuals who strongly identify with the opposing gender are considered transgender.
Section Quiz
The terms “masculine” and “feminine” refer to a person’s _________.
1. sex
2. gender
3. both sex and gender
4. none of the above
Answer
B
The term _______ refers to society's concept of how men and women are expected to act and how they should behave.
1. gender role
2. gender bias
3. sexual orientation
4. sexual attitudes
Answer
A
Research indicates that individuals are aware of their sexual orientation _______.
1. at infancy
2. in early adolescence
3. in early adulthood
4. in late adulthood
Answer
B
A person who is biologically female but identifies with the male gender and has undergone surgery to alter her body is considered _______.
1. transgender
2. transsexual
3. a cross-dresser
4. homosexual
Answer
B
Which of following is correct regarding the explanation for transgenderism?
1. It is strictly biological and associated with chemical imbalances in the brain.
2. It is a behavior that is learned through socializing with other transgender individuals.
3. It is genetic and usually skips one generation.
4. Currently, there is no definitive explanation for transgenderism.
Answer
D
Short Answer
Why do sociologists find it important to differentiate between sex and gender? What importance does the differentiation have in modern society?
How is children’s play influenced by gender roles? Think back to your childhood. How “gendered” were the toys and activities available to you? Do you remember gender expectations being conveyed through the approval or disapproval of your playtime choices?
Further Research
For more information on gender identity and advocacy for transgender individuals see the Global Action for Trans Equality web site at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/trans_equality.
Glossary
DOMA
Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 U.S. law explicitly limiting the definition of “marriage” to a union between one man and one woman and allowing each individual state to recognize or deny same-sex marriages performed in other states
gender dysphoria
a condition listed in the DSM-5 in which people whose gender at birth is contrary to the one they identify with. This condition replaces "gender identity disorder"
gender identity
a person’s deeply held internal perception of his or her gender
gender role
society’s concept of how men and women should behave
gender
a term that refers to social or cultural distinctions of behaviors that are considered male or female
heterosexism
an ideology and a set of institutional practices that privilege heterosexuals and heterosexuality over other sexual orientations
homophobia
an extreme or irrational aversion to homosexuals
sex
a term that denotes the presence of physical or physiological differences between males and females
sexual orientation
a person’s physical, mental, emotional, and sexual attraction to a particular sex (male or female)
transgender
an adjective that describes individuals who identify with the behaviors and characteristics that are other than their biological sex
transsexuals
transgender individuals who attempt to alter their bodies through medical interventions such as surgery and hormonal therapy | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/12%3A_Gender_Sex_and_Sexuality/12.02%3A_Sex_and_Gender.txt |
Traditional images of U.S. gender roles reinforce the idea that women should be subordinate to men. (Photo courtesy of Sport Suburban/flickr)
Gender and Socialization
The phrase “boys will be boys” is often used to justify behavior such as pushing, shoving, or other forms of aggression from young boys. The phrase implies that such behavior is unchangeable and something that is part of a boy’s nature. Aggressive behavior, when it does not inflict significant harm, is often accepted from boys and men because it is congruent with the cultural script for masculinity. The “script” written by society is in some ways similar to a script written by a playwright. Just as a playwright expects actors to adhere to a prescribed script, society expects women and men to behave according to the expectations of their respective gender roles. Scripts are generally learned through a process known as socialization, which teaches people to behave according to social norms.
Socialization
Children learn at a young age that there are distinct expectations for boys and girls. Cross-cultural studies reveal that children are aware of gender roles by age two or three. At four or five, most children are firmly entrenched in culturally appropriate gender roles (Kane 1996). Children acquire these roles through socialization, a process in which people learn to behave in a particular way as dictated by societal values, beliefs, and attitudes. For example, society often views riding a motorcycle as a masculine activity and, therefore, considers it to be part of the male gender role. Attitudes such as this are typically based on stereotypes, oversimplified notions about members of a group. Gender stereotyping involves overgeneralizing about the attitudes, traits, or behavior patterns of women or men. For example, women may be thought of as too timid or weak to ride a motorcycle.
Although our society may have a stereotype that associates motorcycles with men, female bikers demonstrate that a woman’s place extends far beyond the kitchen in the modern United States. (Photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker/flickr)
Gender stereotypes form the basis of sexism. Sexism refers to prejudiced beliefs that value one sex over another. It varies in its level of severity. In parts of the world where women are strongly undervalued, young girls may not be given the same access to nutrition, healthcare, and education as boys. Further, they will grow up believing they deserve to be treated differently from boys (UNICEF 2011; Thorne 1993). While it is illegal in the United States when practiced as discrimination, unequal treatment of women continues to pervade social life. It should be noted that discrimination based on sex occurs at both the micro- and macro-levels. Many sociologists focus on discrimination that is built into the social structure; this type of discrimination is known as institutional discrimination (Pincus 2008).
Gender socialization occurs through four major agents of socialization: family, education, peer groups, and mass media. Each agent reinforces gender roles by creating and maintaining normative expectations for gender-specific behavior. Exposure also occurs through secondary agents such as religion and the workplace. Repeated exposure to these agents over time leads men and women into a false sense that they are acting naturally rather than following a socially constructed role.
Family is the first agent of socialization. There is considerable evidence that parents socialize sons and daughters differently. Generally speaking, girls are given more latitude to step outside of their prescribed gender role (Coltrane and Adams 2004; Kimmel 2000; Raffaelli and Ontai 2004). However, differential socialization typically results in greater privileges afforded to sons. For instance, boys are allowed more autonomy and independence at an earlier age than daughters. They may be given fewer restrictions on appropriate clothing, dating habits, or curfew. Sons are also often free from performing domestic duties such as cleaning or cooking and other household tasks that are considered feminine. Daughters are limited by their expectation to be passive and nurturing, generally obedient, and to assume many of the domestic responsibilities.
Even when parents set gender equality as a goal, there may be underlying indications of inequality. For example, boys may be asked to take out the garbage or perform other tasks that require strength or toughness, while girls may be asked to fold laundry or perform duties that require neatness and care. It has been found that fathers are firmer in their expectations for gender conformity than are mothers, and their expectations are stronger for sons than they are for daughters (Kimmel 2000). This is true in many types of activities, including preference for toys, play styles, discipline, chores, and personal achievements. As a result, boys tend to be particularly attuned to their father’s disapproval when engaging in an activity that might be considered feminine, like dancing or singing (Coltraine and Adams 2008). Parental socialization and normative expectations also vary along lines of social class, race, and ethnicity. African American families, for instance, are more likely than Caucasians to model an egalitarian role structure for their children (Staples and Boulin Johnson 2004).
The reinforcement of gender roles and stereotypes continues once a child reaches school age. Until very recently, schools were rather explicit in their efforts to stratify boys and girls. The first step toward stratification was segregation. Girls were encouraged to take home economics or humanities courses and boys to take math and science.
Studies suggest that gender socialization still occurs in schools today, perhaps in less obvious forms (Lips 2004). Teachers may not even realize they are acting in ways that reproduce gender differentiated behavior patterns. Yet any time they ask students to arrange their seats or line up according to gender, teachers may be asserting that boys and girls should be treated differently (Thorne 1993).
Even in levels as low as kindergarten, schools subtly convey messages to girls indicating that they are less intelligent or less important than boys. For example, in a study of teacher responses to male and female students, data indicated that teachers praised male students far more than female students. Teachers interrupted girls more often and gave boys more opportunities to expand on their ideas (Sadker and Sadker 1994). Further, in social as well as academic situations, teachers have traditionally treated boys and girls in opposite ways, reinforcing a sense of competition rather than collaboration (Thorne 1993). Boys are also permitted a greater degree of freedom to break rules or commit minor acts of deviance, whereas girls are expected to follow rules carefully and adopt an obedient role (Ready 2001).
Mimicking the actions of significant others is the first step in the development of a separate sense of self (Mead 1934). Like adults, children become agents who actively facilitate and apply normative gender expectations to those around them. When children do not conform to the appropriate gender role, they may face negative sanctions such as being criticized or marginalized by their peers. Though many of these sanctions are informal, they can be quite severe. For example, a girl who wishes to take karate class instead of dance lessons may be called a “tomboy” and face difficulty gaining acceptance from both male and female peer groups (Ready 2001). Boys, especially, are subject to intense ridicule for gender nonconformity (Coltrane and Adams 2004; Kimmel 2000).
Mass media serves as another significant agent of gender socialization. In television and movies, women tend to have less significant roles and are often portrayed as wives or mothers. When women are given a lead role, it often falls into one of two extremes: a wholesome, saint-like figure or a malevolent, hypersexual figure (Etaugh and Bridges 2003). This same inequality is pervasive in children’s movies (Smith 2008). Research indicates that in the ten top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1991 and 2013, nine out of ten characters were male (Smith 2008).
Television commercials and other forms of advertising also reinforce inequality and gender-based stereotypes. Women are almost exclusively present in ads promoting cooking, cleaning, or childcare-related products (Davis 1993). Think about the last time you saw a man star in a dishwasher or laundry detergent commercial. In general, women are underrepresented in roles that involve leadership, intelligence, or a balanced psyche. Of particular concern is the depiction of women in ways that are dehumanizing, especially in music videos. Even in mainstream advertising, however, themes intermingling violence and sexuality are quite common (Kilbourne 2000).
Social Stratification and Inequality
Stratification refers to a system in which groups of people experience unequal access to basic, yet highly valuable, social resources. The United States is characterized by gender stratification (as well as stratification of race, income, occupation, and the like). Evidence of gender stratification is especially keen within the economic realm. Despite making up nearly half (49.8 percent) of payroll employment, men vastly outnumber women in authoritative, powerful, and, therefore, high-earning jobs (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Even when a woman’s employment status is equal to a man’s, she will generally make only 77 cents for every dollar made by her male counterpart (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Women in the paid labor force also still do the majority of the unpaid work at home. On an average day, 84 percent of women (compared to 67 percent of men) spend time doing household management activities (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). This double duty keeps working women in a subordinate role in the family structure (Hochschild and Machung 1989).
Gender stratification through the division of labor is not exclusive to the United States. According to George Murdock’s classic work, Outline of World Cultures (1954), all societies classify work by gender. When a pattern appears in all societies, it is called a cultural universal. While the phenomenon of assigning work by gender is universal, its specifics are not. The same task is not assigned to either men or women worldwide. But the way each task’s associated gender is valued is notable. In Murdock’s examination of the division of labor among 324 societies around the world, he found that in nearly all cases the jobs assigned to men were given greater prestige (Murdock and White 1968). Even if the job types were very similar and the differences slight, men’s work was still considered more vital.
There is a long history of gender stratification in the United States. When looking to the past, it would appear that society has made great strides in terms of abolishing some of the most blatant forms of gender inequality (see timeline below) but underlying effects of male dominance still permeate many aspects of society.
• Before 1809—Women could not execute a will
• Before 1840—Women were not allowed to own or control property
• Before 1920—Women were not permitted to vote
• Before 1963—Employers could legally pay a woman less than a man for the same work
• Before 1973—Women did not have the right to a safe and legal abortion (Imbornoni 2009)
In some cultures, women do all of the household chores with no help from men, as doing housework is a sign of weakness, considered by society as a feminine trait. (Photo courtesy of Evil Erin/flickr)
Theoretical Perspectives on Gender
Sociological theories help sociologists to develop questions and interpret data. For example, a sociologist studying why middle-school girls are more likely than their male counterparts to fall behind grade-level expectations in math and science might use a feminist perspective to frame her research. Another scholar might proceed from the conflict perspective to investigate why women are underrepresented in political office, and an interactionist might examine how the symbols of femininity interact with symbols of political authority to affect how women in Congress are treated by their male counterparts in meetings.
Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism has provided one of the most important perspectives of sociological research in the twentieth century and has been a major influence on research in the social sciences, including gender studies. Viewing the family as the most integral component of society, assumptions about gender roles within marriage assume a prominent place in this perspective.
Functionalists argue that gender roles were established well before the pre-industrial era when men typically took care of responsibilities outside of the home, such as hunting, and women typically took care of the domestic responsibilities in or around the home. These roles were considered functional because women were often limited by the physical restraints of pregnancy and nursing and unable to leave the home for long periods of time. Once established, these roles were passed on to subsequent generations since they served as an effective means of keeping the family system functioning properly.
When changes occurred in the social and economic climate of the United States during World War II, changes in the family structure also occurred. Many women had to assume the role of breadwinner (or modern hunter-gatherer) alongside their domestic role in order to stabilize a rapidly changing society. When the men returned from war and wanted to reclaim their jobs, society fell back into a state of imbalance, as many women did not want to forfeit their wage-earning positions (Hawke 2007).
Conflict Theory
According to conflict theory, society is a struggle for dominance among social groups (like women versus men) that compete for scarce resources. When sociologists examine gender from this perspective, we can view men as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group. According to conflict theory, social problems are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups. Consider the Women’s Suffrage Movement or the debate over women’s “right to choose” their reproductive futures. It is difficult for women to rise above men, as dominant group members create the rules for success and opportunity in society (Farrington and Chertok 1993).
Friedrich Engels, a German sociologist, studied family structure and gender roles. Engels suggested that the same owner-worker relationship seen in the labor force is also seen in the household, with women assuming the role of the proletariat. This is due to women’s dependence on men for the attainment of wages, which is even worse for women who are entirely dependent upon their spouses for economic support. Contemporary conflict theorists suggest that when women become wage earners, they can gain power in the family structure and create more democratic arrangements in the home, although they may still carry the majority of the domestic burden, as noted earlier (Rismanand and Johnson-Sumerford 1998).
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory is a type of conflict theory that examines inequalities in gender-related issues. It uses the conflict approach to examine the maintenance of gender roles and inequalities. Radical feminism, in particular, considers the role of the family in perpetuating male dominance. In patriarchal societies, men’s contributions are seen as more valuable than those of women. Patriarchal perspectives and arrangements are widespread and taken for granted. As a result, women’s viewpoints tend to be silenced or marginalized to the point of being discredited or considered invalid.
Sanday’s study of the Indonesian Minangkabau (2004) revealed that in societies some consider to be matriarchies (where women comprise the dominant group), women and men tend to work cooperatively rather than competitively regardless of whether a job is considered feminine by U.S. standards. The men, however, do not experience the sense of bifurcated consciousness under this social structure that modern U.S. females encounter (Sanday 2004).
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behavior by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction. This is certainly relevant to the discussion of masculinity and femininity. Imagine that you walk into a bank hoping to get a small loan for school, a home, or a small business venture. If you meet with a male loan officer, you may state your case logically by listing all the hard numbers that make you a qualified applicant as a means of appealing to the analytical characteristics associated with masculinity. If you meet with a female loan officer, you may make an emotional appeal by stating your good intentions as a means of appealing to the caring characteristics associated with femininity.
Because the meanings attached to symbols are socially created and not natural, and fluid, not static, we act and react to symbols based on the current assigned meaning. The word gay, for example, once meant “cheerful,” but by the 1960s it carried the primary meaning of “homosexual.” In transition, it was even known to mean “careless” or “bright and showing” (Oxford American Dictionary 2010). Furthermore, the word gay (as it refers to a homosexual), carried a somewhat negative and unfavorable meaning fifty years ago, but it has since gained more neutral and even positive connotations. When people perform tasks or possess characteristics based on the gender role assigned to them, they are said to be doing gender. This notion is based on the work of West and Zimmerman (1987). Whether we are expressing our masculinity or femininity, West and Zimmerman argue, we are always "doing gender." Thus, gender is something we do or perform, not something we are.
In other words, both gender and sexuality are socially constructed. The social construction of sexuality refers to the way in which socially created definitions about the cultural appropriateness of sex-linked behavior shape the way people see and experience sexuality. This is in marked contrast to theories of sex, gender, and sexuality that link male and female behavior tobiological determinism, or the belief that men and women behave differently due to differences in their biology.
BEING MALE, BEING FEMALE, AND BEING HEALTHY
In 1971, Broverman and Broverman conducted a groundbreaking study on the traits mental health workers ascribed to males and females. When asked to name the characteristics of a female, the list featured words such as unaggressive, gentle, emotional, tactful, less logical, not ambitious, dependent, passive, and neat. The list of male characteristics featured words such as aggressive, rough, unemotional, blunt, logical, direct, active, and sloppy (Seem and Clark 2006). Later, when asked to describe the characteristics of a healthy person (not gender specific), the list was nearly identical to that of a male.
This study uncovered the general assumption that being female is associated with being somewhat unhealthy or not of sound mind. This concept seems extremely dated, but in 2006, Seem and Clark replicated the study and found similar results. Again, the characteristics associated with a healthy male were very similar to that of a healthy (genderless) adult. The list of characteristics associated with being female broadened somewhat but did not show significant change from the original study (Seem and Clark 2006). This interpretation of feminine characteristic may help us one day better understand gender disparities in certain illnesses, such as why one in eight women can be expected to develop clinical depression in her lifetime (National Institute of Mental Health 1999). Perhaps these diagnoses are not just a reflection of women’s health, but also a reflection of society’s labeling of female characteristics, or the result of institutionalized sexism.
Summary
Children become aware of gender roles in their earliest years, and they come to understand and perform these roles through socialization, which occurs through four major agents: family, education, peer groups, and mass media. Socialization into narrowly prescribed gender roles results in the stratification of males and females. Each sociological perspective offers a valuable view for understanding how and why gender inequality occurs in our society.
Section Quiz
Which of the following is the best example of a gender stereotype?
1. Women are typically shorter than men.
2. Men do not live as long as women.
3. Women tend to be overly emotional, while men tend to be levelheaded.
4. Men hold more high-earning, leadership jobs than women.
Answer
C
Which of the following is the best example of the role peers play as an agent of socialization for school-aged children?
1. Children can act however they wish around their peers because children are unaware of gender roles.
2. Peers serve as a support system for children who wish to act outside of their assigned gender roles.
3. Peers tend to reinforce gender roles by criticizing and marginalizing those who behave outside of their assigned roles.
4. None of the above
Answer
C
To which theoretical perspective does the following statement most likely apply: Women continue to assume the responsibility in the household along with a paid occupation because it keeps the household running smoothly, i.e., at a state of balance?
1. Conflict theory
2. Functionalism
3. Feminist theory
4. Symbolic interactionism
Answer
B
Only women are affected by gender stratification.
1. True
2. False
Answer
B
According to the symbolic interactionist perspective, we “do gender”:
1. during half of our activities
2. only when they apply to our biological sex
3. only if we are actively following gender roles
4. all of the time, in everything we do
Answer
D
Short Answer
In what way do parents treat sons and daughters differently? How do sons and daughters typically respond to this treatment?
What can be done to lessen the effects of gender stratification in the workplace? How does gender stratification harm both men and women?
Further Research
Learn more about gender at the Kinsey Institute here: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/2EKinsey
Glossary
biological determinism
the belief that men and women behave differently due to inherent sex differences related to their biology
doing gender
the performance of tasks based upon the gender assigned to us by society and, in turn, ourselves
sexism
the prejudiced belief that one sex should be valued over another
social construction of sexuality
socially created definitions about the cultural appropriateness of sex-linked behavior which shape how people see and experience sexuality | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/12%3A_Gender_Sex_and_Sexuality/12.03%3A_Gender.txt |
Sexual Attitudes and Practices
In the area of sexuality, sociologists focus their attention on sexual attitudes and practices, not on physiology or anatomy.Sexuality is viewed as a person’s capacity for sexual feelings. Studying sexual attitudes and practices is a particularly interesting field of sociology because sexual behavior is a cultural universal. Throughout time and place, the vast majority of human beings have participated in sexual relationships (Broude 2003). Each society, however, interprets sexuality and sexual activity in different ways. Many societies around the world have different attitudes about premarital sex, the age of sexual consent, homosexuality, masturbation, and other sexual behaviors (Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998). At the same time, sociologists have learned that certain norms are shared among most societies. The incest taboo is present in every society, though which relative is deemed unacceptable for sex varies widely from culture to culture. For example, sometimes the relatives of the father are considered acceptable sexual partners for a woman while the relatives of the mother are not. Likewise, societies generally have norms that reinforce their accepted social system of sexuality.
Sexual practices can differ greatly among groups. Recent trends include the finding that married couples have sex more frequently than do singles and that 27 percent of married couples in their 30s have sex at least twice a week (NSSHB 2010). (Photo courtesy of epSos.de/flickr)
What is considered “normal” in terms of sexual behavior is based on the mores and values of the society. Societies that value monogamy, for example, would likely oppose extramarital sex. Individuals are socialized to sexual attitudes by their family, education system, peers, media, and religion. Historically, religion has been the greatest influence on sexual behavior in most societies, but in more recent years, peers and the media have emerged as two of the strongest influences, particularly among U.S. teens (Potard, Courtois, and Rusch 2008). Let us take a closer look at sexual attitudes in the United States and around the world.
Sexuality around the World
Cross-national research on sexual attitudes in industrialized nations reveals that normative standards differ across the world. For example, several studies have shown that Scandinavian students are more tolerant of premarital sex than are U.S. students (Grose 2007). A study of 37 countries reported that non-Western societies—like China, Iran, and India—valued chastity highly in a potential mate, while Western European countries—such as France, the Netherlands, and Sweden—placed little value on prior sexual experiences (Buss 1989).
Chastity in Terms of Potential Mates. Source: Buss 1989
Country Males (Mean) Females (Mean)
China 2.54 2.61
India 2.44 2.17
Indonesia 2.06 1.98
Iran 2.67 2.23
Israel (Palestinian) 2.24 0.96
Sweden 0.25 0.28
Norway 0.31 0.30
Finland 0.27 0.29
The Netherlands 0.29 0.29
Even among Western cultures, attitudes can differ. For example, according to a 33,590-person survey across 24 countries, 89 percent of Swedes responded that there is nothing wrong with premarital sex, while only 42 percent of Irish responded this way. From the same study, 93 percent of Filipinos responded that sex before age 16 is always wrong or almost always wrong, while only 75 percent of Russians responded this way (Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998). Sexual attitudes can also vary within a country. For instance, 45 percent of Spaniards responded that homosexuality is always wrong, while 42 percent responded that it is never wrong; only 13 percent responded somewhere in the middle (Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998).
Of industrialized nations, Sweden is thought to be the most liberal when it comes to attitudes about sex, including sexual practices and sexual openness. The country has very few regulations on sexual images in the media, and sex education, which starts around age six, is a compulsory part of Swedish school curricula. Sweden’s permissive approach to sex has helped the country avoid some of the major social problems associated with sex. For example, rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease are among the world’s lowest (Grose 2007). It would appear that Sweden is a model for the benefits of sexual freedom and frankness. However, implementing Swedish ideals and policies regarding sexuality in other, more politically conservative, nations would likely be met with resistance.
Sexuality in the United States
The United States prides itself on being the land of the “free,” but it is rather restrictive when it comes to its citizens’ general attitudes about sex compared to other industrialized nations. In an international survey, 29 percent of U.S. respondents stated that premarital sex is always wrong, while the average among the 24 countries surveyed was 17 percent. Similar discrepancies were found in questions about the condemnation of sex before the age of 16, extramarital sex, and homosexuality, with total disapproval of these acts being 12, 13, and 11 percent higher, respectively, in the United States, than the study’s average (Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998).
U.S. culture is particularly restrictive in its attitudes about sex when it comes to women and sexuality. It is widely believed that men are more sexual than are women. In fact, there is a popular notion that men think about sex every seven seconds. Research, however, suggests that men think about sex an average of 19 times per day, compared to 10 times per day for women (Fisher, Moore, and Pittenger 2011).
Belief that men have—or have the right to—more sexual urges than women creates a double standard. Ira Reiss, a pioneer researcher in the field of sexual studies, defined the double standard as prohibiting premarital sexual intercourse for women but allowing it for men (Reiss 1960). This standard has evolved into allowing women to engage in premarital sex only within committed love relationships, but allowing men to engage in sexual relationships with as many partners as they wish without condition (Milhausen and Herold 1999). Due to this double standard, a woman is likely to have fewer sexual partners in her life time than a man. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey, the average thirty-five-year-old woman has had three opposite-sex sexual partners while the average thirty-five-year-old man has had twice as many (Centers for Disease Control 2011).
The future of a society’s sexual attitudes may be somewhat predicted by the values and beliefs that a country’s youth expresses about sex and sexuality. Data from the most recent National Survey of Family Growth reveals that 70 percent of boys and 78 percent of girls ages fifteen to nineteen said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that “it’s okay for an unmarried female to have a child" (National Survey of Family Growth 2013). In a separate survey, 65 percent of teens stated that they “strongly agreed” or “somewhat agreed” that although waiting until marriage for sex is a nice idea, it’s not realistic (NBC News 2005). This does not mean that today’s youth have given up traditional sexual values such as monogamy. Nearly all college men (98.9 percent) and women (99.2 percent) who participated in a 2002 study on sexual attitudes stated they wished to settle down with one mutually exclusive sexual partner at some point in their lives, ideally within the next five years (Pedersen et al. 2002).
Sex Education
One of the biggest controversies regarding sexual attitudes is sexual education in U.S. classrooms. Unlike in Sweden, sex education is not required in all public school curricula in the United States. The heart of the controversy is not about whether sex education should be taught in school (studies have shown that only seven percent of U.S. adults oppose sex education in schools); it is about the type of sex education that should be taught.
Much of the debate is over the issue of abstinence. In a 2005 survey, 15 percent of U.S. respondents believed that schools should teach abstinence exclusively and should not provide contraceptives or information on how to obtain them. Forty-six percent believed schools should institute an abstinence-plus approach, which teaches children that abstinence is best but still gives information about protected sex. Thirty-six percent believed teaching about abstinence is not important and that sex education should focus on sexual safety and responsibility (NPR 2010).
Research suggests that while government officials may still be debating about the content of sexual education in public schools, the majority of U.S. adults are not. Those who advocated abstinence-only programs may be the proverbial squeaky wheel when it comes to this controversy, since they represent only 15 percent of parents. Fifty-five percent of respondents feel giving teens information about sex and how to obtain and use protection will not encourage them to have sexual relations earlier than they would under an abstinence program. About 77 percent think such a curriculum would make teens more likely to practice safe sex now and in the future (NPR 2004).
Sweden, whose comprehensive sex education program in its public schools educates participants about safe sex, can serve as a model for this approach. The teenage birthrate in Sweden is 7 per 1,000 births, compared with 49 per 1,000 births in the United States. Among fifteen to nineteen year olds, reported cases of gonorrhea in Sweden are nearly 600 times lower than in the United States (Grose 2007).
Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Sexuality
Sociologists representing all three major theoretical perspectives study the role sexuality plays in social life today. Scholars recognize that sexuality continues to be an important and defining social location and that the manner in which sexuality is constructed has a significant effect on perceptions, interactions, and outcomes.
Structural Functionalism
When it comes to sexuality, functionalists stress the importance of regulating sexual behavior to ensure marital cohesion and family stability. Since functionalists identify the family unit as the most integral component in society, they maintain a strict focus on it at all times and argue in favor of social arrangements that promote and ensure family preservation.
Functionalists such as Talcott Parsons (1955) have long argued that the regulation of sexual activity is an important function of the family. Social norms surrounding family life have, traditionally, encouraged sexual activity within the family unit (marriage) and have discouraged activity outside of it (premarital and extramarital sex). From a functionalist point of view, the purpose of encouraging sexual activity in the confines of marriage is to intensify the bond between spouses and to ensure that procreation occurs within a stable, legally recognized relationship. This structure gives offspring the best possible chance for appropriate socialization and the provision of basic resources.
From a functionalist standpoint, homosexuality cannot be promoted on a large-scale as an acceptable substitute for heterosexuality. If this occurred, procreation would eventually cease. Thus, homosexuality, if occurring predominantly within the population, is dysfunctional to society. This criticism does not take into account the increasing legal acceptance of same-sex marriage, or the rise in gay and lesbian couples who choose to bear and raise children through a variety of available resources.
Conflict Theory
From a conflict theory perspective, sexuality is another area in which power differentials are present and where dominant groups actively work to promote their worldview as well as their economic interests. Recently, we have seen the debate over the legalization of gay marriage intensify nationwide.
For conflict theorists, there are two key dimensions to the debate over same-sex marriage—one ideological and the other economic. Dominant groups (in this instance, heterosexuals) wish for their worldview—which embraces traditional marriage and the nuclear family—to win out over what they see as the intrusion of a secular, individually driven worldview. On the other hand, many gay and lesbian activists argue that legal marriage is a fundamental right that cannot be denied based on sexual orientation and that, historically, there already exists a precedent for changes to marriage laws: the 1960s legalization of formerly forbidden interracial marriages is one example.
From an economic perspective, activists in favor of same-sex marriage point out that legal marriage brings with it certain entitlements, many of which are financial in nature, like Social Security benefits and medical insurance (Solmonese 2008). Denial of these benefits to gay couples is wrong, they argue. Conflict theory suggests that as long as heterosexuals and homosexuals struggle over these social and financial resources, there will be some degree of conflict.
Symbolic Interactionism
Interactionists focus on the meanings associated with sexuality and with sexual orientation. Since femininity is devalued in U.S. society, those who adopt such traits are subject to ridicule; this is especially true for boys or men. Just as masculinity is the symbolic norm, so too has heterosexuality come to signify normalcy. Prior to 1973, the American Psychological Association (APA) defined homosexuality as an abnormal or deviant disorder. Interactionist labeling theory recognizes the impact this has made. Before 1973, the APA was powerful in shaping social attitudes toward homosexuality by defining it as pathological. Today, the APA cites no association between sexual orientation and psychopathology and sees homosexuality as a normal aspect of human sexuality (APA 2008).
Interactionists are also interested in how discussions of homosexuals often focus almost exclusively on the sex lives of gays and lesbians; homosexuals, especially men, may be assumed to be hypersexual and, in some cases, deviant. Interactionism might also focus on the slurs used to describe homosexuals. Labels such as “queen” and “fag” are often used to demean homosexual men by feminizing them. This subsequently affects how homosexuals perceive themselves. Recall Cooley’s “looking-glass self,” which suggests that self develops as a result of our interpretation and evaluation of the responses of others (Cooley 1902). Constant exposure to derogatory labels, jokes, and pervasive homophobia would lead to a negative self-image, or worse, self-hate. The CDC reports that homosexual youths who experience high levels of social rejection are six times more likely to have high levels of depression and eight times more likely to have attempted suicide (CDC 2011).
Queer Theory
Queer Theory is an interdisciplinary approach to sexuality studies that identifies Western society’s rigid splitting of gender into male and female roles and questions the manner in which we have been taught to think about sexual orientation. According to Jagose (1996), Queer [Theory] focuses on mismatches between anatomical sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, not just division into male/female or homosexual/hetereosexual. By calling their discipline “queer,” scholars reject the effects of labeling; instead, they embraced the word “queer” and reclaimed it for their own purposes. The perspective highlights the need for a more flexible and fluid conceptualization of sexuality—one that allows for change, negotiation, and freedom. The current schema used to classify individuals as either “heterosexual” or “homosexual” pits one orientation against the other. This mirrors other oppressive schemas in our culture, especially those surrounding gender and race (black versus white, male versus female).
Queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argued against U.S. society’s monolithic definition of sexuality and its reduction to a single factor: the sex of someone’s desired partner. Sedgwick identified dozens of other ways in which people’s sexualities were different, such as:
• Even identical genital acts mean very different things to different people.
