The Global Sociology Blog

Click on your own demographics and find out the unemployment rate for people in your category:

The Unemployment Rate for People Like You – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com via kwout

Denis Colombi notes this wonderful gem from former Judo superstar turned right-wing politician (you see where this is going, don’t you?):

Une heure de peine…: David Douillet est-il Français ? via kwout

Let me offer a rough translation of this steaming pile:

“To me, a woman doing judo or in another sport, that’s neither natural not rewarding. For children’s well-being, I think a woman’s place is at home. It is the mother that has it in her genes, her instinct, that capacity to raise children. If God gave women the capacity to procreate, it’s for a reason.

So, this woman, when she has a job outside the home, by choice or necessity, she can no longer fulfill this essential nurturing function. (…) I consider this nexus to be destructured. The foundations of humanity, and nurturing, in particular, are partially shaken.

I have been told I am misogynist. But all men are. Except fags.”

Lovely.

As Colombi notes, in the context of the “big debate” on national identity promulgated by our oh-so concerned administration, gender equality has been posited by officials as a foundation of the Republic. After all, that is the reason why there is discussion to ban certain types of Muslim veils. So, what if instead of very White, very French David Douillet, a Maghred immigrant man had stated the nonsense quoted above? You can bet the outrage would be all over the place, taken as representative of “what Muslim men think of women” and their inability to assimilate into the French society, and duly stigmatized.

Will Douillet be stripped of his French nationality for refusing to accept one of the essential foundations of the Republic: gender equality? Colombi asks, rhetorically, and tongue firmly in cheek. Of course not. What an absurd notion. Stigma is not attached what is done, but to who does it and how the corresponding societal reaction, as Howard Becker has taught us.

Despite claims to generality (”all men think like that”), Douillet’s drivel will not be taken as representative of his ethnic group. That only works for minorities. They are the ones facing sanctions, symbolic and others, for their every move. Spouting nonsense without having to suffer much consequences for it is a form of social privilege.

That’s the sociological interpretation. My more, well, down-to-earth view is below:

Via Sociological Images, this VERY interesting video (note the gender differences in reaction… it would have been interesting to see the reactions if it had been a black man shopping instead of a woman):

It would also have been nice to have some statistics deconstruction: if you target only a specific segment of the population (blacks), then yes, they will show up disproportionately in statistics. If you consider another population to be “safe” (based on stereotypes) and therefore subject them to less scrutiny or no scrutiny at all, then they will be grossly underrepresented in the statistics. Then you can turn around and use the “objective” statistics as support for your prejudice. Neat trick. Works every time.

Good on the ladies for standing up, and shame on the white dude not just for his lack of assistance, but also his reinforcement of the stereotype (”she played the black card”, and then once confronted with his behavior “I felt bad for her”).

And let’s not forget the overall structural effect of these things: the structural exclusion of minorities of all sorts of spheres of social life based on such stereotypes. This is not just a matter of one or two dumb salespeople. They are just channels through which structural mechanisms trickle sown into people’s lives. “Black people are more likely to… (insert one’s preferred undesirable or deviant behavior)” is the way to major social disadvantages for them whether we are discussing medical procedures (such as transplants) or mortgage lending and real estate, or just ordinary shopping behavior.

From their latest album, Raditutes, I Want You To:

I take a lot of fitness classes. I work out quite a bit, cardio kickboxing, step aerobics, strength training, pilates, core strength. I have done them all. But of course, it is impossible to switch off the sociologist thing. And of course, in fitness classes like these, gender is the first thing one notices. Instructors are often women and so are the students in attendance. In roughly 25-student classes, you’re lucky if there are two or three men.

So, where are the men? At the college where I work, the student population is roughly equally divided between men and women. Why would mostly women take fitness classes? Because fitness classes are “girly”. How do we know? Because the instructors are women, for one. A woman instructor apparently automatically feminizes what she teaches. Also, it often happens, mostly in cardio kickboxing classes, that our instructor leaves the door open. It is pretty intense, so, a bit more air circulation is nice. Quite often, groups of young men – mostly athletes – will stop at the door and mimic the moves the class is doing, but with a “faggy” twist (if you’ll pardon me the expression), shaking their hips (we don’t do that in cardio kickboxing), dancing to the music (there’s no dancing in cardio kickboxing), punching in a “weak” and girlie fashion. These guys wil do that for a few seconds and then walk away. That’s all they need to demean our workout as not really working out. We’re just doing girl stuff.

