How Many Other Things Do We Not Know?

Last Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was too young to really remember much about it. I was in first grade. I remember getting a day off from school and watching a parade and not understanding why it was making my mom cry. I don't recall much else about it.

It was 1968 before I got how crazy the world had become in the 1960s. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the riots throughout our major cities, the Chicago assault on protesters at the Democratic Convention. I remember believing the world might come to an end at any time. All that coupled with growing up under the shadow of the nuclear bomb (my Junior High School, built in Florida in 1962 was lead lined in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis and I remember duck and cover exercises from elementary school in Indiana), made for a rather paranoid feeling growing up. It is probably the root of my cynicism.

When I teach about governance in my sociology classes, we discuss charismatic leadership. JFK stands out as one of the few charismatic leaders who actually held a position in government. Most are leaders of movements to change the system, not part of the establishment. Almost all charismatic leaders will either be killed or be discredited. Sometimes, such as the case of JFK, maybe both. The sociological reason for this is simple. The group that forms around charismatic leaders is highly unstable. "Group Stability" is a sociological term referring to the ability of a group identity to outlive its members or the decisions of it members. Since the leadership of this group is through the inspiration of a central figure, getting rid of the central figure either directly via assassination or indirectly via smear campaigns, essentially breaks up the group. The movement cannot survive the loss.

I do have a conspiracy theory regarding JFK. Not so much a "who" theory as to a "why" theory, though "why" points to some specific "who"s.

I believe this speech sealed the deal for JFK's inevitable fate:

(text for this speech can be found here)

Following up on a speech he gave two years earlier on September 25, 1963, Kennedy was advocating peace over war. He was threatening the military-industrial complex, which by this time had rose to considerable power in the United States. I have no doubt that this threat was the motivation behind his assassination.

Kennedy was not perfect and his being put on a pedestal was problematic, as it is when anyone is put there. But I believe the world would have been a different place if he had lived and continued to lead.

My husband and I often have debates about when United States started going downhill. I usually argue that we were never as good as our rhetoric and that the democratic facade has always been with us, since we were built upon lies about equality and theft of land and labor. But if I had to choose a moment in time that changed any possibility of the United States living up to her declared values, it was the assassination of John Kennedy.

I don't know who actually pulled the trigger and I doubt the answer will ever be definitive. But I do know who benefitted from that trigger being pulled. In fact, the lack of knowledge about the assassination is indicative of how the world changed that day. I have no doubt that it was a conspiracy. Some people killed a president and some other people bought the story that it was a lone gunman and it is 50 years later and no one knows the truth.

As I contemplate this anniversary, I cannot help but ask: How many other things do we not know? 

I don't have answers. I don't know where things might head from here. But I remain cynical and that cynicism was born of the 60s and 70s when I learned not to trust power. I do believe this. The world changed that day and not for the better. I also believe that our hope must rely upon something other than a charismatic leader emerging. If we want change, we must find another way than business as usual.

My cynicism should not be mistaken for pessimism. I do have some hope. I have come to believe that a sociological imagination is the key to addressing these changes and that is why sociology remains suppressed through economic means.

Never before has there been a greater need for public sociology and never before has there been a greater call for the sociologist. I am discouraged with our discipline, but I remain hopeful that we have something to offer and that many more are starting to get their voices heard.


As the quote at the top of this blog states, the "sociological imagination [is] our most needed quality of mind." We must do what we can to develop that quality and we must not be silent.

Some Thoughts on Labor, Work and a Job

Two weeks ago, on August 19, I started the first full-time job I've had in 19 years. So the post I am about to make here is a little ironic. But there is a difference between what could/should be and what is. Today, Labor Day, I want to talk about what needs to change.

First, I'm going to cheat and offer you a crash course in US economic history in the form of two episodes of Crashcourse, American History (I know, it is a bit like homework, but I really think these two videos set the stage better than I can):

And...

=================
 What strikes me most about this history is that it did cost us a lot of freedom.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I am a consumer of goods and services that are made possible by this history. I would never have made a good farmer as I killed every plant in my possession. I would never have made a rugged individual on the frontier as I don't know how to cook or sew and every serious attempt I've made has resulted in failure. I am, in a word, a city girl (okay, three words). As an urban dweller, I am inextricably dependent upon these goods and services and while I don't sport the largest footprint on the planet and never would (I hate shopping as well), I don't see myself heading for the mountains and living off the land in some Jeffersonian ideal any time soon.

 On the other hand, it seems patently obvious to me that the time for "jobs" has passed. Politicians keep promising "more jobs" but a job has become one of the most insecure thing in the world for most people, especially low-skilled people. The old narratives of "job-makers" and "job-killers" and "unionized labor" are falling short and they are falling short for a reason that no one on either side of the political aisle seems to want to discuss. A "job" is an industrialization concept and we no longer live in an industrial economy.

