Soci 1101 Final

Ghostly Giants provide us with goods and services, but at a largely hidden price:

Corporate surveillance! Organizations can get info of you through technology, and use it in ways you aren't okay with. ex. china lowering your credit score.

Oct 17 - Equality

Equality 1/4 of American adults unable to name all 3 branches of gov Yet some people are experts on politics Why does a know-nothing have the same right to vote as a poli-sci professor? All people fundamentally equal Equality: a new idea idea that human societies consist of equal individuals. this idea is new. earlier (agrarian), elites seen as a diff species. the extreme: king is a god later, the king was god's representative nobility often saw themselves as superior (spoke a different language) A change: in later 18th century, idea of equality of the individual emerged "All men are created equal." 1776 America then, others followed. French declaration of rights of man 1789. Intensification: according to our reading for today, a second surge of individual rights occurred later. this surge of individualism evident in changes of sex laws after WW2 1945-2005 Marital rape: common law: a man could not be guilty of raping his wife law not either narrowed or eliminated in all 50 states until 1993 Hailed as a victory for American reformers Frank et al: But it is actually much more than that Marital rape laws have been narrowed/eliminated around the world Frank et al: because some of the causes exist at a higher level than the US: World culture. The World: most people are aware of the impact of world economy but largely unaware of impact of world culture a set of ideas and values increasingly shared by humanity as a whole a central element of world culture, especially since WW2, is individualization Cultural Individualization: values that protect and support individuals over groups or institutions (ex. family, country) contrasted w/ collectivism (values that support institutions over individuals) ex: Sex: Traditional View Purpose: to beget legitimate children Marriage therefore required for sex Only proper form of sex: contraceptive free, vaginal intercourse between husband and wife Newer view of sex: individual expression/pleasure acceptable sex activities has expanded pre-marital, homosexual, pornography changes in sex laws reflect growing individualization Sex Laws: analyzing sex laws, 1945-2005 in 190+ countries, Frank et al found that: countries changed their criminal sex laws in highly consistent ways despite the fact that many of these countries are very different (ex. Turkey vs US) 2 kinds of changes: 1. Contractions: laws narrowed in scope -ex. Sodomy (illegal forms of sex, like oral/anal) no longer criminal under the new, individualistic view... Provided it is consensual. Under the old, collectivist view, it was a crime. -contracted laws against adultery and sodomy 2. Expansions -ex. Expansions on rape laws these changes also protect the individual, adult choice: a product of self expression -expanded laws against rape and child molestation Other sex laws: How about prostitution? more tolerance of sex workers (individual rights) but, less tolerance of sex slavery, trafficking, prostitution of minors Some qualifications (exceptions): 1. Countries don't necessarily have the same laws on all 4 topics (adultery, sodomy, rape, child sex laws) -but their laws are much more similar now than before 1945 2. Written laws changed, but we don't know if legal practices changed. -Still, written law projects an image of the country's values as modern, progressive, business friendly. They want to be seen this way. Beyond Sex laws: other examples of world culture individualization: Compulsory (required by law) education AND Human Rights (declared by the UN, protect every individual) Human Rights: protect individuals rather than group strong moral force around the world governments have to at least pretend they respect human rights ex. Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia: member of UN Human Rights Council but tortures and executes prisoners, public floggings Atheism a crime Hate gays Target Yemen citizens Only recently decided to grant women driver license Killed and dismembered a journalist in Turkish embassy Yet, like other countries, it wants to be seen to support human rights Respect: to be respected today, a country must say it respects human rights modern idea of rights for all humans now a central part of world culture The Future: will science and technology augment (help) individualism? ex. individualized medicine Or will it undermine individualism? Individualism assumes we each know what is best for ourselves (marriage). but algorithms are monitoring us and able to predict our opinions and behavior. Monitoring: our internet searches, navigation searches, online buying, etc These systems will come to know us better than ourselves Ex. we may place too much emphasis on someone's physical appearance (for marriage) In future, we may turn over decisions about who to marry, what to do, what career to pursue... to an algorithm (Al) but it is unknown so far Summary: global culture exists Affects thinking and behavior around world Global culture highly individualistic Ex. Changes in laws on sex AND human rights Future of individualism is UNCLEAR