Incidentally, one day, two guys from the football team were doing that for longer than usual (turned out one of them was the boyfriend of one of the young women in the class and they were waiting for them to be done, but they probably got bored waiting, so, on they went, mocking us). The instructor probably had enough and made them come into the room and do the routine with us. After a few minutes, they were dying, they could not keep up with the pace, their coordination was bad.

So, what about the few men who do show up. A few come and work out seriously and realize that it is the real deal. From my random observations (see? That’s why I put it in the title), we often get scrawny / geeky guys. Non-athletes. For them, it’s a relatively safe environment. No one makes fun of them for their lack of masculine traits (not big, not muscular), and they get to work out. However, they tend to stay in the back of the room unless they have women friends in the class.

Then, there are a few athletes who show up. And boy do these suffer. Especially in pilates and core strength which often made me wonder what kind of physical conditioning they get. One would think that core strength would be necessary in any sport. So why do athletic guys have such a hard time? For many men, pilates is unfamiliar territory: you take your shoes off, you spend a lot of time with your legs up in the air, you go through movements slowly and with control, with a lot of emphasis on posture, breathing and coordination (and boy, do guys lack coordination). Somehow, men suffer in that department. I blame bodily socialization.

What is interesting is how men react to lousy performance in fitness classes. For instance, in core strength class I am currently taking, there are a few athletes. It is less uncomfortable for men than pilates. It is more athletic and we keep our shoes on. The exercises are tough and mobilize one’s entire core in a sequence of challenging moves. Women go through it with more or less effort (it’s not easy for anyone)…silently. But men go through it with much huffin’ and puffin’ and loud moaning. Somehow, we all HAVE to know how hard it is and how much effort these guys put into it. And they don’t perform all that well. There are several middle-age women like me, these guys are half our age and we do better than them. And we’re much more quiet in our efforts.

Again, I think this goes back to gender socialization. It’s socially ok for men to be loud as they work out. It’s the masculine thing to do to display that you’re putting in the effort. Us women, we have been socialized into being quiet and not complaining. Actually, when it comes to athletes, there is a lot of performance going on. They show off whether it is to show their strength (when we work with weight, they always take the heaviest weights available) or to offset a poor performance by displays of effort (like moaning).

But it still remains amazing to me that work out classes even of a non-gender type, such as cardio kickboxing or various strength classes, are too gender-threatening for many men to take.

One of the greatest intellectuals and social scientists, ever, irreplaceable:

L’ethnologue Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort – LeMonde.fr via kwout

Rich countries feeding on poor countries’ farmland via kwout

The Oakland Institute report on land grab can be found here. Of course, one can see that “food insecurity” is defined in unilateral terms “our” (rich countries)  food insecurity is the problem to be solved by using the land in countries in the global South. Food and agricultural sustainability in the global South is simply an investment and technology issue: invest in the global South, push for genetically modified monocultures (gotta feed the cattle that ends up as burgers!), use the short-term productivity gains as proof of the necessity of bio-food.

However, according to Olivier de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, there are several problems with this view, as he detailed in a report, and that is that the current regime of intellectual property rights does not improve prospects of food security on the long-term:

So, for De Schutter, the rights of small farmers have to be protected against the power of biotech firms and some wealthy non-profit organizations that promote biotech food, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

World Economic Forum – Latest Press Releases via kwout

So, based on these indicators, what are the rankings? Unsurprisingly, the Scandinavian countries top the list:

World Economic Forum – Latest Press Releases via kwout

In case you’re wondering, the US comes in at number 31. The full report is available in PDF here.

I have never made a secret of my admiration for Zygmunt Bauman. He is one of my favorite contemporary theorists. So, I am glad to see him write for the Social Europe Journal, pushing for more social democracy at the level of global institutions.