 What is the evidence for post-industrialization?

1. Most manufactured goods created in the United States from highly mechanized and robotic factories that employ mostly high tech workers who oversee these electronic gadgets. Even companies that employ factory workers have them working side-by-side with robots. The heyday of the factory job is over, even if some factories provide some jobs for a few skilled workers, we will not see 40% of the labor force employed by factories again. It just isn't necessary and it is too expensive.
   
   
2. The rise of e-commuting and the "on-call" nature of many jobs has blurred the lines of the "where" and "when" of a job. Factories were based on time and place. Workers arrived at specific times and they gathered in specific places to accomplish their work. This is less and less true. The "time" is always and the "place" is everywhere.
   
   
3. The original factory workers, as John Green notes in the first video, were mostly women and mostly temporary workers who expected to leave that employment within a few years. This was a good thing because if you worked too long you would probably die or become disabled as conditions were dismal. But with the rise of unions came job security and for a couple of generations, mostly men, who worked for a large corporation, expected to be there for life and to have a small, but secure, pension available in old age. The day of The Organization Man has long since passed. So called "job-hopping" is on the rise, with some estimates that so-called "Gen-Yers" will have 15 to 20 jobs in their lifetime. The concept of loyalty on both sides of the employment equation is gone.
   
   
4. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the middle-classes are disappearing or surviving only via debt. This trend is worldwide, but it is of particular concern in the United States. Such inequalities in the distribution of wealth resembles feudalism more than it does democracy or free markets. In fact, more than a few analysts are talking about our current political economy as "neofeudalism." 

"Our passivity has resulted... in much more than imperial adventurism and a permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics."--Chris Hedges, Journalist, quoted by John W. Whitehead in The Age of Neo-feudalism: A Government of the Rich, by theRich and for the Corporations. 

I've been doing a lot of thinking in the past few years, especially living in the margins of the current economy, holding multiple part-time jobs and/or contracting for services and running a small micro-enterprise. I am coming to the belief that the sociological imagination could be applied to this history and its seemingly inevitable outcomes (note that the current situation is not the first time such inequalities in wealth distribution have occurred in our short history of both democracy and capitalism.) What is emerging in my thinking is a long project (either a book or a documentary, or both) that will sociologically examine several things at once and how they interplay with each other to create our current situation:

• the influence of the tax code on culture and culture on the tax code;
• our understandings of "work" including Weber's Protestant Work Ethic and how it continues to play into the wealth inequalities that exist and are growing;
• the long history of central banks as the new feudal lords under which we labor;
• and how organizational theory, group dynamics and specifically, a better understanding of the nature of group stability would be key to changing things for the better without resorting to outdated dichotomies like "socialism v. capitalism" or "democracy v. totalitarianism." 

In short, I think the time has come to think outside the box and I hope to find a way to do that. 

I leave you with a quote from Muhammad Yunis, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work on microlending, asset development and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. This radical approach to addressing poverty through wealth development rather than "jobs" is an excellent place to start:

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see

His big idea: "Poverty is unnecessary." 

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Number 7: Everything is Sociological!

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers context to almost any human endeavor.

I jokingly tell people that I got my degree in sociology because I am interested in everything.

Joking or not, this is true. Anything that involves two or more humans is fair game for sociological analysis. This is the key to the sociological imagination concept that is found in almost every single sociology text book in the world (or at least in English).

But this brings us back to where we started: an informed citizenry. The more we understand how humans interact, the most adept we become at living together in every way, including everything from our intimate lives to our civil lives. I ran across an interesting video last night that I felt summed up how an understanding of organization has consequences:



While Grey is speaking from history and politics, he is also making an organizational argument based upon the understanding of human interaction. The rules of engagement have influence over the actions individuals make and these rise to collective, unintended consequences. This little video is an elegant explanation for the current federal budget sequester, the log-jamming of gridlock in our law-making, the negativity of our campaigns and why I feel like I've picked the least bad politician since I voted for Carter (1976 was the first year I could vote), and why some of the smartest people I know no longer bother to vote (including me a couple of times).

A sociologist could also add to this video by explaining group stability and why this will not change from the inside. The argument (when one is made beyond "America is #1") is made in support of our two-party system and first past the post voting practices, is that the United States has been in existence for over two centuries, so we must be doing something right. We have a "stable" system of government.

Sociologists, however, have noted that group stability (defined as a group identity that outlives the original members and the decisions made by the members of the group) has some serious drawbacks. To wit, this same argument could have been and probably was made about slavery. After all, slavery had a longer history since Columbus than our constitution has had.

Group stability reduces the power of the individual members of a group. We sacrifice our power under these systems and, by the way, that was by design.



There was great fear among the gentry in early American history of giving too much power to common people. They also fear too large a government. In an attempt to have cake and eat it too we now have a someone antiquated idea of the "republic" and "representative democracy" that has led to an unintended consequence of create divisive stalemates that are easily manipulated by people with money and power, instead of the well-balanced government intended.