Nine Parts of Desire The Hidden World of Islamic Women Geraldine Brooks

Dr. Abrehet Gebrekidan: work involved saving women from the worst consequences of genital mutilation. Girls were subjected to both clitodirectomy and infibulation in Muslim societies. Campaign was part of a wider agenda promoting women's rights that included referring land distribution to give women a share and pressing for women's representation in politics. "The women have been told its written in the koran that they must do these things." Educating women so the they could read the koran for themselves was the keystone in the eritreans' patient campaign against genital mutilation. A year before I met Aset Ibahim, he would have told anybody who asked that clitoridectomy was essential to a woman's beauty and well being. Her mother and grandmother taught her it was right. Aset's job wasn't easy: she had to talk her patients out of odd ancient practices Aset's assertion was that the practice was damaging. If a woman insisted, though, Aset would reinfibulate her Because some christians and animists also practice genital mutilation, many muslims resent the way it is linked most closely with their own faith. But 1/5 muslim girls today lives in a community that sanctions some sort of interference with her genitals. Asked the reason for the practice, the Buraimi women wouldn't give any It is to safeguard the daughter's chastity. The girl's chastity determines the honor of father and brothers Few religious figures speak to against the practice, and numerous islamic texts still advocate it also in Australia, London In most muslim countries, women are the custodians of their male relatives honor. If a wife commits adultery or a daughter has sex before marriage, or is even suspected of having done so, they dishonor their father, brothers, and sometimes the whole family Yet, the lessening of women's sexual pleasure directly contradicts the teachings of Muhammid Muslims feel that emulation to Muhammad is ideal. every detail of his habits, no matter how trivial, has been preserved. from the study of hadith, various schools of Islamic thought have emerged Most agree on what is haram, and what is wajib (obligatory, like praying) to most muslim men, growing a beard is desirable. removing clitoris is on par with growing a beard. many hadith reveal that muhammad loathed the kind of sexual repression required by christianity's monotheistic traditions!!!!!!!! Muhammad: "I fast, pray, and also have intimate relations with my wife." Compared to st. Paul: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." Muslims see the west's sexual revolution as an inevitable reaction to churches that tried to suppress and make shameful the god given sexual urges TRADITIONALLY, MUSLIMS (MUHAMMAD) ENCOURAGE SEXUAL DESIRE, AS OPPOSED TO CHRISTIANS To Muhammad, sex within marriage was to be enjoyed by husband and wife alike. He especially encouraged foreplay. nor does islam set limits on the kinds of sex married couples can enjoy! the few "don'ts" in islamic marital life reveal the religions willingness to contemplate the gamut of sexual possibilities Islam is one of the few religions to include sex as one of the rewards of the afterlife, although only for males Male believers will be entertained by gorgeous supernatural beings whose eyes will be incapable of noticing another man and whom no man will have deflowered them. One of the few grounds on which a woman can initiate divorce under islamic law is the failure of her husband to have sex with her at least once in 4 months. the reason: a sexually frusterated wife is more easily tempted to commit adultery, which leads to fit, or the social chaos of civil war. "Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts, then gave 9 parts to women and 1 to men." At my catholic school, we were taught the reverse: girls, the less sexually active gender, had to guard their behavior because boys, driven crazy by lust, weren't capable of guarding theirs. In either culture, women somehow managed to get the wrong end of the stick. Women bear the burden of fending off social disorder in the catholic tradition because they ARENT considered sexually active, and in the muslim tradition because they ARE! In either tradition, its the woman's responsibility to stay pure before marriage. "You westerners are so shy about sex. Here, we talk about it all the time." Muhammad enjoyed sexual relations with all his later wives. Coitus interruptions (pull out method), the common birth control method of the day. Issue of contraception arose when muslim soldiers began to win big victories. women were part of the booty of war, and the koran gave men sexual rights over their war captive slaves. but muhammad introduced new limits on these rights. first, koran encouraged muslims to free their slaves. the koran also enjoined muslims not to force female slaves to have sex, if the woman wanted to preserve her chastity. contraception became important because any muslim's slave who bore her owner's child could not be sold and was automatically freed on the man's death. her child would become the owner's heir. preventing pregnancy became essential to preserving your wealth islamic scholars have ruled that artificial insemination is okay, but only with the sperm of a woman's own husband. the question is, "whose child is it, for purposes of custody and inheritance?" Imams ruled that the slave's child was the heir of the owner of the semen Artificial insemination allowed only with the sperm of a woman's own husband! And if she uses another man's sperm, the kid will be the child and heir of the sperm donor, NOT the mothers husband!!!! Always be considered to have been fathered by the sperm donor. It can't be considered as related to, or heir of, the mother's husband. Paradox between sexual license and repression bewildered me Sigheh, agreed between a man and woman sanctioned by a cleric, can last as little as a few minutes or as long as 99 years. Usually, the man pays the woman an agreed sum of money in exchange for a temporary marriage. The usual motive is sex. The transaction differs from prostitution in that the couple have to go before a cleric to record their contract Otherwise, sigheh has few of the responsibilities of marriage Shiites believe Muhammad approved of Sigheh. Sunnis, the majority, don't agree. Debate among Iranian women. They argue that the state should provide for war widows accurately, so they don't have to sell their bodies in sigheh. But others said it wasn't a matter of money. Widows and divorces had sexual desires and needs for a male presence and it was good for the kids. Mostly, it is poorer women who consent In the culture, a man and woman can't just go out on a date and enjoy each other's company, but with sigheh they can in the west, some shiite families use sigheh as a way to make it possible for young couples to get to know each other well before marriage In the sunni branch of islam, if a woman is infertile, her husband usually divorces her or brings home a second wife. in iran (shiite), a sigheh contract can be drawn up by signifying that the object of the temporary marriage is a child that the husband and his PERMANENT wife will raise Sigheh is also the only way a Shiite man can marry a non muslim woman. Unlike the sunnis, who allow muslim men to marry other monotheists, shiites demand conversion from all non muslim women and men before a permanent marriage. Rafsanjjani's reveal of sigheh came as a boom to nonreligious Iranians whose private lives had been disrupted by revolutionary intrusions. Ex. unmarried lovers can't get a hotel room. now, when she takes a lover, she simply signs him up for a few months of sigheh the limits on sexual freedom in islam are drawn strictly around the marriage bed, be it temporary or permanent. Extramarital sex and homosexuality are prohibited, and both offenses can draw the most horrific punishments in islamic sex code!! Death penalty is optional for murder, but is mandatory for any convicted adulterer who could have satisfied his or her sexual urge lawfully with a spouse. Saudi Arabia also specifies stoning Yet stoning is never specified as a punishment for adultery in the koran. The koran states that adulterous wives should be confined to their houses until death takes them. Those who have recently witnessed stoning describe all male crowds. Since it has allowed the fulfillment of sexual instincts by lawful means, it is not prepared to tolerate an perverted behavior. Perverted behavior went on. Ex. the man she interviewed. swirling a glass of ice splashed with scotch, the host seemed oblivious to the contradiction between what he's just finished saying and what he was showing me (strippers dancing in the room). At first, it surprised me that my hypocritical host would have such a lifestyle in a country with such harsh laws against fornication. But eventually I realized that he was quite safe behind the high walls of his compound. In sexual offenses, executions and floggings usually take place only if the accused confensses!!! To get a conviction otherwise is almost impossible under islamic rules of evidence, which demand 4 male witnesses! But often, for WOMEN, none of these rules apply, because executions occur before it ever gets to court every year about 40 palestinian women die at the hands of their fathers or brothers in so called "honor killings" that wipe away the shame of a female relative's premarital or extra material sex. the killer usually becomes a local hero. did what had to be done Honor killings better documented among palestinians than elsewhere because of the israeli police recording it. but honor killings happen throughout the islamic world Mishaal, she says, was unmarried. she was killed simply for flouting (disregarding) the family will and running away from an arranged marriage in order to marry a man she loved. And as an unmarried woman, Mishaal had not committed a capital offense under sharia law It was unusual for an extrajudicial (illegal) honor killing to be carried out by an upper class family generally, it is the women of poorer and less educated families who are most at risk "For most of us, our brothers are like big, barking dogs who feel that their whole purpose in life is to guard our bodies." After she finished school, Tamam left home. later trained as a nurse. only muslim woman I've ever met in middle east who didn't live with either husband or family It is understandable that progressive muslims hate to see their faith associated with these practices. But what is less understandable is the way they turn their wrath on the commentators criticizing the practices. Until Islam's articulate spokeswomen such as Rana Kabbani target their misguided anger on the problem, instead of on outside critics, the grave mistake of associating islam with clitodirectomy and honor killings will continue. and much more importantly, so will the practices themselves, at the cost of so many muslim women's health and happiness.

A central element of world/global culture is:

Individualization

Coleman letter summary

Domestic Authority: Coleman emphasized one aspect of gender equality - domestic authority Where women rule their households (greater gender equality), they are freer to do what they wish (sexual choice). More equality: More permissiveness. Opposite of equality is patriarchy.

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?

Duncan J. Watts

Peggy Giordano: The Wider Circle of Friends (yearbooks) Summary

Rules for Close Friends to follow when writing in yearbooks: Rule 1: Identity: Say something nice close: warm. appraisal wider: honest, unfettered. contrast. opinions difficult to ignore. relevant to the outsider, can reveal things about receiver. Rule 2: Social relations: talk about relationship close: rewards of intimacy. wider: reveals true social worth. provide a source of change, difference. offer yourself as "reserve" for friend group. Rule 3: Culture: advice, wisdom, wishes Close: "we" feeling. share values, memories. INSIDE JOKES/CODES OF EXPRESSION (Rule 9) THAT ONLY THEY WOULD UNDERSTAND. Wider: comprehensive understanding of social context. lets u know how well u fit in, how you're doing Overall, wider circle:shows how u fit into worldmessages more unsettlingnot softened by intimacycorrective to rosy slant or friendship literaturetougher audience for receiver

Political Segregation: The Big Sort: Bill Bishop and Robert G. CushingThe Economist

political polarization leads to social polarization (big sort), which lead to more political polarization (or tribalism). Self reinforcement. Relationality is the cause (independent variable) of political beliefs americans move house often, usually for practical reasons perhaps unconsciously, they are drawn to places where they expect to fit in the big sort does not seem to be driven by economic factors. income is a poor predictor of party preference. cultural factors (relationality) matter more (better predictor). GroupThink (tribalism)because americans are so mobile, even a mild preference for living w like minded neighbors leads over time to severe segregation over time, this means americans are ever less exposed to contrary views when a group is ideologically homogeneous, its members grow more extreme. Today, there are many more LANDSLIDE DISTRICTS, where political candidate wins by a landslide. 10: Consensus: Social Closeness causes similarity of thought.

Risks of going to prison....

The risks of going to prison are about 3 times higher for high school dropouts!! Blacks are 8 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites

LikeWar The Weaponization of Social Media PW Singer and Emerson T Brooking

There was a smartphone app created so that jihadi (islamic military) fans following along at home could ink their social media accounts in solidarity, boosting the invaders' messages even further The effort was organized under one telling hashtag: #AllEyesonISIS The militants demands for swift surrender thus spread both regionally and personally, playing on the phones in their targets hands. ISIS videos also showed that gruesome torture and execution of those who dared resist. In some ways, Iraq has changed dramatically int he years since the 2003 led invasion. Where director Saddam Hussein had once banned mobile phones because ease of communication threatened his grip on power, 3/4 of Iraqis now owned one. The 150,000 iraqis online in 2003 had grown to nearly 4 million. But in other ways, Iraq hadn't changed enough. The bloody sectarian war between the Shia Majority and the dispossessed Sunni minority. Especially in the west and north, where most sunnis iced, the army was undertrained and unpaid. Soldiers and police didn't trust each other. Sunni civilians trusted both groups even lest. ISIS didn't have to look far for willing spies and insurgents, recruited through WhatsApp! The prized target for ISIS was Mosul, a 3,000 year old multicultural metropolis of 1.8 million. Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish neighbors eyed each other with suspicion The enemy hadn't even arrived, but fear already ruled the ranks Thousands of soldiers streamed from the city Most of the city's police followed Mass panic. Nearly half a million civilians fled. When the invading force of 1,500 Isis fighters finally reached the city's outskirts, they were astounded by the good fortune. Only a handful of brave (or confused) soldiers and police remained behind. It wasn't a battle, but a massacre, dutifully filmed and edited How had it gone so wrong? 4 whole Iraqi army divisions, trained and armed by the most powerful nation of the world (US), had essentially evaporated into thin air Echoes of another strange defeat. In 1940, amid the opening stages of WW2, France had seemed undefeatable. As 2.5 million Nazi soldiers amassed at the border, French commanders thought they were ready. They weren't. France would fall in less than 2 months. The weapon that made all this possible was the humble RADIO. Radio allowed armored fanctions to move in swift harmony. Radio spread report of attacks, which spread confusion across the entire french army. Endless stream of propaganda, sowing fear and doubt into the french. ISIS pioneered a different sort of blitzkrieg, one that used the internet itself as a weapon These videos and images MOVED FASTER THAN THE TRUTH You could check the war like you checked the ESPN twitter If it were so inclined, you could message with the people fighting it. Sometimes, they'd talk back. Even ISIS militants were addicted to the feedback loop that social media provided. The Islamic State (ISIS), which had no real cyberwar capabilities to speak of, had just run a military offensive like a viral marketing campaign and won a victory that shouldn't have even been possible. It hadn't hacked the network; it had hacked the information on it. WITH THE INTERNET, ISIS GATHERED SUPPORT FOR THEMSELVES (VOLUNTEERS TO BE FIGHTERS), AND SOWED FEAR AND DOUBT IN MOSUL, CAUSING PEOPLE TO RUN AWAY In the months that followed, ISIS's improbable momentum continued. the group recruited over 30,000 foreigners from nearly 100 countries to join the fight in its self declared caliphate Inspiring scores of terrorist attacks from Paris and Sydney to Orlando and San Bernadino Polling showed americans were suddenly MORE FRIGHTENED OF TERRORISM THAN THEY'D BEEN IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF 9/11 All thanks, essentially, to the fact that ISIS was very good at social media The technology it was using lay at the heart of its disruptive power and outsize success. And it was technology available to everyone. Others could do the same, and they did: In the Syrian civil war where ISIS first roared to prominence, nearly every rebel group used Youtube to recruit, fundraise, and train!! Syrian president Bahsar al-Assad used Instagram to protect a friendly face to the world, while it gassed its own citizens!! Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas militants fought multiple twitter wars. NATO and the Taliban had taken to sniping at each other's twitter feeds! War propogandas lived alongside the internet! Modern internet now disrupting war and politics, the same way it had disrupted entertainment, business, and dating!!!! It was a revolution that no leader, group, army, or nation could afford to ignore. Iraqi army swept back into Mosul 2016, 2 years after #AlleyesonISIS had chased it away The Iraqi military issued a rapid fire stream of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter updates both practical (the status of the operation) and bizarre (grinning selfies of Iraqi soldiers while disabling bombs.) Operation had its own hashtag: #FreeMosul The Iraqis' US military allies also threw themselves into this new fight. Shape the flow of online conversation in Iraq and beyond. Contractors in the employ of the US state department stalked the conversations of potential isis recruits, reminding them of ISIS's barbarity and its impending defeat Drones: combat could be followed live, from both sides of the war, on the front lines Livestreaming In reversal of how ISIS had first exploited the technology in taking Mosul, a global network of online volunteers formed, to save lives over social media. Scanned networks for any snippet of information about where civilians were caught in the crossfire, steering rescuers from the local hospital to their location. A hub for this effort was @MosulEye, run by an Iraqi man working behind ISIS lines as a new kind of online 5th column for peace. He described this effort as a huge change, to reach out to those who were rescued and hear their voices. Social Media had changed not just the message, but the dynamics of conflict. How information was being accessed, manipulated, and spread had taken on new power. The Internet World Collider: Shaquon Thomas lived his life online. "Young Pappy." Life of crime. Online brand extolling murders and drug deals. Thomas had grown up with a loving family and a talent for music. his brother taught him to rap. neighborhood in chicago was caught between 3 gangs Thomas was a gangster disciple and wanted everyone to know it. so he trumpeted the fact online. 2 separate occasions, he was shot at. he dropped a video on youtube. "You don't even know how to shoot," he taunted. They killed Thomas a week later. Indeed, more people were killed by gang violence in 2017 in Chicago than in all US special operations forces across a decade's worth of fighting in Iraq and Syria!!!!!!! Most of the gang disputes have nothing to do with drug sales or gang terroritory, and EVERYTHING TO DO WITH SETTLING PERSONAL SCORES Much of this violence starts with gangs' use of social media to cyber tag and cyberbang. An update of the old school practice of spray painting graffiti to mark territory and insult a rival. The supervision is used to promote your gang or start a flame war!! The difference in being online is that now seemingly the whole world is witnessing whether you accept the challenge or not! So people have to accept the challenge for their pride!! 80% of fights that break out in chicago schools are now INSTIGATED ONLINE In time, these online skirmishes move to the BANG, sometimes called Facebook Drilling. "Wallbanging." As with the distant lone wolf attacks of ISIS, cybertagging vastly increases the reach of potential violence!!!!! in the past, gangs battled with their neighbors, the turf war literally was about the border of the neighborhoods. Now, the quarrel might be also with HATERS TEN MILES NORTH. What started as a provocation online winds up with someone getting drilled in real life!!! By throwing down the gauntlet in such a public way, online threats have to be backed up not just by the individual, but by the GROUP as well. If someone is fronted and doesn't reply, it's not just the gang member, but the whole gang as a whole that loses status and respect. Anyone can start a feud online, but everyone has a collective responsibility to make sure it gets consummated in real life. One death can quickly beget another. Sometimes, the online memorialization of the victim inspires vows of revenge. Other times, the killers use the death to taunt and troll to further bloodshed. Chicago, Los Angeles: gangs use social media to organize their chapters, recruit across the country, and even negotiate drug and arms deals with gangsters in their nations. Social media is THE FACELESS ENEMY! I believe words are causing many people to die!! They must also show their success!!! They edit graphic executions into shareable music videos, and battle in dueling Instagram posts! El Salvadoran drug gangs have embraced the same franchise model as ISIS! Distinction between online and offline criminal worlds has essentially become blurred!!!!!!!!!!!!! Level of physical violence can vary widely Ex. Revolutionary Armed Forces of COLUMBIA, whose 54 year war against the Colombian gov ended with a fragile 2016 peace. Ex. But in other examples, violence continues. Physical to digital front!!!!! Fighters now trade in their rifles for smartphones. These are the "weapons" of a new kind of war. On the other hand, ostensibly nonviolent movements can launch in formation offensives to support shockingly violent acts! Rodrigo Duterte elected president of PHILIPINES 2016. He was hailed as the country's first social media president. Duterte was also a demagogue. Dismissive of human rights. Brutal crackdown on not just criminals, but also his political opponents. Backed by an army of feverishly supportive Facebook groups and twitter bots, his administration set about discrediting journalists and rights activists, and bullying them into silence! At the same time, his followers sowed flash stories and rumors that provided justification for Duterte's increasingly authoritarian actions! Duterte's drug war killed more than 12,000 people! Social Media: Affects the interplay of nations, and by extension, the entire global system. As diplomats and heads of state ave embraced the social media revolution, they have LEFT BEHIND the slow moving ritualistic system that governed international relations for centuries. In a few seconds of twitter typing, Trump has threatened entire nations with nuclear war, dismissed people from gov, etc. Official social media accounts of gov ranging from those of Russia and Ukraine to Israel and Palestine. Authority has fallen into disputes whose only objective seems to be finding the wittier comeback! Diplomacy (conducting matters between states) has become less private and policy oriented, and more public and performative. As with the gangs, each gap is both personal and witnessed by the entire world, poisoning relations. Not just diplomats/leaders!!!!!! Entire populations have been thrown into direct and often volatile contact with each other! Indians and Pakistanis have formed dueling Facebook militias to incite violence!! Chinese Internet users have made a habit of launching online expeditions against any foreign neighbors who seem insufficiently awed by china's power. Notably, these "netizens" also rally against any perceived weaknesses by THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS, CONSTANTLY PUSHING THEIR LEADERS TO USE MILITARY FORCE. PEOPLE ARE USING INTERNET TO PUSH THE GOV TO USE THE MILITARY AND BE VIOLENT TO OTHER COUNTRIES! EVEN IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES, WAR HAS NEVER BEEN SO DEMOCRATIC!!! Sometimes, the terrible consequences of these internet battles may be the only REAL thing about them. Agents of the Russian Federation were organizing an online offensive that would dwarf all others before it!!! Throughout the 2016 US election, thousands of human trolls, backed by tens of thousands of automated accounts, infiltrated every part of the US political dialogue. They steered discussion, sowed doubt, and confused the truth, launching the MOST POLTIICALLY CONSEQUENTIAL INFORMATION ATTACK IN HISTORY. And that operation continues to this day!