Taking stock of the fact that, in Europe, labor / socialist parties have strongly contributed to the dismantling of the social safety net (and a lot of good it did them too…

Reconnecting Power and Politics | Social Europe Journal via kwout

Bauman offers the following:

Reconnecting Power and Politics | Social Europe Journal via kwout

That would involve growing the spine to reclaim one’s ideology and label as terms of pride and not insults, but this would also require major ideological work against “la pensée unique” that has almost triumphed with only the global civil society to push back as national parties may not be the right vehicle for this. Globally connected social movements might work better but the “dinosaurs” in many European socialist and social-democratic party still control quite a bit of power when it comes to money and mobilization despite a “crisis of legitimacy.”

At this point, many of you have probably seen this video of a murder committed by a member of the Camorra against Mariano Bacioterracino:

What I found shocking in this video (in addition to the murder itself but that is par for course for organized crime) was how casual the whole thing is including the murder itself. The voice-over you hear on the video is that of Roberto Saviano, journalist and author of Gomorrah, a devastating book on the Camorra which earned him death threats from the organized group last year. The movie based on the book will soon be out on DVD:

My Italian colleague, Agnese Vardanega was kind enough to provide a rough translation of what Saviano states on the video of the murder above:

Saviano on “Italia mafia killing video” – Appunti di Sociologia via kwout

In addition, Saviano published an angry column in La Reppublica:

Roberto Saviano | articoli | Il filmato-shock sconvolge il mondo i vicoli restano indifferenti via kwout

In this column, he deplores the indifference regarding this murder, arguing that only international reaction to the YouTube video forced the authorities to act. The widespread viewing of the video was also shaming for the locals. And finally, the killer is no longer anonymous. He might have thought he got away with murder, but now, he’s on the run. All of a sudden, the world seems shocked by something that is a relatively ordinary occurrence in Naples. How does organized crime like the new media? Probably not much. But apparently, according to Saviano, this indifference and resignation are Napolitan traits. It is self-preservation, which is why one does not see demands for change from the population of that region. After all, the Camorra has a very long memory and revenge may come 10 or 15 years after the facts. There is therefore no safety to be had. And as Bacioterracino’s wife stated, “”Uccidono tanta gente, hanno ucciso anche mio marito. Qual è il problema?” (”They kill so many people, now they’ve killed my husband. What is the problem?”).

Saviano also notes the different kinds of reaction to mafia death in Naples when one finds the corpse of a family member. For those who experience that for the first time, they do not know how to react. They are petrified in horror. For those who are more “used” to these murders happening to their family, the reaction is different: screaming, tearing one’s hair in agony as a way of letting those who commissioned to the murder know that that’s enough, there is no way more pain can be imposed. This is it, this is all they can take. And if the murder is “clean”, that is, no other relative or family member was killed, then one has to be almost thankful to the mafia for not imposing further pain. And then, for justification and resignation, well, that’s what religion is for. All these people are good Catholic.

For Saviano, the video has revealed all the contradictions of the country. But all the media attention has not provoked a political debate. As much as the murder made headlines and caused a scandal, the deeper aspects of all this will remain undiscussed, such as how one third of the country is held hostage to this. But then, how do you expect a cultural change when the South is politically neglected and those who confront organized crime are not supported enough? How does one eliminate the omertà – not just as code of silence but as code of “not wanting to know” when the national political attitude is similar?

But maybe the exposure had a shaming effect on the authorities after all:

Italian police arrest suspected Camorra mafia boss | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

H/T Deanna Summer, (Click here for a big version):

Death_Penalty_World_Map.png (PNG Image, 1350×625 pixels) – Scaled (86%) via kwout

One can see that the United States is in good company.

Via Dan Hanley,

There has been a lot of stories about airline pilots in the news lately, from Michael Moore’s film to the pilots “forgetting” to land where they were supposed to. These have contributed to attract attention to the pilots’ working conditions and wages. As a class, pilots tend to be “imagined” as well-paid prestigious category of professionals. In reality, the well-paid part? Not really. (Another problem for structural-functionalist theory that contends that higher wages – and corresponding inequalities – reflect length of training and functional significance).