I have come to have as much disdain for a strong central government as I have for oligopolistic businesses (and I will save my central bank rant for another day) so I don't totally agree with all of John Green's conclusions in the video. I don't have definitive answers to the mess we call American politics (and let's not forget the messy economy either), but I do know that without sociologists at the table, we will not find a way out.

But, of course, this is SOCIOLOGY in all caps -- big questions and big answers. But if that's not your brand of social action, you might enjoy this:

First Person, Plural Radio (2003)
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Number 6: Epigenetics

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology helps hard sciences understand human beings and our ecological settings more fully.

One word to look up to make this case: epigenetics.


If we know now that the expression of our genetics are, in part, determined by our ancestors' social histories, we need Sociology to help us understand not only our own world, but the social worlds of times past if we are to utilize the vast knowledge we have obtained about the human genome. Otherwise, we will only half a partial picture (see #1).

Sociology offers context to almost any human endeavor. (Published March 31, 2013, 6:00am PDT)

Number 5: Knowing Organizations Saves Lives

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology helps us design better social organizations.

Any MBA worth her salt will tell you that how a business is organized matters. Complex organizations with multi-layers of bureaucratic systems lead to inefficiencies and poor communication. Flatter organizations are less controllable but offer better flow of communication within the organization and with the outsiders the organization serves.

First Person Plural radio (2003) 
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After the Challenger tragedy in 1986, Sociologist Diane Vaughan started looking at NASA's social structure and culture (including what she called a "culture of risk"), and ended up writing a book,The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, about how the bureaucratic structure of NASA contributed to the accident. It was virtually ignored by NASA until after the 2003 loss of the Colombia.

Redesigning the organization is something that sociologists do well. It is also an area where sociologists are vastly underused.

Sociology helps hard sciences understand human beings and our ecological settings more fully. (Published March 30, 2013, 6am PDT)

Number 4: Commonality in Diversity

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers a way for people from diverse countries, cultures and languages to find common ground.

In my home county alone, the population has shifted to more diversity between 2000 and 2010 census. This shift is being seen almost everywhere in the United States.

But we are interacting globally at a much higher rates as well. This means there are lots of ways we can screw up inter-cultural relationships. Such screw-ups can have lots of fun, unintended consequences like war, trade barriers and extreme wealth imbalances.



Being able to place oneself in the position of the "other," what sociologists call "social empathy," is becoming a more important skill no matter where you live in the contemporary world. Sociology helps find common ground. While there is great diversity in the world, there are also commonalities.

Sociologist Georg Simmel first noted (over 100 years ago) how the mechanisms of stranger relationships work: we keep our distance from people we perceive as different and we welcome people we perceive as similar. The more commonality we find with others, the more likely we are to welcome them into our lives and our social circles. Thus, we have the potential not only of keeping worthwhile people out of our lives because we perceive them as different on some arbitrary factor, we also have the potential of inviting destructive people into our lives because we perceive them as similar. Every successful con artist knows this even if they don't know how to talk about it like this.



A good understanding of differences and commonalities plus a healthy dose of critical thinking and social empathy serves an individual well in choosing whom to let into one's social circles and whom to avoid. It also serves the collective well because it teaches us that we should be paying attention to how people act, not in which category we place them.

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World. (Published March 29, 2013, 6am PDT)

Number 3: Improving Our Personal Lives

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers an understanding of our collective nature that improves our personal lives.

There is some controversy in sociology as a discipline as to the extent to which we control our own destinies. But even in the most functionalist, deterministic applications of social theory, which asserts we have little control, a basic understanding exists that we need each other to survive. I bend more towards a constructionist point-of-view and believe we have a lot of control over our daily lives. But this does not mean we have full control.

As I tell my students, the good news is that you are helping to shape the social world. The bad news is that so is everyone else. What we call "society" is the sum total of all that we do in our human interactions: what we say, how we say it, what we assume, and with whom we interact.

If you think "personal responsibility" is important and that somehow understanding social structures is in opposition to such a concept, then you don't understand the nature of responsibility. Responsibility includes "response ability," how well we will respond to the world around us. If you don't understand group dynamics, social empathy or human interaction, your responses will not be on target. If you do understand how these things work, you will do better in all your endeavors in life, even if you face barriers, including your relationships, your education, your careers, and your citizenship.

Sociology offers a way for people from diverse countries, cultures and languages to find common ground. (Published on March 28, 2013 at 6am PDT)

Number 2: Measuring Success

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers some of the best ways to measure our successes.

If we do take the time to ask what does the data tell us and what solutions make sense given that data, we still need sociology to help us see if some solution is working or not. Social data is always difficult to obtain because we are fish studying fish in a fishbowl. But that doesn't mean it gives us no information. Properly funded, well-designed research can, in fact, track change and give us data on improving our lives.