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari

Stigma

the mark of disgrace that sticks with someone (due to race, criminal record, etc)

Oct 24: Songs

Aggregate: thing formed by combining parts Number 1 Hits: Why did the song "Happy," American Idol, etc. become so successful? Can success be predicted in advance? Corporations often test films, songs, etc by having people rate them before being released. But is this a good strategy? This is what Salganik and Watts (S + W) studied in an ingenious web based experiment at Columbia Music Lab Experiment: Visitors to a teen oriented website were invited to participate in a study of musical taste Participants were given a menu of 48 songs by bands they had never heard of Invited to listen to, and if they wished, download songs Which songs would be downloaded most often - be top hits? Q1: Does a song become hit because it is good, or because it is popular? Over 12,000 listeners were randomly assigned to groups. 1. Independent Group: listeners could see only the name of the band and the song. 2. Social Influence (SI) Group: Listeners could see the name of the band and song AND how many times it had been downloaded. Results: Listeners who saw how often songs had been downloaded were more likely to download those popular songs. Therefore, SI (popularity) mattered. And SI made hits bigger hits. For SI Group: Inequality of popularity increased. Higher Gini Coefficient. Very wide gap between popular song and not popular song. -whereas in the independent group, all songs had about equal popularity. Song Quality: What about song quality? They defined "good" songs as those downloaded, with no information Those good songs also did better when there was info SI: BUT SI had greater impact than quality A song in the top 5 in terms of quality had only a 50% chance of finishing in the top 5 of success when there was popularity info. So the quality of song matters, but so does even a small amount of SI Listing the songs in order of # of downloads also increased the gap between successful and non-successful songs SI mattered A LOT. And yet, STILL, the experiment undercounted the real world effect of SI, because listeners did not: 1. Know who had downloaded the songs (ex. friends) 2. Read any reviews of the songs/bands 3. Know anything about the band - what they look like, where they were from, etc. The point: even a small amount of SI affects our judgement as much (or more than) the song quality itself Q2: Same hits? S+W then looked at another issue: this is the really cool part: alternate universe idea. Does SI always produce the same hits? You can't answer this question in the real world. You cannot re-run history. But you can in the lab. 8 Worlds: SI group divided into 8 parallel "worlds." All of which started with zero downloads. Listeners could only be in one world. People in each world could listen to all 48 songs. But they only saw which songs had been downloaded by people in THEIR OWN WORLD. Did the same songs rise to the top in all 8 worlds? NO!!! Each world produced different hits. Ex. One song was #1 in one world and #40 in another This had profound lessons: 2 Lessons: 1. Hits are unpredictable We can't tell in advance whether a song, movie, book, etc. will be a hit or a flop, even if we do all the market research in the world on consumer preferences. Why? Because what people like changes as they learn of what others like. 2. If we could re run history, we might never have heard of the celebrities we all know and love! -We might have different roster of stars. Ex. Carly Hennessy (might have made it) Hindsight: Success only looks inevitable because hindsight is 20/20 But this research allows us to see success and failure BEFORE AND AS they occur IN REALITY, SUCCESS IS FAR FROM INEVITABLE!! NOT INEVITABLE! So much depends on small initial advantages, such as who likes what, EARLY ON! This is called... CUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE Cumulative Advantage: CA CA: Small initial differences in success can get translated into large long term differences. AKA: The "Matthew Effect:" the rich get richer CA probably applies in other fields as well. Sports, the arts, the professions Many talented law school grads, but some experience small initial advantage that helps there career a lot, long term. In alternate universes, could have been diff people. Or technology. Ex. QWERTY keyboard. Not necessarily better than other keyboards, but small initial differences in popularity/preferences made it do very well, long term. In alternate universes, it could have been other keyboards. Microsoft software. Cooney hates Microsoft word, but uses it because small initial differences made it popular, now everyone uses it. In alternate universes, could have been other software. It helps them become popular if the initial adopters are themselves well-connected (ex. many social media followers) Ashley Mears (UGA sociology student at NYU) found that nobody knows who will be the next top model. But as soon as somebody begins to be favored, others jump on the bandwagon. Ex. Coca Rocha (Irish model). CA does not guarantee long term success. (After all, there are still one hit wonders). CA does not mean that talent and hard work do not matter. They do! BUT, there are lots of talented, hardworking people... CA means that among people who are approximately equally talented and hardworking, small initial differences can make the difference between getting and not getting that initial break (which is typically the first step to big long term success). Summary: LUCK plays a big part in which movies, songs, books, people become successful, because... Small variation in initial conditions can lead to radically different outcomes (CA). Had things been even slightly different in the beginning, we might be seeing a whole different set of stars and hits.

Is Killing Wrong? A Study in Pure Sociology

Mark Cooney

Why have we gone from prudishness to permissiveness (constraint to choice) in many matters of sex? (contraception one reason, but what else?)

GENDER EQUALITY

Sex Law reforms were (1945-2005)...

GLOBAL

Tim Hunt

72 year old british scientist, Nobel laureate (prize winner)at a scientific conference in china, made a joke about a woman in science2 people tweeted the remarkwent viral/public. he was accused of mysogenyalthough some senior women scientists stood up for him, the vast majority of people treated him as a sexistForced to resign by his university and from several prestigious postsRegardless of what you think about his remarks, his reputation (built up over a lifetime of good work that included supporting women scientists) was in tatters - an overnight pariah"I am ruined."

Equality

A new idea A change: in later 18th century, idea of equality of the individual emerged"All men are created equal." 1776 Americathen, others followed. French declaration of rights of man 1789. Rights that protect the individual: evident in: sex laws (1945-2005, Frank et al. These sex laws protect individuals, and their rights.), Human Rights, Democracy, Capitalism, Mass Education THESE THINGS HAPPENED ON A GLOBAL SCALE The World:most people are aware of the impact of world economybut largely unaware of impact of world culturea set of ideas and values increasingly shared by humanity as a wholea central element of world culture, especially since WW2, is individualization Future of individualism is unclear. (technology could augment it, or it could cause us to turn over our individual choices to a machine).

Oligarchy

A small elite (group of powerful people), usually wealthy, perhaps hereditary, monopolizes the higher reaches go ov. leaders stay in power a long time elections, if held, are frequently accompanied by corruption, intimidation, and violence. POLICE ARE MILITARISTIC, SHIELDED FROM SCRUTINY: Police departments tend to be shielded from effective public influence and scrutiny, operating under a militaristic and centralized model of organization. Many 3rd world countries.

Number of people employed in the US (agents of this giant ghost)

About 2.8 million civilian employees. Plus about 1.3 million in US military (and 800,000 reserves). US national debt: $22 trillion!! (trillion = 1,000 billion)

The Asymmetric Society Two Kinds of Persons Natural and Corporate James S. Coleman