Airlines: Some Costs They Can’t – And Shouldn’t – Cut — Seeking Alpha via kwout

One has to consider the possibility that labor, no matter how skilled or no matter how much training is required, present practically no value in the “new economy” as opposed to exchanging bets and empty boxes and other some such “complex financial products.” Skilled labor is not an asset to a company, but rather a liability, a cost that has to be reduced in any way possible.

Hey, higher education is moving more and more online where the course is developed in the most non-personal and most standardized way possible where who actually teaches the course does not matter (actually, at certain for-profit, online universities, there are no teachers, only “facilitators”, that is the learning occurs without actual teaching taking place. That has been taken out of the equation.

How long before we can dispose of the pilots altogether, or some deskilled version, and just have computer monitoring by deskilled technicians?

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is apparently life for sociologists outside of academia! Case in point, the French consulting firm, Chronos, specialized in transportation issues (touching upon, of course, urban, infrastructure and stratification issues):

A propos de nous – Groupe Chronos via kwout

And they have a blog as well: Fluid Trajectories:

Blog – Groupe Chronos via kwout

I don’t know who does their site graphic design but it is really classy.

Update your RSS feeds and bookmarks!

I know that some degree of condescension and amusement is a requirement when it comes to writing about France but this is just a lousy way to start an article about what is successful (albeit not without problems) public policy. After all, we know that Paris, like all (especially European) large cities is a traffic nightmare despite a very thick network of public transportation and air and noise pollution is definitely an issue. So, the bike-rental program is not a bad idea and it has been in place in Amsterdam for a very long time. But here is how the article starts:

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality – NYTimes.com via kwout

See what I mean? “Utopia” (never mind the precedents for this)? “Parisian psyche” (whatever the hell that is)? Oh, those French, don’t they know that government policy NEVER works? Like health care?

Look, this is nothing new to life in a French city. Try leaving your car unlocked or with the radio / CD player in (in France, cars come with plug-in / plug-out radio / CD players) and see what happens. France is a society where there is much less police presence and social classes are not as residentially segregated than in the US where, if one leaves in the upper-middle class suburbs, one will hardly ever be exposed to “the riff-raff”. So, petty delinquency and vandalism are much more visible.

At the same time, French authorities have definitely tried to keep the youth from the French “banlieues” from spending time downtown Paris (it’s bad for the city’s image and for tourism), so these youth often get pulled out of the subway before getting to Paris, hence the sense of exclusion as subways do not run 24/7. This aspect of structural violence is part of the explanation for vandalism, as reaction of the powerless, as a sociologist explains:

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality – NYTimes.com via kwout

So, basically, it’s a success with some problems related to larger social issues that France has been facing for many years… so much for utopia and Parisian psyche.

Actually, Bruno Marzloff has much more nuanced views when it comes to bike-sharing and bike-riding programs for large cities (note that he created his own private consultant practice, specialized in transportation issues… so, there is work for sociologists outside of academia) but these do not eliminate preexisting stratification barriers:

The A,B,C of the everyday bike – Blog – Groupe Chronos via kwout

The issue here, also, is that such agency and mobility is based on a certain level of affluence and social status in the stratification system. Monitoring one’s mobility is often not an option for banlieues dwellers whose movements and physical mobility tend to be more limited by the availability of public transportation and greater weight of police presence. Marzloff’s bike-sharer is most likely an upper-middle class professional who can afford to live in Paris (hence the convenience of door-to-door bike ride) or an affluent suburb dweller who does not fall into the category of suspicious population.

Moreover, the network-building that Marzloff mentions definitely involves choices and options that are not available to the entire population. The notion of sharing transportation relies on a certain degree of trust (Putnam’s social capital) which tends to not exist across social classes (especially in the class-segregated suburbs) as well as equal playing field where the parties both have something of equal value to exchange. Building social capital and networks in situations of social asymmetries is much more difficult.

In the end, mobility as privilege and being stuck as structural violence at the local level is a mirror image of the same at the global level, as studied by Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen: the transnational capitalist class moves seamlessly from international airport terminals to expensive hotels at the core of global cities, witohut much impediment from the authorities whereas the global poor tends to be stuck in place or stigmatized when they try to move (see all anti-immigration discourse) and much more strictly controlled in their limited mobility.