However, I think the most important aspect of learning sociological methods is not what we can produce or evaluate ourselves, but rather how our ability to detect other people's bullshit will become easier. Hard sciences help with this, of course. Knowing the scientific method is the first step. Sociological methods, however, go beyond predictions, theories and cause/effect proofs to rounding out context to these things. Bias exists in all scientific studies and must be sought out and accounted for in order to do good research, no matter what is being researched. Sociology gives us tools to identify those biases on both the macro level and the micro level.

In a society that has made the words "studies have shown" into a magic incantation in which any words that follow in the sentence are instantly and irrefutably "true," understanding the context to research and media is more important than ever.

We live in what has been called "the information age" and yet we rarely take the time to evaluate that information. Sociology is one of the best ways to fully understand what we are being told and how good the information really is.

Sociology offers an understanding or our collective nature that improves our personal lives. (Published March 27, 2013, 6am PDT)

Number 1: A Fuller Picture

This is part of a series of Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Sociology offers a fuller picture of our condition as human beings.

No amount of closing our eyes and ears and singing "na-na-na-na" evoking the name of Ayn Rand three times a day, will change the fact that we share our world with each other. What we do and what other people do creates a collective reality that needs to be understood in order to be improved.

If we ignore this data, we will be scratching our collective heads about why we can't solve problems. And nowadays we are scratching our collective heads wondering why war, famine, poverty, violence and other collective factors still exist. One of the main reasons is that political solutions often ignore the hard stuff that require people to change. A politician will never ask his constituents to change and so any "solution" found in that realm will be lacking.


If we were more interested in truth than politics, we would see change. We know this because the few times we have done this. it has worked out quite well, at least until we let money and politics corrupt it.

Next: Sociology offers some of the best ways to measure our successes. (Published March 26, 2013, 6am PDT)

Something for Which I Am Thankful

I teach a course called "Race and Ethnic Groups in Contemporary Society" and have been asked on several occasions, "what can we do to end racism?" Here is my answer, though simplified:

1. Own up to our racist history--we need to start talking openly and honestly about how America became one of the richest countries in the world through colonization, exploitation and oppressive domination.

2. Have a national discussion regarding restitution and healing of the wrongs that have been committed. I don't know the answer, but I do know we will never find one until we start looking for one.

3. Be grateful. Any wealth we Americans have, any material goods for which we can be grateful on a day such as today, was built on the backs of slaves and stolen from the indigenous peoples who were the first "occupiers." It does not matter if you came here after these deeds were done. You live here, you benefit. So those of us who were the children of the colonizers and slave owners, and those of us who were not, should never forget that the cities we live in, the food we eat, the houses over our heads, and the bounties we share were made possible by the sacrifices made by these peoples.

It is my belief that from these three steps healing could begin. We should be open to where it leads us.

I just saw this article about The Thick Dark Fog. I think it looks like a good start for a national conversation:



The film is still in production and needs contributions to help it get finished. You can contribute on the Human Arts Association website (be sure to select The Thick Dark Fog as the project, though it looks like they have a number of worthy projects to help with this national conversation.

Finally, consider Truth Out's call for United States Truth and Reconciliation Commission to begin to provide for the damage that has been done and also to provide a way for the stories of indigenous people to be heard.

So I hope, on the national day of thanksgiving, you will join me in the gratitude I feel to these sacrifices and the other ongoing sacrifices that exploited people make, sometimes willingly, sometimes under force, to others. We take so much for granted. Today, let us stop and take note of the truth. The truth will set us free.

Sociology and the Space Shuttle

As the space shuttle Atlantis launches on its final mission and the last mission of the entire program, I felt it was important to mark the contribution of a sociologist, Dr. Diane Vaughan, then of Boston College, in changing how NASA addressed risk organizationally.


Vaughan's book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA really didn't get a lot of attention when she first published it. It became a staple in engineering schools but got little attention from NASA.

Then in February 2003, the Columbia went down. Suddenly, Vaughan's work got noticed.

We are proud to be one of the first media outlets to draw attention to her work and the possible relevance to the second accident. I knew Vaughan and her work from attending BC for a semester. We called her the morning the Columbia went down and set up the interview for our radio show First Person Plural.

As the world watches the final shuttle mission, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer that interview again.

Enjoy!

(note, depending on your computer and internet connection, this may take a few minutes to load)

The American Ruling Class: View of the Power Elite

Last week I showed two of my classes a delightful film called The American Ruling Class, which bills itself as a "documentary, drama, musical." It lives up to the billing.

The drama part is the storyline of two recent Yale graduates who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives now that they are ready for the "real world." Other fictional parts include classmates, workers, a Pentagon press corps, and musical entertainers, including some wonderful kids.