• Sexuality makes up a large share of the self-perceived identity of some people, a small share of others’.
• Some people spend a lot of time thinking about sex, others little.
• Some people like to have a lot of sex, others little or none.
• Many people have their richest mental/emotional involvement with sexual acts that they don’t do, or don’t even want to do.
• Some people like spontaneous sexual scenes, others like highly scripted ones, others like spontaneous-sounding ones that are nonetheless totally predictable.
• Some people, homo- hetero- and bisexual, experience their sexuality as deeply embedded in a matrix of gender meanings and gender differentials. Others of each sexuality do not (Sedgwick 1990).
Thus, theorists utilizing queer theory strive to question the ways society perceives and experiences sex, gender, and sexuality, opening the door to new scholarly understanding.
Throughout this chapter we have examined the complexities of gender, sex, and sexuality. Differentiating between sex, gender, and sexual orientation is an important first step to a deeper understanding and critical analysis of these issues. Understanding the sociology of sex, gender, and sexuality will help to build awareness of the inequalities experienced by subordinate categories such as women, homosexuals, and transgender individuals.
Summary
When studying sex and sexuality, sociologists focus their attention on sexual attitudes and practices, not on physiology or anatomy. Norms regarding gender and sexuality vary across cultures. In general, the United States tends to be fairly conservative in its sexual attitudes. As a result, homosexuals continue to face opposition and discrimination in most major social institutions.
Section Quiz
What Western country is thought to be the most liberal in its attitudes toward sex?
1. United States
2. Sweden
3. Mexico
4. Ireland
Answer
B
Compared to most Western societies, U.S. sexual attitudes are considered _______.
1. conservative
2. liberal
3. permissive
4. free
Answer
A
Sociologists associate sexuality with _______.
1. heterosexuality
2. homosexuality
3. biological factors
4. a person’s capacity for sexual feelings
Answer
D
According to national surveys, most U.S. parents support which type of sex education program in school?
1. Abstinence only
2. Abstinence plus sexual safety
3. Sexual safety without promoting abstinence
4. No sex education
Answer
B
Which theoretical perspective stresses the importance of regulating sexual behavior to ensure marital cohesion and family stability?
1. Functionalism
2. Conflict theory
3. Symbolic interactionalism
4. Queer theory
Answer
A
Short Answer
Identify three examples of how U.S. society is heteronormative.
Consider the types of derogatory labeling that sociologists study and explain how these might apply to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Further Research
For more information about sexual attitudes and practices in countries around the world, see the entire “Attitudes Toward Nonmarital Sex in 24 Countries” article from the Journal of Sex Research at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/journal_of_sex_research.
Glossary
double standard
the concept that prohibits premarital sexual intercourse for women but allows it for men
queer theory
an interdisciplinary approach to sexuality studies that identifies Western society’s rigid splitting of gender into male and female roles and questions its appropriateness
sexuality
a person’s capacity for sexual feelings | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/12%3A_Gender_Sex_and_Sexuality/12.04%3A_Sex_and_Sexuality.txt |
The aging of the U.S. population has significant ramifications for institutions such as business, education, the healthcare industry, and the family, as well as for the many cultural norms and traditions that focus on interactions with and social roles for older people. “Old” is a socially defined concept, and the way we think about aging is likely to change as the population ages.
• 13.1: Prelude to Aging and the Elderly
People over ninety years of age now account for 4.7 percent of the older population, defined as age sixty-five or above; this percentage is expected to reach 10 percent by the year 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). As of 2013, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 14.1 percent of the total U.S. population is sixty-five years old or older.
• 13.2: Who Are the Elderly? Aging in Society
Many media portrayals of the elderly reflect negative cultural attitudes toward aging. In the United States, society tends to glorify youth and associate it with beauty and sexuality. In comedies, the elderly are often associated with grumpiness or hostility. Rarely do the roles of older people convey the fullness of life experienced by seniors—as employees, lovers, or the myriad roles they have in real life. What values does this reflect?
• 13.3: The Process of Aging
Through the phases of the life course, dependence and independence levels change. At birth, newborns are dependent on caregivers for everything. As babies become toddlers and toddlers become adolescents and then teenagers, they assert their independence more and more. Gradually, children come to be considered adults, responsible for their own lives, although the point at which this occurs is widely varied among individuals, families, and cultures.
• 13.4: Challenges Facing the Elderly
Aging comes with many challenges. The loss of independence is one potential part of the process, as are diminished physical ability and age discrimination. The term senescence refers to the aging process, including biological, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual changes. This section discusses some of the challenges we encounter during this process.
• 13.5: Theoretical Perspectives on Aging
What roles do individual senior citizens play in your life? How do you relate to and interact with older people? What role do they play in neighborhoods and communities, in cities and in states? Sociologists are interested in exploring the answers to questions such as these through three different perspectives: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.
• 13.E: Aging and the Elderly (Exercises)
Thumbnail: How old is this woman? In modern U.S. society, appearance is not a reliable indicator of age. In addition to genetic differences, health habits, hair dyes, Botox, and the like make traditional signs of aging increasingly unreliable. (Photo courtesy of the Sean and Lauren Spectacular/flickr)
13: Aging and the Elderly
Madame Jeanne Calment of France was the world's oldest living person until she died at 122 years old; there are currently six women in the world whose ages are well documented as 115 years or older (Diebel 2014).
Supercentenarians are people living to 110 years or more. In August 2014, there were seventy-five verified supercentenarians worldwide—seventy-three women and two men. These are people whose age has been carefully documented, but there are almost certainly others who have not been identified. The Gerontology Research Group (2014) estimates there are between 300 and 450 people worldwide who are at least 110 years of age.
Centenarians are people living to be 100 years old, and they are approximately 1,000 times more common than supercentenarians. In 2010, there were about 80,000 centenarians in the United States alone. They make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the population (Boston University School of Medicine 2014).
People over ninety years of age now account for 4.7 percent of the older population, defined as age sixty-five or above; this percentage is expected to reach 10 percent by the year 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). As of 2013, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 14.1 percent of the total U.S. population is sixty-five years old or older.
The aging of the U.S. population has significant ramifications for institutions such as business, education, the healthcare industry, and the family, as well as for the many cultural norms and traditions that focus on interactions with and social roles for older people. “Old” is a socially defined concept, and the way we think about aging is likely to change as the population ages.
Society's view of the elderly is likely to change as the population ages. (Photo courtesy of sima dimitric/flickr)
References
Boston University School of Medicine. 2014. “New England Centenarian Study Overview.” Retrieved November 2, 2014 (http://www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian/overview/).
Diebel, Matthew. 2014. “Yes, Six People Born in the 19th Century Are Still With Us.” USA Today. Retrieved November 2, 2014 (www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...tury/15122367/).
Gerontology Research Group. 2014. “Current Validated Living Supercentenarians.” Retrieved November 2, 2014 (www.grg.org/Adams/E.HTM).
United States Census Bureau. 2011. “Census Bureau Releases Comprehensive Analysis of Fast-Growing 90-and0Older Population.” Newsroom Archive, November 17. Retrieved November 1, 2014 (www.census.gov/newsroom/rele.../cb11-194.html).
Glossary
supercentenarians
people 110 of age or older | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly/13.01%3A_Prelude_to_Aging_and_the_Elderly.txt |
Think of U.S. movies and television shows you have watched recently. Did any of them feature older actors and actresses? What roles did they play? How were these older actors portrayed? Were they cast as main characters in a love story? Or were they cast as grouchy old people?
Many media portrayals of the elderly reflect negative cultural attitudes toward aging. In the United States, society tends to glorify youth and associate it with beauty and sexuality. In comedies, the elderly are often associated with grumpiness or hostility. Rarely do the roles of older people convey the fullness of life experienced by seniors—as employees, lovers, or the myriad roles they have in real life. What values does this reflect?
One hindrance to society’s fuller understanding of aging is that people rarely understand the process of aging until they reach old age themselves. (As opposed to childhood, for instance, which we can all look back on.) Therefore, myths and assumptions about the elderly and aging are common. Many stereotypes exist surrounding the realities of being an older adult. While individuals often encounter stereotypes associated with race and gender and are thus more likely to think critically about them, many people accept age stereotypes without question (Levy 2002). Each culture has a certain set of expectations and assumptions about aging, all of which are part of our socialization.
While the landmarks of maturing into adulthood are a source of pride, signs of natural aging can be cause for shame or embarrassment. Some people try to fight off the appearance of aging with cosmetic surgery. Although many seniors report that their lives are more satisfying than ever, and their self-esteem is stronger than when they were young, they are still subject to cultural attitudes that make them feel invisible and devalued.
Gerontology is a field of science that seeks to understand the process of aging and the challenges encountered as seniors grow older. Gerontologists investigate age, aging, and the aged. Gerontologists study what it is like to be an older adult in a society and the ways that aging affects members of a society. As a multidisciplinary field, gerontology includes the work of medical and biological scientists, social scientists, and even financial and economic scholars.
Social gerontology refers to a specialized field of gerontology that examines the social (and sociological) aspects of aging. Researchers focus on developing a broad understanding of the experiences of people at specific ages, such as mental and physical wellbeing, plus age-specific concerns such as the process of dying. Social gerontologists work as social researchers, counselors, community organizers, and service providers for older adults. Because of their specialization, social gerontologists are in a strong position to advocate for older adults.
How old is this woman? In modern U.S. society, appearance is not a reliable indicator of age. In addition to genetic differences, health habits, hair dyes, Botox, and the like make traditional signs of aging increasingly unreliable. (Photo courtesy of the Sean and Lauren Spectacular/flickr)
Scholars in these disciplines have learned that “aging” reflects not only the physiological process of growing older but also our attitudes and beliefs about the aging process. You’ve likely seen online calculators that promise to determine your “real age” as opposed to your chronological age. These ads target the notion that people may “feel” a different age than their actual years. Some sixty-year-olds feel frail and elderly, while some eighty-year-olds feel sprightly.
Equally revealing is that as people grow older they define “old age” in terms of greater years than their current age (Logan 1992). Many people want to postpone old age and regard it as a phase that will never arrive. Some older adults even succumb to stereotyping their own age group (Rothbaum 1983).
In the United States, the experience of being elderly has changed greatly over the past century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many U.S. households were home to multigenerational families, and the experiences and wisdom of elders was respected. They offered wisdom and support to their children and often helped raise their grandchildren (Sweetser 1984).
Multigenerational U.S. families began to decline after World War II, and their numbers reached a low point around 1980, but they are on the rise again. In fact, a 2010 Pew Research Center analysis of census data found that multigenerational families in the United States have now reached a record high. The 2008 census data indicated that 49 million U.S. families, 16.1 percent of the country's total population, live in a family household with at least two adult generations—or a grandparent and at least one other generation.
Attitudes toward the elderly have also been affected by large societal changes that have happened over the past 100 years. Researchers believe industrialization and modernization have contributed greatly to lowering the power, influence, and prestige the elderly once held.
The elderly have both benefitted and suffered from these rapid social changes. In modern societies, a strong economy created new levels of prosperity for many people. Healthcare has become more widely accessible, and medicine has advanced, which allows the elderly to live longer. However, older people are not as essential to the economic survival of their families and communities as they were in the past.
Studying Aging Populations
Since its creation in 1790, the U.S. Census Bureau has been tracking age in the population. Age is an important factor to analyze with accompanying demographic figures, such as income and health. The population pyramid below shows projected age distribution patterns for the next several decades.
This population pyramid shows the age distribution pattern for 2010 and projected patterns for 2030 and 2050 (Graph courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau).
Statisticians use data to calculate the median age of a population, that is, the number that marks the halfway point in a group’s age range. In the United States, the median age is about forty (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). That means that about half of the people in the United States are under forty and about half are over forty. This median age has been increasing, which indicates the population as a whole is growing older.
A cohort is a group of people who share a statistical or demographic trait. People belonging to the same age cohort were born in the same time frame. Understanding a population’s age composition can point to certain social and cultural factors and help governments and societies plan for future social and economic challenges.
Sociological studies on aging might help explain the difference between Native American age cohorts and the general population. While Native American societies have a strong tradition of revering their elders, they also have a lower life expectancy because of lack of access to healthcare and high levels of mercury in fish, which is a traditional part of their diet.
Phases of Aging: The Young-Old, Middle-Old, and Old-Old
In the United States, all people over eighteen years old are considered adults, but there is a large difference between a person who is twenty-one years old and a person who is forty-five years old. More specific breakdowns, such as “young adult” and “middle-aged adult,” are helpful. In the same way, groupings are helpful in understanding the elderly. The elderly are often lumped together to include everyone over the age of sixty-five. But a sixty-five-year-old’s experience of life is much different from a ninety-year-old’s.
The United States’ older adult population can be divided into three life-stage subgroups: the young-old (approximately sixty-five to seventy-four years old), the middle-old (ages seventy-five to eighty-four years old), and the old-old (over age eighty-five). Today’s young-old age group is generally happier, healthier, and financially better off than the young-old of previous generations. In the United States, people are better able to prepare for aging because resources are more widely available.
Also, many people are making proactive quality-of-life decisions about their old age while they are still young. In the past, family members made care decisions when an elderly person reached a health crisis, often leaving the elderly person with little choice about what would happen. The elderly are now able to choose housing, for example, that allows them some independence while still providing care when it is needed. Living wills, retirement planning, and medical power of attorney are other concerns that are increasingly handled in advance.
The Graying of the United States
What does it mean to be elderly? Some define it as an issue of physical health, while others simply define it by chronological age. The U.S. government, for example, typically classifies people aged sixty-five years old as elderly, at which point citizens are eligible for federal benefits such as Social Security and Medicare. The World Health Organization has no standard, other than noting that sixty-five years old is the commonly accepted definition in most core nations, but it suggests a cut-off somewhere between fifty and fifty-five years old for semi-peripheral nations, such as those in Africa (World Health Organization 2012). AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) cites fifty as the eligible age of membership. It is interesting to note AARP’s name change; by taking the word “retired” out of its name, the organization can broaden its base to any older people in the United States, not just retirees. This is especially important now that many people are working to age seventy and beyond.
As senior citizens begin to make up a larger percentage of the United States, the organizations supporting them grow stronger. (Photo courtesy of Congressman George Miller/flickr)
There is an element of social construction, both local and global, in the way individuals and nations define who is elderly; that is, the shared meaning of the concept of elderly is created through interactions among people in society. This is exemplified by the truism that you are only as old as you feel.
Demographically, the U.S. population over sixty-five years old increased from 3 million in 1900 to 33 million in 1994 (Hobbs 1994) and to 36.8 million in 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau 2011c). This is a greater than tenfold increase in the elderly population, compared to a mere tripling of both the total population and of the population under sixty-five years old (Hobbs 1994). This increase has been called “the graying of America,” a term that describes the phenomenon of a larger and larger percentage of the population getting older and older. There are several reasons why the United States is graying so rapidly. One of these is life expectancy: the average number of years a person born today may expect to live. When we review Census Bureau statistics grouping the elderly by age, it is clear that in the United States, at least, we are living longer. In 2010, there were about 80,000 centenarians in the United States alone. They make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the population (Boston University School of Medicine 2014).
People over ninety years of age now account for 4.7 percent of the older population, defined as age sixty-five or above; this percentage is expected to reach 10 percent by the year 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). As of 2013, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 14.1 percent of the total U.S. population is sixty-five years old or older.
It is interesting to note that not all people in the United States age equally. Most glaring is the difference between men and women; as Figure shows, women have longer life expectancies than men. In 2010, there were ninety sixty-five-year-old men per one hundred sixty-five-year-old women. However, there were only eighty seventy-five-year-old men per one hundred seventy-five-year-old women, and only sixty eighty-five-year-old men per one hundred eighty-five-year-old women. Nevertheless, as the graph shows, the sex ratio actually increased over time, indicating that men are closing the gap between their life spans and those of women (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).
This U.S. Census graph shows that women live significantly longer than men. However, over the past two decades, men have narrowed the percentage by which women outlive them. (Graph courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau)
Baby Boomers
Of particular interest to gerontologists today is the population of baby boomers, the cohort born between 1946 and 1964 and now reaching their 60s. Coming of age in the 1960s and early 1970s, the baby boom generation was the first group of children and teenagers with their own spending power and therefore their own marketing power (Macunovich 2000). As this group has aged, it has redefined what it means to be young, middle-aged, and now old. People in the boomer generation do not want to grow old the way their grandparents did; the result is a wide range of products designed to ward off the effects—or the signs—of aging. Previous generations of people over sixty-five were “old.” Baby boomers are in “later life” or “the third age” (Gilleard and Higgs 2007).
The baby boom generation is the cohort driving much of the dramatic increase in the over-sixty-five population. Figure shows a comparison of the U.S. population by age and gender between 2000 and 2010. The biggest bulge in the pyramid (representing the largest population group) moves up the pyramid over the course of the decade; in 2000, the largest population group was age thirty-five to fifty-five. In 2010, that group was age forty-five to sixty-five, meaning the oldest baby boomers were just reaching the age at which the U.S. Census considers them elderly. In 2020, we can predict, the baby boom bulge will continue to rise up the pyramid, making the largest U.S. population group between sixty-five and eighty-five years old.
In this U.S. Census pyramid chart, the baby boom bulge was aged thirty-five to fifty-five in 2000. In 2010, they were aged forty-five to sixty-five. (Graph courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau)
This aging of the baby boom cohort has serious implications for our society. Healthcare is one of the areas most impacted by this trend. For years, hand-wringing has abounded about the additional burden the boomer cohort will place on Medicare, a government-funded program that provides healthcare services to people over sixty-five years old. And indeed, the Congressional Budget Office’s 2008 long-term outlook report shows that Medicare spending is expected to increase from 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009 to 8 percent of GDP in 2030, and to 15 percent in 2080 (Congressional Budget Office 2008).
Certainly, as boomers age, they will put increasing burdens on the entire U.S. healthcare system. A study from 2008 indicates that medical schools are not producing enough medical professionals who specialize in treating geriatric patients (Gerontological Society of America 2008). However, other studies indicate that aging boomers will bring economic growth to the healthcare industries, particularly in areas like pharmaceutical manufacturing and home healthcare services (Bierman 2011). Further, some argue that many of our medical advances of the past few decades are a result of boomers’ health requirements. Unlike the elderly of previous generations, boomers do not expect that turning sixty-five means their active lives are over. They are not willing to abandon work or leisure activities, but they may need more medical support to keep living vigorous lives. This desire of a large group of over-sixty-five-year-olds wanting to continue with a high activity level is driving innovation in the medical industry (Shaw).
The economic impact of aging boomers is also an area of concern for many observers. Although the baby boom generation earned more than previous generations and enjoyed a higher standard of living, they also spent their money lavishly and did not adequately prepare for retirement. According to a 2008 report from the McKinsey Global Institute, approximately two-thirds of early boomer households have not accumulated enough savings to maintain their lifestyles. This will have a ripple effect on the economy as boomers work and spend less (Farrel et al. 2008).
Just as some observers are concerned about the possibility of Medicare being overburdened, Social Security is considered to be at risk. Social Security is a government-run retirement program funded primarily through payroll taxes. With enough people paying into the program, there should be enough money for retirees to take out. But with the aging boomer cohort starting to receive Social Security benefits and fewer workers paying into the Social Security trust fund, economists warn that the system will collapse by the year 2037. A similar warning came in the 1980s; in response to recommendations from the Greenspan Commission, the retirement age (the age at which people could start receiving Social Security benefits) was raised from sixty-two to sixty-seven and the payroll tax was increased. A similar hike in retirement age, perhaps to seventy, is a possible solution to the current threat to Social Security (Reuteman 2010).
Aging around the World
From 1950 to approximately 2010, the global population of individuals age sixty-five and older increased by a range of 5–7 percent (Lee 2009). This percentage is expected to increase and will have a huge impact on the dependency ratio: the number of nonproductive citizens (young, disabled, or elderly) to productive working citizens (Bartram and Roe 2005). One country that will soon face a serious aging crisis is China, which is on the cusp of an “aging boom”— a period when its elderly population will dramatically increase. The number of people above age sixty in China today is about 178 million, which amounts to 13.3 percent of its total population (Xuequan 2011). By 2050, nearly a third of the Chinese population will be age sixty or older, which will put a significant burden on the labor force and impacting China’s economic growth (Bannister, Bloom, and Rosenberg 2010).
Cultural values and attitudes can shape people’s experience of aging. (Photo courtesy of Tom Coppen/flickr)
As healthcare improves and life expectancy increases across the world, elder care will be an emerging issue. Wienclaw (2009) suggests that with fewer working-age citizens available to provide home care and long-term assisted care to the elderly, the costs of elder care will increase.
Worldwide, the expectation governing the amount and type of elder care varies from culture to culture. For example, in Asia the responsibility for elder care lies firmly on the family (Yap, Thang, and Traphagan 2005). This is different from the approach in most Western countries, where the elderly are considered independent and are expected to tend to their own care. It is not uncommon for family members to intervene only if the elderly relative requires assistance, often due to poor health. Even then, caring for the elderly is considered voluntary. In the United States, decisions to care for an elderly relative are often conditionally based on the promise of future returns, such as inheritance or, in some cases, the amount of support the elderly provided to the caregiver in the past (Hashimoto 1996).
These differences are based on cultural attitudes toward aging. In China, several studies have noted the attitude of filial piety(deference and respect to one’s parents and ancestors in all things) as defining all other virtues (Hsu 1971; Hamilton 1990). Cultural attitudes in Japan prior to approximately 1986 supported the idea that the elderly deserve assistance (Ogawa and Retherford 1993). However, seismic shifts in major social institutions (like family and economy) have created an increased demand for community and government care. For example, the increase in women working outside the home has made it more difficult to provide in-home care to aging parents, which leads to an increase in the need for government-supported institutions (Raikhola and Kuroki 2009).
In the United States, by contrast, many people view caring for the elderly as a burden. Even when there is a family member able and willing to provide for an elderly family member, 60 percent of family caregivers are employed outside the home and are unable to provide the needed support. At the same time, however, many middle-class families are unable to bear the financial burden of “outsourcing” professional healthcare, resulting in gaps in care (Bookman and Kimbrel 2011). It is important to note that even within the United States not all demographic groups treat aging the same way. While most people in the United States are reluctant to place their elderly members into out-of-home assisted care, demographically speaking, the groups least likely to do so are Latinos, African Americans, and Asians (Bookman and Kimbrel 2011).
Globally, the United States and other core nations are fairly well equipped to handle the demands of an exponentially increasing elderly population. However, peripheral and semi-peripheral nations face similar increases without comparable resources. Poverty among elders is a concern, especially among elderly women. The feminization of the aging poor, evident in peripheral nations, is directly due to the number of elderly women in those countries who are single, illiterate, and not a part of the labor force (Mujahid 2006).
In 2002, the Second World Assembly on Aging was held in Madrid, Spain, resulting in the Madrid Plan, an internationally coordinated effort to create comprehensive social policies to address the needs of the worldwide aging population. The plan identifies three themes to guide international policy on aging: 1) publically acknowledging the global challenges caused by, and the global opportunities created by, a rising global population; 2) empowering the elderly; and 3) linking international policies on aging to international policies on development (Zelenev 2008).
The Madrid Plan has not yet been successful in achieving all its aims. However, it has increased awareness of the various issues associated with a global aging population, as well as raising the international consciousness to the way that the factors influencing the vulnerability of the elderly (social exclusion, prejudice and discrimination, and a lack of socio-legal protection) overlap with other developmental issues (basic human rights, empowerment, and participation), leading to an increase in legal protections (Zelenev 2008).
Summary
The social study of aging uses population data and cohorts to predict social concerns related to aging populations. In the United States, the population is increasingly older (called “the graying of the United States”), especially due to the baby boomer segment. Global studies on aging reveal a difference in life expectancy between core and peripheral nations as well as a discrepancy in nations’ preparedness for the challenges of increasing elderly populations.
Further Research
Gregory Bator founded the television show Graceful Aging and then developed a web site offering short video clips from the show. The purpose of Graceful Aging is to both inform and entertain, with clips on topics such as sleep, driving, health, safety, and legal issues. Bator, a lawyer, works on counseling seniors about their legal needs. Log onto Graceful Aging for a visual understanding of aging: openstaxcollege.org/l/graceful_aging
Glossary
baby boomers
people in the United States born between approximately 1946 and 1964
centenarians
people 100 years old or older
cohort
a group of people who share a statistical or demographic trait
dependency ratio
the number of nonproductive citizens (young, disabled, elderly) to productive working citizens
filial piety
deference and respect to one’s parents and ancestors in all things
gerontology
a field of science that seeks to understand the process of aging and the challenges encountered as seniors grow older
life expectancy
the number of years a newborn is expected to live
social gerontology
a specialized field of gerontology that examines the social (and sociological) aspects of aging | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly/13.02%3A_Who_Are_the_Elderly_Aging_in_Society.txt |
As human beings grow older, they go through different phases or stages of life. It is helpful to understand aging in the context of these phases. A life course is the period from birth to death, including a sequence of predictable life events such as physical maturation. Each phase comes with different responsibilities and expectations, which of course vary by individual and culture. Children love to play and learn, looking forward to becoming preteens. As preteens begin to test their independence, they are eager to become teenagers. Teenagers anticipate the promises and challenges of adulthood. Adults become focused on creating families, building careers, and experiencing the world as independent people. Finally, many adults look forward to old age as a wonderful time to enjoy life without as much pressure from work and family life. In old age, grandparenthood can provide many of the joys of parenthood without all the hard work that parenthood entails. And as work responsibilities abate, old age may be a time to explore hobbies and activities that there was no time for earlier in life. But for other people, old age is not a phase that they look forward to. Some people fear old age and do anything to “avoid” it by seeking medical and cosmetic fixes for the natural effects of age. These differing views on the life course are the result of the cultural values and norms into which people are socialized, but in most cultures, age is a master status influencing self-concept, as well as social roles and interactions.
Through the phases of the life course, dependence and independence levels change. At birth, newborns are dependent on caregivers for everything. As babies become toddlers and toddlers become adolescents and then teenagers, they assert their independence more and more. Gradually, children come to be considered adults, responsible for their own lives, although the point at which this occurs is widely varied among individuals, families, and cultures.
As Riley (1978) notes, aging is a lifelong process and entails maturation and change on physical, psychological, and social levels. Age, much like race, class, and gender, is a hierarchy in which some categories are more highly valued than others. For example, while many children look forward to gaining independence, Packer and Chasteen (2006) suggest that even in children, age prejudice leads to a negative view of aging. This, in turn, can lead to a widespread segregation between the old and the young at the institutional, societal, and cultural levels (Hagestad and Uhlenberg 2006).
DR. IGNATZ NASCHER AND THE BIRTH OF GERIATRICS
In the early 1900s, a New York physician named Dr. Ignatz Nascher coined the term geriatrics, a medical specialty that focuses on the elderly. He created the word by combining two Greek words:geron (old man) and iatrikos (medical treatment). Nascher based his work on what he observed as a young medical student, when he saw many acutely ill elderly people who were diagnosed simply as “being old.” There was nothing medicine could do, his professors declared, about the syndrome of “old age.”
Nascher refused to accept this dismissive view, seeing it as medical neglect. He believed it was a doctor’s duty to prolong life and relieve suffering whenever possible. In 1914, he published his views in his book Geriatrics: The Diseases of Old Age and Their Treatment (Clarfield 1990). Nascher saw the practice of caring for the elderly as separate from the practice of caring for the young, just as pediatrics (caring for children) is different from caring for grown adults (Clarfield 1990).
Nascher had high hopes for his pioneering work. He wanted to treat the aging, especially those who were poor and had no one to care for them. Many of the elderly poor were sent to live in “almshouses,” or public old-age homes (Cole 1993). Conditions were often terrible in these almshouses, where the aging were often sent and just forgotten.
As hard as it might be to believe today, Nascher’s approach was once considered unique. At the time of his death, in 1944, he was disappointed that the field of geriatrics had not made greater strides. In what ways are the elderly better off today than they were before Nascher’s ideas gained acceptance?
Biological Changes
Each person experiences age-related changes based on many factors. Biological factors such as molecular and cellular changes are called primary aging, while aging that occurs due to controllable factors such as lack of physical exercise and poor diet is called secondary aging (Whitbourne and Whitbourne 2010).
Most people begin to see signs of aging after fifty years old, when they notice the physical markers of age. Skin becomes thinner, drier, and less elastic. Wrinkles form. Hair begins to thin and gray. Men prone to balding start losing hair. The difficulty or relative ease with which people adapt to these changes is dependent in part on the meaning given to aging by their particular culture. A culture that values youthfulness and beauty above all else leads to a negative perception of growing old. Conversely, a culture that reveres the elderly for their life experience and wisdom contributes to a more positive perception of what it means to grow old.
Aging can be a visible, public experience. Many people recognize the signs of aging and, because of the meanings that culture assigns to these changes, believe that being older means being in physical decline. Many older people, however, remain healthy, active, and happy. (Photo courtesy of Pedro Riberio Simoes/flickr)
The effects of aging can feel daunting, and sometimes the fear of physical changes (like declining energy, food sensitivity, and loss of hearing and vision) is more challenging to deal with than the changes themselves. The way people perceive physical aging is largely dependent on how they were socialized. If people can accept the changes in their bodies as a natural process of aging, the changes will not seem as frightening.
According to the federal Administration on Aging (2011), in 2009 fewer people over sixty-five years old assessed their health as “excellent” or “very good” (41.6 percent) compared to those aged eighteen to sixty-four (64.4 percent). Evaluating data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Administration on Aging found that from 2006 to 2008, the most frequently reported health issues for those over sixty-five years old included arthritis (50 percent), hypertension (38 percent), heart disease (32 percent), and cancer (22 percent). About 27 percent of people age sixty and older are considered obese by current medical standards. Parker and Thorslunf (2006) found that while the trend is toward steady improvement in most disability measures, there is a concomitant increase in functional impairments (disability) and chronic diseases. At the same time, medical advances have reduced some of the disabling effects of those diseases (Crimmins 2004).
Some impacts of aging are gender-specific. Some of the disadvantages aging women face arise from long-standing social gender roles. For example, Social Security favors men over women, inasmuch as women do not earn Social Security benefits for the unpaid labor they perform (usually at home) as an extension of their gender roles. In the healthcare field, elderly female patients are more likely than elderly men to see their healthcare concerns trivialized (Sharp 1995) and are more likely to have their health issues labeled psychosomatic (Munch 2004). Another female-specific aspect of aging is that mass-media outlets often depict elderly females in terms of negative stereotypes and as less successful than older men (Bazzini and Mclntosh I997).
For men, the process of aging—and society’s response to and support of the experience—may be quite different. The gradual decrease in male sexual performance that occurs as a result of primary aging is medicalized and constructed as needing treatment (Marshall and Katz 2002) so that a man may maintain a sense of youthful masculinity. On the other hand, aging men have fewer opportunities to assert their masculine identities in the company of other men (for example, through sports participation) (Drummond 1998). And some social scientists have observed that the aging male body is depicted in the Western world as genderless (Spector-Mersel 2006).
Aging is accompanied by a host of biological, social, and psychological changes. (Photo courtesy of Michael Cohen/flickr)
Social and Psychological Changes
Male or female, growing older means confronting the psychological issues that come with entering the last phase of life. Young people moving into adulthood take on new roles and responsibilities as their lives expand, but an opposite arc can be observed in old age. What are the hallmarks of social and psychological change?