Asymmetric: absence of symmetry Aggregate: a whole formed by combining several elements Social system constructed and inhabited by persons, yet it is diff from the aggregate of psyches of those who inhabit it Inca civilization fell to european conquest. rich social system suddenly collapsed. WHAT HAD CHANGED WAS NOT THE PEOPLE, BUT THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE THEY INHABITED Task of sociologists is to describe that structure which we all inhabit. (it is hard. you can't tell the parts just by standing back and looking at society, like you can look at a house and telling all the parts) One theory: people are the fundamental elements of society. People are goal directed. Master of fate. Other theory: conceptions of social change which do not have goal directed persons as their units. The man must be a passive bystander to the external forces of change. Marxist social theory remains attractive to many: describes "objective interests." master of fate. he says we aren't passive. 3 Episodes: Not 2 persons in interaction but 3. And there were in each of the first 2 episodes 2 interactions, not 1. In the 3rd episode, there were 3 interactions. First episode: interaction between the widow and the variety store, with the saleslady as the agent of the variety store (type 2). Then, offered to lend her earrings to the widow. Interaction was now between the woman and the widow (type 1). Second episode: first, the waitress was the agent of the hotel. Shift from an interaction between the hotel and the american (type 2), to between a man and a woman (type 1), by asking her to go with him to concert. A person may be an agent for more than one corporate actor!!!! Third episode was somewhat different. One interaction between my friend and the drug store, with me as agent. Second between my friend and me. Moral dilemma: whether or not to use the drug store resource to enhance the friendship. 3rd interaction: between the drug store and me, not as an agent but as a person who might steal resources. Social system contains not only persons like you and me as its elements but also another kind of "person" as well: these intangible persons which the law once called FICTIONAL PERSONS and I will call CORPORATE ACTORS (Cooney calls ghosts/giants), ti distinguish themselves from persons like you and me (who the law calls NATURAL PERSONS). In our larger, modern society, there are many corporate actors Corporate actors are relatively recent components of social systems!!! We have always had corporate action, and by that token, corporate actors. But, until recently, these have been, with few exceptions, easily resolvable into the component persons of which they were composed. Ex. tribesmen banded together to kill an elephant This is no longer so, and it is coming to be less so all the time Look at the law: Civil actions people sue each other. Criminal actions people are the objects of action by the state itself (ghost giant). Before the 13th century, western law found it unnecessary to conceive of persons other than natural persons The king had begun to issue charters to towns Towns could own tolls, could own land Towns became parties before the courts Many struggles before the law gave in and recognized the town as a "fictional person" or "legal person" Another source: The church Law began to recognize, from the 13th century onward, the church as a person before the law! Economic enterprise outgrew the family! Law made possible limited liability. Financial liability is limited to a certain number. Corporations are seen as individuals. So people could join up to form corporations (which were then seen as individuals), and these corporations would only be responsible for paying a minimum amount of money. In other countries, where extended family is stronger, corporate enterprise could take off from the oldest corporate form: the extended family!! seen as an individual. US: owners of a corporation are not responsible for many things (names are removed, when the corporation itself becomes an individual). this happens by limited liability, AND the fact that incorporation is done by the STATES, not FEDERAL GOV. Corporation was much more readily freed, this way. Law has facilitated (and technology has motivated) an enormous growth of a new kind of person!!!!! Corporate actions have consequences for natural people like you and me Growth in numbers of profit making corporations US 1917-1969 of more than 5 times There was natural person pop growth too, but not by this much! Actions in NY state appellate court: corporate actors started low. persons, agents started high. but corporate went up and persons went down. they now meet in middle. proportion of front page attention (newspapers): corporate actors start high and go up. natural persons start low and go down. CORPORATE ACTORS PLAY AN INCREASING ROLE, AND NATURAL PERSONS PLAY A DECREASING ROLE. They employ natural persons as agents. They have natural persons as their chief executives. Asymmetry of a large portion of its relations 4 kinds of action: 1: person on person 2a: person on corporate actor 2b: corporate actor on person 3: corporate on corporate type 2a and 2b contrast with 1 and 3. assymetric and with enormous growth in numbers of corporate actors in modern society, asymmetric form of relation has come to proliferate throughout social structure. Increasingly, there are relations like those exemplified in the 3 episodes I described, relations which at first glance appear to be between 2 persons, but in fact are between a person and a corporate actor, with he corporate actor being represented by an agent. yet, the 3 episodes are not typical types of type 2 relations. Typically, corporate actor is very large in resources, compared to the person knows more about you than you know about it On one side, may be US gov (corporate actor), and on the other side is a citizen (natural person). And typically, on the corporate actor side, there are only a few other parties as an alternative transaction partner. There may be none. On the person side there are typically hundred, thousands, millions. YOU NEED THE CORPORATE ACTORS, BUT THEY DONT NEED YOU. YOU ARE REPLACEABLE, BUT THEY ARE NOT. Ghosts: because they can't be touched, they can be in more than one place at a time, they are long lasting Giants: some are big and powerful (states, organizations) OVERALL, 2 TYPES OF PERSON, 3 TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS

Worldwide trends in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1945-2005 David John Frank, Bayliss J. Camp, and Steven A. Boutcher

Between 1945-2005, nation states around the world revised their criminal laws on sexual activities Eroding world level support for criminal laws aimed at protecting collective entities, especially the family and the nation - and strengthening the world support for laws aimed at protecting individualized persons Cross national data on 4 things: adultery, sodomy, rape, and child sexual abuse Expansion display the logic of individualization, with the results of negative binomial regression New Zealand legalized "commercial sexual services" while safeguarding sex workers human rights and prohibiting prostitution of persons under 18 years old South Africa elaborated pornography regulations. Decriminalized adult porn, criminalized child porn. Romania: incest laws came under scrutiny. Most scholars take micro approaches to legal change These are rich in detail. Case study approach. Tendency to restrict analytic attention to isolated kinds of sex laws. May exaggerate the independence of particular regulation. Formal, rationalized criminal codes arose in modern Europe within the apparatus of the nation state, and they diffused through colonial networks. Penal codes originate in global institutions, and so may impulses for reform. Reforms are clustered across domains of activity or countries At least one recent study suggests that formal sex laws are related to sex laws in practice Empirical Analysis. Looked at data on the way the laws have changed 1945-2005. World Society Perspective Society is an institutional system rather than functional or action system Society has grown increasingly universalistic, rationalized, global Individualized models of society did not transform every social sector equally after WW2 Spurred the long term trend toward individualization, ushering western born models of individualized society onto an increasingly globalized stage Individualization also contributed to the global rise of capitalism, democracy, mass education. Recognition of a growing number of HUMAN RIGHTS!!! Sex shifted from an activity meant to propagate the collective order through sanctioned reproduction to an activity meant to enhance individual pleasure through self expression sex as procreation gave way to sex as recreation the natural object of carnal intercourse is that there be a possibility of conception of a human being Postwar individualization of world models sex was conceived through an individualized prism sex outside marriage and across religious and racial lines individual pleasure. consent emerged as the cardinal rule of sexual relations. then, sex crimes reclassified from offenses against morality, the family, honor. TO offenses against liberty, self determinations, or physical integrity, emphasizing individualization in catalyzing global sex law reforms. Individualization strengthened global support for laws protecting individuals. Preserving corporate bodies at the expense of individual bodies (ex. marital rape): things like this grew vulnerable Decriminalization of contraception (condoms) and pornography Intergovernmental and international nongovernmental organizations (IGO and INGO) Generalist INGO and IGO advanced global sex law standards via grand projects of modernization Other IGO and INGO dedicated themselves directly to sex law reforms Main impulses for individualizing sex law reforms were 1. Not only local but global, across all sorts of countries 2. Not only particular but encompassing, across domains of sexual activities -Carried by 2 organizational processes: world structuralization, which expanded the basic platforms for global activities, and world legalization, which expanded the basic apparatus of global laws 1945-2005 60 year timeline for all 194 nation states in existence then as indicators of laws aimed at preserving corporate entities, we chose adultery and sodomy for their part, sodomy laws penalize "unnatural" intercourse we expect adultery and sodomy laws to contract worldwide during the postwar era laws aimed at preserving individual entities, we selected rape and child sexual abuse laws rule of consent important! collective concerns ignored! criminal regardless of whether pregnancy or marriage is involved we expect worldwide expansions in both kinds of laws during period of question out data include only those criminal laws that explicitly address adultery, sodomy, rape, and child sexual abuse we focus on formal laws in the books Contract: sodomy and adultery laws Expand: rape and sexual abuse laws Sex laws defending the imperative of corporate reproduction receded while sex laws defending the cardinal rule of individual consent advanced While most reforms in this domain increased the scope of legal protections for individuals, a MINORITY of reforms did not. Ex. some reforms lowered the age of consent, gives teenagers more rights to consent, but it PROTECTS these individuals less! In americas, europe, and oceana, individualizing reforms comprise over 90% of total reforms, while in africa and asia 71-74%. middle east: 48%. Individualization prevailed everywhere except middle east, when there, nearly half the reform followed the global individualizing trend We observe a propensity for revisions that are isomorphic (the same) domestic reforms reflect global templates the local actors who animate the case study literature appear to read from globally institutionalized scripts

Corporate Actors/Ghosts/Giants/Fictional Persons/Organizations: timeline

Corporate actors are relatively recent components of social systems!!! We have always had corporate action, and by that token, corporate actors. But, until recently, these have been, with few exceptions, easily resolvable into the component persons of which they were composed. Ex. tribesmen banded together to kill an elephant

US trends in crime

Crime Rates rise 1960-1991. Since then, a decrease. Small upward tick/motion recently, but still, overall, a decrease.