The documentary part involves the film's creator, Lewis Lampham, long-time editor of Harper's Magaine and self-identified member of America's Ruling Class. Lampham coaches the fictional Yalees by introducing them to a wide range of real life members of various sectors of media, literary, Hollywood and political elites. There is little indication of how many of these well-known persons are "in" on the fictional aspects. In this way, the film reminds me of Sacha Baron Cohen's work where the lines between fiction and reality are blurred. Highlights include Walter Kronkite, Kurt Vonnegut, Barbara Ehrenreich, James Baker, Hodding Carter, and Bill Bradley.

The musical part involves several times in the film when the point is driven by workers, press corps and kids breaking out in song. Of course, there is also a magical bus ride with Howard Zinn, who conducts a tour of an alternative American history that sought to set up a ruling class and suppress dissent, accompanied by a Phillip Glass composition from Koyaanisqatsi. And rounding out the musical aspects of the film, is a wonderful encounter with Pete Seeger, who is strumming a banjo on a country road and providing sage wisdom about social change.

If you are looking for cut and dry answers to the questions of whether the ruling class controls the rest of us, whether holding power means the opportunity to do great good or whether power corrupts absolutely, you will be dissatisfied with this film. It is highly ambiguous, reflecting, I believe Lampham's own mixed feelings about the privileges that he has enjoyed.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the obvious role that two prominent private organizations play in providing a gateway to becoming a part of the class: the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

One of the graduates is introduced to the Council on Foreign Relations as the doorway he must pass through in order to become part of The American Ruling Class. The other graduate, a little more reluctant to become a member, is sent to a wide range of political, military and philanthropic leaders, each of whom is a member of one or both of these organizations.

When I teach about C. Wright Mills's Power Elite, I point out that one of the features of an elite is that they are simply acting within their social circles, no evil cartel needed. Because these powerful persons share social spaces, they often make decisions like most of us, thinking of their own interests and those of their social circles, acting along the norms that they have been taught and viewing the world in ways they have been socialized. The difference is that when these elites act, other people's lives outside their circles are affected. The effects can be unintentional, but they are real, nonetheless.

Only after watching this film did I learn more about the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. I was amazed. These organizations are the centers of power on both sides of the political spectrum. These are where the elite meet and do business. These are where power is brokered, expanded and solidified.

When I teach about Mills's point that no evil cartel is necessary, I also point out that doesn't rule out conspiracies. Conspiracies are not necessary, but they certainly are more efficient. After learning more about these two organizations, I am now worried that I was more right about this than I want to be.

Add to this, another aspect of world elitism of which I've only recently become aware, the annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum. While the news media loves to show G-fill-in-the-number-this-year summits of political leaders and financial advisors supposedly setting trade policy, little media coverage is given to Davos outside of business news. Yet this is where elites from around the world meet to set policy not only for governments, but for developing countries, social agendas, multi-national corporations, academic grants and media production.


If you are concerned about the fact that 1% of the world's population now owns over 40% of the world's wealth, then these three organizations should be on your radar. If you are concerned about the growing poverty the world is experiencing the wake of the events of 2008 and the so-called financial meltdown, these three organizations should be on your radar. If you want to understand why political power is much more complex than the news channels want you to believe (like much more complex that what the current president is doing today and how are the two-sides of one coin political parties are dividing their time), then these three organizations should be on your radar.

This is the power elite and as predicted they are getting more powerful in many ways.

I have a lot more to say about power and I do not believe the power elite is the only power game. But I do think it is important to know about this if you want to give the correct context to media. Because, currently in the United States, the media are acting as smoke and mirrors.

Toto is looking behind the curtain. We should probably follow suit if we want to find our way to our brains, our hearts, our courage and our homes.

What a Day--Stigma is alive and well

I wrote a little blog entry on Psychology Today yesterday and today all hell broke lose and I spent the day being attacked on a number of personal levels, including threats to my job at CSN.

As a description of the blog I wrote:

Judging character, work ethic, health or worth on the basis of how somone looks is ALWAYS prejudice. No one should be treated as "less than human" because of their body size.FATISM is a matter of cultural stigma. This blog is about cultural and social issues, not a health debate.

Talk about a prophecy. First controversy and the judgements about my character, my work ethic, my health and my worth were all over the place.

I think the thing that interests me most as a sociologist is that I was considered "obsessed" because I have written about this. These persons were defending themselves on the basis of credentials and a body of work, but as a stigmatized person I was considered "biased," "obsessed" and "deaf to other points of view" because I, too, had a body of work.

I have never seen a more beautiful example of what Goffman meant by spoiled identity. If I wrote and researched the topic, I am obsessed. If I am uniformed and unwilling to change, I am ignorant and need help. My body was code for "stupid," "unhealthy," "lazy," and "incompetent." It makes me wonder what they would have used if I had been thin.

I have written in other places about my reluctance to be a "professional fat person." Today was a reminder of both why I became one and why I hate it.