Retirement—the withdrawal from paid work at a certain age—is a relatively recent idea. Up until the late nineteenth century, people worked about sixty hours a week until they were physically incapable of continuing. Following the American Civil War, veterans receiving pensions were able to withdraw from the workforce, and the number of working older men began declining. A second large decline in the number of working men began in the post-World War II era, probably due to the availability of Social Security, and a third large decline in the 1960s and 1970s was probably due to the social support offered by Medicare and the increase in Social Security benefits (Munnell 2011).
In the twenty-first century, most people hope that at some point they will be able to stop working and enjoy the fruits of their labor. But do we look forward to this time or fear it? When people retire from familiar work routines, some easily seek new hobbies, interests, and forms of recreation. Many find new groups and explore new activities, but others may find it more difficult to adapt to new routines and loss of social roles, losing their sense of self-worth in the process.
Each phase of life has challenges that come with the potential for fear. Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994), in his view of socialization, broke the typical life span into eight phases. Each phase presents a particular challenge that must be overcome. In the final stage, old age, the challenge is to embrace integrity over despair. Some people are unable to successfully overcome the challenge. They may have to confront regrets, such as being disappointed in their children’s lives or perhaps their own. They may have to accept that they will never reach certain career goals. Or they must come to terms with what their career success has cost them, such as time with their family or declining personal health. Others, however, are able to achieve a strong sense of integrity and are able to embrace the new phase in life. When that happens, there is tremendous potential for creativity. They can learn new skills, practice new activities, and peacefully prepare for the end of life.
For some, overcoming despair might entail remarriage after the death of a spouse. A study conducted by Kate Davidson (2002) reviewed demographic data that asserted men were more likely to remarry after the death of a spouse and suggested that widows (the surviving female spouse of a deceased male partner) and widowers (the surviving male spouse of a deceased female partner) experience their postmarital lives differently. Many surviving women enjoyed a new sense of freedom, since they were living alone for the first time. On the other hand, for surviving men, there was a greater sense of having lost something, because they were now deprived of a constant source of care as well as the focus of their emotional life.
Aging and Sexuality
It is no secret that people in the United States are squeamish about the subject of sex. And when the subject is the sexuality of elderly people? No one wants to think about it or even talk about it. That fact is part of what makes 1971’s Harold and Maude so provocative. In this cult favorite film, Harold, an alienated young man, meets and falls in love with Maude, a seventy-nine-year-old woman. What is so telling about the film is the reaction of his family, priest, and psychologist, who exhibit disgust and horror at such a match.
Although it is difficult to have an open, public national dialogue about aging and sexuality, the reality is that our sexual selves do not disappear after age sixty-five. People continue to enjoy sex—and not always safe sex—well into their later years. In fact, some research suggests that as many as one in five new cases of AIDS occurs in adults over sixty-five years old (Hillman 2011).
In Harold and Maude, a 1971 cult classic movie, a twenty-something young man falls in love with a seventy-nine-year-old woman. The world reacts in disgust. What is your response to this picture, given that that the two people are meant to be lovers, not grandmother and grandson? (Photo courtesy of luckyjackson/flickr)
In some ways, old age may be a time to enjoy sex more, not less. For women, the elder years can bring a sense of relief as the fear of an unwanted pregnancy is removed and the children are grown and taking care of themselves. However, while we have expanded the number of psycho-pharmaceuticals to address sexual dysfunction in men, it was not until very recently that the medical field acknowledged the existence of female sexual dysfunctions (Bryant 2004).
AGING “OUT:” LGBT SENIORS
How do different groups in our society experience the aging process? Are there any experiences that are universal, or do different populations have different experiences? An emerging field of study looks at how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people experience the aging process and how their experience differs from that of other groups or the dominant group. This issue is expanding with the aging of the baby boom generation; not only will aging boomers represent a huge bump in the general elderly population but also the number of LGBT seniors is expected to double by 2030 (Fredriksen-Goldsen et al. 2011).
As same-sex marriage becomes a possibility, many gay and lesbian couples are finally able to tie the knot—sometimes as seniors—after decades of waiting. (Photo courtesy of Fibonacci Blue/flickr).
A recent study titled The Aging and Health Report: Disparities and Resilience among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Older Adults finds that LGBT older adults have higher rates of disability and depression than their heterosexual peers. They are also less likely to have a support system that might provide elder care: a partner and supportive children (Fredriksen-Goldsen et al. 2011). Even for those LGBT seniors who are partnered, some states do not recognize a legal relationship between two people of the same sex, which reduces their legal protection and financial options.
As they transition to assisted-living facilities, LGBT people have the added burden of “disclosure management:” the way they share their sexual and relationship identity. In one case study, a seventy-eight-year-old lesbian lived alone in a long-term care facility. She had been in a long-term relationship of thirty-two years and had been visibly active in the gay community earlier in her life. However, in the long-term care setting, she was much quieter about her sexual orientation. She “selectively disclosed” her sexual identity, feeling safer with anonymity and silence (Jenkins et al. 2010). A study from the National Senior Citizens Law Center reports that only 22 percent of LGBT older adults expect they could be open about their sexual orientation or gender identity in a long-term care facility. Even more telling is the finding that only 16 percent of non-LGBT older adults expected that LGBT people could be open with facility staff (National Senior Citizens Law Center 2011).
Same-sex marriage—a civil rights battleground that is being fought in many states—can have major implications for the way the LGBT community ages. With marriage comes the legal and financial protection afforded to opposite-sex couples, as well as less fear of exposure and a reduction in the need to “retreat to the closet” (Jenkins et al. 2010). Changes in this area are coming slowly, and in the meantime, advocates have many policy recommendations for how to improve the aging process for LGBT individuals. These recommendations include increasing federal research on LGBT elders, increasing (and enforcing existing) laws against discrimination, and amending the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to cover LGBT caregivers (Grant 2009).
Death and Dying
For most of human history, the standard of living was significantly lower than it is now. Humans struggled to survive with few amenities and very limited medical technology. The risk of death due to disease or accident was high in any life stage, and life expectancy was low. As people began to live longer, death became associated with old age.
For many teenagers and young adults, losing a grandparent or another older relative can be the first loss of a loved one they experience. It may be their first encounter with grief, a psychological, emotional, and social response to the feelings of loss that accompanies death or a similar event.
A young man sits at the grave of his great-grandmother. (Photo courtesy of Sara Goldsmith/flickr)
People tend to perceive death, their own and that of others, based on the values of their culture. While some may look upon death as the natural conclusion to a long, fruitful life, others may find the prospect of dying frightening to contemplate. People tend to have strong resistance to the idea of their own death, and strong emotional reactions of loss to the death of loved ones. Viewing death as a loss, as opposed to a natural or tranquil transition, is often considered normal in the United States.
What may be surprising is how few studies were conducted on death and dying prior to the 1960s. Death and dying were fields that had received little attention until a psychologist named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross began observing people who were in the process of dying. As Kübler-Ross witnessed people’s transition toward death, she found some common threads in their experiences. She observed that the process had five distinct stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She published her findings in a 1969 book called On Death and Dying. The book remains a classic on the topic today.
Kübler-Ross found that a person’s first reaction to the prospect of dying is denial: this is characterized by the person's not wanting to believe he or she is dying, with common thoughts such as “I feel fine” or “This is not really happening to me.” The second stage is anger, when loss of life is seen as unfair and unjust. A person then resorts to the third stage, bargaining: trying to negotiate with a higher power to postpone the inevitable by reforming or changing the way he or she lives. The fourth stage, psychological depression, allows for resignation as the situation begins to seem hopeless. In the final stage, a person adjusts to the idea of death and reaches acceptance. At this point, the person can face death honestly, by regarding it as a natural and inevitable part of life and can make the most of their remaining time.
The work of Kübler-Ross was eye-opening when it was introduced. It broke new ground and opened the doors for sociologists, social workers, health practitioners, and therapists to study death and help those who were facing death. Kübler-Ross’s work is generally considered a major contribution to thanatology: the systematic study of death and dying.
Of special interests to thanatologists is the concept of “dying with dignity.” Modern medicine includes advanced medical technology that may prolong life without a parallel improvement to the quality of life one may have. In some cases, people may not want to continue living when they are in constant pain and no longer enjoying life. Should patients have the right to choose to die with dignity? Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a staunch advocate for physician-assisted suicide: the voluntary or physician-assisted use of lethal medication provided by a medical doctor to end one’s life. This right to have a doctor help a patient die with dignity is controversial. In the United States, Oregon was the first state to pass a law allowing physician-assisted suicides. In 1997, Oregon instituted the Death with Dignity Act, which required the presence of two physicians for a legal assisted suicide. This law was successfully challenged by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2001, but the appeals process ultimately upheld the Oregon law. Subsequently, both Montana and Washington have passed similar laws.
The controversy surrounding death with dignity laws is emblematic of the way our society tries to separate itself from death. Health institutions have built facilities to comfortably house those who are terminally ill. This is seen as a compassionate act, helping relieve the surviving family members of the burden of caring for the dying relative. But studies almost universally show that people prefer to die in their own homes (Lloyd, White, and Sutton 2011). Is it our social responsibility to care for elderly relatives up until their death? How do we balance the responsibility for caring for an elderly relative with our other responsibilities and obligations? As our society grows older, and as new medical technology can prolong life even further, the answers to these questions will develop and change.
The changing concept of hospice is an indicator of our society’s changing view of death. Hospice is a type of healthcare that treats terminally ill people when “cure-oriented treatments” are no longer an option (Hospice Foundation of America 2012b). Hospice doctors, nurses, and therapists receive special training in the care of the dying. The focus is not on getting better or curing the illness, but on passing out of this life in comfort and peace. Hospice centers exist as a place where people can go to die in comfort, and increasingly, hospice services encourage at-home care so that someone has the comfort of dying in a familiar environment, surrounded by family (Hospice Foundation of America 2012a). While many of us would probably prefer to avoid thinking of the end of our lives, it may be possible to take comfort in the idea that when we do approach death in a hospice setting, it is in a familiar, relatively controlled place.
Summary
Old age affects every aspect of human life: biological, social, and psychological. Although medical technology has lengthened life expectancies, it cannot eradicate aging and death. Cultural attitudes shape the way our society views old age and dying, but these attitudes shift and evolve over time.
Further Research
Read the article “A Study of Sexuality and Health among Older Adults in the United States.” You will find it online at the New England Journal of Medicine: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/New_Eng...urnal_medicine
Glossary
geriatrics
a medical specialty focusing on the elderly
grief
a psychological, emotional, and social response to the feelings of loss that accompanies death or a similar event
hospice
healthcare that treats terminally ill people by providing comfort during the dying process
life course
the period from birth to death, including a sequence of predictable life events
physician-assisted suicide
the voluntary use of lethal medication provided by a medical doctor to end one’s life
primary aging
biological factors such as molecular and cellular changes
secondary aging
aging that occurs due to controllable factors like exercise and diet
thanatology
the systematic study of death and dying | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly/13.03%3A_The_Process_of_Aging.txt |
Aging comes with many challenges. The loss of independence is one potential part of the process, as are diminished physical ability and age discrimination. The term senescence refers to the aging process, including biological, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual changes. This section discusses some of the challenges we encounter during this process. As already observed, many older adults remain highly self-sufficient. Others require more care. Because the elderly typically no longer hold jobs, finances can be a challenge. And due to cultural misconceptions, older people can be targets of ridicule and stereotypes. The elderly face many challenges in later life, but they do not have to enter old age without dignity.
Poverty
For many people in the United States, growing older once meant living with less income. In 1960, almost 35 percent of the elderly existed on poverty-level incomes. A generation ago, the nation’s oldest populations had the highest risk of living in poverty.
While elderly poverty rates showed an improvement trend for decades, the 2008 recession has changed some older people’s financial futures. Some who had planned a leisurely retirement have found themselves at risk of late-age destitution. (Photo (a) courtesy of Michael Cohen/flickr; photo (b) courtesy of Alex Proimos/flickr)
At the start of the twenty-first century, the older population was putting an end to that trend. Among people over sixty-five years old, the poverty rate fell from 30 percent in 1967 to 9.7 percent in 2008, well below the national average of 13.2 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2009). However, given the subsequent recession, which severely reduced the retirement savings of many while taxing public support systems, how are the elderly affected? According to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, the national poverty rate among the elderly had risen to 14 percent by 2010 (Urban Institute and Kaiser Commission 2010).
Before the recession hit, what had changed to cause a reduction in poverty among the elderly? What social patterns contributed to the shift? For several decades, a greater number of women joined the workforce. More married couples earned double incomes during their working years and saved more money for their retirement. Private employers and governments began offering better retirement programs. By 1990, senior citizens reported earning 36 percent more income on average than they did in 1980; that was five times the rate of increase for people under age thirty-five (U.S. Census Bureau 2009).
In addition, many people were gaining access to better healthcare. New trends encouraged people to live more healthful lifestyles by placing an emphasis on exercise and nutrition. There was also greater access to information about the health risks of behaviors such as cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and drug use. Because they were healthier, many older people continue to work past the typical retirement age and provide more opportunity to save for retirement. Will these patterns return once the recession ends? Sociologists will be watching to see. In the meantime, they are realizing the immediate impact of the recession on elderly poverty.
During the recession, older people lost some of the financial advantages that they’d gained in the 1980s and 1990s. From October 2007 to October 2009 the values of retirement accounts for people over age fifty lost 18 percent of their value. The sharp decline in the stock market also forced many to delay their retirement (Administration on Aging 2009).
Ageism
Driving to the grocery store, Peter, twenty-three years old, got stuck behind a car on a four-lane main artery through his city’s business district. The speed limit was thirty-five miles per hour, and while most drivers sped along at forty to forty-five mph, the driver in front of him was going the minimum speed. Peter tapped on his horn. He tailgated the driver. Finally, Peter had a chance to pass the car. He glanced over. Sure enough, Peter thought, a gray-haired old man guilty of “DWE,” driving while elderly.
Are these street signs humorous or offensive? What shared assumptions make them humorous? Or is memory loss too serious to be made fun of? (Photo courtesy of Tumbleweed/flickr)
Note
At the grocery store, Peter waited in the checkout line behind an older woman. She paid for her groceries, lifted her bags of food into her cart, and toddled toward the exit. Peter, guessing her to be about eighty years old, was reminded of his grandmother. He paid for his groceries and caught up with her.
“Can I help you with your cart?” he asked.
“No, thank you. I can get it myself,” she said and marched off toward her car.
Peter’s responses to both older people, the driver and the shopper, were prejudiced. In both cases, he made unfair assumptions. He assumed the driver drove cautiously simply because the man was a senior citizen, and he assumed the shopper needed help carrying her groceries just because she was an older woman.
Responses like Peter’s toward older people are fairly common. He didn’t intend to treat people differently based on personal or cultural biases, but he did. Ageism is discrimination (when someone acts on a prejudice) based on age. Dr. Robert Butler coined the term in 1968, noting that ageism exists in all cultures (Brownell). Ageist attitudes and biases based on stereotypes reduce elderly people to inferior or limited positions.
Ageism can vary in severity. Peter’s attitudes are probably seen as fairly mild, but relating to the elderly in ways that are patronizing can be offensive. When ageism is reflected in the workplace, in healthcare, and in assisted-living facilities, the effects of discrimination can be more severe. Ageism can make older people fear losing a job, feel dismissed by a doctor, or feel a lack of power and control in their daily living situations.
In early societies, the elderly were respected and revered. Many preindustrial societies observed gerontocracy, a type of social structure wherein the power is held by a society’s oldest members. In some countries today, the elderly still have influence and power and their vast knowledge is respected. Reverence for the elderly is still a part of some cultures, but it has changed in many places because of social factors.
In many modern nations, however, industrialization contributed to the diminished social standing of the elderly. Today wealth, power, and prestige are also held by those in younger age brackets. The average age of corporate executives was fifty-nine years old in 1980. In 2008, the average age had lowered to fifty-four years old (Stuart 2008). Some older members of the workforce felt threatened by this trend and grew concerned that younger employees in higher level positions would push them out of the job market. Rapid advancements in technology and media have required new skill sets that older members of the workforce are less likely to have.
Changes happened not only in the workplace but also at home. In agrarian societies, a married couple cared for their aging parents. The oldest members of the family contributed to the household by doing chores, cooking, and helping with child care. As economies shifted from agrarian to industrial, younger generations moved to cities to work in factories. The elderly began to be seen as an expensive burden. They did not have the strength and stamina to work outside the home. What began during industrialization, a trend toward older people living apart from their grown children, has become commonplace.
Mistreatment and Abuse
Mistreatment and abuse of the elderly is a major social problem. As expected, with the biology of aging, the elderly sometimes become physically frail. This frailty renders them dependent on others for care—sometimes for small needs like household tasks, and sometimes for assistance with basic functions like eating and toileting. Unlike a child, who also is dependent on another for care, an elder is an adult with a lifetime of experience, knowledge, and opinions—a more fully developed person. This makes the care-providing situation more complex.
Elder abuse occurs when a caretaker intentionally deprives an older person of care or harms the person in his or her charge. Caregivers may be family members, relatives, friends, health professionals, or employees of senior housing or nursing care. The elderly may be subject to many different types of abuse.
In a 2009 study on the topic led by Dr. Ron Acierno, the team of researchers identified five major categories of elder abuse: 1) physical abuse, such as hitting or shaking, 2) sexual abuse, including rape and coerced nudity, 3) psychological or emotional abuse, such as verbal harassment or humiliation, 4) neglect or failure to provide adequate care, and 5) financial abuse or exploitation (Acierno 2010).
The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA), a division of the U.S. Administration on Aging, also identifies abandonment and self-neglect as types of abuse. Table shows some of the signs and symptoms that the NCEA encourages people to notice.
Signs of Elder Abuse. The National Center on Elder Abuse encourages people to watch for these signs of mistreatment. (Chart courtesy of National Center on Elder Abuse)
Type of Abuse Signs and Symptoms
Physical abuse Bruises, untreated wounds, sprains, broken glasses, lab findings of medication overdosage
Sexual abuse Bruises around breasts or genitals, torn or bloody underclothing, unexplained venereal disease
Emotional/psychological abuse Being upset or withdrawn, unusual dementia-like behavior (rocking, sucking)
Neglect Poor hygiene, untreated bed sores, dehydration, soiled bedding
Financial Sudden changes in banking practices, inclusion of additional names on bank cards, abrupt changes to will
Self-neglect Untreated medical conditions, unclean living area, lack of medical items like dentures or glasses
How prevalent is elder abuse? Two recent U.S. studies found that roughly one in ten elderly people surveyed had suffered at least one form of elder abuse. Some social researchers believe elder abuse is underreported and that the number may be higher. The risk of abuse also increases in people with health issues such as dementia (Kohn and Verhoek-Oftedahl 2011). Older women were found to be victims of verbal abuse more often than their male counterparts.
In Acierno’s study, which included a sample of 5,777 respondents age sixty and older, 5.2 percent of respondents reported financial abuse, 5.1 percent said they’d been neglected, and 4.6 endured emotional abuse (Acierno 2010). The prevalence of physical and sexual abuse was lower at 1.6 and 0.6 percent, respectively (Acierno 2010).
Other studies have focused on the caregivers to the elderly in an attempt to discover the causes of elder abuse. Researchers identified factors that increased the likelihood of caregivers perpetrating abuse against those in their care. Those factors include inexperience, having other demands such as jobs (for those who weren’t professionally employed as caregivers), caring for children, living full-time with the dependent elder, and experiencing high stress, isolation, and lack of support (Kohn and Verhoek-Oftedahl 2011).
A history of depression in the caregiver was also found to increase the likelihood of elder abuse. Neglect was more likely when care was provided by paid caregivers. Many of the caregivers who physically abused elders were themselves abused—in many cases, when they were children. Family members with some sort of dependency on the elder in their care were more likely to physically abuse that elder. For example, an adult child caring for an elderly parent while at the same time depending on some form of income from that parent, is considered more likely to perpetrate physical abuse (Kohn and Verhoek-Oftedahl 2011).
A survey in Florida found that 60.1 percent of caregivers reported verbal aggression as a style of conflict resolution. Paid caregivers in nursing homes were at a high risk of becoming abusive if they had low job satisfaction, treated the elderly like children, or felt burnt out (Kohn and Verhoek-Oftedahl 2011). Caregivers who tended to be verbally abusive were found to have had less training, lower education, and higher likelihood of depression or other psychiatric disorders. Based on the results of these studies, many housing facilities for seniors have increased their screening procedures for caregiver applicants.
WORLD WAR II VETERANS
World War II veterans are aging. Many are in their eighties and nineties. They are dying at an estimated rate of about 740 per day, according to the U.S. Veterans Administration (National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics 2011). Data suggest that by 2036, there will be no living veterans of WWII (U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs).
When these veterans came home from the war and ended their service, little was known about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These heroes did not receive the mental and physical healthcare that could have helped them. As a result, many of them, now in old age, are dealing with the effects of PTSD. Research suggests a high percentage of World War II veterans are plagued by flashback memories and isolation, and that many “self-medicate” with alcohol.
World War II (1941–1945) veterans and members of an Honor Flight from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, visit the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. Most of these men and women were in their late teens or twenties when they served. (Photo courtesy of Sean Hackbarth/flickr)
Research has found that veterans of any conflict are more than twice as likely as nonveterans to commit suicide, with rates highest among the oldest veterans. Reports show that WWII-era veterans are four times as likely to take their own lives as people of the same age with no military service (Glantz 2010).
In May 2004, the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, was completed and dedicated to honor those who served during the conflict. Dr. Earl Morse, a physician and retired Air Force captain, treated many WWII veterans. He encouraged them to visit the memorial, knowing it could help them heal. Many WWII veterans expressed interest in seeing the memorial. Unfortunately, many were in their eighties and were neither physically nor financially able to travel on their own. Dr. Morse arranged to personally escort some of the veterans and enlisted volunteer pilots who would pay for the flights themselves. He also raised money, insisting the veterans pay nothing. By the end of 2005, 137 veterans, many in wheelchairs, had made the trip. The Honor Flight Network was up and running.
As of 2010, the Honor Flight Network had flown more than 120,000 U.S. veterans of World War II, and some veterans of the Korean War, to Washington. The round-trip flights leave for day-long trips from airports in thirty states, staffed by volunteers who care for the needs of the elderly travelers (Honor Flight Network 2011).
Summary
As people enter old age, they face challenges. Ageism, which involves stereotyping and discrimination against the elderly, leads to misconceptions about their abilities. Although elderly poverty has been improving for decades, many older people may be detrimentally affected by the 2008 recession. Some elderly people grow physically frail and, therefore, dependent on caregivers, which increases their risk of elder abuse.
Further Research
Veterans who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during various conflicts represent cohorts. Veterans share certain aspects of life in common. To find information on veteran populations and how they are aging, study the information on the web site of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Dep_Veterans_Affairs
Learn more about the Honor Flight Network, the organization offering trips to national war memorials in Washington, DC, at no cost to the veterans: openstaxcollege.org/l/honor_flight
Glossary
ageism
discrimination based on age
elder abuse
the act of a caretaker intentionally depriving an older person of care or harming the person in their charge
gerontocracy
a type of social structure wherein the power is held by a society’s oldest members
senescence
the aging process, including biological, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual changes | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly/13.04%3A_Challenges_Facing_the_Elderly.txt |
What roles do individual senior citizens play in your life? How do you relate to and interact with older people? What role do they play in neighborhoods and communities, in cities and in states? Sociologists are interested in exploring the answers to questions such as these through three different perspectives: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.
Functionalism
Functionalists analyze how the parts of society work together. Functionalists gauge how society’s parts are working together to keep society running smoothly. How does this perspective address aging? The elderly, as a group, are one of society’s vital parts.
Functionalists find that people with better resources who stay active in other roles adjust better to old age (Crosnoe and Elder 2002). Three social theories within the functional perspective were developed to explain how older people might deal with later-life experiences.
Does being old mean disengaging from the world? (Photo courtesy of Candida Performa/Wikimedia Commons)
The earliest gerontological theory in the functionalist perspective is disengagement theory, which suggests that withdrawing from society and social relationships is a natural part of growing old. There are several main points to the theory. First, because everyone expects to die one day, and because we experience physical and mental decline as we approach death, it is natural to withdraw from individuals and society. Second, as the elderly withdraw, they receive less reinforcement to conform to social norms. Therefore, this withdrawal allows a greater freedom from the pressure to conform. Finally, social withdrawal is gendered, meaning it is experienced differently by men and women. Because men focus on work and women focus on marriage and family, when they withdraw they will be unhappy and directionless until they adopt a role to replace their accustomed role that is compatible with the disengaged state (Cummings and Henry 1961).
The suggestion that old age was a distinct state in the life course, characterized by a distinct change in roles and activities, was groundbreaking when it was first introduced. However, the theory is no longer accepted in its classic form. Criticisms typically focus on the application of the idea that seniors universally naturally withdraw from society as they age, and that it does not allow for a wide variation in the way people experience aging (Hothschild 1975).
The social withdrawal that Cummings and Henry recognized (1961), and its notion that elderly people need to find replacement roles for those they’ve lost, is addressed anew in activity theory. According to this theory, activity levels and social involvement are key to this process, and key to happiness (Havinghurst 1961; Neugarten 1964; Havinghurst, Neugarten, and Tobin 1968). According to this theory, the more active and involved an elderly person is, the happier he or she will be. Critics of this theory point out that access to social opportunities and activity are not equally available to all. Moreover, not everyone finds fulfillment in the presence of others or participation in activities. Reformulations of this theory suggest that participation in informal activities, such as hobbies, are what most effect later life satisfaction (Lemon, Bengtson, and Petersen 1972).
According to continuity theory, the elderly make specific choices to maintain consistency in internal (personality structure, beliefs) and external structures (relationships), remaining active and involved throughout their elder years. This is an attempt to maintain social equilibrium and stability by making future decisions on the basis of already developed social roles (Atchley 1971; Atchley 1989). One criticism of this theory is its emphasis on so-called “normal” aging, which marginalizes those with chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
THE GRAYING OF AMERICAN PRISONS
Earl Grimes is a seventy-nine-year-old inmate at a state prison. He has undergone two cataract surgeries and takes about \$1,000 a month worth of medication to manage a heart condition. He needs significant help moving around, which he obtains by bribing younger inmates. He is serving a life prison term for a murder he committed thirty-eight years—half a lifetime—ago (Warren 2002).
Grimes’ situation exemplifies the problems facing prisons today. According to a recent report released by Human Rights Watch (2012), there are now more than 124,000 prisoners age fifty-five years or older and over 26,000 prisoners age sixty-five or older in the U.S. prison population. These numbers represent an exponential rise over the last two decades. Why are U.S. prisons graying so rapidly?
Would you want to spend your retirement here? A growing elderly prison population requires asking questions about how to deal with senior inmates. (Photo courtesy of Claire Rowland/Wikimedia Commons)
Two factors contribute significantly to this country’s aging prison population. One is the tough-on-crime reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, when mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes” policies sent many people to jail for thirty years to life, even when the third strike was a relatively minor offense (Leadership Conference, n.d.). Many of today’s elderly prisoners are those who were incarcerated thirty years ago for life sentences. The other factor influencing today’s aging prison population is the aging of the overall population. As discussed in the section on aging in the United States, the percentage of people over sixty-five years old is increasing each year due to rising life expectancies and the aging of the baby boom generation.
So why should it matter that the elderly prison population is growing so swiftly? As discussed in the section on the process of aging, growing older is accompanied by a host of physical problems, like failing vision, mobility, and hearing. Chronic illnesses like heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes also become increasingly common as people age, whether they are in prison or not. In many cases, elderly prisoners are physically incapable of committing a violent—or possibly any—crime. Is it ethical to keep them locked up for the short remainder of their lives?
There seem to be a lot of reasons, both financial and ethical, to release some elderly prisoners to live the rest of their lives—and die—in freedom. However, few lawmakers are willing to appear soft on crime by releasing convicted felons from prison, especially if their sentence was “life without parole” (Warren 2002).
Conflict Perspective
Theorists working the conflict perspective view society as inherently unstable, an institution that privileges the powerful wealthy few while marginalizing everyone else. According to the guiding principle of conflict theory, social groups compete with other groups for power and scarce resources. Applied to society’s aging population, the principle means that the elderly struggle with other groups—for example, younger society members—to retain a certain share of resources. At some point, this competition may become conflict.
At a public protest, older people make their voices heard. In advocating for themselves, they help shape public policy and alter the allotment of available resources. (Photo courtesy of longislandwins/flickr)
For example, some people complain that the elderly get more than their fair share of society’s resources. In hard economic times, there is great concern about the huge costs of Social Security and Medicare. One of every four tax dollars, or about 28 percent, is spent on these two programs. In 1950, the federal government paid \$781 million in Social Security payments. Now, the payments are 870 times higher. In 2008, the government paid \$296 billion (Statistical Abstract 2011). The medical bills of the nation’s elderly population are rising dramatically. While there is more care available to certain segments of the senior community, it must be noted that the financial resources available to the aging can vary tremendously by race, social class, and gender.
There are three classic theories of aging within the conflict perspective. Modernization theory (Cowgill and Holmes 1972) suggests that the primary cause of the elderly losing power and influence in society are the parallel forces of industrialization and modernization. As societies modernize, the status of elders decreases, and they are increasingly likely to experience social exclusion. Before industrialization, strong social norms bound the younger generation to care for the older. Now, as societies industrialize, the nuclear family replaces the extended family. Societies become increasingly individualistic, and norms regarding the care of older people change. In an individualistic industrial society, caring for an elderly relative is seen as a voluntary obligation that may be ignored without fear of social censure.
The central reasoning of modernization theory is that as long as the extended family is the standard family, as in preindustrial economies, elders will have a place in society and a clearly defined role. As societies modernize, the elderly, unable to work outside of the home, have less to offer economically and are seen as a burden. This model may be applied to both the developed and the developing world, and it suggests that as people age they will be abandoned and lose much of their familial support since they become a nonproductive economic burden.
Another theory in the conflict perspective is age stratification theory (Riley, Johnson, and Foner 1972). Though it may seem obvious now, with our awareness of ageism, age stratification theorists were the first to suggest that members of society might be stratified by age, just as they are stratified by race, class, and gender. Because age serves as a basis of social control, different age groups will have varying access to social resources such as political and economic power. Within societies, behavioral age norms, including norms about roles and appropriate behavior, dictate what members of age cohorts may reasonably do. For example, it might be considered deviant for an elderly woman to wear a bikini because it violates norms denying the sexuality of older females. These norms are specific to each age strata, developing from culturally based ideas about how people should “act their age.”
Thanks to amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which drew attention to some of the ways in which our society is stratified based on age, U.S. workers no longer must retire upon reaching a specified age. As first passed in 1967, the ADEA provided protection against a broad range of age discrimination and specifically addressed termination of employment due to age, age specific layoffs, advertised positions specifying age limits or preferences, and denial of healthcare benefits to those over sixty-five years old (U.S. EEOC 2012).
Age stratification theory has been criticized for its broadness and its inattention to other sources of stratification and how these might intersect with age. For example, one might argue that an older white male occupies a more powerful role, and is far less limited in his choices, compared to an older white female based on his historical access to political and economic power.