Example of formal label (especially sticky):

Criminal Justice System -when you go to jail and you are released, you are an ex convict, and that stigma sticks with you. no one will hire you (Pager), low wages, etc. Then you are more likely to turn to crime again. Once labeled, you are more likely to commit crime again. Other sticky label: Sex Offender

Culture has shifted from being local to being GLOBAL, and with global culture comes individualization:

Cultural Individualization:values that protect and support individuals over groups or institutions (ex. family, country)contrasted w/ collectivism (values that support institutions over individuals)

Being Sane in Insane Places

DL Rosenhan

Jurocracy in America Donald Black

Crozier theory (wrong): Dr. Crozier talks about Delirium of due process. Among major symptoms are a bloated and still growing legal profession. As a result of these developments, life has become easier for criminals and other wrongdoers (since all they need is a good lawyer). Democracy has steadily withered away The root cause to which Dr Crozier attributes these ills is quite unexpected: an obsession with individual freeom because americans have refused to rely on a hierarchy to provide order in their society, the americans have had to find a substitute, and thus have turned to law and the courts Legal process has proven to be self perpetuating and is swelling beyond control Legal strategies such as these require conterstratgies and lawyers generate more lawyers. Hence america is caught in a vicious cycle: legalism begets more legalism. legal madness Dr Crozier exaggerates the role of law and lawyers in modern america Right Theory: Law and Lawyers in Everyday Life Although it is well known that litigation rate and number of lawyers per capita in US is among the highest in the world (and raw statistics about the number of lawsuits and lawyers might give the impression that law is everywhere expanding its involvement in american lifeand litigation is increasing technically, probably due to many organizations suing individuals), the role of law in everyday life remains extremely small Most disputes do not go to the legal system Vitually all conflicts settled without litigation. Thus, for example, in a recent study of civil litigation conducted, it was found that individuals in US contact a lawyer in only 1/10 (10%) of the cases, which they have a grievance involving $1,000 or more. Lawyers only file the case in half of those. (5% of the time) Fewer than 1% of the grievances are aired in a courtroom. American courts are rarely used to settle negligence cases or breaches of contract in routine business transactions! (rarely used for people who know each other) Litigation: process of taking legal action Americans manage nearly all of their conflicts without recourse to law Conflict management in modern America thus does not remotely resemble the frenzy of legal activity that Crozier portrays. American lawyers are NEGOTIATORS MUCH MORE THAN LITIGATORS Lawyers spend much of their time preparing documents designed to prevent conflict Tax matters consume a considerable amount of time as well Upsurge as an occupation would seem primarily to reflect a growing demand for peacemakers and pathfinders in an increasingly complicated world!!! In the matter of judges, Dr Crozier's analysis is more persuasive. Crozier correctly observes that the american judiciary exerts a greater influence over public policy, particularly through interpretations of the constitution. This can be contrasted to france and other nations, where judges are expected to apply a code of law in the mechanical manner of obediant beurocrats Peculiar feature of political life in US is "inter alia," a mechanism of decentralization and a protection against the abuses of power the legislative and executive branches of gov. But Crozier claims that this practice has evolved into a monstrosity which he calls government by judges. this may be a bit hysterical. most issues of public policy have remained far beyond their reach. It is not a jurocracy Judgess: powerful, use the common law (as opposed toothed countries, where judges are slaves to the code of law). US: judicial branch checks other branches: Inter alia. STILL, not a jurocracy. Judges don't have THAT much power! Legal Devolution: Although raw statistics about the number of lawsuits and lawyers might give the impression that law is everywhere expanding its involvement in american life, that would be mistaken. There is, in fact, a delegation movement afoot in the US., and its impact has been considerable For example, numerous programs have recently appeared throughout the US to develop alternatives to the courts. one preferred option is mediation, a variety of conflict management in which a restoration of harmony takes precedence over the rule enforcement and in which the parties themselves decide the result, typically a compromise. Mediation: a form of settlement (there is a third party), but the 2 groups are settling it out and deciding the outcome, usually a comrpmise Devolution movement/Legal Devolution: people relying less on legal system now Considering other ways (like mediation). or reducing the power of criminal justice laws returning to simple ways Family Quarrels, disputes between neighbors, and landlord tenant conflicts. there are also more specialized programs to handle divorces, consumer complaints, disputes in and between business organizations, school problems, environmental issues. IT IS NOT COMMON FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW EACH OTHER/HAVE RELATIONSHIPS TO TURN TO LEGAL SYSTEM (which would destroy the relationship), SO THESE PEOPLE ARE TURNING TO OTHER SIMPLER FORMS, LIKE MEDIATION, FOR THESE TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS Another branch of this movement is concerned with reducing the scope, severity, and penal character of criminal justice, by decriminalizing such conduct like homosexuality and marijuana, and abolishing capital punishment, and requiring compensation of victims by criminal offenders. The style of conflict management found in courtrooms (involving its combative, winner take all, judge centered, severe and penal character) is no longer appropriate in many cases of human conflict. In some respects, indeed, american law is undergoing a process of devolution, a return to modes of conflict management found in simpler and more traditional societies (LESS COMPLICATED. MOVING AWAY FROM COMPLEX PENAL STRICT WINNER TAKE ALL LEGAL SUSTEM). Sociogenesis of Law: Holding constant the nature of grievance (injustice), the tendency to resort to law varies inversely with the degree of intimacy between the parties. This means that offenses between STRANGERS (whether criminal or civil) are MORE LIKELY TO RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION THAN ARE OFFENSES OF THE FAMILY Social relationships in the US legal system are, in the aggregate, among the most fluid and impersonal in the world CULTURAL DISTANCE INCREASES LAW IN THE SAME MANNER AS RELATIONAL DISTANCE. AND SO THE IMMENSE HETEROGENIETY OF AMERICAN SOCIETY (ESPECIALLY ITS ETHNIC DIVERSITY) IS RELEVANT AS WELL. People more likely to have legal disputes with people of other cultures. The US is also a nation of organizations in which an ever larger proportion of social transactions involve CORPORATE ACTORS Organizations are more litigious than individuals, particularly when they have grievances against individuals!! It might be noted that American society had for some time been undergoing a process of equalization. Improving social status of racial minorities and women. On the one hand, because legal activity tends to increase with the social standing of the who are aggrieved, these gains have been signicantly broadening participation in the legal system. If this trend continues, we should expect to see many minorities and women against whites and men. some litigation will also advance the equalization process itself ON THE OTHER HAND, since law seems to flourish best in stratified societies, in the long term, the leveling/equaling of american society may DECREASE the legal system's growth. In fact, the new American interest in mediation and the increasing demand for negotiators almost certainly reflect to some extent the breakdown of self regulating hierarchies in domestic, economic, and other setting! Equalization = Mediation Mediation and negotiation are the most developed as modes of conflict management in the relatively egalitarian societies of a sort the western world has not seen in many centuries!!! Sociology has finally become a differentiated field of scholarship with a considerable body of factual and theoretical knowledge about a number of social phenomena. One of them is law. The trouble with Michael Crozier's analysis is that it was wwritten as if sociology were still so primitive as to require only the personal impressions of its practitioners Now that societies are becoming more equal, it makes sense that we are moving to/returning to a simpler, yet more developed mode that the western world has not seen in a long time: mediation and negotiation