It remains my hope, however, that having become one, I can use the example of fat stigma to end all stigma. Stigma is a horrible cultural practice and one that hurts both individuals and society.

I Take Up Space: New Blog on Psychology Today

I'm excited about kicking off a new blog at the Psychology Today website. The blog is called "I Take Up Space" and is about the consequences of fatism. The site has millions of visitors each month, so I'm hopeful that it will become an outlet for discussing Fat Studies as an emerging field and promoting sociological perspectives on these issues as well.

I write about the failure of New Year's Resolutions and the Moral Panic of the War on Obesity in my first effort.

(Please forgive my cross-posting if you read me in more than one place.)

My Critique of the New York Times Article on US as Banana Republic

My facebook friend and fellow Sociologist, Lesliegh Owens wrote on Facebook comments to my New York Times Blog entry:

"Pattie, I'm intrigued by your comments about cultural production and social infrastructure. Would you please expand a bit? Huge thanks!"

I could write a whole lot on this, but suffice it to say that ownership of production includes ownership of cultural production such as media, education and the arts. This means that, as Gramsci noted, the interests of a very few are being served up hegemonically as being "American" interests. Thus, what feels natural or normal by the vast majority of Americans is actually only good for a very small percentage of Americans.

As far as infrastructure goes, we saw in this last election a group on the right who looked like a grassroots movement, but were highly funded by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch along with puppetmaster, Karl Rove, and a group on the left who looked like a grassroots movement, but were highly funded by billionaire George Soros.

With the ridiculous Supreme Court ruling that corporations have freedom of speech, we now have a select few who are funding and influencing a chess game of politics using "common" folk as pawns. Everyone wonders why this midterm election seemed so visible when most midterm elections are usually dull with little turnout. Well what we are seeing is an election battle between two billionaire camps, that top 1%. It is interesting to consider the election in light of the NY Times article.

If you saw, Capitalism: A Love Story, you know about the Citigroup plutonomy memo which lamented the fact that we have voting rights. Well, I think we just witnessed in the past two years exactly how the rich are going to handle the voters -- fund them and get them riled up through media.

By concentrating so much on the personal aspects of these inequalities, I think Kristof missed some real structural and cultural changes that this inequality is creating and the very real ways it is changing our so-called democracy into something very undemocratic.

Is an Empathic Civilization Possible?

This is an interesting take on the ways in which socialization and biology intertwine to create society. It is also an interesting take on how we might change social systems in the future.

In my classes we discuss that three elements contribute to human interaction: nature, nurture and choice. We also discuss how sociological imagination is the connection of our own biographies with the collective history of human beings at group levels. Global empathy would surely change the world.

I may use this video in future 101 classes. Not sure I agree with everything in it, but it is thought-provoking. (Thanks to Evan Ravitz for posting this on FaceBook.)

Improve Your Sociological Imagination!

I just found the kewlest website for Sociology that I've seen in a long time: Sociological Images: Inspiring Sociological Imaginations Everywhere. I highly recommend spending some time looking at the images. An excellent way to uncover the taken-for-granted. Bravo!

7 Reasons Why UNIVERSAL Health Care does NOT EQUAL SUPPLEMENTING THE SICK

My outspoken stances on universal health care coupled with the size of my body, the disabilities I live with, and my unapologetic attitude have led to some flaming of me personally on the net. I'm not too worried about it and while the hatred saddens me somewhat, I generally ignore it and almost never respond to direct flames. I've been around the net long enough to know that arguing with such people basically just fans those flames and doesn't accomplish anything but an ashy mess.

I received one such flame this weekend, however, that I do want to address, though not directly. Basically I was told in not-so-nice terms that I was for healthcare reform so I could sponge off my  healthier peers. The belief that universal health care is some plot for sick people to lay back, do nothing at the cost of the healthy is, I believe, at the heart of the health care debate. It is a belief that has been exploited by insurance companies for decades.

The irony is that the basis of insurance is exactly the same basis of universal coverage: insurance is based on the principle that if everyone pays a little when they do not need whatever the insurance is covering, then when something happens and they do need it, the fund will be there to help. If the group is big enough and has enough diversity, the bet is that it will be unlikely that the fund will be depleted because only a small percentage of those paying will need help at any given time. Of course, there is a certain understanding that each member of the group has to pay enough to cover that expected collective need for a given time, but for the most part the amount paid to the fund is supposed to be significantly less than any individual's need if it arises (making it more appealing to pay into the fund rather than just save for a rainy day). 

Of course, one of the reasons for last years collapse in the credit market is that large companies offered "insurance" against default on debts without adhering to the basic principles of size and contribution and the system collapsed.  But the idea behind insurance is an old and tested one and when done soundly it is not a bad idea. It is, in fact, one of the benefits of collectivity.