Finally, exchange theory (Dowd 1975), a rational choice approach, suggests we experience an increased dependence as we age and must increasingly submit to the will of others because we have fewer ways of compelling others to submit to us. Indeed, inasmuch as relationships are based on mutual exchanges, as the elderly become less able to exchange resources, they will see their social circles diminish. In this model, the only means to avoid being discarded is to engage in resource management, like maintaining a large inheritance or participating in social exchange systems via child care. In fact, the theory may depend too much on the assumption that individuals are calculating. It is often criticized for affording too much emphasis to material exchange and devaluing nonmaterial assets such as love and friendship.
The subculture of aging theory posits that the elderly create their own communities because they have been excluded from other groups. (Photo courtesy of Icnacio Palomo Duarte/flickr)
Symbolic Interactionism
Generally, theories within the symbolic interactionist perspective focus on how society is created through the day-to-day interaction of individuals, as well as the way people perceive themselves and others based on cultural symbols. This microanalytic perspective assumes that if people develop a sense of identity through their social interactions, their sense of self is dependent on those interactions. A woman whose main interactions with society make her feel old and unattractive may lose her sense of self. But a woman whose interactions make her feel valued and important will have a stronger sense of self and a happier life.
Symbolic interactionists stress that the changes associated with old age, in and of themselves, have no inherent meaning. Nothing in the nature of aging creates any particular, defined set of attitudes. Rather, attitudes toward the elderly are rooted in society.
One microanalytical theory is Rose’s (1962) subculture of aging theory, which focuses on the shared community created by the elderly when they are excluded (due to age), voluntarily or involuntarily, from participating in other groups. This theory suggests that elders will disengage from society and develop new patterns of interaction with peers who share common backgrounds and interests. For example, a group consciousness may develop within such groups as AARP around issues specific to the elderly like the Medicare “doughnut hole,” focused on creating social and political pressure to fix those issues. Whether brought together by social or political interests, or even geographic regions, elders may find a strong sense of community with their new group.
Another theory within the symbolic interaction perspective is selective optimization with compensation theory. Baltes and Baltes (1990) based their theory on the idea that successful personal development throughout the life course and subsequent mastery of the challenges associated with everyday life are based on the components of selection, optimization, and compensation. Though this happens at all stages in the life course, in the field of gerontology, researchers focus attention on balancing the losses associated with aging with the gains stemming from the same. Here, aging is a process and not an outcome, and the goals (compensation) are specific to the individual.
According to this theory, our energy diminishes as we age, and we select (selection) personal goals to get the most (optimize) for the effort we put into activities, in this way making up for (compensation) the loss of a wider range of goals and activities. In this theory, the physical decline postulated by disengagement theory may result in more dependence, but that is not necessarily negative, as it allows aging individuals to save their energy for the most meaningful activities. For example, a professor who values teaching sociology may participate in a phased retirement, never entirely giving up teaching, but acknowledging personal physical limitations that allow teaching only one or two classes per year.
Swedish sociologist Lars Tornstam developed a symbolic interactionist theory called gerotranscendence: the idea that as people age, they transcend the limited views of life they held in earlier times. Tornstam believes that throughout the aging process, the elderly become less self-centered and feel more peaceful and connected to the natural world. Wisdom comes to the elderly, Tornstam’s theory states, and as the elderly tolerate ambiguities and seeming contradictions, they let go of conflict and develop softer views of right and wrong (Tornstam 2005).
Tornstam does not claim that everyone will achieve wisdom in aging. Some elderly people might still grow bitter and isolated, feel ignored and left out, or become grumpy and judgmental. Symbolic interactionists believe that, just as in other phases of life, individuals must struggle to overcome their own failings and turn them into strengths.
Summary
The three major sociological perspectives inform the theories of aging. Theories in the functionalist perspective focus on the role of elders in terms of the functioning of society as a whole. Theories in the conflict perspective concentrate on how elders, as a group, are at odds with other groups in society. And theories in the symbolic interactionist perspective focus on how elders’ identities are created through their interactions.
Further Research
New Dynamics of Aging is a web site produced by an interdisciplinary team at the University of Sheffield. It is supposedly the largest research program on aging in the United Kingdom to date. In studying the experiences of aging and factors that shape aging, including behaviors, biology, health, culture, history, economics, and technology, researchers are promoting healthy aging and helping dispel stereotypes.
• Abner, Carrie. 2006. “Graying Prisons: States Face Challenges of an Aging Inmate Population.” State News, November/December.
• Atchley, R.C. 1971. "Retirement and Leisure Participation: Continuity or Crisis?" The Gerontologist 11:13–17.
• Atchley, R.C. 1989. "A Continuity Theory of Normal Aging." The Gerontologist 29:183–190.
• Baltes, Paul, and Margret Baltes, eds. 1990. Successful Aging: Perspectives from The Behavioral Sciences. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.
• Cowgill, D.O. and L.D. Holmes, eds. 1972. Aging and Modernization. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Crosnoe, Robert, and Glen H. Elder. 2002. “Life Course Transitions, the Generational Stake, and Grandparent-Grandchild Relationships.” Journal of Marriage and Family 64(4):1089–1096.
• Cumming, Elaine, and William Earl Henry. 1961. Growing Old. New York: Basic.
• Dowd, James J. 1975. "Aging as Exchange: A Preface to Theory." Journal of Gerontology 30:584–594.
• Havinghurst, R.J. 1961. "Successful Aging." The Gerontologist 1:8–13.
• Havinghurst, Robert, Bernice Neugarten, and Sheldon Tobin. 1968. “Patterns of Aging.” Pp. 161–172 in Middle Age and Aging, edited by B. Neugarten. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Hothschild, Arlie. 1975. “Disengagement Theory: A Critique and Proposal.” American Sociological Review 40:563–569.
• Human Rights Watch. 2012. Old Behind Bars: The Aging Prison Population in the United States. Retrieved February 2, 2012 (www.hrw.org/reports/2012/01/27/old-behind-bars).
• Leadership Conference. N.d. “Chapter Three: Race, Sentencing and the "Tough Crime" Movement.” Retrieved February 2, 2012 (www.civilrights.org/publicati...entencing.html).
• Lemon, B., V. Bengtson, and J. Petersen. 1972. “An Exploration of the Activity Theory of Aging: Activity Types and Life Expectation among In-Movers to a Retirement Community.” Journal of Gerontology 27:511–23.
• Riley, Matilda While, Marilyn Johnson, and Anne Foner. 1972. Aging and Society. Volume III, A Sociology of Age Stratification. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Rose, Arnold. 1960. “The Subculture of the Aging: A Topic for Sociological Research.” The Gerontologist 2:123–127.
• Tornstam Lars. 2005. Gerotranscendence: A Developmental Theory of Positive Aging. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
• U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. Statistical Abstract 2011: Table 147. Retrieved February 13, 2012 (www.census.gov/compendia/stat..._medicaid.html).
• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 2012. “The Age Discrimination in Employment Act 1967 (ADEA).” Retrieved January 30, 2012 (http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm).
• Warren, Jenifer. 2002. “The Graying of the Prisons.” Los Angeles Times, June 9. Retrieved February 2, 2012 (http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun...local/me-cons9).
Glossary
activity theory
a theory which suggests that for individuals to enjoy old age and feel satisfied, they must maintain activities and find a replacement for the statuses and associated roles they have left behind as they aged
age stratification theory
a theory which states that members of society are stratified by age, just as they are stratified by race, class, and gender
continuity theory
a theory which states that the elderly make specific choices to maintain consistency in internal (personality structure, beliefs) and external structures (relationships), remaining active and involved throughout their elder years
disengagement theory
a theory which suggests that withdrawing from society and social relationships is a natural part of growing old
exchange theory
a theory which suggests that we experience an increased dependence as we age and must increasingly submit to the will of others, because we have fewer ways of compelling others to submit to us
gerotranscendence
the idea that as people age, they transcend limited views of life they held in earlier times
modernization theory
a theory which suggests that the primary cause of the elderly losing power and influence in society are the parallel forces of industrialization and modernization
selective optimization with compensation theory
a theory based on the idea that successful personal development throughout the life course and subsequent mastery of the challenges associated with everyday life are based on the components of selection, optimization, and compensation
subculture of aging theory
a theory that focuses on the shared community created by the elderly when they are excluded (due to age), voluntarily or involuntarily, from participating in other groups | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly/13.05%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Aging.txt |
13.1: Who Are the Elderly? Aging in Society
Many media portrayals of the elderly reflect negative cultural attitudes toward aging. In the United States, society tends to glorify youth and associate it with beauty and sexuality. In comedies, the elderly are often associated with grumpiness or hostility. Rarely do the roles of older people convey the fullness of life experienced by seniors—as employees, lovers, or the myriad roles they have in real life. What values does this reflect?
Section Quiz
In most countries, elderly women ______ than elderly men.
1. are mistreated less
2. live a few years longer
3. suffer fewer health problems
4. deal with issues of aging better
Answer
B
America’s baby boomer generation has contributed to all of the following except:
1. Social Security’s vulnerability
2. improved medical technology
3. Medicaid being in danger of going bankrupt
4. rising Medicare budgets
Answer
C
The measure that compares the number of men to women in a population is ______.
1. cohort
2. sex ratio
3. baby boomer
4. disengagement
Answer
B
The “graying of the United States” refers to ________.
1. the increasing percentage of the population over sixty-five years old
2. faster aging due to stress
3. dissatisfaction with retirement plans
4. increased health problems such as Alzheimer’s
Answer
A
What is the approximate median age of the United States?
1. eighty-five
2. sixty-five
3. thirty-seven
4. eighteen
Answer
C
Short Answer
Baby boomers have been called the “Me Generation.” Do you know any baby boomers? In what way do they exemplify their generation?
What social issues involve age disaggregation (breakdowns into groups) of a population? What kind of sociological studies would consider age an important factor?
Conduct a mini-census by counting the members of your extended family, and emphasize age. Try to include three or four generations, if possible. Create a table and include total population plus percentages of each generation. Next, begin to analyze age patterns in your family. What issues are important and specific to each group? What trends can you predict about your own family over the next ten years based on this census? For example, how will family members’ needs and interests and relationships change the family dynamic?
13.2: The Process of Aging
Through the phases of the life course, dependence and independence levels change. At birth, newborns are dependent on caregivers for everything. As babies become toddlers and toddlers become adolescents and then teenagers, they assert their independence more and more. Gradually, children come to be considered adults, responsible for their own lives, although the point at which this occurs is widely varied among individuals, families, and cultures.
Section Quiz
Thanatology is the study of _____.
1. life expectancy
2. biological aging
3. death and dying
4. adulthood
Answer
C
In Erik Erikson’s developmental stages of life, with which challenge must older people struggle?
1. Overcoming despair to achieve integrity
2. Overcoming role confusion to achieve identity
3. Overcoming isolation to achieve intimacy
4. Overcoming shame to achieve autonomy
Answer
A
Who wrote the book On Death and Dying, outlining the five stages of grief?
1. Ignatz Nascher
2. Erik Erikson
3. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
4. Carol Gilligan
Answer
C
For individual people of a certain culture, the life course is ________.
1. the average age they will die
2. the lessons they must learn
3. the length of a typical bereavement period
4. the typical sequence of events in their lives
Answer
D
In the United States, life expectancy rates in recent decades have ______.
1. continued to gradually rise
2. gone up and down due to global issues such as military conflicts
3. lowered as healthcare improves
4. stayed the same since the mid-1960s
Answer
A
Short Answer
Test Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. Think of someone or something you have lost. You might consider the loss of a relationship, possession, or aspect of your self-identity. For example, perhaps you dissolved a childhood friendship, sold your car, or got a bad haircut. For even a small loss, did you experience all five stages of grief? If so, how did the expression of each stage manifest? Did the process happen slowly or rapidly? Did the stages occur out of order? Did you reach acceptance? Try to recall the experience and analyze your own response to loss. Does your experience facilitate your empathizing with the elderly?
What do you think it will be like to be ten, twenty, and fifty years older than you are now? What facts are your assumptions based on? Are any of your assumptions about getting older false? What kind of sociological study could you establish to test your assumptions?
What is your relationship to aging and to time? Look back on your own life. How much and in what ways did you change in ten years and in twenty years? Does a decade seem like a long time or a short time in a life span? Now apply some of your ideas to the idea of aging. Do you think older people share similar experiences as they age?
13.3: Challenges Facing the Elderly
Aging comes with many challenges. The loss of independence is one potential part of the process, as are diminished physical ability and age discrimination. The term senescence refers to the aging process, including biological, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual changes. This section discusses some of the challenges we encounter during this process.
Section Quiz
Today in the United States the poverty rate of the elderly is ______.
1. lower than at any point in history
2. increasing
3. decreasing
4. the same as that of the general population
Answer
B
Which action reflects ageism?
1. Enabling WWII veterans to visit war memorials
2. Speaking slowly and loudly when talking to someone over age sixty-five years old
3. Believing that older people drive too slowly
4. Living in a culture where elders are respected
Answer
B
Which factor most increases the risk of an elderly person suffering mistreatment?
1. Bereavement due to widowhood
2. Having been abusive as a younger adult
3. Being frail to the point of dependency on care
4. The ability to bestow a large inheritance on survivors
Answer
C
If elderly people suffer abuse, it is most often perpetrated by ______.
1. spouses
2. caregivers
3. lawyers
4. strangers
Answer
B
Veterans are two to four times more likely to ______ as people who did not serve in the military.
1. be a victim of elder abuse
2. commit suicide
3. be concerned about financial stresses
4. be abusive toward care providers
Answer
B
Short Answer
Make a list of all the biases, generalizations, and stereotypes about elderly people that you have seen or heard. Include everything, no matter how small or seemingly trivial. Try to rate the items on your list. Which statements can be considered myths? Which frequently turn into discrimination?
Have you known any person who experienced prejudice or discrimination based on age? Think of someone who has been denied an experience or opportunity simply for being too old. Write the story as a case study.
Think of an older person you know well, perhaps a grandparent, other relative, or neighbor. How does this person defy certain stereotypes of aging?
Older people suffer discrimination, and often, so do teenagers. Compare the discrimination of the elderly to that of teenagers. What do the groups share in common and how are they different?
13.4: Theoretical Perspectives on Aging
What roles do individual senior citizens play in your life? How do you relate to and interact with older people? What role do they play in neighborhoods and communities, in cities and in states? Sociologists are interested in exploring the answers to questions such as these through three different perspectives: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.
Section Quiz
Which assertion about aging in men would be made by a sociologist following the functionalist perspective?
1. Men view balding as representative of a loss of strength.
2. Men tend to have better retirement plans than women.
3. Men have life expectancies three to five years shorter than women.
4. Men who remain active after retirement play supportive community roles.
Answer
D
An older woman retires and completely changes her life. She is no longer raising children or working. However, she joins the YWCA to swim every day. She serves on the Friends of the Library board. She is part of a neighborhood group that plays Bunco on Saturday nights. Her situation most closely illustrates the ______ theory.
1. activity
2. continuity
3. disengagement
4. gerotranscendence
Answer
A
An older man retires from his job, stops golfing, and cancels his newspaper subscription. After his wife dies, he lives alone, loses touch with his children, and stops seeing old friends. His situation most closely illustrates the _______ theory.
1. activity
2. continuity
3. disengagement
4. gerotranscendence
Answer
C
What is the primary driver of modernization theory?
1. Industrialization
2. Aging
3. Conflict
4. Interactions
Answer
A
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act counteracts which theory?
1. Modernization
2. Conflict
3. Disengagement
4. Age stratification
Answer
D
Short Answer
Remember Madame Jeanne Calment of France was the world's oldest living person until she died at 122 years old? Consider her life experiences from all three sociological points of view. Analyze her situation as if you were a functionalist, a symbolic interactionist, and a conflict theorist.
Which lifestyle do you think is healthiest for aging people—activity, continuity, or disengagement theories? What are the pros and cons of each theory? Find examples of real people who illustrate the theories, either from your own experience or your friends’ relationships with older people. Do your examples show positive or negative aspects of the theory they illustrate? | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly/13.E%3A_Aging_and_the_Elderly_%28Exercises%29.txt |
• 14.1: Prelude to Marriage and Family
Between 2006 and 2010, nearly half of heterosexual women (48 percent) ages fifteen to forty-four said they were not married to their spouse or partner when they first lived with them, the report says. That's up from 43 percent in 2002, and 34 percent in 1995. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number of unmarried couples has grown from fewer than one million in the 1970s to 8.1 million in 2011. With fewer couples marrying, the traditional U.S. family structure is becoming less common.
• 14.2: What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?
Marriage and family are key structures in most societies. While the two institutions have historically been closely linked in U.S. culture, their connection is becoming more complex. The relationship between marriage and family is an interesting topic of study to sociologists.
• 14.3: Variations in Family Life
People's concepts of marriage and family in the United States are changing. Increases in cohabitation, same-sex partners, and singlehood are altering of our ideas of marriage. Similarly, single parents, same-sex parents, cohabitating parents, and unwed parents are changing our notion of what it means to be a family. While most children still live in opposite-sex, two-parent, married households, that is no longer viewed as the only type of nuclear family.
• 14.4: Challenges Families Face
As the structure of family changes over time, so do the challenges families face. Events like divorce and remarriage present new difficulties for families and individuals. Other long-standing domestic issues such as abuse continue to strain the health and stability of today’s families.
• 14.E: Marriage and Family (Exercises)
Thumbnail: More than one quarter of U.S. children live in a single-parent household. (Photo courtesy of Ross Griff/flickr)
14: Marriage and Family
Rebecca and John were having a large church wedding attended by family and friends. They had been living together their entire senior year of college and planned on getting married right after graduation.
• Rebecca's parents were very traditional in their life and family. They had married after college at which time Rebecca's mother was a stay-at-home mother and Rebecca's father was a Vice President at a large accounting firm. The marriage was viewed as very strong by outsiders.
• John's parents had divorced when John was five. He and his younger sister lived with his financially struggling mother. The mother had a live-in boyfriend that she married when John was in high school. The Asian step father was helpful in getting John summer jobs and encouraged John to attend the local community college before moving to the four-year university.
• Rebecca's maid of honor, Susie, attended college with Rebecca but had dropped out when finding out she was pregnant. She chose not to marry the father and was currently raising the child as a single parent. Working and taking care of the child made college a remote possibility.
• The best man, Brad, was in and out of relationships. He was currently seeing a woman with several children of different parentage. The gossip had this relationship lasting about the same amount of time as all the previous encounters.
• Rebecca and John had a gay couple as ushers. Steve and Roger had been in a monogamous relationship for almost ten years, had adopted a minority daughter and were starting a web-based business together. It was obvious they both adored their child, and they planned on being married at a Washington destination ceremony later in the year.
This scenario may be complicated, but it is representative of the many types of families in today's society.
What constitutes a family nowadays? (Photo courtesy of Michael/flickr)
Between 2006 and 2010, nearly half of heterosexual women (48 percent) ages fifteen to forty-four said they were not married to their spouse or partner when they first lived with them, the report says. That's up from 43 percent in 2002, and 34 percent in 1995 (Rettner 2013). The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number of unmarried couples has grown from fewer than one million in the 1970s to 8.1 million in 2011. Cohabitating, but unwed, couples account for 10 percent of all opposite-sex couples in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2008). Some may never choose to wed (Gardner 2013). With fewer couples marrying, the traditional U.s. family structure is becoming less common. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/14%3A_Marriage_and_Family/14.01%3A__Prelude_to_Marriage_and_Family.txt |
Marriage and family are key structures in most societies. While the two institutions have historically been closely linked in U.S. culture, their connection is becoming more complex. The relationship between marriage and family is an interesting topic of study to sociologists.
What is marriage? Different people define it in different ways. Not even sociologists are able to agree on a single meaning. For our purposes, we’ll define marriage as a legally recognized social contract between two people, traditionally based on a sexual relationship and implying a permanence of the union. In practicing cultural relativism, we should also consider variations, such as whether a legal union is required (think of “common law” marriage and its equivalents), or whether more than two people can be involved (consider polygamy). Other variations on the definition of marriage might include whether spouses are of opposite sexes or the same sex and how one of the traditional expectations of marriage (to produce children) is understood today.
The modern concept of family is far more encompassing than in past decades. What do you think constitutes a family? (Photo (a) courtesy Gareth Williams/flickr; photo (b) courtesy Guillaume Paumier/ Wikimedia Commons)
Sociologists are interested in the relationship between the institution of marriage and the institution of family because, historically, marriages are what create a family, and families are the most basic social unit upon which society is built. Both marriage and family create status roles that are sanctioned by society.
So what is a family? A husband, a wife, and two children—maybe even a pet—has served as the model for the traditional U.S. family for most of the twentieth century. But what about families that deviate from this model, such as a single-parent household or a homosexual couple without children? Should they be considered families as well?
The question of what constitutes a family is a prime area of debate in family sociology, as well as in politics and religion. Social conservatives tend to define the family in terms of structure with each family member filling a certain role (like father, mother, or child). Sociologists, on the other hand, tend to define family more in terms of the manner in which members relate to one another than on a strict configuration of status roles. Here, we’ll define family as a socially recognized group (usually joined by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption) that forms an emotional connection and serves as an economic unit of society. Sociologists identify different types of families based on how one enters into them. A family of orientation refers to the family into which a person is born. A family of procreation describes one that is formed through marriage. These distinctions have cultural significance related to issues of lineage.
Drawing on two sociological paradigms, the sociological understanding of what constitutes a family can be explained by symbolic interactionism as well as functionalism. These two theories indicate that families are groups in which participants view themselves as family members and act accordingly. In other words, families are groups in which people come together to form a strong primary group connection and maintain emotional ties to one another over a long period of time. Such families may include groups of close friends or teammates. In addition, the functionalist perspective views families as groups that perform vital roles for society—both internally (for the family itself) and externally (for society as a whole). Families provide for one another’s physical, emotional, and social well-being. Parents care for and socialize children. Later in life, adult children often care for elderly parents. While interactionism helps us understand the subjective experience of belonging to a “family,” functionalism illuminates the many purposes of families and their roles in the maintenance of a balanced society (Parsons and Bales 1956). We will go into more detail about how these theories apply to family in.
Challenges Families Face
People in the United States as a whole are somewhat divided when it comes to determining what does and what does not constitute a family. In a 2010 survey conducted by professors at the University of Indiana, nearly all participants (99.8 percent) agreed that a husband, wife, and children constitute a family. Ninety-two percent stated that a husband and a wife without children still constitute a family. The numbers drop for less traditional structures: unmarried couples with children (83 percent), unmarried couples without children (39.6 percent), gay male couples with children (64 percent), and gay male couples without children (33 percent) (Powell et al. 2010). This survey revealed that children tend to be the key indicator in establishing “family” status: the percentage of individuals who agreed that unmarried couples and gay couples constitute a family nearly doubled when children were added.
The study also revealed that 60 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that if you consider yourself a family, you are a family (a concept that reinforces an interactionist perspective) (Powell 2010). The government, however, is not so flexible in its definition of “family.” The U.S. Census Bureau defines a family as “a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together” (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). While this structured definition can be used as a means to consistently track family-related patterns over several years, it excludes individuals such as cohabitating unmarried heterosexual and homosexual couples. Legality aside, sociologists would argue that the general concept of family is more diverse and less structured than in years past. Society has given more leeway to the design of a family making room for what works for its members (Jayson 2010).
Family is, indeed, a subjective concept, but it is a fairly objective fact that family (whatever one’s concept of it may be) is very important to people in the United States. In a 2010 survey by Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, 76 percent of adults surveyed stated that family is “the most important” element of their life—just one percent said it was “not important” (Pew Research Center 2010). It is also very important to society. President Ronald Regan notably stated, “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms” (Lee 2009). While the design of the family may have changed in recent years, the fundamentals of emotional closeness and support are still present. Most responders to the Pew survey stated that their family today is at least as close (45 percent) or closer (40 percent) than the family with which they grew up (Pew Research Center 2010).
Alongside the debate surrounding what constitutes a family is the question of what people in the United States believe constitutes a marriage. Many religious and social conservatives believe that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman, citing religious scripture and the basics of human reproduction as support. Social liberals and progressives, on the other hand, believe that marriage can exist between two consenting adults—be they a man and a woman, or a woman and a woman—and that it would be discriminatory to deny such a couple the civil, social, and economic benefits of marriage.
Marriage Patterns
With single parenting and cohabitation (when a couple shares a residence but not a marriage) becoming more acceptable in recent years, people may be less motivated to get married. In a recent survey, 39 percent of respondents answered “yes” when asked whether marriage is becoming obsolete (Pew Research Center 2010). The institution of marriage is likely to continue, but some previous patterns of marriage will become outdated as new patterns emerge. In this context, cohabitation contributes to the phenomenon of people getting married for the first time at a later age than was typical in earlier generations (Glezer 1991). Furthermore, marriage will continue to be delayed as more people place education and career ahead of “settling down.”
One Partner or Many?
People in the United States typically equate marriage with monogamy, when someone is married to only one person at a time. In many countries and cultures around the world, however, having one spouse is not the only form of marriage. In a majority of cultures (78 percent), polygamy, or being married to more than one person at a time, is accepted (Murdock 1967), with most polygamous societies existing in northern Africa and east Asia (Altman and Ginat 1996). Instances of polygamy are almost exclusively in the form of polygyny. Polygyny refers to a man being married to more than one woman at the same time. The reverse, when a woman is married to more than one man at the same time, is called polyandry. It is far less common and only occurs in about 1 percent of the world’s cultures (Altman and Ginat 1996). The reasons for the overwhelming prevalence of polygamous societies are varied but they often include issues of population growth, religious ideologies, and social status.
While the majority of societies accept polygyny, the majority of people do not practice it. Often fewer than 10 percent (and no more than 25–35 percent) of men in polygamous cultures have more than one wife; these husbands are often older, wealthy, high-status men (Altman and Ginat 1996). The average plural marriage involves no more than three wives. Negev Bedouin men in Israel, for example, typically have two wives, although it is acceptable to have up to four (Griver 2008). As urbanization increases in these cultures, polygamy is likely to decrease as a result of greater access to mass media, technology, and education (Altman and Ginat 1996).
In the United States, polygamy is considered by most to be socially unacceptable and it is illegal. The act of entering into marriage while still married to another person is referred to as bigamy and is considered a felony in most states. Polygamy in the United States is often associated with those of the Mormon faith, although in 1890 the Mormon Church officially renounced polygamy. Fundamentalist Mormons, such as those in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), on the other hand, still hold tightly to the historic Mormon beliefs and practices and allow polygamy in their sect.
The prevalence of polygamy among Mormons is often overestimated due to sensational media stories such as the Yearning for Zion ranch raid in Texas in 2008 and popular television shows such as HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s Sister Wives. It is estimated that there are about 37,500 fundamentalist Mormons involved in polygamy in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but that number has shown a steady decrease in the last 100 years (Useem 2007).
U.S. Muslims, however, are an emerging group with an estimated 20,000 practicing polygamy. Again, polygamy among U.S. Muslims is uncommon and occurs only in approximately 1 percent of the population (Useem 2007). For now polygamy among U.S. Muslims has gone fairly unnoticed by mainstream society, but like fundamentalist Mormons whose practices were off the public’s radar for decades, they may someday find themselves at the center of social debate.
Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, is said to have practiced polygamy. (Photo courtesy of public domain/Wikimedia Commons)
Residency and Lines of Descent
When considering one’s lineage, most people in the United States look to both their father’s and mother’s sides. Both paternal and maternal ancestors are considered part of one’s family. This pattern of tracing kinship is called bilateral descent. Note thatkinship, or one’s traceable ancestry, can be based on blood or marriage or adoption. Sixty percent of societies, mostly modernized nations, follow a bilateral descent pattern. Unilateral descent (the tracing of kinship through one parent only) is practiced in the other 40 percent of the world’s societies, with high concentration in pastoral cultures (O’Neal 2006).
There are three types of unilateral descent: patrilineal, which follows the father’s line only; matrilineal, which follows the mother’s side only; and ambilineal, which follows either the father’s only or the mother’s side only, depending on the situation. In partrilineal societies, such as those in rural China and India, only males carry on the family surname. This gives males the prestige of permanent family membership while females are seen as only temporary members (Harrell 2001). U.S. society assumes some aspects of partrilineal decent. For instance, most children assume their father’s last name even if the mother retains her birth name.
In matrilineal societies, inheritance and family ties are traced to women. Matrilineal descent is common in Native American societies, notably the Crow and Cherokee tribes. In these societies, children are seen as belonging to the women and, therefore, one’s kinship is traced to one’s mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and so on (Mails 1996). In ambilineal societies, which are most common in Southeast Asian countries, parents may choose to associate their children with the kinship of either the mother or the father. This choice maybe based on the desire to follow stronger or more prestigious kinship lines or on cultural customs such as men following their father’s side and women following their mother’s side (Lambert 2009).
Tracing one’s line of descent to one parent rather than the other can be relevant to the issue of residence. In many cultures, newly married couples move in with, or near to, family members. In a patrilocal residence system it is customary for the wife to live with (or near) her husband’s blood relatives (or family or orientation). Patrilocal systems can be traced back thousands of years. In a DNA analysis of 4,600-year-old bones found in Germany, scientists found indicators of patrilocal living arrangements (Haak et al 2008). Patrilocal residence is thought to be disadvantageous to women because it makes them outsiders in the home and community; it also keeps them disconnected from their own blood relatives. In China, where patrilocal and patrilineal customs are common, the written symbols for maternal grandmother (wáipá) are separately translated to mean “outsider” and “women” (Cohen 2011).
Similarly, in matrilocal residence systems, where it is customary for the husband to live with his wife’s blood relatives (or her family of orientation), the husband can feel disconnected and can be labeled as an outsider. The Minangkabau people, a matrilocal society that is indigenous to the highlands of West Sumatra in Indonesia, believe that home is the place of women and they give men little power in issues relating to the home or family (Joseph and Najmabadi 2003). Most societies that use patrilocal and patrilineal systems are patriarchal, but very few societies that use matrilocal and matrilineal systems are matriarchal, as family life is often considered an important part of the culture for women, regardless of their power relative to men.
Stages of Family Life
As we’ve established, the concept of family has changed greatly in recent decades. Historically, it was often thought that many families evolved through a series of predictable stages. Developmental or “stage” theories used to play a prominent role in family sociology (Strong and DeVault 1992). Today, however, these models have been criticized for their linear and conventional assumptions as well as for their failure to capture the diversity of family forms. While reviewing some of these once-popular theories, it is important to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
The set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time is referred to as the family life cycle. One of the first designs of the family life cycle was developed by Paul Glick in 1955. In Glick’s original design, he asserted that most people will grow up, establish families, rear and launch their children, experience an “empty nest” period, and come to the end of their lives. This cycle will then continue with each subsequent generation (Glick 1989). Glick’s colleague, Evelyn Duvall, elaborated on the family life cycle by developing these classic stages of family (Strong and DeVault 1992):
Stage Theory. This table shows one example of how a “stage” theory might categorize the phases a family goes through.
Stage Family Type Children
1 Marriage Family Childless
2 Procreation Family Children ages 0 to 2.5
3 Preschooler Family Children ages 2.5 to 6
4 School-age Family Children ages 6–13
5 Teenage Family Children ages 13–20
6 Launching Family Children begin to leave home
7 Empty Nest Family “Empty nest”; adult children have left home
The family life cycle was used to explain the different processes that occur in families over time. Sociologists view each stage as having its own structure with different challenges, achievements, and accomplishments that transition the family from one stage to the next. For example, the problems and challenges that a family experiences in Stage 1 as a married couple with no children are likely much different than those experienced in Stage 5 as a married couple with teenagers. The success of a family can be measured by how well they adapt to these challenges and transition into each stage. While sociologists use the family life cycle to study the dynamics of family overtime, consumer and marketing researchers have used it to determine what goods and services families need as they progress through each stage (Murphy and Staples 1979).
