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)

Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World: Introduction

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I love Sociology so much and why the rest of the world does not.

An article in the Huffington Post by Scott Atran called The Folly of Defunding Social Sciences raised some important points. The last sentence caught my eye:

There is more to being a citizen than voting!

The Founding Fathers envisioned a Republic with an enlightened citizenry educated in "all philosophical Experiments that Light into the Nature of Things ... and multiply the Conveniences or Pleasures of Life" -- not just technical training for jobs that pay well.

I have come to believe that it is an "enlightened  citizenry" that our government fears the most. And I've come to believe (or rather, have strong evidence suggesting) that Sociology is a key to enlightenment.

So over the next week I will be posting daily my Top 7 Things Sociology Offers the World.

Stay tuned!

Next: Sociology offers a fuller picture of our condition as human beings. (Published March 25, 2013, 6am PDT)

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)

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.)

Grand Challenge of the 21st Century -- End Stigmatization

So I got a tweet from @whitehouse yesterday and again today regarding President Obama's call for submissions regarding Grand Challenges of the 21st Century. Aside from the grammatical error (I think it should read "Your Ideas Welcomed"), this is basically a call for ideas to aid Obama's White House in creating their highly touted "Strategy for American Innovation."

Okay, I'm pretty cynical, or at least, skeptical, when it comes to these things, but I decided to take them up on the challenge because it is a bad strategy in life to assume that nobody wants to hear your ideas ever.

So I submitted a grand idea: a comprehensive, well-funded program to end stigmatization. It is too long to post here (4 pages), so click on the link to read the .pdf.

When I taught about race and ethnicity, I have challenged my students to find ways to end stigmatization. My parameters for them were to come up with ideas that they can implement in their own daily lives, ie, no funding, no government support, no charity. They have done surprising well with great ideas about staging public events, posting youtube videos, selling tee-shirts and so forth.

This is a little different but it is in the spirit of the assignment. Most people who address stigma do so by telling stigmatized persons how to cope with the stigma. This is unacceptable and is essentially a losing strategy. It is saying that the bigot doesn't have to change, we do. But stigma originates from the bigoted idea, not the characteristic used as an excuse for the bigotry. It is not under the control of the stigmatized, it is under the control of those who stigmatize others. So if we want a tolerant society. If we want bigotry, xenophobia, discrimination, bullying as so forth to end, we should be starting with the source and not teach people to cope.

Let me know what you think of my idea. Or better yet, if you like it, you might send an email to challenge@ostp.gov and second the proposal.

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!

Who is in Control of Your Life?

On May 9, 2002, Carl and I launched a unique radio show called First Person Plural.

We began by posing the question, "Who is in Control of Your Life?"

We hope you enjoy this look back.

Collectivity: Howard Roark's Sociological Imagination

In the film, The Fountainhead, based on Ayn Rand's book, two philosophies are counterposed and represented by two characters. Ellsworth Toohey, a mover and shaker who believes in the collective and is angered by those who would stray from the standards set forth by the collective. And Howard Roark, an individualist whose insistence that he is in control of his own destiny is so committed that he is willing to sacrifice all he has rather than conform. Rand's simple view of the world cannot contain the story she sets out to tell because film requires interaction and interaction demands collectivity. Thus, the very writing of the book and the very making of the film undermines the message of individuality.

Toohey exclaims, "Artistic value is achieved collectively by each man subordinating himself to the standards of the majority."

Roark defends his position, "No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered. His truth was his only motive. His work was his only goal. His work, not those who used it, his creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things, and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not. With his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing, and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement."

Both are wrong and both are right.

There is no doubt that creativity cannot be achieved via compliance. The nature of art and creation of art can only be distinguished from the factory by its breaking out of that container and pushing boundaries outward. Compliance produces duplication and mass appeal, but does little to enrich or please. To suggest that art must bow to the will of the masses is to doom us to a dull life of repetition leading to all sorts of consequences, not the least of which would be plain old boredom. One only needs to travel in the American Southwest or the Yukon to understand that beauty is about diversity and variety. If Toohey really meant what he said, his philosophy would lead us to the most unnatural of existences.

But Rand's insistence on a dichotomy doesn't work because Roark's viewpoint is lacking as well. His own life's story undermines his assertion that he alone controls his creation. Simply recognizing the existence of others in the equation means collectivity is influential. His own baser needs for food, clothing and shelter lead him to menial tasks to make a living. His willingness to do these tasks rather than compromise his art is admirable, but the tasks are still part of the collective and he is dependent upon others to pay him and to make food for him and to rent shelter to him and to sell clothes to him. He is even dependent upon others to allow him to create his art, design his buildings.