So why has the idea that the public option would be something new and different been so easy to sell to a good percentage of the American public? I believe it is because of the fear of collectivity and the cult of individualism that pervades our culture. It is this knee-jerk reaction to anything that smacks of collectivity that has made it possible for this current system of cutting off the access to good care for as many people as possible to exist.  Because Americans accept the cult of individualism we are willing:

• to blame individuals for their illnesses;
• to understand when doctors get richer because we are ill (after all each person is obviously responsible for their own illness);
  
• to buy into the lifestyle myths that eating and exercise means we can live forever (thus leading us to buy billions of dollars in diet and exercise products);
• to stand by when insurance companies and HMOs discriminate against sick people by refusing to sell coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, by denying coverage to sick people, even when they have paid premiums, and by canceling their coverage when they get sick;
• to support pharmaceutical companies even though they continue to make obscene profits by selling their medications to Americans at extreme prices to make up for the reasonable limits on their profits in other countries;
  
• to yell "socialism" when any remedy to this racket is suggested.

The reason that these companies can do what they do is because the majority of people in the United States are sold on this idea that they are in control of their health and anyone who gets sick is "obviously" at fault. So why would it be shocking when someone takes advantage of the sick? It is not "my problem." Even more basic, most Americans believe they can control risk and that a risk-free environment is fundamentally their birthright.

So I propose another way to look at all this.  I suggest that life is risky and that any one of us could get sick, disabled or incapacitated just by living a normal, every day existence, no matter how "good" we are or how much "care" we take. Life is risky, but we can face these risks and these troubles better together than apart.

So here are seven reasons to consider why one should not view universal health care as supplementing the sick, but rather as a basic right that each individual should have guaranteed under our law, as our founding documents suggest:

1.  All people can get ill no matter how "healthy" their behavior.

Yes it is true that eating enough nutrients and moving often seems to help create a healthier life. But this does NOT equate to A GUARANTEE that one will never be sick. Health and illness is complex with genetics, environment, behavior and just plain germs all calculating into the mix.  Many of the illnesses that people experience have no apparent cause and have little understanding by the medical community at this point. So deciding that one "is healthy" means that one will "stay healthy" is a costly naivety.

2.  The Healthy/Sick Dichotomy Does NOT Exist.

Health is not a binary function where it is obvious that one is either healthy or sick. Health is a continuum at least and probably more like a web structure. One can have a chronic illness but live a fairly fulfilled and active life. One can have something affects one's body but leaves one's mind sharp or vice versa. One can believe they are healthy for months or even years before a symptom of problem shows up. The belief that the healthy would be supplementing the sick is based upon a false dichotomy that cannot be worked out in the real world. All of us are dying from the moment we were born. So in a sense, we are all sick.

3. Many diseases are contagious and germs do NOT discriminate.

A really fundamental reason to work towards collective health is that the less people carrying germs around, the less chance other people will carry germs around and the benefit grows exponentially. We have a public health system in the United States right now. Universal coverage will enhance this system by ensuring that it is not a matter of money that people get immunized.

4. The question of "health care costs" is complex.

The concept of supplementation is based upon all these "cost" figures bouncing around. Costs are basically arbitrary and negotiable since most of what is involved in health care is service not raw materials. Because of economies of scale and because early intervention will help prevent more involved treatments, coupled with the power of the collective to negotiate prices and simplify administration, the overall cost of health care will get lower. This lowering of costs has been shown to occur in every country that has adopted universal health care and it has not been taken into account by those who are estimating the costs of various programs because it is hard to predict when and how much such reductions will occur. Thus, as with good insurance practices, the size of the pool and the sufficiency of the contribution will help reduce the costs for every individual and be there for each of us when we need it.


5. Public Health approaches can lead to cures and preventative measures that individual health care misses.

One of the big advantages other countries have over the United States is the ability to see big pictures when it comes to health because there is a collective understanding of data collection and analysis. Understanding epidemics, environmental factors and other kinds of risk factors comes from big picture analysis. Thus, universal coverage will make it possible to know what the health of the population is and to see patterns and gain information that will lift up the health of us all.


6. All people have the potential to make contributions that will enrich our lives and illness does not discriminate among the best and worst.

By keeping people in sickness, we may be wasting human resources that would make our lives better. Equality of access is something that has been recognized as important to the strength of our country by many of our founders and leaders. Discrimination on the basis of illness is one more wasted result of xenophobia.


7. Justice demands it.

You may consider this trite but universal health care is JUST in the most fundamental sense of the term.  Rawl's basic principle of justice calls on us to imagine a world that we would want to exist if we had no idea who we would be when we were born into it. If we didn't know whether we'd be dark or light skin, a just world would treat people the same no matter what color their skin.  If we didn't know whether we would be male or female, a just world would not discriminate on the basis of gender. If we didn't know whether we'd be rich or poor, a just world would not discriminate against the "have-nots."  So, if you imagine yourself to be one of the "healthy" and do not want to "supplement the sick," I ask you to consider how such an attitude is any different than racism, sexism or classism.