As early “stage” theories have been criticized for generalizing family life and not accounting for differences in gender, ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle, less rigid models of the family life cycle have been developed. One example is the family life course, which recognizes the events that occur in the lives of families but views them as parting terms of a fluid course rather than in consecutive stages (Strong and DeVault 1992). This type of model accounts for changes in family development, such as the fact that in today’s society, childbearing does not always occur with marriage. It also sheds light on other shifts in the way family life is practiced. Society’s modern understanding of family rejects rigid “stage” theories and is more accepting of new, fluid models.
THE EVOLUTION OF TELEVISION FAMILIES
Whether you grew up watching the Cleavers, the Waltons, the Huxtables, or the Simpsons, most of the iconic families you saw in television sitcoms included a father, a mother, and children cavorting under the same roof while comedy ensued. The 1960s was the height of the suburban U.S. nuclear family on television with shows such as The Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best. While some shows of this era portrayed single parents (My Three Sons and Bonanza, for instance), the single status almost always resulted from being widowed—not divorced or unwed.
Although family dynamics in real U.S. homes were changing, the expectations for families portrayed on television were not. The United States’ first reality show, An American Family (which aired on PBS in 1973) chronicled Bill and Pat Loud and their children as a “typical” U.S. family. During the series, the oldest son, Lance, announced to the family that he was gay, and at the series’ conclusion, Bill and Pat decided to divorce. Although the Loud’s union was among the 30 percent of marriages that ended in divorce in 1973, the family was featured on the cover of the March 12 issue of Newsweekwith the title “The Broken Family” (Ruoff 2002).
Less traditional family structures in sitcoms gained popularity in the 1980s with shows such asDiff’rent Strokes (a widowed man with two adopted African American sons) and One Day at a Time(a divorced woman with two teenage daughters). Still, traditional families such as those in Family Ties and The Cosby Show dominated the ratings. The late 1980s and the 1990s saw the introduction of the dysfunctional family. Shows such as Roseanne, Married with Children, and The Simpsonsportrayed traditional nuclear families, but in a much less flattering light than those from the 1960s did (Museum of Broadcast Communications 2011).
Over the past ten years, the nontraditional family has become somewhat of a tradition in television. While most situation comedies focus on single men and women without children, those that do portray families often stray from the classic structure: they include unmarried and divorced parents, adopted children, gay couples, and multigenerational households. Even those that do feature traditional family structures may show less-traditional characters in supporting roles, such as the brothers in the highly rated shows Everybody Loves Raymond and Two and Half Men. Even wildly popular children’s programs as Disney’s Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody feature single parents.
In 2009, ABC premiered an intensely nontraditional family with the broadcast of Modern Family. The show follows an extended family that includes a divorced and remarried father with one stepchild, and his biological adult children—one of who is in a traditional two-parent household, and the other who is a gay man in a committed relationship raising an adopted daughter. While this dynamic may be more complicated than the typical “modern” family, its elements may resonate with many of today’s viewers. “The families on the shows aren't as idealistic, but they remain relatable,” states television critic Maureen Ryan. “The most successful shows, comedies especially, have families that you can look at and see parts of your family in them” (Respers France 2010).
Summary
Sociologists view marriage and families as societal institutions that help create the basic unit of social structure. Both marriage and a family may be defined differently—and practiced differently—in cultures across the world. Families and marriages, like other institutions, adapt to social change.
Further Research
For more information on family development and lines of descent, visit the New England Historical Genealogical Society’s web site, American Ancestors, and find out how genealogies have been established and recorded since 1845.http://openstaxcollege.org/l/American_Ancestors
Glossary
ambilineal
a type of unilateral descent that follows either the father’s or the mother’s side exclusively
bilateral descent
the tracing of kinship through both parents’ ancestral lines
bigamy
the act of entering into marriage while still married to another person
cohabitation
the act of a couple sharing a residence while they are not married
family
socially recognized groups of individuals who may be joined by blood, marriage, or adoption and who form an emotional connection and an economic unit of society
family life course
a sociological model of family that sees the progression of events as fluid rather than as occurring in strict stages
family life cycle
a set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time
family of orientation
the family into which one is born
family of procreation
a family that is formed through marriage
kinship
a person’s traceable ancestry (by blood, marriage, and/or adoption)
marriage
a legally recognized contract between two or more people in a sexual relationship who have an expectation of permanence about their relationship
matrilineal descent
a type of unilateral descent that follows the mother’s side only
matrilocal residence
a system in which it is customary for a husband to live with the his wife’s family
monogamy
the act of being married to only one person at a time
patrilineal descent
a type of unilateral descent that follows the father’s line only
patrilocal residence
a system in which it is customary for the a wife to live with (or near) the her husband’s family
polyandry
a form of marriage in which one woman is married to more than one man at one time
polygamy
the state of being committed or married to more than one person at a time
polygyny
a form of marriage in which one man is married to more than one woman at one time
unilateral descent
the tracing of kinship through one parent only. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/14%3A_Marriage_and_Family/14.02%3A_What_Is_Marriage_What_Is_a_Family.txt |
The combination of husband, wife, and children that 99.8 percent of people in the United States believe constitutes a family is not representative of 99.8 percent of U.S. families. According to 2010 census data, only 66 percent of children under seventeen years old live in a household with two married parents. This is a decrease from 77 percent in 1980 (U.S. Census 2011). This two-parent family structure is known as a nuclear family, referring to married parents and children as the nucleus, or core, of the group. Recent years have seen a rise in variations of the nuclear family with the parents not being married. Three percent of children live with two cohabiting parents (U.S. Census 2011).
More than one quarter of U.S. children live in a single-parent household. (Photo courtesy of Ross Griff/flickr)
Single Parents
Single-parent households are on the rise. In 2010, 27 percent of children lived with a single parent only, up from 25 percent in 2008. Of that 27 percent, 23 percent live with their mother and three percent live with their father. Ten percent of children living with their single mother and 20 percent of children living with their single father also live with the cohabitating partner of their parent (for example, boyfriends or girlfriends).
Stepparents are an additional family element in two-parent homes. Among children living in two-parent households, 9 percent live with a biological or adoptive parent and a stepparent. The majority (70 percent) of those children live with their biological mother and a stepfather. Family structure has been shown to vary with the age of the child. Older children (fifteen to seventeen years old) are less likely to live with two parents than adolescent children (six to fourteen years old) or young children (zero to five years old). Older children who do live with two parents are also more likely to live with stepparents (U.S. Census 2011).
In some family structures a parent is not present at all. In 2010, three million children (4 percent of all children) lived with a guardian who was neither their biological nor adoptive parent. Of these children, 54 percent live with grandparents, 21 percent live with other relatives, and 24 percent live with nonrelatives. This family structure is referred to as the extended family, and may include aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same home. Foster parents account for about a quarter of nonrelatives. The practice of grandparents acting as parents, whether alone or in combination with the child’s parent, is becoming widespread among today’s families (De Toledo and Brown 1995). Nine percent of all children live with a grandparent, and in nearly half those cases, the grandparent maintains primary responsibility for the child (U.S. Census 2011). A grandparent functioning as the primary care provider often results from parental drug abuse, incarceration, or abandonment. Events like these can render the parent incapable of caring for his or her child.
Changes in the traditional family structure raise questions about how such societal shifts affect children. U.S. Census statistics have long shown that children living in homes with both parents grow up with more financial and educational advantages than children who are raised in single-parent homes (U.S. Census 1997). Parental marital status seems to be a significant indicator of advancement in a child’s life. Children living with a divorced parent typically have more advantages than children living with a parent who never married; this is particularly true of children who live with divorced fathers. This correlates with the statistic that never-married parents are typically younger, have fewer years of schooling, and have lower incomes (U.S. Census 1997). Six in ten children living with only their mother live near or below the poverty level. Of those being raised by single mothers, 69 percent live in or near poverty compared to 45 percent for divorced mothers (U.S. Census 1997). Though other factors such as age and education play a role in these differences, it can be inferred that marriage between parents is generally beneficial for children.
Cohabitation
Living together before or in lieu of marriage is a growing option for many couples. Cohabitation, when a man and woman live together in a sexual relationship without being married, was practiced by an estimated 7.5 million people (11.5 percent of the population) in 2011, which shows an increase of 13 percent since 2009 (U.S. Census 2010). This surge in cohabitation is likely due to the decrease in social stigma pertaining to the practice. In a 2010 National Center for Health Statistics survey, only 38 percent of the 13,000-person sample thought that cohabitation negatively impacted society (Jayson 2010). Of those who cohabitate, the majority are non-Hispanic with no high school diploma or GED and grew up in a single-parent household (U.S. Census 2010).
Cohabitating couples may choose to live together in an effort to spend more time together or to save money on living costs. Many couples view cohabitation as a “trial run” for marriage. Today, approximately 28 percent of men and women cohabitated before their first marriage. By comparison, 18 percent of men and 23 percent of women married without ever cohabitating (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). The vast majority of cohabitating relationships eventually result in marriage; only 15 percent of men and women cohabitate only and do not marry. About one half of cohabitators transition into marriage within three years (U.S. Census 2010).
While couples may use this time to “work out the kinks” of a relationship before they wed, the most recent research has found that cohabitation has little effect on the success of a marriage. In fact, those who do not cohabitate before marriage have slightly better rates of remaining married for more than ten years (Jayson 2010). Cohabitation may contribute to the increase in the number of men and women who delay marriage. The median age for marriage is the highest it has ever been since the U.S. Census kept records—age twenty-six for women and age twenty-eight for men (U.S. Census 2010).
As shown by this graph of marital status percentages among young adults, more young people are choosing to delay or opt out of marriage. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census and American Community Survey)
Same-Sex Couples
The number of same-sex couples has grown significantly in the past decade. The U.S. Census Bureau reported 594,000 same-sex couple households in the United States, a 50 percent increase from 2000. This increase is a result of more coupling, the growing social acceptance of homosexuality, and a subsequent increase in willingness to report it. Nationally, same-sex couple households make up 1 percent of the population, ranging from as little as 0.29 percent in Wyoming to 4.01 percent in the District of Columbia (U.S. Census 2011). Legal recognition of same-sex couples as spouses is different in each state, as only six states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. The 2010 U.S. Census, however, allowed same-sex couples to report as spouses regardless of whether their state legally recognizes their relationship. Nationally, 25 percent of all same-sex households reported that they were spouses. In states where same-sex marriages are performed, nearly half (42.4 percent) of same-sex couple households were reported as spouses.
In terms of demographics, same-sex couples are not very different from opposite-sex couples. Same-sex couple households have an average age of 52 and an average household income of \$91,558; opposite-sex couple households have an average age of 59 and an average household income of \$95,075. Additionally, 31 percent of same-sex couples are raising children, not far from the 43 percent of opposite-sex couples (U.S. Census 2009). Of the children in same-sex couple households, 73 percent are biological children (of only one of the parents), 21 percent are adopted only, and 6 percent are a combination of biological and adopted (U.S. Census 2009).
While there is some concern from socially conservative groups regarding the well-being of children who grow up in same-sex households, research reports that same-sex parents are as effective as opposite-sex parents. In an analysis of 81 parenting studies, sociologists found no quantifiable data to support the notion that opposite-sex parenting is any better than same-sex parenting. Children of lesbian couples, however, were shown to have slightly lower rates of behavioral problems and higher rates of self-esteem (Biblarz and Stacey 2010).
Staying Single
Gay or straight, a new option for many people in the United States is simply to stay single. In 2010, there were 99.6 million unmarried individuals over age eighteen in the United States, accounting for 44 percent of the total adult population (U.S. Census 2011). In 2010, never-married individuals in the twenty-five to twenty-nine age bracket accounted for 62 percent of women and 48 percent of men, up from 11 percent and 19 percent, respectively, in 1970 (U.S. Census 2011). Single, or never-married, individuals are found in higher concentrations in large cities or metropolitan areas, with New York City being one of the highest.
Although both single men and single women report social pressure to get married, women are subject to greater scrutiny. Single women are often portrayed as unhappy “spinsters” or “old maids” who cannot find a man to marry them. Single men, on the other hand, are typically portrayed as lifetime bachelors who cannot settle down or simply “have not found the right girl.” Single women report feeling insecure and displaced in their families when their single status is disparaged (Roberts 2007). However, single women older than thirty-five years old report feeling secure and happy with their unmarried status, as many women in this category have found success in their education and careers. In general, women feel more independent and more prepared to live a large portion of their adult lives without a spouse or domestic partner than they did in the 1960s (Roberts 2007).
The decision to marry or not to marry can be based a variety of factors including religion and cultural expectations. Asian individuals are the most likely to marry while African Americans are the least likely to marry (Venugopal 2011). Additionally, individuals who place no value on religion are more likely to be unmarried than those who place a high value on religion. For black women, however, the importance of religion made no difference in marital status (Bakalar 2010). In general, being single is not a rejection of marriage; rather, it is a lifestyle that does not necessarily include marriage. By age forty, according to census figures, 20 percent of women and 14 of men will have never married (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).
More and more people in the United States are choosing lifestyles that don’t include marriage. (Photo courtesy of Glenn Harper/flickr)
DECEPTIVE DIVORCE RATES
It is often cited that half of all marriages end in divorce. This statistic has made many people cynical when it comes to marriage, but it is misleading. Let’s take a closer look at the data.
Using National Center for Health Statistics data from 2003 that show a marriage rate of 7.5 (per 1000 people) and a divorce rate of 3.8, it would appear that exactly one half of all marriages failed (Hurley 2005). This reasoning is deceptive, however, because instead of tracing actual marriages to see their longevity (or lack thereof), this compares what are unrelated statistics: that is, the number of marriages in a given year does not have a direct correlation to the divorces occurring that same year. Research published in the New York Times took a different approach—determining how many people had ever been married, and of those, how many later divorced. The result? According to this analysis, U.S. divorce rates have only gone as high as 41 percent (Hurley 2005). Another way to calculate divorce rates would be through a cohort study. For instance, we could determine the percentage of marriages that are intact after, say, five or seven years, compared to marriages that have ended in divorce after five or seven years. Sociological researchers must remain aware of research methods and how statistical results are applied. As illustrated, different methodologies and different interpretations can lead to contradictory, and even misleading, results.
Theoretical Perspectives on Marriage and Family
Sociologists study families on both the macro and micro level to determine how families function. Sociologists may use a variety of theoretical perspectives to explain events that occur within and outside of the family.
Functionalism
When considering the role of family in society, functionalists uphold the notion that families are an important social institution and that they play a key role in stabilizing society. They also note that family members take on status roles in a marriage or family. The family—and its members—perform certain functions that facilitate the prosperity and development of society.
Sociologist George Murdock conducted a survey of 250 societies and determined that there are four universal residual functions of the family: sexual, reproductive, educational, and economic (Lee 1985). According to Murdock, the family (which for him includes the state of marriage) regulates sexual relations between individuals. He does not deny the existence or impact of premarital or extramarital sex, but states that the family offers a socially legitimate sexual outlet for adults (Lee 1985). This outlet gives way to reproduction, which is a necessary part of ensuring the survival of society.
Once children are produced, the family plays a vital role in training them for adult life. As the primary agent of socialization and enculturation, the family teaches young children the ways of thinking and behaving that follow social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes. Parents teach their children manners and civility. A well-mannered child reflects a well-mannered parent.
Parents also teach children gender roles. Gender roles are an important part of the economic function of a family. In each family, there is a division of labor that consists of instrumental and expressive roles. Men tend to assume the instrumental roles in the family, which typically involve work outside of the family that provides financial support and establishes family status. Women tend to assume the expressive roles, which typically involve work inside of the family which provides emotional support and physical care for children (Crano and Aronoff 1978). According to functionalists, the differentiation of the roles on the basis of sex ensures that families are well balanced and coordinated. When family members move outside of these roles, the family is thrown out of balance and must recalibrate in order to function properly. For example, if the father assumes an expressive role such as providing daytime care for the children, the mother must take on an instrumental role such as gaining paid employment outside of the home in order for the family to maintain balance and function.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theorists are quick to point out that U.S. families have been defined as private entities, the consequence of which has been to leave family matters to only those within the family. Many people in the United States are resistant to government intervention in the family: parents do not want the government to tell them how to raise their children or to become involved in domestic issues. Conflict theory highlights the role of power in family life and contends that the family is often not a haven but rather an arena where power struggles can occur. This exercise of power often entails the performance of family status roles. Conflict theorists may study conflicts as simple as the enforcement of rules from parent to child, or they may examine more serious issues such as domestic violence (spousal and child), sexual assault, marital rape, and incest.
The first study of marital power was performed in 1960. Researchers found that the person with the most access to value resources held the most power. As money is one of the most valuable resources, men who worked in paid labor outside of the home held more power than women who worked inside the home (Blood and Wolfe 1960). Conflict theorists find disputes over the division of household labor to be a common source of marital discord. Household labor offers no wages and, therefore, no power. Studies indicate that when men do more housework, women experience more satisfaction in their marriages, reducing the incidence of conflict (Coltrane 2000). In general, conflict theorists tend to study areas of marriage and life that involve inequalities or discrepancies in power and authority, as they are reflective of the larger social structure.
Symbolic Interactionism
Interactionists view the world in terms of symbols and the meanings assigned to them (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). The family itself is a symbol. To some, it is a father, mother, and children; to others, it is any union that involves respect and compassion. Interactionists stress that family is not an objective, concrete reality. Like other social phenomena, it is a social construct that is subject to the ebb and flow of social norms and ever-changing meanings.
Consider the meaning of other elements of family: “parent” was a symbol of a biological and emotional connection to a child; with more parent-child relationships developing through adoption, remarriage, or change in guardianship, the word “parent” today is less likely to be associated with a biological connection than with whoever is socially recognized as having the responsibility for a child’s upbringing. Similarly, the terms “mother” and “father” are no longer rigidly associated with the meanings of caregiver and breadwinner. These meanings are more free-flowing through changing family roles.
Interactionists also recognize how the family status roles of each member are socially constructed, playing an important part in how people perceive and interpret social behavior. Interactionists view the family as a group of role players or “actors” that come together to act out their parts in an effort to construct a family. These roles are up for interpretation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a “good father,” for example, was one who worked hard to provided financial security for his children. Today, a “good father” is one who takes the time outside of work to promote his children’s emotional well-being, social skills, and intellectual growth—in some ways, a much more daunting task.
Summary
People's concepts of marriage and family in the United States are changing. Increases in cohabitation, same-sex partners, and singlehood are altering of our ideas of marriage. Similarly, single parents, same-sex parents, cohabitating parents, and unwed parents are changing our notion of what it means to be a family. While most children still live in opposite-sex, two-parent, married households, that is no longer viewed as the only type of nuclear family.
Further Research
For more statistics on marriage and family, see the Forum on Child and Family Statistics atopenstaxcollege.org/l/child...ily_statistics, as well as the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey, and the U.S. Census decennial survey at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/US_Census.
Glossary
extended family
a household that includes at least one parent and child as well as other relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins
nuclear family
two parents (traditionally a married husband and wife) and children living in the same households | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/14%3A_Marriage_and_Family/14.03%3A_Variations_in_Family_Life.txt |
As the structure of family changes over time, so do the challenges families face. Events like divorce and remarriage present new difficulties for families and individuals. Other long-standing domestic issues such as abuse continue to strain the health and stability of today’s families.
Divorce and Remarriage
Divorce, while fairly common and accepted in modern U.S. society, was once a word that would only be whispered and was accompanied by gestures of disapproval. In 1960, divorce was generally uncommon, affecting only 9.1 out of every 1,000 married persons. That number more than doubled (to 20.3) by 1975 and peaked in 1980 at 22.6 (Popenoe 2007). Over the last quarter century, divorce rates have dropped steadily and are now similar to those in 1970. The dramatic increase in divorce rates after the 1960s has been associated with the liberalization of divorce laws and the shift in societal make up due to women increasingly entering the workforce (Michael 1978). The decrease in divorce rates can be attributed to two probable factors: an increase in the age at which people get married, and an increased level of education among those who marry—both of which have been found to promote greater marital stability.
Divorce does not occur equally among all people in the United States; some segments of the U.S. population are more likely to divorce than others. According the American Community Survey (ACS), men and women in the Northeast have the lowest rates of divorce at 7.2 and 7.5 per 1,000 people. The South has the highest rate of divorce at 10.2 for men and 11.1 for women. Divorce rates are likely higher in the South because marriage rates are higher and marriage occurs at younger-than-average ages in this region. In the Northeast, the marriage rate is lower and first marriages tend to be delayed; therefore, the divorce rate is lower (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).
The rate of divorce also varies by race. In a 2009 ACS study, American Indian and Alaskan Natives reported the highest percentages of currently divorced individuals (12.6 percent) followed by blacks (11.5 percent), whites (10.8 percent), Pacific Islanders (8 percent), Latinos (7.8 percent) and Asians (4.9 percent) (ACS 2011). In general those who marry at a later age, have a college education have lower rates of divorce.
Provisional number of divorces and annulments and rate: United States, 2000–2011 There has been a steady decrease in divorce over the past decade. (National Center for Health Statistics, CDC)
Year Divorces and annulments Population Rate per 1,000 total population
20111 877,000 246,273,366 3.6
20101 872,000 244,122,529 3.6
20091 840,000 242,610,561 3.5
20081 844,000 240,545,163 3.5
20071 856,000 238,352,850 3.6
20061 872,000 236,094,277 3.7
20051 847,000 233,495,163 3.6
20042 879,000 236,402,656 3.7
20033 927,000 243,902,090 3.8
20024 955,000 243,108,303 3.9
20015 940,000 236,416,762 4.0
20005 944,000 233,550,143 4.0
1Excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Minnesota. 2Excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, and Louisiana. 3Excludes data for California, Hawaii, Indiana, and Oklahoma. 4Excludes data for California, Indiana, and Oklahoma. 5Excludes data for California, Indiana, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
Note: Rates for 2001-2009 have been revised and are based on intercensal population estimates from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Populations for 2010 rates are based on the 2010 census.
So what causes divorce? While more young people are choosing to postpone or opt out of marriage, those who enter into the union do so with the expectation that it will last. A great deal of marital problems can be related to stress, especially financial stress. According to researchers participating in the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, couples who enter marriage without a strong asset base (like a home, savings, and a retirement plan) are 70 percent more likely to be divorced after three years than are couples with at least \$10,000 in assets. This is connected to factors such as age and education level that correlate with low incomes.
The addition of children to a marriage creates added financial and emotional stress. Research has established that marriages enter their most stressful phase upon the birth of the first child (Popenoe and Whitehead 2007). This is particularly true for couples who have multiples (twins, triplets, and so on). Married couples with twins or triplets are 17 percent more likely to divorce than those with children from single births (McKay 2010). Another contributor to the likelihood of divorce is a general decline in marital satisfaction over time. As people get older, they may find that their values and life goals no longer match up with those of their spouse (Popenoe and Whitehead 2004).
Divorce is thought to have a cyclical pattern. Children of divorced parents are 40 percent more likely to divorce than children of married parents. And when we consider children whose parents divorced and then remarried, the likelihood of their own divorce rises to 91 percent (Wolfinger 2005). This might result from being socialized to a mindset that a broken marriage can be replaced rather than repaired (Wolfinger 2005). That sentiment is also reflected in the finding that when both partners of a married couple have been previously divorced, their marriage is 90 percent more likely to end in divorce (Wolfinger 2005).
A study from Radford University indicated that bartenders are among the professions with the highest divorce rates (38.4 percent). Other traditionally low-wage industries (like restaurant service, custodial employment, and factory work) are also associated with higher divorce rates. (Aamodt and McCoy 2010). (Photo courtesy of Daniel Lobo/flickr)
People in a second marriage account for approximately 19.3 percent of all married persons, and those who have been married three or more times account for 5.2 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). The vast majority (91 percent) of remarriages occur after divorce; only 9 percent occur after death of a spouse (Kreider 2006). Most men and women remarry within five years of a divorce, with the median length for men (three years) being lower than for women (4.4 years). This length of time has been fairly consistent since the 1950s. The majority of those who remarry are between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four (Kreider 2006). The general pattern of remarriage also shows that whites are more likely to remarry than black Americans.
Marriage the second time around (or third or fourth) can be a very different process than the first. Remarriage lacks many of the classic courtship rituals of a first marriage. In a second marriage, individuals are less likely to deal with issues like parental approval, premarital sex, or desired family size (Elliot 2010). In a survey of households formed by remarriage, a mere 8 percent included only biological children of the remarried couple. Of the 49 percent of homes that include children, 24 percent included only the woman’s biological children, 3 percent included only the man’s biological children, and 9 percent included a combination of both spouse’s children (U.S. Census Bureau 2006).
Children of Divorce and Remarriage
Divorce and remarriage can been stressful on partners and children alike. Divorce is often justified by the notion that children are better off in a divorced family than in a family with parents who do not get along. However, long-term studies determine that to be generally untrue. Research suggests that while marital conflict does not provide an ideal childrearing environment, going through a divorce can be damaging. Children are often confused and frightened by the threat to their family security. They may feel responsible for the divorce and attempt to bring their parents back together, often by sacrificing their own well-being (Amato 2000). Only in high-conflict homes do children benefit from divorce and the subsequent decrease in conflict. The majority of divorces come out of lower-conflict homes, and children from those homes are more negatively impacted by the stress of the divorce than the stress of unhappiness in the marriage (Amato 2000). Studies also suggest that stress levels for children are not improved when a child acquires a stepfamily through marriage. Although there may be increased economic stability, stepfamilies typically have a high level of interpersonal conflict (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).
Children’s ability to deal with a divorce may depend on their age. Research has found that divorce may be most difficult for school-aged children, as they are old enough to understand the separation but not old enough to understand the reasoning behind it. Older teenagers are more likely to recognize the conflict that led to the divorce but may still feel fear, loneliness, guilt, and pressure to choose sides. Infants and preschool-age children may suffer the heaviest impact from the loss of routine that the marriage offered (Temke 2006).
Proximity to parents also makes a difference in a child’s well-being after divorce. Boys who live or have joint arrangements with their fathers show less aggression than those who are raised by their mothers only. Similarly, girls who live or have joint arrangements with their mothers tend to be more responsible and mature than those who are raised by their fathers only. Nearly three-fourths of the children of parents who are divorced live in a household headed by their mother, leaving many boys without a father figure residing in the home (U.S. Census Bureau 2011b). Still, researchers suggest that a strong parent-child relationship can greatly improve a child’s adjustment to divorce (Temke 2006).
There is empirical evidence that divorce has not discouraged children in terms of how they view marriage and family. A blended family has additional stress resulting from yours/mine/ours children. The blended family also has a ex-parent that has different discipline techniques. In a survey conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan, about three-quarters of high school seniors said it was “extremely important” to have a strong marriage and family life. And over half believed it was “very likely” that they would be in a lifelong marriage (Popenoe and Whitehead 2007). These numbers have continued to climb over the last twenty-five years.
Violence and Abuse
Violence and abuse are among the most disconcerting of the challenges that today’s families face. Abuse can occur between spouses, between parent and child, as well as between other family members. The frequency of violence among families is a difficult to determine because many cases of spousal abuse and child abuse go unreported. In any case, studies have shown that abuse (reported or not) has a major impact on families and society as a whole.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is a significant social problem in the United States. It is often characterized as violence between household or family members, specifically spouses. To include unmarried, cohabitating, and same-sex couples, family sociologists have created the term intimate partner violence (IPV). Women are the primary victims of intimate partner violence. It is estimated that one in four women has experienced some form of IPV in her lifetime (compared to one in seven men) (Catalano 2007). IPV may include physical violence, such as punching, kicking, or other methods of inflicting physical pain; sexual violence, such as rape or other forced sexual acts; threats and intimidation that imply either physical or sexual abuse; and emotional abuse, such as harming another’s sense of self-worth through words or controlling another’s behavior. IPV often starts as emotional abuse and then escalates to other forms or combinations of abuse (Centers for Disease Control 2012).
Thirty percent of women who are murdered are killed by their intimate partner. What does this statistic reveal about societal patterns and norms concerning intimate relationships and gender roles? (Photo courtesy of Kathy Kimpel/flickr)
In 2010, of IPV acts that involved physical actions against women, 57 percent involved physical violence only; 9 percent involved rape and physical violence; 14 percent involved physical violence and stalking; 12 percent involved rape, physical violence, and stalking; and 4 percent involved rape only (CDC 2011). This is vastly different than IPV abuse patterns for men, which show that nearly all (92 percent) physical acts of IVP take the form of physical violence and fewer than 1 percent involve rape alone or in combination (Catalano 2007). IPV affects women at greater rates than men because women often take the passive role in relationships and may become emotionally dependent on their partners. Perpetrators of IPV work to establish and maintain such dependence in order to hold power and control over their victims, making them feel stupid, crazy, or ugly—in some way worthless.
IPV affects different segments of the population at different rates. The rate of IPV for black women (4.6 per 1,000 persons over the age of twelve) is higher than that for white women (3.1). These numbers have been fairly stable for both racial groups over the last ten years. However, the numbers have steadily increased for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives (up to 11.1 for females) (Catalano 2007).
Those who are separated report higher rates of abuse than those with other marital statuses, as conflict is typically higher in those relationships. Similarly, those who are cohabitating are more likely than those who are married to experience IPV (Stets and Straus 1990). Other researchers have found that the rate of IPV doubles for women in low-income disadvantaged areas when compared to IPV experienced by women who reside in more affluent areas (Benson and Fox 2004). Overall, women ages twenty to twenty-four are at the greatest risk of nonfatal abuse (Catalano 2007).
Accurate statistics on IPV are difficult to determine, as it is estimated that more than half of nonfatal IPV goes unreported. It is not until victims choose to report crimes that patterns of abuse are exposed. Most victims studied stated that abuse had occurred for at least two years prior to their first report (Carlson, Harris, and Holden 1999).
Sometimes abuse is reported to police by a third party, but it still may not be confirmed by victims. A study of domestic violence incident reports found that even when confronted by police about abuse, 29 percent of victims denied that abuse occurred. Surprisingly, 19 percent of their assailants were likely to admit to abuse (Felson, Ackerman, and Gallagher 2005). According to the National Criminal Victims Survey, victims cite varied reason why they are reluctant to report abuse, as shown in the table below.
This chart shows reasons that victims give for why they fail to report abuse to police authorities (Catalano 2007).
Reason Abuse Is Unreported % Females % Males
Considered a Private Matter 22 39
Fear of Retaliation 12 5
To Protect the Abuser 14 16
Belief That Police Won’t Do Anything 8 8
Two-thirds of nonfatal IPV occurs inside of the home and approximately 10 percent occurs at the home of the victim’s friend or neighbor. The majority of abuse takes place between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., and nearly half (42 percent) involves alcohol or drug use (Catalano 2007). Many perpetrators of IVP blame alcohol or drugs for their abuse, though studies have shown that alcohol and drugs do not cause IPV, they may only lower inhibitions (Hanson 2011). IPV has significant long-term effects on individual victims and on society. Studies have shown that IPV damage extends beyond the direct physical or emotional wounds. Extended IPV has been linked to unemployment among victims, as many have difficulty finding or holding employment. Additionally, nearly all women who report serious domestic problems exhibit symptoms of major depression (Goodwin, Chandler, and Meisel 2003).