Oct 15: Culture Architecture: part of culture. the symbolic dimension of social life. Culture: includes art, music, science, religion, ethnicity Q: Is all culture converging? Is the same architecture, music, fashion, movies, books, food, and sport now found everywhere? America: regional differences were once more important ex. strong accents, customs, less common now. have homogenized. now one part of the country looks/acts like any other. very little culture shock Is the same thing now happening to the world? There are differences across the globe (ex. Asia vs Middle East), but are those differences disappearing? The Long Term: In HG era, tens of thousands of small, local cultures homogeneous within, different between Chinese HG culture very diff from South African HG culture With agriculture, many smaller cultures became incorporated into larger, fewer, more interconnected societies Internal diversity increases, but over time decreases as a result of being part of the same society And external diversity (between societies) decreases! Global homogenization increases. Agrarian Era: In agrarian era, a wider, cross societal culture (ex. Latin, Christianity) develops on top of local cultures (ex. local languages) But still big differences between regions of the glob (ex. Marco Polo: found the Chinese to be more civilized than Europe. Wrote of the fantastic things he had seen: paper money, coal, gunpowder, printing, porcelain) Since then, trade and travel have greatly increased and differences across the world cultures have shrunk Industrial Era: global culture emerges greatest influence on global culture is the leading world power. first industrial power was: Britain Invaded and conquered many parts of the world British Culture: British empire exploited colonial people but left much of its culture on the world: English language The common law/ judge based law (instead of code made law) Steam engine, electric motor, etc. Soccer, rugby, cricket, tennis, golf, polo American Dominance: America has given the world: Technologies Movies Musical styles Blue jeans Sports Youth culture Fast food, etc. Languages: some worry that global culture threatens local cultures. big languages (english, mandarin, arabic, spanish) are expanding Smaller languages: but many smaller ones endangered 6,000 languages worldwide this could be down to 3,000 by the year 2100 Global Mono-Culture: today, entire world: people have the same ideas about: (Harari) Politics (sovereign state) Economics (money, taxes) Medicine (scientific) People come together for the Olympics Increasingly, around the world, the same: musical styles, movies, clothes, stores, architecture (cities and malls look the same everywhere) Uniformity: in short, as we travel, it is harder to find a place diff from US so study abroad is now less exotic. people speak English to you. and yet, this is NOT the entire story. Qualifications (exceptions): 1. Trend toward greater homogenization has not been completely linear, and may not be completely linear in the future. ex. Fall of Roman Empire (this stalled homogenization for a bit) 2. Less diversity across societies... but more within many societies (ex. Ireland. More black people there now, etc.) 3. Homogenization is greater in rich countries. Ex. less of an urban-rural contrast in rich countries. 4. Global culture is not just American culture. ex. K pop, sushi, Athens ethnic restaurants 5. Global culture interpreted and used differently by different cultures ex. world music, fusion cuisine, spanglish, etc. So what? Homogenization of culture means: 1. A more uniform world, less interesting...? loss of tradition loss of knowledge (ex. loss of fold medicine) but there is another side to this story 2. A more tolerant world before: cultures were very distant or different from one another lots of conflict and wars between religions, ethnicities, nationalities ancient enmities (feelings of hostility) are now slowly disappearing ex. France-Germany, Japan-Korea Sporting rivalries are replacing wars we even have special words to describe ethnic killing: genocide as it went down, we started taking it more seriously, and we coined the term ancient practice, but a new word (1944) Prejudice and Discrimination: in a culturally distant world, there was high degrees of: out-group prejudice. -"they're beneath us" -ex. Christians and Jews in Europe. Europeans and Africans in 19th century. -discrimination was taken for granted: -Lapiere: in 1930s, it was acceptable to be racist. Now, it's acceptable to be tolerant. -Homogenization has led to prejudice and discrimination becoming more unacceptable... Even if they have not disappeared (ex. people are still racist, but they can't admit it anymore) Summary: Human culture is homogenizing (across countries) Small, local cultures (ex. languages) have declines, and large, global culture has grown and continues to grow diversity within cultures increasing. diversity between cultures decreasing. But global culture itself: Diverse: made up of many cultures Dynamic: constantly changing Locally variable: fused with local elements In short, regional differences continue across the world, but you have to look harder to find them now. And homogenization helps breed tolerance.

Culture. Global Homogenization.

Mark of a Criminal Record

Devah Pager

Field Experiments

Experiments done in the real world (not in the lab) Harder for researcher to control everything, but more realistic than the lab Pager: field experimentation effect of a criminal record on job prospects for black and white men.

Mark of a Criminal Record Devah Pager

Experimental design! She fabricated a pair of job applicants who were matched on all features except their criminal history. White no rec, then white rec, then black no rec, then black rec. More likely to hold stereotypes suspecting blacks, especially young black men, of being prone to crime and of being unreliable employees Large and growing numbers of men being processed through criminal justice system Trends in incarceration: Over past 3 decades, the number of prison inmates in the US has increased by more than 600%, leaving it the country with the HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE IN THE WORLD harsher sentences for a wider range of offenses tough on crime policies little provision has been made for when they get out roughly 8% of the working age population. of those recently released, nearly 2/3 will be charged with new crimes and over 40% will return to prison within 3 years. incarceration is associated with limited future employment opportunities and earning potential, which themselves are among the strongest predictors of recidivism particular consequential for blacks. the incarceration rate for young black men in the year 2000 was nearly 10% compared to just over 1% for white men young black men today have a 28% likelihood of incarceration above 50% among young black high school dropouts the objective of this study is to assess whether the effect of a criminal record differs for black and white applicants Rates of incarceration also important to consider possible racial differences in the effects of incarceration on one hand, there is reason to believe that the signal of a criminal record should be less consequential for blacks if in the case that employers view all blacks as potential criminals, they are more likely to differentiate less among those with official criminal records than those without. the outcomes for ALL blacks should be worse, with less differentiation between those with a criminal record and those without ON THE OTHER HAND, the effect of a criminal record is actually worse for blacks, because employers, already wary of blacks, are more hesitant when it comes to taking risks on blacks with proven criminal tendencies. Discrimination, when combined with knowledge of criminal history: negative attributions will intensify Study Design: study involves the use of 4 male auditors (called testers): 2 blacks and 2 whites. 23 year old college students from milwaukee who were matched on the basis of physical appearance and self presentation experiment in milwaukee and then repeated in NY Within each term, one auditor was randomly assigned a criminal record for the first week, the pair then rotated Unobserved difference within the pairs of applicants were effectively controlled. No significant differences were found job openings for entry level positions. randomly assigned 15 job openings each week. the white pair and black pair were assigned separate sets of jobs, with the same race testers applying to the same jobs. Total of 350 employers Important variables included the type of occupation, metropolitan status, wage, size of establishment, and race and sex of employer testers wrote narratives describing the overall interaction and any comments made by employers, specifically related to race or criminal records Tester profiles: In the present study, the criminal record consisted of a FELONY DRUG CONVICTION Drug crime (as opposed to a violent or property crime) was chosen because of its prevalence, its policy salience, and its connection to racial disparities in incarceration!!! It is important to acknowledge that the effects reported here may differ depending on the type of offense. Effect of Criminal Record for whites: White: non stigmatized group 34% of whites without criminal records received callbacks, relative to only 17% of whites WITH criminal records. A criminal record thereby reduces the likelihood of callback by 50%. employers seem to use the info as a screening mechanism as we can see here, in 50% of cases, employers were unwilling to consider equally qualified applicants on the basis of their criminal record Some employers who seemed to prefer workers who had been recently released from prison Because they tend to be more motivated and willing to do dirty work A criminal record is thus not an obstacle in all cases, but on average, as we see above, it reduces employment opportunities substantially The Effect of Race: Effect of race in these findings in strikingly large. Among blacks without criminal records, only 14% received callbacks, relative to 34% of white noncriminals. In fact, even whites with criminal records (17%) received favorable treatment to blacks WITHOUT criminal records (14%). Race continues to play a dominant role in shaping employment opportunities, equal to or greater than the impact of a criminal record. White without, then white with, then black without, then black with Very little has changed in the reaction of employers to minority applicants Racial Differences in the effects of a criminal record: Degree to which the effect of a criminal record differs depending on the race of the applicant Effect of a criminal record appears more pronounced fro blacks than it is for whites Employers, already reluctant to hire blacks, appear even more wary of blacks with proven criminal involvment Despite the fact that these testers were bright college students with good self presentation, the cursory review of entry level applicants leaves little room for these qualities to be noticed. Instead, the employment barriers of minority status and criminal record are compounded, intensifying the stigma toward this group The salience of employers' sensitivity toward criminal involvement among blacks was highlighted. Ex. black testers were asked in person whether they had a prior criminal history. None of the white testers were asked this in person. Discussion: Criminal record as a mechanism produces employment disparities The finding that ex offenders are only one half to a third as likely as non offenders to be considered by employers suggests that a criminal record indeed presents major barrier to employment. With over 2 million people behind bars and over 12 million people with prior felony convictions Blacks are less than half as likely to receive consideration by employers Public opinion seems largely misinformed. Just over 1/4 of whites believes there to be a lot of discrimination against blacks, compared to nearly 2/3 of black respondents. When we combine the effects of race and criminal record, the problem grows more intense. Previous estimates of the aggregate consequences of incarceration may underestimate the impact of racial disparities Employment is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not they go back to crime Criminal record severely limits employment opportunities (particularly among blacks), suggests that these individuals are left with few visible alternatives. so they return to crime Future research is needed to expand this emphasis to other mechanisms (the transformative effects of prison on human and social capital), as well as to include other social domains affected by incarceration (ex. housing, family formation, political participation, etc). in this way, we can move toward a more complete understanding of the collateral consequences of incarceration for social inequality Whether this process of negative credentialing will continue to form the basis of emerging social cleavages remains to be seen