Universal Health Care is a basic human right that has been recognized by others around the world for hundreds of years. It is time Americans join the free world and put an end to discrimination against the sick.

Collectivity, Complexity, Chaos, Control & Change

There's a tension in sociology between individual action and collective control. It is a basic question that anyone thinking about groups has to address. To what extent does the actions of others influence the lives of individuals?

The two extreme answers to this question is each person creates their own outcomes, singularly and by their own choices versus everyone is controlled by a system that is beyond their control whether that system is "big government," "big business," or some evil cartel that is controlling all of history. This is, of course, a false dichotomy. No amount of positive thinking is going to control the outcome of an individual's life 100%. We all have obstacles and limitations. AND the system is far from capable of creating the outcomes of all members of a group no matter how tight it tries to hold its grip.

I'm going to spend the next few entries in my blog examining five concepts that I think are pivotal in addressing this tension, this central question: collectivity, complexity, chaos, control and change.

Just to get us started, let us consider the definition of each of these words.

Collectivity

Involvement in an undertaking that is made by a number of people acting as a group; The people considered as a body or whole.

Complexity

A whole made up of interwoven, intricate parts; the characteristic of a structure that is interconnected and involved

Chaos

# A condition or place of great disorder or confusion; A disorderly mass; a jumble; The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe.

Control

To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over; direct: To adjust to a requirement; regulate; To hold in restraint; check; To reduce or prevent the spread of; To verify or regulate; To verify by using a duplicate for comparison.

Change

To become different or undergo alteration; To undergo transformation or transition; To go from one phase to another; To make an exchange; To transfer from one conveyance to another; To put on other clothing; To become deeper in tone:

False Dichotomies

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.
--C. Wright Mills

false (adj): not in accordance with the fact or reality or actuality

dichotomy (n): being twofold; a classification into two opposed parts or subclasses

Probably the most basic concept that keeps my students from understanding their own connectivity is this strong tradition of believing that things are "either/or." Specifically, they fear that understanding themselves as part of a group means they will lose their individuality.

I begin every semester of any sociology course with the ultimate sociological trick question: "Who's in control of your life?"

It is the ultimate sociological question because studying societies is studying power. Power is about control. In fact, the only way we really know if someone's power is by observing what that someone has control over. Power is not really something we "are" or something we "possess," though our language would suggest this. We say "she's a powerful person" or "he has a powerful personality" or more simply "they have power." But the truth is power is always a social relationship because the only way we know power is by the extent to which the wishes of one person or set of people get carried out while the wishes of another person or set of people gets ignored or resisted. In other words, power is perceived through control and control requires cooperation coupled with consequences. Understand that if the consequences are severed enough the cooperation is not freely given but rather extorted, but nonetheless if the subordinate person decides to face the consequences instead of obey the wishes of the other, the other's power is diminished.

And that leads us to the trickiness of the question. Because the answer is inevitably given with a dichotomy in mind: I control my life versus someone or thing outside of me controls my life. But both are correct. To the extent to which I can express my wishes and they are done, I determine the agenda and to the extent to which I cooperate with the wishes of others they determine the agenda.

Not only is the dichotomy wrong because it sets up an "either/or" that is really a "both/and" but it is wrong because in truth their are myriads of possibilities and complexities to the answer that are hidden in dichotomous thinking.

For example, take a simple and mundane situation like driving a car. In one sense, I am in control of the machine when I'm driving it. I have a desired agenda (a destination) and I act upon the vehicle, it follows that agenda. So I'm in control. Except that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and I usually can't get in my car and drive the shortest possible distance because I have to take roads and I have stay on the correct side of the road. I can't even get the fastest possible time because I have to obey speed limits and stop at lights and stop signs and signal and yield the right of way before turning. If I disobey these rules their are consequences. There are legal consequences because I can get a ticket and the guy in the blue suit who wants to give me that ticket, wears a gun and other weaponry, so I pull over when he flashes a light at me. There are physical consequences as well because two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, which means that if I drive into another person, vehicle or building, something has to move over. If it's me that has to move on impact, it could mean injury or death. But I could speed. I could crash. I could plow through a straight line at optimum speed and try to get to my destination as quickly as possible. There are also economic consequences because I want my car to be available for the next trip and someone designed the car with economics in mind so that it would experience wear and tear and only be able to achieve a specific speed or last a specific number of miles. There are biological consequences because I may have physical limitations in my ability to see and use muscles to interact with the car.

So who is in control of my driving? The answer is all of these factors and more are driving the car.

False dichotomies hide this complexity and give us the illusion of control and that makes them hard to give up.

False dichotomies hide the truth of our existence from us and this can cost us dearly in the long run because if we do not understand the available choices we have and the consequences of these choices, we will never be free.