Probably the most telling quote in the film is Roark rejects his clients' rights to demand a particular kind of design from him and is told that his uncompromising attitude will cost him business and, possibly, his career:  "I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build!"

What seems to lost on Rand is that in either case, he needs clients. He needs someone to fund the project. He also needs someone to build the building once the design is complete.  This is collectivity.

Taking a step back from the book and the movie, the very act of creating both undermines the message as well. Rand needed a publisher and readers. After writing, she often spoke in public and thoroughly and obviously enjoyed the interaction with her audience, especially her followers.

The making of the film required collaboration and collective effort. The story could only become a film with a shared vision among those who funded, who directed, who operated the equipment, who acted, who created the sets and so forth. It also required an audience that continues to watch the film years after most of those involved have passed away.

Rand's own life undermines the message as well. Her disdain for the collective did not spring forth from her as a isolated revelation about the true nature of human beings. Her early years in communist Russia shaped her beliefs about the dangers of the collective and led her to glorify the superiority of individualism. Her own experiences with oppression and the strength of her determination to break free from that oppression were the birth pangs of her own artistic vision as an author and speaker.

I actually love The Fountainhead as a film about the complexities of collectivity. It is a wonderful meditation on the tensions between the individual and the collective, the creative and the mundane, achievement and oppression. I'm quite certain that my reading of the film and the story is quite different than what Rand (and probably director King Vidor) had in mind. But that is another joy of art. The unintended consequences that can only be discovered when art is shared.

What does emerge for me when contemplating the film is a basic question (or really set of questions) about collectivity.

Somehow there is a whole as well as parts. As each individual within a particular group acts, something is created that can be understood as the group acting as well. Sometimes the individuals involved are quite aware of the parts they are playing. Both Toohey and Roark have thought long about their positions and have articulated their reasons for their actions. But more often individuals just do things without much thought.

They do things out of habits long ago formed. They do things because it is "the way it is done." They do things because they want to shake things up. Whether mindlessly following traditions that feel natural or reactively rebelling against those traditions, the perceived whole shapes the action of the part and then, in turn, the action shapes the whole.

So, in a sense, the collective is always a sum of the past. It is our way of understanding what has already happened, has already been decided. The present and the future are shaped by this past, but are at the mercy of the actions of individuals. Toohey is just as much an independent actor as Roark. His decisions to promote the collective, to promote the compromise, to promote the mundane is just as proactive as Roark's decision to reject these things as a basis for his designs. Toohey's action shapes the collective as much as Roark's action is shaped by the collective even as each protests the other's positions.

One advantage to developing a sociological imagination is the ability to see these forces and respond to them intelligently. In the end, that is what Roak is doing. He is not acting independently as he asserts. He is reacting just as much as those around are doing mindlessly. But his mindfulness does give him an advantage. His mindfulness of the collective affords him the ability to see that he must stand his ground in order to keep his integrity. He has to see the world not only from his own point of view, but from the point of view of others. He has to understand how his actions and the actions of others are interconnected. He has to see how he fits in the big picture and how his actions can lead to unintended consequences if he does not pay attention to these larger visions. He must actively resist the pressure brought to bear on him and his creativity. In other words, he must see that he is part of a collective system in order to maintain his individuality. That is the essence of sociological imagination. To see one's part is to be empowered to act upon the collective as well as be connected to it.

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.

Exploring the Sociological Imagination: New Direction for Blog

Up until now, I've been using this blog mostly to stay in touch with my students while I worked out the kinks in using the student online system. Well, I've worked out the kinks and I won't be teaching again until Fall semester at the end of August, so I'm taking this time to head in a new direction for this blog.

Specifically, I want to explore the sociological imagination here.

The events over the past 2 years in the United States have led me to believe that our biggest challenge in this country is understanding the extent to which we are part of a world greater than ourselves. Americans have long been short-sighted in their vision of the future and short-memory-ed in their recall of their history. We often do not understand any other part of the planet except our own little bit of land. This lack of imagination, that is understand and empathy, is costing us greatly.

I've taught the "sociological imagination" in every sociology class I've ever taught (now around 10 semesters, I'm not going to take the time to count). Almost every sociology instructor/professor does this. It is a "course objective" for practically every sociology class taught at the high school and undergrad level. In all this time, I'm now only reading the entire book that inspired this discipline wide objective: The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills.

Sociology has done a great disservice to C. Wright Mills in my opinion. We have co-opted his concept without fully understanding the challenge he made. This challenge was needed in 1959 and it is needed even more today.

It is my privilege and my mission to explore this concept more fully, to understand and share Mills' challenges to sociology and to American society, and most importantly, my fervent hope to inspire the development of sociological imagination in others.

It truly is "our most needed quality of mind."