Female victims of IPV are also more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, suffer from eating disorders, and attempt suicide (Silverman et al. 2001). IPV is indeed something that impacts more than just intimate partners. In a survey, 34 percent of respondents said they have witnessed IPV, and 59 percent said that they know a victim personally (Roper Starch Worldwide 1995). Many people want to help IPV victims but are hesitant to intervene because they feel that it is a personal matter or they fear retaliation from the abuser—reasons similar to those of victims who do not report IPV.
Child Abuse
Children are among the most helpless victims of abuse. In 2010, there were more than 3.3 million reports of child abuse involving an estimated 5.9 million children (Child Help 2011). Three-fifths of child abuse reports are made by professionals, including teachers, law enforcement personal, and social services staff. The rest are made by anonymous sources, other relatives, parents, friends, and neighbors.
Child abuse may come in several forms, the most common being neglect (78.3 percent), followed by physical abuse (10.8 percent), sexual abuse (7.6 percent), psychological maltreatment (7.6 percent), and medical neglect (2.4 percent) (Child Help 2011). Some children suffer from a combination of these forms of abuse. The majority (81.2 percent) of perpetrators are parents; 6.2 percent are other relatives.
Infants (children less than one year old) were the most victimized population with an incident rate of 20.6 per 1,000 infants. This age group is particularly vulnerable to neglect because they are entirely dependent on parents for care. Some parents do not purposely neglect their children; factors such as cultural values, standard of care in a community, and poverty can lead to hazardous level of neglect. If information or assistance from public or private services are available and a parent fails to use those services, child welfare services may intervene (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).
The Casey Anthony trial, in which Casey was ultimately acquitted of murder charges against her daughter, Caylee, created public outrage and brought to light issues of child abuse and neglect across the United States. (Photo courtesy of Bruce Tuten/flickr)
Infants are also often victims of physical abuse, particularly in the form of violent shaking. This type of physical abuse is referred to as shaken-baby syndrome, which describes a group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or causing impact to an infant’s head. A baby’s cry is the number one trigger for shaking. Parents may find themselves unable to soothe a baby’s concerns and may take their frustration out on the child by shaking him or her violently. Other stress factors such as a poor economy, unemployment, and general dissatisfaction with parental life may contribute this type of abuse. While there is no official central registry of shaken-baby syndrome statistics, it is estimated that each year 1,400 babies die or suffer serious injury from being shaken (Barr 2007).
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
Physical abuse in children may come in the form of beating, kicking, throwing, choking, hitting with objects, burning, or other methods. Injury inflicted by such behavior is considered abuse even if the parent or caregiver did not intend to harm the child. Other types of physical contact that are characterized as discipline (spanking, for example) are not considered abuse as long as no injury results (Child Welfare Information Gateway 2008).
This issue is rather controversial among modern-day people in the United States. While some parents feel that physical discipline, or corporal punishment, is an effective way to respond to bad behavior, others feel that it is a form of abuse. According to a poll conducted by ABC News, 65 percent of respondents approve of spanking and 50 percent said that they sometimes spank their child.
Tendency toward physical punishment may be affected by culture and education. Those who live in the South are more likely than those who live in other regions to spank their child. Those who do not have a college education are also more likely to spank their child (Crandall 2011). Currently, 23 states officially allow spanking in the school system; however, many parents may object and school officials must follow a set of clear guidelines when administering this type of punishment (Crandall 2011). Studies have shown that spanking is not an effective form of punishment and may lead to aggression by the victim, particularly in those who are spanked at a young age (Berlin 2009).
Child abuse occurs at all socioeconomic and education levels and crosses ethnic and cultural lines. Just as child abuse is often associated with stresses felt by parents, including financial stress, parents who demonstrate resilience to these stresses are less likely to abuse (Samuels 2011). Young parents are typically less capable of coping with stresses, particularly the stress of becoming a new parent. Teenage mothers are more likely to abuse their children than their older counterparts. As a parent’s age increases, the risk of abuse decreases. Children born to mothers who are fifteen years old or younger are twice as likely to be abused or neglected by age five than are children born to mothers ages twenty to twenty-one (George and Lee 1997).
Drug and alcohol use is also a known contributor to child abuse. Children raised by substance abusers have a risk of physical abuse three times greater than other kids, and neglect is four times as prevalent in these families (Child Welfare Information Gateway 2011). Other risk factors include social isolation, depression, low parental education, and a history of being mistreated as a child. Approximately 30 percent of abused children will later abuse their own children (Child Welfare Information Gateway 2006).
The long-term effects of child abuse impact the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of a child. Injury, poor health, and mental instability occur at a high rate in this group, with 80 percent meeting the criteria of one or more psychiatric disorders, such as depression, anxiety, or suicidal behavior, by age twenty-one. Abused children may also suffer from cognitive and social difficulties. Behavioral consequences will affect most, but not all, of child abuse victims. Children of abuse are 25 percent more likely, as adolescents, to suffer from difficulties like poor academic performance and teen pregnancy, or to engage in behaviors like drug abuse and general delinquency. They are also more likely to participate in risky sexual acts that increase their chances of contracting a sexually transmitted disease (Child Welfare Information Gateway 2006). Other risky behaviors include drug and alcohol abuse. As these consequences can affect the health care, education, and criminal systems, the problems resulting from child abuse do not just belong to the child and family, but to society as a whole.
Summary
Today’s families face a variety of challenges, specifically to marital stability. While divorce rates have decreased in the last twenty-five years, many family members, especially children, still experience the negative effects of divorce. Children are also negatively impacted by violence and abuse within the home, with nearly 6 million children abused each year.
Further Research
To find more information on child abuse, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services web site atopenstaxcollege.org/l/child_welfare to review documents provided by the Child Welfare Information Gateway.
Glossary
intimate partner violence (IPV)
violence that occurs between individuals who maintain a romantic or sexual relationship
shaken-baby syndrome
a group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or impacting an infant’s head | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/14%3A_Marriage_and_Family/14.04%3A_Challenges_Families_Face.txt |
14.1: What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?
Marriage and family are key structures in most societies. While the two institutions have historically been closely linked in U.S. culture, their connection is becoming more complex. The relationship between marriage and family is an interesting topic of study to sociologists.
Section Quiz
Sociologists tend to define family in terms of
1. how a given society sanctions the relationships of people who are connected through blood, marriage, or adoption
2. the connection of bloodlines
3. the status roles that exist in a family structure
4. how closely members adhere to social norms
Answer
A
Research suggests that people generally feel that their current family is _______ than the family they grew up with.
1. less close
2. more close
3. at least as close
4. none of the above
Answer
C
A woman being married to two men would be an example of:
1. monogamy
2. polygyny
3. polyandry
4. cohabitation
Answer
C
A child who associates his line of descent with his father’s side only is part of a _____ society.
1. matrilocal
2. bilateral
3. matrilineal
4. patrilineal
Answer
D
Which of the following is a criticism of the family life cycle model?
1. It is too broad and accounts for too many aspects of family.
2. It is too narrowly focused on a sequence of stages.
3. It does not serve a practical purpose for studying family behavior.
4. It is not based on comprehensive research.
Answer
B
Short Answer
According to research, what are people's general thoughts on family in the United States? How do they view nontraditional family structures? How do you think these views might change in twenty years?
Explain the difference between bilateral and unilateral descent. Using your own association with kinship, explain which type of descent applies to you?
14.2: Variations in Family Life
People's concepts of marriage and family in the United States are changing. Increases in cohabitation, same-sex partners, and singlehood are altering of our ideas of marriage. Similarly, single parents, same-sex parents, cohabitating parents, and unwed parents are changing our notion of what it means to be a family. While most children still live in opposite-sex, two-parent, married households, that is no longer viewed as the only type of nuclear family.
Section Quiz
The majority of U.S. children live in:
1. two-parent households
2. one-parent households
3. no-parent households
4. multigenerational households
Answer
A
According to the study cited by the U.S. Census Bureau, children who live with married parents grow up with more advantages than children who live with:
1. a divorced parent
2. a single parent
3. a grandparent
4. all of the above
Answer
B
Couples who cohabitate before marriage are ______ couples who did not cohabitate before marriage to be married at least ten years.
1. far more likely than
2. far less likely than
3. slightly less likely than
4. equally as likely as
Answer
C
Same-sex couple households account for _____ percent of U.S. households.
1. 1
2. 10
3. 15
4. 30
Answer
A
The median age of first marriage has ______ in the last fifty years.
1. increased for men but not women
2. decreased for men but not women
3. increased for both men and women
4. decreased for both men and women
Answers
C
Short Answer
Explain the different variations of the nuclear family and the trends that occur in each.
Why are some couples choosing to cohabitate before marriage? What effect does cohabitation have on marriage?
14.3: Challenges Families Face
As the structure of family changes over time, so do the challenges families face. Events like divorce and remarriage present new difficulties for families and individuals. Other long-standing domestic issues such as abuse continue to strain the health and stability of today’s families.
Section Quiz
Current divorce rates are:
1. at an all-time high
2. at an all-time low
3. steadily increasing
4. steadily declining
Answer
D
Children of divorced parents are _______ to divorce in their own marriage than children of parents who stayed married.
1. more likely
2. less likely
3. equally likely
Answer
A
In general, children in ______ households benefit from divorce.
1. stepfamily
2. multigenerational
3. high-conflict
4. low-conflict
Answer
C
Which of the following is true of intimate partner violence (IPV)?
1. IPV victims are more frequently men than women.
2. One in ten women is a victim of IPV.
3. Nearly half of instances of IPV involve drugs or alcohol.
4. Rape is the most common form of IPV.
Answer
C
Which type of child abuse is most prevalent in the United States?
1. Physical abuse
2. Neglect
3. Shaken-baby syndrome
4. Verbal mistreatment
Answer
B
Short Answer
Explain how financial status impacts marital stability. What other factors are associated with a couple’s financial status?
Explain why more than half of IPV goes unreported? Why are those who are abused unlikely to report the abuse? | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/14%3A_Marriage_and_Family/14.E%3A_Marriage_and_Family_%28Exercises%29.txt |
Why do sociologists study religion? For centuries, humankind has sought to understand and explain the “meaning of life.” Many philosophers believe this contemplation and the desire to understand our place in the universe are what differentiate humankind from other species. Religion, in one form or another, has been found in all human societies since human societies first appeared. Archaeological digs have revealed ritual objects, ceremonial burial sites, and other religious artifacts. Social conflict and even wars often result from religious disputes. To understand a culture, sociologists must study its religion.
• 15.1: Introduction to Religion
Does religion bring fear, wonder, relief, explanation of the unknown or control over freedom and choice? How do our religious perspectives affect our behavior? These are questions sociologists ask and are reasons they study religion. What are peoples' conceptions of the profane and the sacred? How do religious ideas affect the real-world reactions and choices of people in a society?
• 15.2: The Sociological Approach to Religion
While some people think of religion as something individual because religious beliefs can be highly personal, religion is also a social institution. Social scientists recognize that religion exists as an organized and integrated set of beliefs, behaviors, and norms centered on basic social needs and values. Moreover, religion is a cultural universal found in all social groups.
• 15.3: World Religions
The major religions of the world (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism, and Judaism) differ in many respects, including how each religion is organized and the belief system each upholds. Other differences include the nature of belief in a higher power, the history of how the world and the religion began, and the use of sacred texts and objects.
• 15.4: Religion in the United States
In examining the state of religion in the United States today, we see the complexity of religious life in our society, plus emerging trends like the rise of the megachurch, secularization, and the role of religion in social change.
• 15.E: Religion (Exercises)
Thumbnail: Religious symbols from the top nine organized faiths of the world according to Major world religions From left to right: 1st Row: Christian Cross, Jewish Star of David, Hindu Aumkar 2nd Row: Islamic Star and crescent, Buddhist Wheel of Dharma, Shinto Torii 3rd Row: Sikh Khanda, Bahá'í star, Jain Ahimsa Symbol. Image used wtih permission (Public Domain; Rursus)
15: Religion
Religions come in many forms, such as this large megachurch. (Photo courtesy of ToBeDaniel/Wikimedia Commons)
Why do sociologists study religion? For centuries, humankind has sought to understand and explain the “meaning of life.” Many philosophers believe this contemplation and the desire to understand our place in the universe are what differentiate humankind from other species. Religion, in one form or another, has been found in all human societies since human societies first appeared. Archaeological digs have revealed ritual objects, ceremonial burial sites, and other religious artifacts. Social conflict and even wars often result from religious disputes. To understand a culture, sociologists must study its religion.
What is religion? Pioneer sociologist Émile Durkheim described it with the ethereal statement that it consists of “things that surpass the limits of our knowledge” (1915). He went on to elaborate: Religion is “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say set apart and forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community, called a church, all those who adhere to them” (1915). Some people associate religion with places of worship (a synagogue or church), others with a practice (confession or meditation), and still others with a concept that guides their daily lives (like dharma or sin). All these people can agree that religion is a system of beliefs, values, and practices concerning what a person holds sacred or considers to be spiritually significant.
Does religion bring fear, wonder, relief, explanation of the unknown or control over freedom and choice? How do our religious perspectives affect our behavior? These are questions sociologists ask and are reasons they study religion. What are peoples' conceptions of the profane and the sacred? How do religious ideas affect the real-world reactions and choices of people in a society?
Religion can also serve as a filter for examining other issues in society and other components of a culture. For example, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it became important for teachers, church leaders, and the media to educate Americans about Islam to prevent stereotyping and to promote religious tolerance. Sociological tools and methods, such as surveys, polls, interviews, and analysis of historical data, can be applied to the study of religion in a culture to help us better understand the role religion plays in people’s lives and the way it influences society.
Glossary
religion
a system of beliefs, values, and practices concerning what a person holds to be sacred or spiritually significant | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/15%3A_Religion/15.01%3A__Introduction_to_Religion.txt |
From the Latin religio (respect for what is sacred) and religare (to bind, in the sense of an obligation), the term religion describes various systems of belief and practice that define what people consider to be sacred or spiritual (Fasching and deChant 2001; Durkheim 1915). Throughout history, and in societies across the world, leaders have used religious narratives, symbols, and traditions in an attempt to give more meaning to life and understand the universe. Some form of religion is found in every known culture, and it is usually practiced in a public way by a group. The practice of religion can include feasts and festivals, intercession with God or gods, marriage and funeral services, music and art, meditation or initiation, sacrifice or service, and other aspects of culture.
While some people think of religion as something individual because religious beliefs can be highly personal, religion is also a social institution. Social scientists recognize that religion exists as an organized and integrated set of beliefs, behaviors, and norms centered on basic social needs and values. Moreover, religion is a cultural universal found in all social groups. For instance, in every culture, funeral rites are practiced in some way, although these customs vary between cultures and within religious affiliations. Despite differences, there are common elements in a ceremony marking a person’s death, such as announcement of the death, care of the deceased, disposition, and ceremony or ritual. These universals, and the differences in the way societies and individuals experience religion, provide rich material for sociological study.
In studying religion, sociologists distinguish between what they term the experience, beliefs, and rituals of a religion. Religious experience refers to the conviction or sensation that we are connected to “the divine.” This type of communion might be experienced when people are pray or meditate. Religious beliefs are specific ideas members of a particular faith hold to be true, such as that Jesus Christ was the son of God, or that reincarnation exists. Another illustration of religious beliefs is the creation stories we find in different religions. Religious rituals are behaviors or practices that are either required or expected of the members of a particular group, such as bar mitzvah or confession of sins (Barkan and Greenwood 2003).
The History of Religion as a Sociological Concept
In the wake of nineteenth century European industrialization and secularization, three social theorists attempted to examine the relationship between religion and society: Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx. They are among the founding thinkers of modern sociology.
As stated earlier, French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) defined religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things” (1915). To him, sacred meant extraordinary—something that inspired wonder and that seemed connected to the concept of “the divine.” Durkheim argued that “religion happens” in society when there is a separation between the profane (ordinary life) and the sacred (1915). A rock, for example, isn’t sacred or profane as it exists. But if someone makes it into a headstone, or another person uses it for landscaping, it takes on different meanings—one sacred, one profane.
Durkheim is generally considered the first sociologist who analyzed religion in terms of its societal impact. Above all, he believed religion is about community: It binds people together (social cohesion), promotes behavior consistency (social control), and offers strength during life’s transitions and tragedies (meaning and purpose). By applying the methods of natural science to the study of society, Durkheim held that the source of religion and morality is the collective mind-set of society and that the cohesive bonds of social order result from common values in a society. He contended that these values need to be maintained to maintain social stability.
But what would happen if religion were to decline? This question led Durkheim to posit that religion is not just a social creation but something that represents the power of society: When people celebrate sacred things, they celebrate the power of their society. By this reasoning, even if traditional religion disappeared, society wouldn’t necessarily dissolve.
Whereas Durkheim saw religion as a source of social stability, German sociologist and political economist Max Weber (1864–1920) believed it was a precipitator of social change. He examined the effects of religion on economic activities and noticed that heavily Protestant societies—such as those in the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Germany—were the most highly developed capitalist societies and that their most successful business leaders were Protestant. In his writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), he contends that the Protestant work ethic influenced the development of capitalism. Weber noted that certain kinds of Protestantism supported the pursuit of material gain by motivating believers to work hard, be successful, and not spend their profits on frivolous things. (The modern use of “work ethic” comes directly from Weber’s Protestant ethic, although it has now lost its religious connotations.)
THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC IN THE INFORMATION AGE
Max Weber (1904) posited that, in Europe in his time, Protestants were more likely than Catholics to value capitalist ideology, and believed in hard work and savings. He showed that Protestant values directly influenced the rise of capitalism and helped create the modern world order. Weber thought the emphasis on community in Catholicism versus the emphasis on individual achievement in Protestantism made a difference. His century-old claim that the Protestant work ethic led to the development of capitalism has been one of the most important and controversial topics in the sociology of religion. In fact, scholars have found little merit to his contention when applied to modern society (Greeley 1989).
What does the concept of work ethic mean today? The work ethic in the information age has been affected by tremendous cultural and social change, just as workers in the mid- to late nineteenth century were influenced by the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Factory jobs tend to be simple, uninvolved, and require very little thinking or decision making on the part of the worker. Today, the work ethic of the modern workforce has been transformed, as more thinking and decision making is required. Employees also seek autonomy and fulfillment in their jobs, not just wages. Higher levels of education have become necessary, as well as people management skills and access to the most recent information on any given topic. The information age has increased the rapid pace of production expected in many jobs.
On the other hand, the “McDonaldization” of the United States (Hightower 1975; Ritzer 1993), in which many service industries, such as the fast-food industry, have established routinized roles and tasks, has resulted in a “discouragement” of the work ethic. In jobs where roles and tasks are highly prescribed, workers have no opportunity to make decisions. They are considered replaceable commodities as opposed to valued employees. During times of recession, these service jobs may be the only employment possible for younger individuals or those with low-level skills. The pay, working conditions, and robotic nature of the tasks dehumanizes the workers and strips them of incentives for doing quality work.
Working hard also doesn’t seem to have any relationship with Catholic or Protestant religious beliefs anymore, or those of other religions; information age workers expect talent and hard work to be rewarded by material gain and career advancement.
German philosopher, journalist, and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx (1818–1883) also studied the social impact of religion. He believed religion reflects the social stratification of society and that it maintains inequality and perpetuates the status quo. For him, religion was just an extension of working-class (proletariat) economic suffering. He famously argued that religion “is the opium of the people” (1844).
For Durkheim, Weber, and Marx, who were reacting to the great social and economic upheaval of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Europe, religion was an integral part of society. For Durkheim, religion was a force for cohesion that helped bind the members of society to the group, while Weber believed religion could be understood as something separate from society. Marx considered religion inseparable from the economy and the worker. Religion could not be understood apart from the capitalist society that perpetuated inequality. Despite their different views, these social theorists all believed in the centrality of religion to society.
Theoretical Perspectives on Religion
Functionalists believe religion meets many important needs for people, including group cohesion and companionship. (Photo courtesy of James Emery/flickr)
Modern-day sociologists often apply one of three major theoretical perspectives. These views offer different lenses through which to study and understand society: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory. Let’s explore how scholars applying these paradigms understand religion.
Functionalism
Functionalists contend that religion serves several functions in society. Religion, in fact, depends on society for its existence, value, and significance, and vice versa. From this perspective, religion serves several purposes, like providing answers to spiritual mysteries, offering emotional comfort, and creating a place for social interaction and social control.
In providing answers, religion defines the spiritual world and spiritual forces, including divine beings. For example, it helps answer questions like, “How was the world created?” “Why do we suffer?” “Is there a plan for our lives?” and “Is there an afterlife?” As another function, religion provides emotional comfort in times of crisis. Religious rituals bring order, comfort, and organization through shared familiar symbols and patterns of behavior.
One of the most important functions of religion, from a functionalist perspective, is the opportunities it creates for social interaction and the formation of groups. It provides social support and social networking and offers a place to meet others who hold similar values and a place to seek help (spiritual and material) in times of need. Moreover, it can foster group cohesion and integration. Because religion can be central to many people’s concept of themselves, sometimes there is an “in-group” versus “out-group” feeling toward other religions in our society or within a particular practice. On an extreme level, the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and anti-Semitism are all examples of this dynamic. Finally, religion promotes social control: It reinforces social norms such as appropriate styles of dress, following the law, and regulating sexual behavior.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theorists view religion as an institution that helps maintain patterns of social inequality. For example, the Vatican has a tremendous amount of wealth, while the average income of Catholic parishioners is small. According to this perspective, religion has been used to support the “divine right” of oppressive monarchs and to justify unequal social structures, like India’s caste system.
Conflict theorists are critical of the way many religions promote the idea that believers should be satisfied with existing circumstances because they are divinely ordained. This power dynamic has been used by Christian institutions for centuries to keep poor people poor and to teach them that they shouldn’t be concerned with what they lack because their “true” reward (from a religious perspective) will come after death. Conflict theorists also point out that those in power in a religion are often able to dictate practices, rituals, and beliefs through their interpretation of religious texts or via proclaimed direct communication from the divine.
Many religions, including the Catholic faith, have long prohibited women from becoming spiritual leaders. Feminist theorists focus on gender inequality and promote leadership roles for women in religion. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
The feminist perspective is a conflict theory view that focuses specifically on gender inequality. In terms of religion, feminist theorists assert that, although women are typically the ones to socialize children into a religion, they have traditionally held very few positions of power within religions. A few religions and religious denominations are more gender equal, but male dominance remains the norm of most.
RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY: CAN ECONOMIC THEORY BE APPLIED TO RELIGION?
How do people decide which religion to follow, if any? How does one pick a church or decide which denomination “fits” best? Rational choice theory (RCT) is one way social scientists have attempted to explain these behaviors. The theory proposes that people are self-interested, though not necessarily selfish, and that people make rational choices—choices that can reasonably be expected to maximize positive outcomes while minimizing negative outcomes. Sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (1988) first considered the use of RCT to explain some aspects of religious behavior, with the assumption that there is a basic human need for religion in terms of providing belief in a supernatural being, a sense of meaning in life, and belief in life after death. Religious explanations of these concepts are presumed to be more satisfactory than scientific explanations, which may help to account for the continuation of strong religious connectedness in countries such as the United States, despite predictions of some competing theories for a great decline in religious affiliation due to modernization and religious pluralism.
Another assumption of RCT is that religious organizations can be viewed in terms of “costs” and “rewards.” Costs are not only monetary requirements, but are also the time, effort, and commitment demands of any particular religious organization. Rewards are the intangible benefits in terms of belief and satisfactory explanations about life, death, and the supernatural, as well as social rewards from membership. RCT proposes that, in a pluralistic society with many religious options, religious organizations will compete for members, and people will choose between different churches or denominations in much the same way they select other consumer goods, balancing costs and rewards in a rational manner. In this framework, RCT also explains the development and decline of churches, denominations, sects, and even cults; this limited part of the very complex RCT theory is the only aspect well supported by research data.
Critics of RCT argue that it doesn’t fit well with human spiritual needs, and many sociologists disagree that the costs and rewards of religion can even be meaningfully measured or that individuals use a rational balancing process regarding religious affiliation. The theory doesn’t address many aspects of religion that individuals may consider essential (such as faith) and further fails to account for agnostics and atheists who don’t seem to have a similar need for religious explanations. Critics also believe this theory overuses economic terminology and structure and point out that terms such as “rational” and “reward” are unacceptably defined by their use; they would argue that the theory is based on faulty logic and lacks external, empirical support. A scientific explanation for why something occurs can’t reasonably be supported by the fact that it does occur. RCT is widely used in economics and to a lesser extent in criminal justice, but the application of RCT in explaining the religious beliefs and behaviors of people and societies is still being debated in sociology today.
Symbolic Interactionism
Rising from the concept that our world is socially constructed, symbolic interactionism studies the symbols and interactions of everyday life. To interactionists, beliefs and experiences are not sacred unless individuals in a society regard them as sacred. The Star of David in Judaism, the cross in Christianity, and the crescent and star in Islam are examples of sacred symbols. Interactionists are interested in what these symbols communicate. Because interactionists study one-on-one, everyday interactions between individuals, a scholar using this approach might ask questions focused on this dynamic. The interaction between religious leaders and practitioners, the role of religion in the ordinary components of everyday life, and the ways people express religious values in social interactions—all might be topics of study to an interactionist.
Summary
Religion describes the beliefs, values, and practices related to sacred or spiritual concerns. Social theorist Émile Durkheim defined religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things” (1915). Max Weber believed religion could be a force for social change. Karl Marx viewed religion as a tool used by capitalist societies to perpetuate inequality. Religion is a social institution, because it includes beliefs and practices that serve the needs of society. Religion is also an example of a cultural universal, because it is found in all societies in one form or another. Functionalism, conflict theory, and interactionism all provide valuable ways for sociologists to understand religion.
Section Quiz
In what ways does religion serve the role of a social institution?
1. Religions have a complex and integrated set of norms.
2. Religious practices and beliefs are related to societal values.
3. Religions often meet several basic needs.
4. All of the above
Answer
D
A cultural universal is something that:
1. addresses all aspects of a group’s behavior
2. is found in all cultures
3. is based on social norms
4. may or may not be of value in meeting social needs
Answer
B
Which of the main theoretical perspectives would approach religion from the micro-level, studying how religion impacts an individual’s sense of support and well-being?
1. Functionalism
2. Symbolic interactionism
3. Conflict theory
4. Feminism
Answer
B
Which perspective most emphasizes the ways in which religion helps keep the social system running smoothly?
1. Functional perspective
2. Symbolic interactionist perspective
3. Conflict perspective
4. Feminist perspective
Answer
A
Which socialist perspective most emphasizes the ways in which religion helps to maintain social inequalities within a society?
1. Functional
2. Symbolic interactionist
3. Conflict theory
4. Feminist perspective
Answer
C
Which of the following do the functionalist and conflict perspectives share?
1. Position that religion relates to social control, enforcing social norms
2. Emphasis on religion as providing social support
3. Belief that religion helps explain the mysteries of life
4. None of the above
Answer
A
The Protestant work ethic was viewed in terms of its relationship to:
1. evolution and natural selection
2. capitalism
3. determinism
4. prejudice and discrimination
Answer
B
Short Answer
List some ways that you see religion having social control in the everyday world.
What are some sacred items that you’re familiar with? Are there some objects, such as cups, candles, or clothing, that would be considered profane in normal settings but are considered sacred in special circumstances or when used in specific ways?
Consider a religion that you are familiar with, and discuss some of its beliefs, behaviors, and norms. Discuss how these meet social needs. Then, research a religion that you don’t know much about. Explain how its beliefs, behaviors, and norms are like/unlike the other religion.
Further Research
For more discussion on the study of sociology and religion, check out the following blog:openstaxcollege.org/l/immanent_frame/. The Immanent Frame is a forum for the exchange of ideas about religion, secularism, and society by leading thinkers in the social sciences and humanities.
Read more about functionalist views on religion at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Grinnell_functionalism, symbolic interactionist view on religion at openstaxcollege.org/l/flat_Earth, and women in the clergy at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/women_clergy.
Some would argue that the Protestant work ethic is still alive and well in the United States. Read British historian Niall Ferguson’s view at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Protestant_work_ethic.
Glossary
religious experience
the conviction or sensation that one is connected to “the divine”
religious beliefs
specific ideas that members of a particular faith hold to be true
religious rituals
behaviors or practices that are either required for or expected of the members of a particular group | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/15%3A_Religion/15.02%3A_The_Sociological_Approach_to_Religion.txt |
The major religions of the world (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism, and Judaism) differ in many respects, including how each religion is organized and the belief system each upholds. Other differences include the nature of belief in a higher power, the history of how the world and the religion began, and the use of sacred texts and objects.
The symbols of fourteen religions are depicted here. In no particular order, they represent Judaism, Wicca, Taoism, Christianity, Confucianism, Baha’i, Druidism, Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Can you match the symbol to the religion? What might a symbolic interactionist make of these symbols? (Photo courtesy of ReligiousTolerance.org)
Types of Religious Organizations
Religions organize themselves—their institutions, practitioners, and structures—in a variety of fashions. For instance, when the Roman Catholic Church emerged, it borrowed many of its organizational principles from the ancient Roman military and turned senators into cardinals, for example. Sociologists use different terms, like ecclesia, denomination, and sect, to define these types of organizations. Scholars are also aware that these definitions are not static. Most religions transition through different organizational phases. For example, Christianity began as a cult, transformed into a sect, and today exists as an ecclesia.
Cults, like sects, are new religious groups. In the United States today this term often carries pejorative connotations. However, almost all religions began as cults and gradually progressed to levels of greater size and organization. The term cult is sometimes used interchangeably with the term new religious movement (NRM). In its pejorative use, these groups are often disparaged as being secretive, highly controlling of members’ lives, and dominated by a single, charismatic leader.
Controversy exists over whether some groups are cults, perhaps due in part to media sensationalism over groups like polygamous Mormons or the Peoples Temple followers who died at Jonestown, Guyana. Some groups that are controversially labeled as cults today include the Church of Scientology and the Hare Krishna movement.
A sect is a small and relatively new group. Most of the well-known Christian denominations in the United States today began as sects. For example, the Methodists and Baptists protested against their parent Anglican Church in England, just as Henry VIII protested against the Catholic Church by forming the Anglican Church. From “protest” comes the term Protestant.
Occasionally, a sect is a breakaway group that may be in tension with larger society. They sometimes claim to be returning to “the fundamentals” or to contest the veracity of a particular doctrine. When membership in a sect increases over time, it may grow into a denomination. Often a sect begins as an offshoot of a denomination, when a group of members believes they should separate from the larger group.
Some sects dissolve without growing into denominations. Sociologists call these established sects. Established sects, such as the Amish or Jehovah’s Witnesses fall halfway between sect and denomination on the ecclesia–cult continuum because they have a mixture of sect-like and denomination-like characteristics.
A denomination is a large, mainstream religious organization, but it does not claim to be official or state sponsored. It is one religion among many. For example, Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, Catholic, and Seventh-day Adventist are all Christian denominations.
The term ecclesia, originally referring to a political assembly of citizens in ancient Athens, Greece, now refers to a congregation. In sociology, the term is used to refer to a religious group that most all members of a society belong to. It is considered a nationally recognized, or official, religion that holds a religious monopoly and is closely allied with state and secular powers. The United States does not have an ecclesia by this standard; in fact, this is the type of religious organization that many of the first colonists came to America to escape.
How might you classify the Mennonites? As a cult, a sect, or a denomination? (Photo courtesy of Frenkieb/flickr)
One way to remember these religious organizational terms is to think of cults, sects, denominations, and ecclesia representing a continuum, with increasing influence on society, where cults are least influential and ecclesia are most influential.
Types of Religions
Scholars from a variety of disciplines have strived to classify religions. One widely accepted categorization that helps people understand different belief systems considers what or who people worship (if anything). Using this method of classification, religions might fall into one of these basic categories, as shown in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\): One way scholars have categorized religions is by classifying what or who they hold to be divine.
Religious Classification What/Who Is Divine Example
Polytheism Multiple gods Belief systems of the ancient Greeks and Romans
Monotheism Single god Judaism, Islam
Atheism No deities Atheism
Animism Nonhuman beings (animals, plants, natural world) Indigenous nature worship (Shinto)
Totemism Human-natural being connection Ojibwa (Native American) beliefs
Note that some religions may be practiced—or understood—in various categories. For instance, the Christian notion of the Holy Trinity (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit) defies the definition of monotheism, which is a religion based on belief in a single deity, to some scholars. Similarly, many Westerners view the multiple manifestations of Hinduism’s godhead as polytheistic, which is a religion based on belief in multiple deities,, while Hindus might describe those manifestations are a monotheistic parallel to the Christian Trinity. Some Japanese practice Shinto, which follows animism, which is a religion that believes in the divinity of nonhuman beings, like animals, plants, and objects of the natural world, while people who practice totemism believe in a divine connection between humans and other natural beings.
It is also important to note that every society also has nonbelievers, such as atheists, who do not believe in a divine being or entity, and agnostics, who hold that ultimate reality (such as God) is unknowable. While typically not an organized group, atheists and agnostics represent a significant portion of the population. It is important to recognize that being a nonbeliever in a divine entity does not mean the individual subscribes to no morality. Indeed, many Nobel Peace Prize winners and other great humanitarians over the centuries would have classified themselves as atheists or agnostics.
The World’s Religions
Religions have emerged and developed across the world. Some have been short-lived, while others have persisted and grown. In this section, we will explore seven of the world’s major religions.
Hinduism
The oldest religion in the world, Hinduism originated in the Indus River Valley about 4,500 years ago in what is now modern-day northwest India and Pakistan. It arose contemporaneously with ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. With roughly one billion followers, Hinduism is the third-largest of the world’s religions. Hindus believe in a divine power that can manifest as different entities. Three main incarnations—Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—are sometimes compared to the manifestations of the divine in the Christian Trinity.
Multiple sacred texts, collectively called the Vedas, contain hymns and rituals from ancient India and are mostly written in Sanskrit. Hindus generally believe in a set of principles called dharma, which refer to one’s duty in the world that corresponds with “right” actions. Hindus also believe in karma, or the notion that spiritual ramifications of one’s actions are balanced cyclically in this life or a future life (reincarnation).
Hindu women sometimes apply decorations of henna dye to their hands for special occasions such as weddings and religious festivals. (Photo courtesy of Akash Mazumdar)
Buddhism promotes peace and tolerance. The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) is one of the most revered and influential Tibetan Buddhist leaders. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Pelosi/flickr)
Buddhism
Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama around 500 B.C.E. Siddhartha was said to have given up a comfortable, upper-class life to follow one of poverty and spiritual devotion. At the age of thirty-five, he famously meditated under a sacred fig tree and vowed not to rise before he achieved enlightenment (bodhi). After this experience, he became known as Buddha, or “enlightened one.” Followers were drawn to Buddha’s teachings and the practice of meditation, and he later established a monastic order.
Meditation is an important practice in Buddhism. A Tibetan monk is shown here engaged in solitary meditation. (Photo courtesy of Prince Roy/flickr)
Buddha’s teachings encourage Buddhists to lead a moral life by accepting the four Noble Truths: 1) life is suffering, 2) suffering arises from attachment to desires, 3) suffering ceases when attachment to desires ceases, and 4) freedom from suffering is possible by following the “middle way.” The concept of the “middle way” is central to Buddhist thinking, which encourages people to live in the present and to practice acceptance of others (Smith 1991). Buddhism also tends to deemphasize the role of a godhead, instead stressing the importance of personal responsibility (Craig 2002).
Confucianism
Confucianism was the official religion of China from 200 B.C.E. until it was officially abolished when communist leadership discouraged religious practice in 1949. The religion was developed by Kung Fu-Tzu (Confucius), who lived in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. An extraordinary teacher, his lessons—which were about self-discipline, respect for authority and tradition, andjen (the kind treatment of every person)—were collected in a book called the Analects.
Some religious scholars consider Confucianism more of a social system than a religion because it focuses on sharing wisdom about moral practices but doesn’t involve any type of specific worship; nor does it have formal objects. In fact, its teachings were developed in context of problems of social anarchy and a near-complete deterioration of social cohesion. Dissatisfied with the social solutions put forth, Kung Fu-Tzu developed his own model of religious morality to help guide society (Smith 1991).
Taoism
In Taoism, the purpose of life is inner peace and harmony. Tao is usually translated as “way” or “path.” The founder of the religion is generally recognized to be a man named Laozi, who lived sometime in the sixth century B.C.E. in China. Taoist beliefs emphasize the virtues of compassion and moderation.
The central concept of tao can be understood to describe a spiritual reality, the order of the universe, or the way of modern life in harmony with the former two. The ying-yang symbol and the concept of polar forces are central Taoist ideas (Smith 1991). Some scholars have compared this Chinese tradition to its Confucian counterpart by saying that “whereas Confucianism is concerned with day-to-day rules of conduct, Taoism is concerned with a more spiritual level of being” (Feng and English 1972).
Judaism
After their Exodus from Egypt in the thirteenth century B.C.E., Jews, a nomadic society, became monotheistic, worshipping only one God. The Jews’ covenant, or promise of a special relationship with Yahweh (God), is an important element of Judaism, and their sacred text is the Torah, which Christians also follow as the first five books of the Bible. Talmud refers to a collection of sacred Jewish oral interpretation of the Torah. Jews emphasize moral behavior and action in this world as opposed to beliefs or personal salvation in the next world.
The Islamic house of worship is called a mosque. (Photo courtesy of David Stanley/flickr)
Islam
Islam is monotheistic religion and it follows the teaching of the prophet Muhammad, born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 570 C.E. Muhammad is seen only as a prophet, not as a divine being, and he is believed to be the messenger of Allah (God), who is divine. The followers of Islam, whose U.S. population is projected to double in the next twenty years (Pew Research Forum 2011), are called Muslims.
Islam means “peace” and “submission.” The sacred text for Muslims is the Qur’an (or Koran). As with Christianity’s Old Testament, many of the Qur’an stories are shared with the Jewish faith. Divisions exist within Islam, but all Muslims are guided by five beliefs or practices, often called “pillars”: 1) Allah is the only god, and Muhammad is his prophet, 2) daily prayer, 3) helping those in poverty, 4) fasting as a spiritual practice, and 5) pilgrimage to the holy center of Mecca.
cornerstones of Muslim practice is journeying to the religion’s most sacred place, Mecca. (Photo courtesy of Raeky/flickr)
Christianity
Today the largest religion in the world, Christianity began 2,000 years ago in Palestine, with Jesus of Nazareth, a charismatic leader who taught his followers about caritas (charity) or treating others as you would like to be treated yourself.
The sacred text for Christians is the Bible. While Jews, Christians, and Muslims share many of same historical religious stories, their beliefs verge. In their shared sacred stories, it is suggested that the son of God—a messiah—will return to save God’s followers. While Christians believe that he already appeared in the person of Jesus Christ, Jews and Muslims disagree. While they recognize Christ as an important historical figure, their traditions don’t believe he’s the son of God, and their faiths see the prophecy of the messiah’s arrival as not yet fulfilled.
Different Christian groups have variations among their sacred texts. For instance, Mormons, an established Christian sect, also use the Book of Mormon, which they believe details other parts of Christian doctrine and Jesus’ life that aren’t included in the Bible. Similarly, the Catholic Bible includes the Apocrypha, a collection that, while part of the 1611 King James translation, is no longer included in Protestant versions of the Bible. Although monotheistic, Christians often describe their god through three manifestations that they call the Holy Trinity: the father (God), the son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a term Christians often use to describe religious experience, or how they feel the presence of the sacred in their lives. One foundation of Christian doctrine is the Ten Commandments, which decry acts considered sinful, including theft, murder, and adultery.
Summary
Sociological terms for different kinds of religious organizations are, in order of decreasing influence in society, ecclesia, denomination, sect, and cult. Religions can be categorized according to what or whom its followers worship. Some of the major, and oldest, of the world’s religions include Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
Section Quiz
What are some denominations of the Christian Protestant church?
1. Catholic and Jewish
2. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Presbyterians
3. Scientology and Hare Krishna
4. Methodist and Seventh-day Adventist
Answer
D
A sect:
1. has generally grown so large that it needs new buildings and multiple leaders
2. often believes it must split from the larger group to return to important fundamentals
3. is another term for a cult
4. All of the above
Answer
B
The main difference between an ecclesia and a denomination is:
1. the number of followers or believers is much larger for denominations
2. the geographical location varies for ecclesia versus denominations
3. ecclesia are state-sponsored and considered an official religion
4. there are no important differences; the terms are interchangeable
Answer
C
Some controversial groups that may be mislabeled as cults include:
1. Scientology and the Hare Krishna
2. the Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate
3. the Branch Davidians and the Manson Family
4. Quakers and Pentecostals
Answer
A
In what part of the world have Confucianism and Taoism been primarily practiced?
1. India
2. Europe
3. China
4. The Middle East
Answer
C
Many stories in the sacred text of Judaism are:
1. referred to as the Apocrypha
2. oral traditions only because Judaism has no sacred text
3. shared by Christianity and Islam
4. no longer part of the Torah
Answer
C
What do Christianity and Islam have in common?
1. Both believe in a single supreme god.
2. Both share many of the same stories in their central religious texts.
3. Both believe in an afterlife.
4. All of the above
Answer
D
Short Answer
Consider the different types of religious organizations in the United States. What role did ecclesia play in the history of the United States? How have sects tended to change over time? What role do cults have today?
What is your understanding of monotheism versus polytheism? How might your ideology be an obstacle to understanding the theism of another religion you’re unfamiliar with?
In U.S. society, do you believe there is social stratification that correlates with religious beliefs? What about within the practitioners of a given religion? Provide examples to illustrate your point.
Further Research
PBS’s Frontline explores “the life of Jesus and the rise of Christianity” in this in-depth documentary. View the piece in its entirety here: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/PBS_Frontline.
For more insight on Confucianism, read the Analects by Confucius, at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Confucius_Analects. For a primer on Judaism, read Judaism 101 at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Jew_FAQ.
Sorting through the different Christian denominations can be a daunting task. To help clarify these groups, go toopenstaxcollege.org/l/Chris..._denominations.
Glossary
animism
the religion that believes in the divinity of nonhuman beings, like animals, plants, and objects of the natural world
atheism
the belief in no deities
cults
religious groups that are small, secretive, and highly controlling of members and have a charismatic leader
denomination
a large, mainstream religion that is not sponsored by the state
ecclesia
a religion that is considered the state religion
established sects
sects that last but do not become denominations
monotheism
a religion based on belief in a single deity
polytheism
a religion based on belief in multiple deities
sect
a small, new offshoot of a denomination
totemism
the belief in a divine connection between humans and other natural beings | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/15%3A_Religion/15.03%3A_World_Religions.txt |
In examining the state of religion in the United States today, we see the complexity of religious life in our society, plus emerging trends like the rise of the megachurch, secularization, and the role of religion in social change.
Religion and Social Change
Religion has historically been an impetus to social change. The translation of sacred texts into everyday, nonscholarly language empowered people to shape their religions. Disagreements between religious groups and instances of religious persecution have led to wars and genocides. The United States is no stranger to religion as an agent of social change. In fact, the United States' first European arrivals were acting largely on religious convictions when they were compelled to settle in the United States.
Liberation Theology
Liberation theology began as a movement within the Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s and 1960s in Latin America, and it combines Christian principles with political activism. It uses the church to promote social change via the political arena, and it is most often seen in attempts to reduce or eliminate social injustice, discrimination, and poverty. A list of proponents of this kind of social justice (although some pre-date liberation theory) could include Francis of Assisi, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Desmond Tutu.
Although begun as a moral reaction against the poverty caused by social injustice in that part of the world, today liberation theology is an international movement that encompasses many churches and denominations. Liberation theologians discuss theology from the point of view of the poor and the oppressed, and some interpret the scriptures as a call to action against poverty and injustice. In Europe and North America, feminist theology has emerged from liberation theology as a movement to bring social justice to women.
RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND THE RAINBOW OF GAY PRIDE
What happens when a religious leader officiates a gay marriage against denomination policies? What about when that same minister defends the action in part by coming out and making her own lesbian relationship known to the church?
In the case of the Reverend Amy DeLong, it meant a church trial. Some leaders in her denomination assert that homosexuality is incompatible with their faith, while others feel this type of discrimination has no place in a modern church (Barrick 2011).
As the LBGT community increasingly advocates for, and earns, basic civil rights, how will religious communities respond? Many religious groups have traditionally discounted LBGT sexualities as “wrong.” However, these organizations have moved closer to respecting human rights by, for example, increasingly recognizing females as an equal gender. The Roman Catholic Church drew controversial attention to this issue in 2010 when the Vatican secretary of state suggested homosexuality was in part to blame for pedophilic sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the church (Beck 2010). Because numerous studies have shown there to be no relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia, nor a higher incidence of pedophilia among homosexuals than among heterosexuals (Beck 2010), the Vatican’s comments seem suspect. More recently Pope Francis has been pushing for a more open church, and some Catholic bishops have been advocating for a more "gay-friendly" church (McKenna, 2014). This has not come to pass, but some scholars believe these changes are a matter of time.
No matter the situation, most religions have a tenuous (at best) relationship with practitioners and leaders in the gay community. As one of the earliest Christian denominations to break barriers by ordaining women to serve as pastors, will Amy DeLong’s United Methodist denomination also be a leader in LBGT rights within Christian churchgoing society?
Megachurches
A megachurch is a Christian church that has a very large congregation averaging more than 2,000 people who attend regular weekly services. As of 2009, the largest megachurch in the United States was in Houston Texas, boasting an average weekly attendance of more than 43,000 (Bogan 2009). Megachurches exist in other parts of the world, especially in South Korea, Brazil, and several African countries, but the rise of the megachurch in the United States is a fairly recent phenomenon that has developed primarily in California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas.
Since 1970 the number of megachurches in this country has grown from about fifty to more than 1,000, most of which are attached to the Southern Baptist denomination (Bogan 2009). Approximately six million people are members of these churches (Bird and Thumma 2011). The architecture of these church buildings often resembles a sport or concert arena. The church may include jumbotrons (large-screen televisual technology usually used in sports arenas to show close-up shots of an event). Worship services feature contemporary music with drums and electric guitars and use state-of-the-art sound equipment. The buildings sometimes include food courts, sports and recreation facilities, and bookstores. Services such as child care and mental health counseling are often offered.
Typically, a single, highly charismatic pastor leads the megachurch; at present, most are male. Some megachurches and their preachers have a huge television presence, and viewers all around the country watch and respond to their shows and fundraising.
Besides size, U.S. megachurches share other traits, including conservative theology, evangelism, use of technology and social networking (Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, blogs), hugely charismatic leaders, few financial struggles, multiple sites, and predominantly white membership. They list their main focuses as youth activities, community service, and study of the Scripture (Hartford Institute for Religion Research b).
Critics of megachurches believe they are too large to promote close relationships among fellow church members or the pastor, as could occur in smaller houses of worship. Supporters note that, in addition to the large worship services, congregations generally meet in small groups, and some megachurches have informal events throughout the week to allow for community-building (Hartford Institute for Religion Research a).
Secularization
Historical sociologists Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud anticipated secularization and claimed that the modernization of society would bring about a decrease in the influence of religion. Weber believed membership in distinguished clubs would outpace membership in Protestant sects as a way for people to gain authority or respect.
Conversely, some people suggest secularization is a root cause of many social problems, such as divorce, drug use, and educational downturn. One-time presidential contender Michele Bachmann even linked Hurricane Irene and the 2011 earthquake felt in Washington D.C. to politicians’ failure to listen to God (Ward 2011).
While some scholars see the United States becoming increasingly secular, others observe a rise in fundamentalism. Compared to other democratic, industrialized countries, the United States is generally perceived to be a fairly religious nation. Whereas 65 percent of U.S. adults in a 2009 Gallup survey said religion was an important part of their daily lives, the numbers were lower in Spain (49 percent), Canada (42 percent), France (30 percent), the United Kingdom (27 percent), and Sweden (17 percent) (Crabtree and Pelham 2009). Secularization interests social observers because it entails a pattern of change in a fundamental social institution.
THANK GOD FOR THAT TOUCHDOWN: SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Imagine three public universities with football games scheduled on Saturday. At University A, a group of students in the stands who share the same faith decide to form a circle amid the spectators to pray for the team. For fifteen minutes, people in the circle share their prayers aloud among their group. At University B, the team ahead at halftime decides to join together in prayer, giving thanks and seeking support from God. This lasts for the first ten minutes of halftime on the sidelines of the field while spectators watch. At University C, the game program includes, among its opening moments, two minutes set aside for the team captain to share a prayer of his choosing with the spectators.
In the tricky area of separation of church and state, which of these actions is allowed and which is forbidden? In our three fictional scenarios, the last example is against the law while the first two situations are perfectly acceptable.
In the United States, a nation founded on the principles of religious freedom (many settlers were escaping religious persecution in Europe), how stringently do we adhere to this ideal? How well do we respect people’s right to practice any belief system of their choosing? The answer just might depend on what religion you practice.
In 2003, for example, a lawsuit escalated in Alabama regarding a monument to the Ten Commandments in a public building. In response, a poll was conducted by USA Today, CNN, and Gallup. Among the findings: 70 percent of people approved of a Christian Ten Commandments monument in public, while only 33 percent approved of a monument to the Islamic Qur’an in the same space. Similarly, survey respondents showed a 64 percent approval of social programs run by Christian organizations, but only 41 percent approved of the same programs run by Muslim groups (Newport 2003).
These statistics suggest that, for most people in the United States, freedom of religion is less important than the religion under discussion. And this is precisely the point made by those who argue for separation of church and state. According to their contention, any state-sanctioned recognition of religion suggests endorsement of one belief system at the expense of all others—contradictory to the idea of freedom of religion.
So what violates separation of church and state and what is acceptable? Myriad lawsuits continue to test the answer. In the case of the three fictional examples above, the issue of spontaneity is key, as is the existence (or lack thereof) of planning on the part of event organizers.
The next time you’re at a state event—political, public school, community—and the topic of religion comes up, consider where it falls in this debate.
Summary
Liberation theology combines Christian principles with political activism to address social injustice, discrimination, and poverty. Megachurches are those with a membership of more than 2,000 regular attendees, and they are a vibrant, growing and highly influential segment of U.S. religious life. Some sociologists believe levels of religiosity in the United States are declining (called secularization), while others observe a rise in fundamentalism.
Section Quiz
Social scientists refer to the use of a church to combat social injustice in the political realm as:
1. the protestant work ethic
2. conflict management
3. liberation theology
4. justice work
Answer
C
Megachurches tend to have:
1. a variety of male and female clergy
2. numerous buildings in which to meet
3. high attendance for only a limited time
4. large arenas where services are held
Answer
D
Short Answer
Do you believe the United States is becoming more secularized or more fundamentalist? Comparing your generation to that of your parents or grandparents, what differences do you see in the relationship between religion and society? What would popular media have you believe is the state of religion in the United States today?
Further Research
What is a megachurch and how are they changing the face of religion? Read “Exploring the Megachurch Phenomena: Their Characteristics and Cultural Context” at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/megachurch.
Curious about the LGBT religious movement? Visit the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and Human Rights Campaign (HRC) web sites for current news about the growing inclusion of LGBT citizens into their respective religious communities, both in the pews and from the pulpit: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/GLAAD andopenstaxcollege.org/l/human_rights_campaign.
How do Christians feel about gay marriage? How many Mormons are there in the United States? Check outopenstaxcollege.org/l/Pew_Forum, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a research institute examining U.S. religious trends.
Glossary
liberation theology
the use of a church to promote social change via the political arena
megachurch
a Christian church that has a very large congregation averaging more than 2,000 people who attend regular weekly services
15.E: Religion (Exercises)
15.1: The Sociological Approach to Religion
While some people think of religion as something individual because religious beliefs can be highly personal, religion is also a social institution. Social scientists recognize that religion exists as an organized and integrated set of beliefs, behaviors, and norms centered on basic social needs and values. Moreover, religion is a cultural universal found in all social groups.
15.2: World Religions
The major religions of the world (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism, and Judaism) differ in many respects, including how each religion is organized and the belief system each upholds. Other differences include the nature of belief in a higher power, the history of how the world and the religion began, and the use of sacred texts and objects.
15.3: Religion in the United States
In examining the state of religion in the United States today, we see the complexity of religious life in our society, plus emerging trends like the rise of the megachurch, secularization, and the role of religion in social change. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/15%3A_Religion/15.04%3A_Religion_in_the_United_States.txt |
Thumbnail: A crowd of college students at the 2007 Pittsburgh University Commencement (CC BY 2.0; Kit)
16: Education
Students who do graduate from college are likely to begin a career in debt. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Dooley/flickr)
"What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves" (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed). David Simon, in his book Social Problems and the Sociological Imagination: A Paradigm for Analysis (1995), points to the notion that social problems are, in essence, contradictions—that is, statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another. Consider then, that one of the greatest expectations in U.S. society is that to attain any form of success in life, a person needs an education. In fact, a college degree is rapidly becoming an expectation at nearly all levels of middle-class success, not merely an enhancement to our occupational choices. And, as you might expect, the number of people graduating from college in the United States continues to rise dramatically.
The contradiction, however, lies in the fact that the more necessary a college degree has become, the harder it has become to achieve it. The cost of getting a college degree has risen sharply since the mid-1980s, while government support in the form of Pell Grants has barely increased. The net result is that those who do graduate from college are likely to begin a career in debt. As of 2013, the average of amount of a typical student's loans amounted to around \$29,000. Added to that is that employment opportunities have not met expectations. The Washington Post (Brad Plumer May 20, 2013) notes that in 2010, only 27 percent of college graduates had a job related to their major. The business publication Bloomberg News states that among twenty-two-year-old degree holders who found jobs in the past three years, more than half were in roles not even requiring a college diploma (Janet Lorin and Jeanna Smialek, June 5, 2014).
As can be seen by the trend in the graph, while the Federal Pell Grant maximum has risen slightly between 1976 and 2008, it has not been able to keep pace with the total cost of college.
Is a college degree still worth it? All this is not to say that lifetime earnings among those with a college degree are not, on average, still much higher than for those without. But even with unemployment among degree-earners at a low of 3 percent, the increase in wages over the past decade has remained at a flat 1 percent. And the pay gap between those with a degree and those without has continued to increase because wages for the rest have fallen (David Leonhardt, New York Times, The Upshot, May 27, 2014).
But is college worth more than money?
Generally, the first two years of college are essentially a liberal arts experience. The student is exposed to a fairly broad range of topics, from mathematics and the physical sciences to history and literature, the social sciences, and music and art through introductory and survey-styled courses. It is in this period that the student's world view is, it is hoped, expanded. Memorization of raw data still occurs, but if the system works, the student now looks at a larger world. Then, when he or she begins the process of specialization, it is with a much broader perspective than might be otherwise. This additional "cultural capital" can further enrich the life of the student, enhance his or her ability to work with experienced professionals, and build wisdom upon knowledge. Over two thousand years ago, Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." The real value of an education, then, is to enhance our skill at self-examination. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/16%3A_Education/16.01%3A_Prelude_to_Education.txt |
Education is a social institution through which a society’s children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms. Every nation in the world is equipped with some form of education system, though those systems vary greatly. The major factors that affect education systems are the resources and money that are utilized to support those systems in different nations. As you might expect, a country’s wealth has much to do with the amount of money spent on education. Countries that do not have such basic amenities as running water are unable to support robust education systems or, in many cases, any formal schooling at all. The result of this worldwide educational inequality is a social concern for many countries, including the United States.
These children are at a library in Singapore, where students are outperforming U.S. students on worldwide tests. (Photo courtesy of kodomut/flickr)
International differences in education systems are not solely a financial issue. The value placed on education, the amount of time devoted to it, and the distribution of education within a country also play a role in those differences. For example, students in South Korea spend 220 days a year in school, compared to the 180 days a year of their United States counterparts (Pellissier 2010). As of 2006, the United States ranked fifth among twenty-seven countries for college participation, but ranked sixteenth in the number of students who receive college degrees (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education 2006). These statistics may be related to how much time is spent on education in the United States.
Then there is the issue of educational distribution within a nation. In December 2010, the results of a test called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is administered to fifteen-year-old students worldwide, were released. Those results showed that students in the United States had fallen from fifteenth to twenty-fifth in the rankings for science and math (National Public Radio 2010). Students at the top of the rankings hailed from Shanghai, Finland, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Analysts determined that the nations and city-states at the top of the rankings had several things in common. For one, they had well-established standards for education with clear goals for all students. They also recruited teachers from the top 5 to 10 percent of university graduates each year, which is not the case for most countries (National Public Radio 2010).
Finally, there is the issue of social factors. One analyst from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the organization that created the test, attributed 20 percent of performance differences and the United States’ low rankings to differences in social background. Researchers noted that educational resources, including money and quality teachers, are not distributed equitably in the United States. In the top-ranking countries, limited access to resources did not necessarily predict low performance. Analysts also noted what they described as “resilient students,” or those students who achieve at a higher level than one might expect given their social background. In Shanghai and Singapore, the proportion of resilient students is about 70 percent. In the United States, it is below 30 percent. These insights suggest that the United States’ educational system may be on a descending path that could detrimentally affect the country’s economy and its social landscape (National Public Radio 2010).
EDUCATION IN FINLAND
With public education in the United States under such intense criticism, why is it that Singapore, South Korea, and especially Finland (which is culturally most similar to us), have such excellent public education? Over the course of thirty years, the country has pulled itself from among the lowest rankings by the Organization of Economic Cooperation (OEDC) to first in 2012, and remains, as of 2014, in the top five. Contrary to the rigid curriculum and long hours demanded of students in South Korea and Singapore, Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. It is common for children to enter school at seven years old, and children will have more recess and less hours in school than U.S. children—approximately 300 less hours. Their homework load is light when compared to all other industrialized nations (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school). There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests (Laukkanen 2008; LynNell Hancock 2011).
Prioritization is different than in the United States. There is an emphasis on allocating resources for those who need them most, high standards, support for special needs students, qualified teachers taken from the top 10 percent of the nation's graduates and who must earn a Master's degree, evaluation of education, balancing decentralization and centralization.
"We used to have a system which was really unequal," stated the Finnish Education Chief in an interview. "My parents never had a real possibility to study and have a higher education. We decided in the 1960s that we would provide a free quality education to all. Even universities are free of charge. Equal means that we support everyone and we’re not going to waste anyone’s skills." As for teachers, "We don’t test our teachers or ask them to prove their knowledge. But it’s true that we do invest in a lot of additional teacher training even after they become teachers" (Gross-Loh 2014).
Yet over the past decade Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the PISA. Finland’s school children didn’t always excel. Finland built its excellent, efficient, and equitable educational system in a few decades from scratch, and the concept guiding almost every educational reform has been equity. The Finnish paradox is that by focusing on the bigger picture for all, Finland has succeeded at fostering the individual potential of most every child.
"We created a school system based on equality to make sure we can develop everyone’s potential. Now we can see how well it’s been working. Last year the OECD tested adults from twenty-four countries measuring the skill levels of adults aged sixteen to sixty-five on a survey called the PIAAC (Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies), which tests skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Finland scored at or near the top on all measures."
Formal and Informal Education
As already mentioned, education is not solely concerned with the basic academic concepts that a student learns in the classroom. Societies also educate their children, outside of the school system, in matters of everyday practical living. These two types of learning are referred to as formal education and informal education.
Formal education describes the learning of academic facts and concepts through a formal curriculum. Arising from the tutelage of ancient Greek thinkers, centuries of scholars have examined topics through formalized methods of learning. Education in earlier times was only available to the higher classes; they had the means for access to scholarly materials, plus the luxury of leisure time that could be used for learning. The Industrial Revolution and its accompanying social changes made education more accessible to the general population. Many families in the emerging middle class found new opportunities for schooling.
The modern U.S. educational system is the result of this progression. Today, basic education is considered a right and responsibility for all citizens. Expectations of this system focus on formal education, with curricula and testing designed to ensure that students learn the facts and concepts that society believes are basic knowledge.
In contrast, informal education describes learning about cultural values, norms, and expected behaviors by participating in a society. This type of learning occurs both through the formal education system and at home. Our earliest learning experiences generally happen via parents, relatives, and others in our community. Through informal education, we learn how to dress for different occasions, how to perform regular life routines like shopping for and preparing food, and how to keep our bodies clean.
Parents teaching their children to cook provide an informal education. (Photo courtesy of eyeliam/flickr)
Cultural transmission refers to the way people come to learn the values, beliefs, and social norms of their culture. Both informal and formal education include cultural transmission. For example, a student will learn about cultural aspects of modern history in a U.S. History classroom. In that same classroom, the student might learn the cultural norm for asking a classmate out on a date through passing notes and whispered conversations.
Access to Education
Another global concern in education is universal access. This term refers to people’s equal ability to participate in an education system. On a world level, access might be more difficult for certain groups based on class or gender (as was the case in the United States earlier in the nation’s history, a dynamic we still struggle to overcome). The modern idea of universal access arose in the United States as a concern for people with disabilities. In the United States, one way in which universal education is supported is through federal and state governments covering the cost of free public education. Of course, the way this plays out in terms of school budgets and taxes makes this an often-contested topic on the national, state, and community levels.
How has your state’s revenue affected your educational opportunities? (Graph courtesy of Census of Governments: Survey of School System Finances 2012)
A precedent for universal access to education in the United States was set with the 1972 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia’s decision in Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia. This case was brought on the behalf of seven school-age children with special needs who argued that the school board was denying their access to free public education. The school board maintained that the children’s “exceptional” needs, which included mental retardation and mental illness, precluded their right to be educated for free in a public school setting. The board argued that the cost of educating these children would be too expensive and that the children would therefore have to remain at home without access to education.
This case was resolved in a hearing without any trial. The judge, Joseph Cornelius Waddy, upheld the students’ right to education, finding that they were to be given either public education services or private education paid for by the Washington, D.C., board of education. He noted that
Constitutional rights must be afforded citizens despite the greater expense involved … the District of Columbia’s interest in educating the excluded children clearly must outweigh its interest in preserving its financial resources. … The inadequacies of the District of Columbia Public School System whether occasioned by insufficient funding or administrative inefficiency, certainly cannot be permitted to bear more heavily on the “exceptional” or handicapped child than on the normal child (Mills v. Board of Education 1972).
Today, the optimal way to include differently abled students in standard classrooms is still being researched and debated. “Inclusion” is a method that involves complete immersion in a standard classroom, whereas “mainstreaming” balances time in a special-needs classroom with standard classroom participation. There continues to be social debate surrounding how to implement the ideal of universal access to education.
Summary
Educational systems around the world have many differences, though the same factors—including resources and money—affect every educational system. Educational distribution is a major issue in many nations, including in the United States, where the amount of money spent per student varies greatly by state. Education happens through both formal and informal systems; both foster cultural transmission. Universal access to education is a worldwide concern.
Section Quiz
What are the major factors that affect education systems throughout the world?
1. Resources and money
2. Student interest
3. Teacher interest
4. Transportation
Answer
A
What do nations that are top-ranked in science and math have in common?
1. They are all in Asia.
2. They recruit top teachers.
3. They spend more money per student.
4. They use cutting-edge technology in classrooms.
Answer
B
Informal education _________________.
1. describes when students teach their peers
2. refers to the learning of cultural norms
3. only takes place at home
4. relies on a planned instructional process
Answer
B
Learning from classmates that most students buy lunch on Fridays is an example of ________.
1. cultural transmission
2. educational access
3. formal education
4. informal education
Answer
A
The 1972 case Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia set a precedent for __________.
1. access to education
2. average spending on students
3. desegregation of schools
4. teacher salary
Answer
A
Short Answer
Has there ever been a time when your formal and informal educations in the same setting were at odds? How did you overcome that disconnect?
Do you believe free access to schools has achieved its intended goal? Explain.
Further Research
Though it’s a struggle, education is continually being improved in the developing world. To learn how educational programs are being fostered worldwide, explore the Education section of the Center for Global Development’s website:http://openstaxcollege.org/l/center_...al_development
Glossary
cultural transmission
the way people come to learn the values, beliefs, and social norms of their culture
education
a social institution through which a society’s children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms
formal education
the learning of academic facts and concepts
informal education
education that involves learning about cultural values, norms, and expected behaviors through participation in a society
universal access
the equal ability of all people to participate in an education system | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/16%3A_Education/16.02%3A_Education_around_the_World.txt |
While it is clear that education plays an integral role in individuals’ lives as well as society as a whole, sociologists view that role from many diverse points of view. Functionalists believe that education equips people to perform different functional roles in society. Conflict theorists view education as a means of widening the gap in social inequality. Feminist theorists point to evidence that sexism in education continues to prevent women from achieving a full measure of social equality. Symbolic interactionists study the dynamics of the classroom, the interactions between students and teachers, and how those affect everyday life. In this section, you will learn about each of these perspectives.
Functionalism
Functionalists view education as one of the more important social institutions in a society. They contend that education contributes two kinds of functions: manifest (or primary) functions, which are the intended and visible functions of education; and latent (or secondary) functions, which are the hidden and unintended functions.
Manifest Functions
There are several major manifest functions associated with education. The first is socialization. Beginning in preschool and kindergarten, students are taught to practice various societal roles. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who established the academic discipline of sociology, characterized schools as “socialization agencies that teach children how to get along with others and prepare them for adult economic roles” (Durkheim 1898). Indeed, it seems that schools have taken on this responsibility in full.
This socialization also involves learning the rules and norms of the society as a whole. In the early days of compulsory education, students learned the dominant culture. Today, since the culture of the United States is increasingly diverse, students may learn a variety of cultural norms, not only that of the dominant culture.
School systems in the United States also transmit the core values of the nation through manifest functions like social control. One of the roles of schools is to teach students conformity to law and respect for authority. Obviously, such respect, given to teachers and administrators, will help a student navigate the school environment. This function also prepares students to enter the workplace and the world at large, where they will continue to be subject to people who have authority over them. Fulfillment of this function rests primarily with classroom teachers and instructors who are with students all day.
The teacher’s authority in the classroom is a way in which education fulfills the manifest functions of social control. (Photo courtesy of Tulane Public Relations/flickr)
Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward social mobility. This function is referred to associal placement. College and graduate schools are viewed as vehicles for moving students closer to the careers that will give them the financial freedom and security they seek. As a result, college students are often more motivated to study areas that they believe will be advantageous on the social ladder. A student might value business courses over a class in Victorian poetry because she sees business class as a stronger vehicle for financial success.
Latent Functions
Education also fulfills latent functions. As you well know, much goes on in a school that has little to do with formal education. For example, you might notice an attractive fellow student when he gives a particularly interesting answer in class—catching up with him and making a date speaks to the latent function of courtship fulfilled by exposure to a peer group in the educational setting.
The educational setting introduces students to social networks that might last for years and can help people find jobs after their schooling is complete. Of course, with social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, these networks are easier than ever to maintain. Another latent function is the ability to work with others in small groups, a skill that is transferable to a workplace and that might not be learned in a homeschool setting.
The educational system, especially as experienced on university campuses, has traditionally provided a place for students to learn about various social issues. There is ample opportunity for social and political advocacy, as well as the ability to develop tolerance to the many views represented on campus. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across college campuses all over the United States, leading to demonstrations in which diverse groups of students were unified with the purpose of changing the political climate of the country.
Manifest and Latent Functions of EducationAccording to functionalist theory, education contributes both manifest and latent functions.
Manifest Functions: Openly stated functions with intended goals Latent Functions: Hidden, unstated functions with sometimes unintended consequences
Socialization Courtship
Transmission of culture Social networks
Social control Group work
Social placement Creation of generation gap
Cultural innovation Political and social integration
Functionalists recognize other ways that schools educate and enculturate students. One of the most important U.S. values students in the United States learn is that of individualism—the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole. In countries such as Japan and China, where the good of the group is valued over the rights of the individual, students do not learn as they do in the United States that the highest rewards go to the “best” individual in academics as well as athletics. One of the roles of schools in the United States is fostering self-esteem; conversely, schools in Japan focus on fostering social esteem—the honoring of the group over the individual.
In the United States, schools also fill the role of preparing students for competition in life. Obviously, athletics foster a competitive nature, but even in the classroom students compete against one another academically. Schools also fill the role of teaching patriotism. Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and take history classes where they learn about national heroes and the nation’s past.
Starting each day with the Pledge of Allegiance is one way in which students are taught patriotism. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Turner/flickr)
Another role of schools, according to functionalist theory, is that of sorting, or classifying students based on academic merit or potential. The most capable students are identified early in schools through testing and classroom achievements. Such students are placed in accelerated programs in anticipation of successful college attendance.
Functionalists also contend that school, particularly in recent years, is taking over some of the functions that were traditionally undertaken by family. Society relies on schools to teach about human sexuality as well as basic skills such as budgeting and job applications—topics that at one time were addressed by the family.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theorists do not believe that public schools reduce social inequality. Rather, they believe that the educational system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities that arise from differences in class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Where functionalists see education as serving a beneficial role, conflict theorists view it more negatively. To them, educational systems preserve the status quo and push people of lower status into obedience.
Conflict theorists see the education system as a means by which those in power stay in power. (Photo courtesy Thomas Ricker/flickr)
The fulfillment of one’s education is closely linked to social class. Students of low socioeconomic status are generally not afforded the same opportunities as students of higher status, no matter how great their academic ability or desire to learn. Picture a student from a working-class home who wants to do well in school. On a Monday, he’s assigned a paper that’s due Friday. Monday evening, he has to babysit his younger sister while his divorced mother works. Tuesday and Wednesday, he works stocking shelves after school until 10:00 p.m. By Thursday, the only day he might have available to work on that assignment, he’s so exhausted he can’t bring himself to start the paper. His mother, though she’d like to help him, is so tired herself that she isn’t able to give him the encouragement or support he needs. And since English is her second language, she has difficulty with some of his educational materials. They also lack a computer and printer at home, which most of his classmates have, so they have to rely on the public library or school system for access to technology. As this story shows, many students from working-class families have to contend with helping out at home, contributing financially to the family, poor study environments and a lack of support from their families. This is a difficult match with education systems that adhere to a traditional curriculum that is more easily understood and completed by students of higher social classes.
Such a situation leads to social class reproduction, extensively studied by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He researched howcultural capital, or cultural knowledge that serves (metaphorically) as currency that helps us navigate a culture, alters the experiences and opportunities available to French students from different social classes. Members of the upper and middle classes have more cultural capital than do families of lower-class status. As a result, the educational system maintains a cycle in which the dominant culture’s values are rewarded. Instruction and tests cater to the dominant culture and leave others struggling to identify with values and competencies outside their social class. For example, there has been a great deal of discussion over what standardized tests such as the SAT truly measure. Many argue that the tests group students by cultural ability rather than by natural intelligence.
The cycle of rewarding those who possess cultural capital is found in formal educational curricula as well as in the hidden curriculum, which refers to the type of nonacademic knowledge that students learn through informal learning and cultural transmission. This hidden curriculum reinforces the positions of those with higher cultural capital and serves to bestow status unequally.
Conflict theorists point to tracking, a formalized sorting system that places students on “tracks” (advanced versus low achievers) that perpetuate inequalities. While educators may believe that students do better in tracked classes because they are with students of similar ability and may have access to more individual attention from teachers, conflict theorists feel that tracking leads to self-fulfilling prophecies in which students live up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations (Education Week 2004).
To conflict theorists, schools play the role of training working-class students to accept and retain their position as lower members of society. They argue that this role is fulfilled through the disparity of resources available to students in richer and poorer neighborhoods as well as through testing (Lauen and Tyson 2008).
IQ tests have been attacked for being biased—for testing cultural knowledge rather than actual intelligence. For example, a test item may ask students what instruments belong in an orchestra. To correctly answer this question requires certain cultural knowledge—knowledge most often held by more affluent people who typically have more exposure to orchestral music. Though experts in testing claim that bias has been eliminated from tests, conflict theorists maintain that this is impossible. These tests, to conflict theorists, are another way in which education does not provide opportunities, but instead maintains an established configuration of power.
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory aims to understand the mechanisms and roots of gender inequality in education, as well as their societal repercussions. Like many other institutions of society, educational systems are characterized by unequal treatment and opportunity for women. Almost two-thirds of the world’s 862 million illiterate people are women, and the illiteracy rate among women is expected to increase in many regions, especially in several African and Asian countries (UNESCO 2005; World Bank 2007).
Women in the United States have been relatively late, historically speaking, to be granted entry to the public university system. In fact, it wasn’t until the establishment of Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972 that discriminating on the basis of sex in U.S. education programs became illegal. In the United States, there is also a post-education gender disparity between what male and female college graduates earn. A study released in May 2011 showed that, among men and women who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010, men out-earned women by an average of more than \$5,000 each year. First-year job earnings for men averaged \$33,150; for women the average was \$28,000 (Godofsky, Zukin, and van Horn 2011). Similar trends are seen among salaries of professionals in virtually all industries.
When women face limited opportunities for education, their capacity to achieve equal rights, including financial independence, are limited. Feminist theory seeks to promote women’s rights to equal education (and its resultant benefits) across the world.
GRADE INFLATION: WHEN IS AN A REALLY A C?
Consider a large-city newspaper publisher. Ten years ago, when culling résumés for an entry-level copywriter, they were well assured that if they selected a grad with a GPA of 3.7 or higher, they’d have someone with the writing skills to contribute to the workplace on day one. But over the last few years, they’ve noticed that A-level students don’t have the competency evident in the past. More and more, they find themselves in the position of educating new hires in abilities that, in the past, had been mastered during their education.
This story illustrates a growing concern referred to as grade inflation—a term used to describe the observation that the correspondence between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing (in a downward direction) over time. Put simply, what used to be considered C-level, or average, now often earns a student a B, or even an A.
Why is this happening? Research on this emerging issue is ongoing, so no one is quite sure yet. Some cite the alleged shift toward a culture that rewards effort instead of product, i.e., the amount of work a student puts in raises the grade, even if the resulting product is poor quality. Another oft-cited contributor is the pressure many of today’s instructors feel to earn positive course evaluations from their students—records that can tie into teacher compensation, award of tenure, or the future career of a young grad teaching entry-level courses. The fact that these reviews are commonly posted online exacerbates this pressure.
Other studies don’t agree that grade inflation exists at all. In any case, the issue is hotly debated, with many being called upon to conduct research to help us better understand and respond to this trend (National Public Radio 2004; Mansfield 2005).
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism sees education as one way that labeling theory is seen in action. A symbolic interactionist might say that this labeling has a direct correlation to those who are in power and those who are labeled. For example, low standardized test scores or poor performance in a particular class often lead to a student who is labeled as a low achiever. Such labels are difficult to “shake off,” which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton 1968).
In his book High School Confidential, Jeremy Iverson details his experience as a Stanford graduate posing as a student at a California high school. One of the problems he identifies in his research is that of teachers applying labels that students are never able to lose. One teacher told him, without knowing he was a bright graduate of a top university, that he would never amount to anything (Iverson 2006). Iverson obviously didn’t take this teacher’s false assessment to heart. But when an actual seventeen-year-old student hears this from a person with authority over her, it’s no wonder that the student might begin to “live down to” that label.
The labeling with which symbolic interactionists concern themselves extends to the very degrees that symbolize completion of education. Credentialism embodies the emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that a person has a certain skill, has attained a certain level of education, or has met certain job qualifications. These certificates or degrees serve as a symbol of what a person has achieved, and allows the labeling of that individual.
Indeed, as these examples show, labeling theory can significantly impact a student’s schooling. This is easily seen in the educational setting, as teachers and more powerful social groups within the school dole out labels that are adopted by the entire school population.
Summary
The major sociological theories offer insight into how we understand education. Functionalists view education as an important social institution that contributes both manifest and latent functions. Functionalists see education as serving the needs of society by preparing students for later roles, or functions, in society. Conflict theorists see schools as a means for perpetuating class, racial-ethnic, and gender inequalities. In the same vein, feminist theory focuses specifically on the mechanisms and roots of gender inequality in education. The theory of symbolic interactionism focuses on education as a means for labeling individuals.
Section Quiz
Which of the following is not a manifest function of education?
1. Cultural innovation
2. Courtship
3. Social placement
4. Socialization
Answer
B
Because she plans on achieving success in marketing, Tammie is taking courses on managing social media. This is an example of ________.
1. cultural innovation
2. social control
3. social placement
4. socialization
Answer
C
Which theory of education focuses on the ways in which education maintains the status quo?
1. Conflict theory
2. Feminist theory
3. Functionalist theory
4. Symbolic interactionism
Answer
A
Which theory of education focuses on the labels acquired through the educational process?
1. Conflict theory
2. Feminist theory
3. Functionalist theory
4. Symbolic interactionism
Answer
D
What term describes the assignment of students to specific education programs and classes on the basis of test scores, previous grades, or perceived ability?
1. Hidden curriculum
2. Labeling
3. Self-fulfilling prophecy
4. Tracking
Answer
D
Functionalist theory sees education as serving the needs of _________.
1. families
2. society
3. the individual
4. all of the above
Answer
D
Rewarding students for meeting deadlines and respecting authority figures is an example of ________.
1. a latent function
2. a manifest function
3. informal education
4. transmission of moral education
Answer
D
What term describes the separation of students based on merit?
1. Cultural transmission
2. Social control
3. Sorting
4. Hidden curriculum
Answer
C
Conflict theorists see sorting as a way to ________.
1. challenge gifted students
2. perpetuate divisions of socioeconomic status
3. help students who need additional support
4. teach respect for authority
Answer
B
Conflict theorists see IQ tests as being biased. Why?
1. They are scored in a way that is subject to human error.
2. They do not give children with learning disabilities a fair chance to demonstrate their true intelligence.
3. They don’t involve enough test items to cover multiple intelligences.
4. They reward affluent students with questions that assume knowledge associated with upper-class culture.
Answer
D
Short Answer
Thinking of your school, what are some ways that a conflict theorist would say that your school perpetuates class differences?
Which sociological theory best describes your view of education? Explain why.
Based on what you know about symbolic interactionism and feminist theory, what do you think proponents of those theories see as the role of the school?
Further Research
Can tracking actually improve learning? This 2009 article from Education Next explores the debate with evidence from Kenya.http://openstaxcollege.org/l/education_next
The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) is committed to ending the bias and other flaws seen in standardized testing. Their mission is to ensure that students, teachers, and schools are evaluated fairly. You can learn more about their mission, as well as the latest in news on test bias and fairness, at their website: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/fair_test
Glossary
credentialism
the emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that a person has a certain skill, has attained a certain level of education, or has met certain job qualifications
cultural capital
cultural knowledge that serves (metaphorically) as currency to help one navigate a culture
grade inflation
the idea that the achievement level associated with an A today is notably lower than the achievement level associated with A-level work a few decades ago
hidden curriculum
the type of nonacademic knowledge that people learn through informal learning and cultural transmission
social placement
the use of education to improve one’s social standing
sorting
classifying students based on academic merit or potential
tracking
a formalized sorting system that places students on “tracks” (advanced, low achievers) that perpetuate inequalities | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/16%3A_Education/16.03%3A_Theoretical_Perspectives_on_Education.txt |
As schools strive to fill a variety of roles in their students’ lives, many issues and challenges arise. Students walk a minefield of bullying, violence in schools, the results of declining funding, plus other problems that affect their education. When Americans are asked about their opinion of public education on the Gallup poll each year, reviews are mixed at best (Saad 2008). Schools are no longer merely a place for learning and socializing. With the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling in 1954, schools became a repository of much political and legal action that is at the heart of several issues in education.
Equal Education
Until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, schools had operated under the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which allowed racial segregation in schools and private businesses (the case dealt specifically with railroads) and introduced the much maligned phrase “separate but equal” into the U.S. lexicon. The 1954 Brown v. Board decision overruled this, declaring that state laws that had established separate schools for black and white students were, in fact, unequal and unconstitutional.
While the ruling paved the way toward civil rights, it was also met with contention in many communities. In Arkansas in 1957, the governor mobilized the state National Guard to prevent black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower, in response, sent members of the 101st Airborne Division from Kentucky to uphold the students’ right to enter the school. In 1963, almost ten years after the ruling, Governor George Wallace of Alabama used his own body to block two black students from entering the auditorium at the University of Alabama to enroll in the school. Wallace’s desperate attempt to uphold his policy of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” stated during his 1963 inauguration (PBS 2000) became known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.” He refused to grant entry to the students until a general from the Alabama National Guard arrived on President Kennedy’s order.
President Eisenhower sent members of the 101st Airborne Division from Kentucky to escort black students into Little Rock Central High School after the governor of Arkansas tried to deny them entry. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army)
Presently, students of all races and ethnicities are permitted into schools, but there remains a troubling gap in the equality of education they receive. The long-term socially embedded effects of racism—and other discrimination and disadvantage—have left a residual mark of inequality in the nation’s education system. Students from wealthy families and those of lower socioeconomic status do not receive the same opportunities.
Today’s public schools, at least in theory, are positioned to help remedy those gaps. Predicated on the notion of universal access, this system is mandated to accept and retain all students regardless of race, religion, social class, and the like. Moreover, public schools are held accountable to equitable per-student spending (Resnick 2004). Private schools, usually only accessible to students from high-income families, and schools in more affluent areas generally enjoy access to greater resources and better opportunities. In fact, some of the key predictors for student performance include socioeconomic status and family background. Children from families of lower socioeconomic status often enter school with learning deficits they struggle to overcome throughout their educational tenure. These patterns, uncovered in the landmark Coleman Report of 1966, are still highly relevant today, as sociologists still generally agree that there is a great divide in the performance of white students from affluent backgrounds and their nonwhite, less affluent, counterparts (Coleman 1966).
Head Start
The findings in the Coleman Report were so powerful that they brought about two major changes to education in the United States. The federal Head Start program, which is still active and successful today, was developed to give low-income students an opportunity to make up the preschool deficit discussed in Coleman’s findings. The program provides academic-centered preschool to students of low socioeconomic status.
Busing
The second major change brought about after the release of the Coleman Report was less successful than the Head Start program and has been the subject of a great deal of controversy. With the goal of further desegregating education, courts across the United States ordered some school districts to begin a program that became known as “busing.” This program involved bringing students to schools outside their neighborhoods (and therefore schools they would not normally have the opportunity to attend) to bring racial diversity into balance. This practice was met with a great deal of public resistance from people on both sides dissatisfied with white students traveling to inner city schools and minority students bring transported to schools in the suburbs.
No Child Left Behind
In 2001, the Bush administration passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires states to test students in designated grades. The results of those tests determine eligibility to receive federal funding. Schools that do not meet the standards set by the Act run the risk of having their funding cut. Sociologists and teachers alike have contended that the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act is far more negative than positive, arguing that a “one size fits all” concept cannot apply to education.
Teaching to the Test
The funding tie-in of the No Child Left Behind Act has led to the social phenomenon commonly called “teaching to the test,” which describes when a curriculum focuses on equipping students to succeed on standardized tests, to the detriment of broader educational goals and concepts of learning. At issue are two approaches to classroom education: the notion that teachers impart knowledge that students are obligated to absorb, versus the concept of student-centered learning that seeks to teach children not facts, but problem solving abilities and learning skills. Both types of learning have been valued in the U.S. school system. The former, to critics of “teaching to the test,” only equips students to regurgitate facts, while the latter, to proponents of the other camp, fosters lifelong learning and transferable work skills.
Bilingual Education
New issues of inequality have entered the national conversation in recent years with the issue of bilingual education, which attempts to give equal opportunity to minority students through offering instruction in languages other than English. Though it is actually an old issue (bilingual education was federally mandated in 1968), it remains one of hot debate. Supporters of bilingual education argue that all students deserve equal opportunities in education—opportunities some students cannot access without instruction in their first language. On the other side, those who oppose bilingual education often point to the need for English fluency in everyday life and in the professional world.
Common Core
"The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade." Included in the list of standards is that they be evidence-based, clear, understandable, consistent, aligned with college and career expectations, include the application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills, and are informed by other top-performing countries (The Common Core State Standards Initiative 2014).
The primary controversy over the Common Core State Standards, or simply the Common Core, from the standpoint of teachers, parents and students, and even administrators, is not so much the standards themselves, but the assessment process and the high stakes involved. Both the national teacher's unions in the United States initially agreed to them, at least in principle. But both have since become strong voices of criticism. Given a public education system that is primarily funded by local property taxes, rather than by state and federal funds distributed to all schools equally, we see a wide disparity of funding per student throughout the country, with the result that students in schools funded by well-to-do communities are clearly better off than those who are not, sometimes only a few miles away.
What gets measured?
Much has been said about the quality, usefulness, and even accuracy of many of the standardized tests. Math questions have been found to be misleading and poorly phrased; for instance, “Tyler made 36 total snowfalls with is a multiple of how triangular snowflakes he made. How many triangular snowflakes could he have made?”
Some of the essays had questions that made little sense to the students. One notable test question in 2014 that dominated the Internet for a time was about "The Hare and the Pineapple." This was a parody on the well-known Aesop fable of the race between the hare and the tortoise that appeared on a standardized test for New York's eighth-grade exam, with the tortoise changed into a talking pineapple. With the pineapple clearly unable to participate in a race and the hare winning, "the animals ate the pineapple." "Moral: Pineapples don’t have sleeves."
At the end of the story, questions for the student included, "Which animal spoke the wisest words?" and "Why did the animals eat the talking fruit?"
Charter Schools
Charter schools are self-governing public schools that have signed agreements with state governments to improve students when poor performance is revealed on tests required by the No Child Left Behind Act. While such schools receive public money, they are not subject to the same rules that apply to regular public schools. In return, they make agreements to achieve specific results. Charter schools, as part of the public education system, are free to attend, and are accessible via lottery when there are more students seeking enrollment than there are spots available at the school. Some charter schools specialize in certain fields, such as the arts or science, while others are more generalized.
The debate over the performance of charter schools vs. public schools is a charged one. Dozens of studies have been made on the topic, and some, as reflected in Stanford's CREDO study above, do not support the claim that charter schools always outperform public schools. (Source: Based on the CREDO study Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States)
MONEY AS MOTIVATION IN CHARTER SCHOOLS
Public school teachers typically find stability, comprehensive benefits packages, and long-term job security. In 2011, one charter school in New York City set out to learn if teachers would give up those protections if it meant an opportunity to make much more money than the typical teacher’s salary. The Equity Project is a privately run charter school that offered teachers positions paying \$125,000 per year (more than twice the average salary for teachers). The school’s founder and principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, explained that this allows him to attract the best and brightest teachers to his school—to decide whom he hires and how much they are paid—and build a school where “every teacher is a great teacher” (CBS News 2011). He sees attracting top teachers as a direct road to student achievement. A nationwide talent search resulted in the submission of thousands of applications. The final round of interviews consisted of a day-long trial run. The school looks for teachers who can show evidence of student growth and achievement. They also must be highly engaging.
The majority of students at the school are African American and Hispanic, from poor families, and reading below grade level. The school faces the challenge faced by schools all over the United States: getting poor, disadvantaged students to perform at the same level as their more affluent counterparts. Vanderhoek believes his team of dream teachers can help students close their learning gaps by several grade levels within one year.
This is not an affluent school. It is publicly funded and classes are held in trailers. Most of the school’s budget goes into the teachers’ salaries. There are no reading or math aides; those roles are filled by the regular classroom teachers.
The experiment may be working. Students who were asked how they feel about their education at The Equity Project said that their teachers care if they succeed and give them the attention they need to achieve at high levels. They cite the feeling that their teachers believe in them as a major reason for liking school for the first time.
Of course, with the high salary comes high risk. Most public schools offer contracts to teachers. Those contracts guarantee job security. But The Equity Project is an at-will employer. Those who don’t meet the standards set by the school will lose their jobs. Vanderhoek does not believe in teacher tenure, which he feels gives teachers “a job for life no matter how they perform” (CBS News 2011). With a teaching staff of roughly fifteen, he terminated two teachers after the first year. In comparison, in New York City as a whole, only seven teachers out of 55,000 with tenure have been terminated for poor performance.
One of those two teachers who was let go said she was relieved, citing eighty- to ninety-hour work weeks and a decline in the quality of her family life. Meanwhile, there is some question as to whether the model is working. On one hand, there are individual success stories, such as a student whose reading skills increased two grade levels in a single year. On the other, there is the fact that on the state math and reading exams taken by all fifth graders, the Equity Project students remained out-scored by other district schools (CBS News 2011). Do charter schools actually work? A Stanford CREDO study in 2009 found "there is a wide variance in the quality of the nation’s several thousand charter schools with, in the aggregate, students in charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools" (CREDO 2009).
Teacher Training
Schools face an issue of teacher effectiveness, in that most high school teachers perceive students as being prepared for college, while most college professors do not see those same students as prepared for the rigors of collegiate study. Some feel that this is due to teachers being unprepared to teach. Many teachers in the United States teach subject matter that is outside their own field of study. This is not the case in many European and Asian countries. Only eight percent of United States fourth-grade math teachers majored or minored in math, compared with 48 percent in Singapore. Further, students in disadvantaged American schools are 77 percent more likely to be educated by a teacher who didn’t specialize in the subject matter than students who attend schools in affluent neighborhoods (Holt, McGrath, and Seastrom 2006).
Social Promotion
Social promotion is another issue identified by sociologists. This is the concept of passing students to the next grade regardless of their meeting standards for that grade. Critics of this practice argue that students should never move to the next grade if they have not mastered the skills required to “graduate” from the previous grade. Proponents of the practice question what a school is to do with a student who is three to four years older than other students in his or her grade, saying this creates more issues than the practice of social promotion.
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action has been a subject of debate, primarily as it relates to the admittance of college students. Opponents suggest that, under affirmative action, minority students are given greater weighted priorities for admittance. Supporters of affirmative action point to the way in which it grants opportunities to students who are traditionally done a disservice in the college admission process.
Rising Student Loan Debt
In a growing concern, the amount of college loan debt that students are taking on is creating a new social challenge. As of 2010, the debts of students with student loans averaged \$25,250 upon graduation, leaving students hard-pressed to repay their education while earning entry-level wages, even at the professional level (Lewin 2011). With the increase in unemployment since the 2008 recession, jobs are scarce and make this burden more pronounced. As recent grads find themselves unable to meet their financial obligations, all of society is affected.
Home Schooling
Homeschooling refers to children being educated in their own homes, typically by a parent, instead of in a traditional public or private school system. Proponents of this type of education argue that it provides an outstanding opportunity for student-centered learning while circumventing problems that plague today’s education system. Opponents counter that homeschooled children miss out on the opportunity for social development that occurs in standard classroom environments and school settings.
Proponents say that parents know their own children better than anyone else and are thus best equipped to teach them. Those on the other side of the debate assert that childhood education is a complex task and requires the degree teachers spend four years earning. After all, they argue, a parent may know her child’s body better than anyone, yet she seeks out a doctor for her child’s medical treatment. Just as a doctor is a trained medical expert, teachers are trained education experts.
The National Center for Education Statistics shows that the quality of the national education system isn’t the only major concern of homeschoolers. While nearly half cite their reason for homeschooling as the belief that they can give their child a better education than the school system can, just under 40 percent choose homeschooling for “religious reasons” (NCES 2008).
To date, researchers have not found consensus in studies evaluating the success, or lack thereof, of homeschooling.
Summary
As schools continue to fill many roles in the lives of students, challenges arise. Historical issues include the racial desegregation of schools, marked by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling. In today’s diverse educational landscape, socioeconomic status and diversity remain at the heart of issues in education, with programs such as the Head Start program attempting to give students equal footing. Other educational issues that impact society include charter schools, teaching to the test, student loan debt, and homeschooling.
One hot topic is the Common Core State Standards, or the Common Core. The primary controversy over the Common Core, from the standpoint of teachers, parents and students, and even administrators, is not so much the standards themselves, but the assessment process and the high stakes involved
Section Quiz
Plessy v. Ferguson set the precedent that _____________.
1. racial segregation in schools was allowed
2. separate schools for black and white students were unconstitutional
3. students do not have a right to free speech in public schools
4. students have a right to free speech in public schools
Answer
A
Public schools must guarantee that ___________.
1. all students graduate from high school
2. all students receive an equal education
3. per-student spending is equitable
4. the amount spent on each student is equal to that spent regionally
Answer
C
Key predictors for student success include ____________.
1. how many school-age siblings the student has
2. socioeconomic status and family background
3. the age of the student when she or he enters kindergarten
4. how many students attend the school
Answer
B
Allowing a student to move to the next grade regardless of whether or not they have met the requirements for that grade is called ____________.
1. affirmative action
2. social control
3. social promotion
4. socialization
Answer
C
Short Answer
Is busing a reasonable method of serving students from diverse backgrounds? If not, suggest and support an alternative.
Further Research
Whether or not students in public schools are entitled to free speech is a subject of much debate. In the public school system, there can be a clash between the need for a safe learning environment and the guarantee to free speech granted to U.S. citizens. You can learn more about this complicated issue at the Center for Public Education.http://openstaxcollege.org/l/center_public_education
Glossary
Head Start program
a federal program that provides academically focused preschool to students of low socioeconomic status
No Child Left Behind Act
an act that requires states to test students in prescribed grades, with the results of those tests determining eligibility to receive federal funding | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Introductory_Sociology_1e_(OpenStax)/16%3A_Education/16.04%3A_Issues_in_Education.txt |
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