Marital Rape:

Marital rape: common law: a man could not be guilty of raping his wife law not either narrowed or eliminated in all 50 states until 1993

The Asymmetric Society Two Kinds of Persons Natural and Corporate

James S. Coleman

Nov 5: Morality

Morality: Morality: Definition and response to right and wrong Here we find crime, deviance, punishment, law, conflict Universal: No society or large group has ever existed without standards of morality So morality is a universal feature of social life Variable: But morality is also a variable feature of social life What counts as right and wrong differs across time and place (context) ex. Tribe in South America: gives a hallucinogen drug to a baby. Here, not seen as moral. Morality is socially relative (varies across time and place. Context matters)!! Relative Morality: Our society persecuted homosexuals for a long time. Now gays can marry What is deviant/normal depends on context Ireland: first to legalize gay marriage Context: Rosenhan: 8 researchers admitted themselves to 12 psychiatric hospitals, claiming to hear voices. Labeled as mentally ill: schizophrenia. From then on, they acted normally. Rosenhan: The doctors and nurses continued to view them as mentally ill Interpreted any behavior and personal history of "patients" as "confirming the diagnoses" It was at least a week before any patients were released. One patient more than 7 weeks: 52 days. All released were said to be in remission (not cured). Oops: turns out, Rosenhan's study might not have been accurate Despite this, psychiatric lesson is valid: Mental illness is hard to diagnose, and often inaccurate, and yet we still use the diagnosis! 2 Main Sociological lessons of the study are also valid: 1. Context Matters: acting NORMALLY in an ABNORMAL SETTING may be TREATED AS ABNORMALITY. Context: Singing in the shower - go for it. Vs: Singing in the classroom (huh?) Taking off clothes in bedroom - fine Taking off clothes in public - no 2. Labels - Deviant Labels are Sticky Unofficial labels - ex - child labeled difficult in school will find that hard to shake off Formal labels: even MORE STICKY. ex. criminal justice system! Labeling Theory of Crime: Once labeled, you are more likely to commit further crimes Ex. Devah Pager - harder to get a job with a criminal record. If you can't get a job, you are more likely to turn to crime again. Criminal labels are therefore especially sticky Some are stickier than others. Ex. Sex offender - very sticky. Speaking of Crime: Crime is of great interest to people News, detective novels, TV series, movies, etc Sociologists study crime scientifically Sociology of Crime: 2 main issues: 1. Patterns of Criminal Behavior - who, what, when, where, etc. 2. Explaining WHY those patterns occur - theory. -Today, we talk about one aspect of crime patterns: crime over time -Most people believe crime is on the rise. -Is it? NO!! Crime Stats: 2 Main Types: 1. Crimes reported to police: Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) But not all crimes are reported to police. Ex. Victims are guilty, embarrassed, threatened, want to protect the criminal (ex. domestic violence). 2. Surveys of Victims - National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): conducted by Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) NCVS undercounts crime as well, because victims won't always report on a survey either. Still, a big improvement. This one doesn't undercount crime as much! Both sets of stats (1 and 2) are good for looking at TRENDS! Each uses the same methodology every year, so they are useful for looking at crime patterns over time. They both undercount crime, but they undercount it the same way every year, so consistent! Number vs Rate: Crime stats reported as either number of crimes, or (better): Rate of Crime: number of crimes per person FBI reports rate per 100,000 people (# of crimes/total pop) x 100,000 BJS reports per 1,000 people/households Crime Rates rise 1960-1991. Since then, a decrease. Small upward tick/motion recently, but still, overall, a decrease. Recent years: 2014: homicide rate reached a low of 4.5 per 100,000. (1980-1990 had been about 10). Increases 2015-2018 to 5.0. Just a small uptick. Even 5.0 is very low. Only slightly higher than the 1960s rate. Without the drop: If 1980 homicide rate had continued to today, we would have had an additional 300,000 people killed (3 Sanford Stadiums and then some). By contrast, only 66,000 US soldiers have been killed since the Vietnam war. Intimate Partners: Male on Female killing: (declined): 1976: 1.4 per 100,000 Now: 0.8 per 100,000 Female on Male killings declined even more: 1976: 1.2 per 100,000. (almost as much as male on female). Now: 0.2 per 100,000. Non Fatal Domestic Violence: Also reached a peak in 1990, and has gone down a lot since then. Since 2014, a slight uptick, but overall, trend is down. Sexual Violence: Rape and sexual assault, 1995 NCVS rate: 5.0 per 1,000 females aged 12 or over. 2014 rate: 1.1 per 1,000 2018 rate: 2.7 per 1,000 Peaked in 1990, then went down a lot. Small uptick since 2014, but overall, trend is down. NCVS says: A 46% decline overall FBI says rape: 30% decline These are different rates Why the difference? Why did the NCVS rate decline much more than the UCR rate? These days, more rapes are being reported to the police. So, they don't see as much of a decline. UCR data supports this (up to the year 2000): UCR 1973-2000: % of rapes reported to police rose from 50% to 60% College Sexual Assault: Rape on campus remains a reality But the current awareness campaign is flowing with the tide of history Rape on campus peaked around 1990, and has gone down since then. (Nonstudent rape is higher than student rape, surprisingly) Why the crime decline? Reasons include: Greater gender equality Growth in income Maturation of drug markets. Drug gang wars have declined since 1990. Drug gangs collaborate with each other and stay in their own territory. More focused policing More incarceration (which continued to go up AFTER crime started going down. incarceration continued going up until 2010). Good News: Crime drop is surely good news Yes, many crimes remain But millions of people have been spared victimization Good news is not as newsworthy as bad news, so we do not pay as much attention to this or see it on the news as much. Crime has gone down since 1990, but people think the opposite: that it is still going up. The fact that people think the opposite: points to a paradox. Paradox: Cooney and Burt: as deviance goes down, social control often goes up. Harsher punishments and more news stories+research The amount of attention given to crime is the INVERSE of how frequently it is committed. So maybe when something is being given a lot of attention on the news, this is a good thing, because it means that the frequency of this crime is actually going down! When attention is high, crime is low. Summary: Deviant labels tend to stick to people Can greatly affect how others treat you Crime rates have dropped sharply since 1990 Even with a small uptick in the last few years, you are much less likely to be a victim of a crime

Nov 19: Sexual Collective Morality: Honor Killings

Morality: varies across time, space, context Saudi Arabia: homosexuality a capital crime. US: gays can marry 19th century America: parents who didn't spank children would be considered neglectful. Today, spanking is child abuse. Relative: Middle ages: Europeans executed for religious heresy Now, you can leave or join any religion or have no religion Context: We say, "though shall not kill," yet we make war an exception etc. What is "Deviant?" What is considered deviant/immoral varies across time, space, context Ex: Sexual Morality: Can vary from one time period to another and one society to another Prudishness vs Permissiveness (or constraint vs choice) Ex. Compare "I love lucy" to "game of thrones" or compare attitudes to pre-marital sex!! Why? Why have we gone from constraint to choice in many matters of sex? Contraception? (Condoms being invented) Yes, but not the whole answer Some pre industrial tribes have sexual choice but no contraception One important factor - GENDER EQUALITY!!! Domestic Authority: Coleman emphasized one aspect of gender equality - domestic authority Where women rule their households (greater gender equality), they are freer to do what they wish (sexual choice). More equality: More permissiveness Opposite of equality is patriarchy Patriarchy: The rule of man when men rule, they control women and children especially women's sexuality double standard: women's sexuality is constrained, men's sexuality is not sexual norms become conservative patriarchy is prudish Brooks: To see this, look at the places where, though there are individual exceptions, women are highly subordinate - such as many predominantly Muslim countries, especially in rural areas! Men rule the family Women have little choice in marriage/divorce Women veiled and secluded. Can't talk to men outside the family. Clitodirectomy, in some places All this gives rise to very strict penalties for sex before/outside marriage. Technically, penalties for men, too, but much stricter enforcement for women. Family Honor Killing: Women, and sometimes men, killed by the family for ruining the family's reputation (honor) through sex before/outside marriage. Or for not complying with family wishes (ex. eloping with someone else). Honor is very important in these societies NOT CONFINED TO MUSLIMS, but practiced mainly in majority muslim countries - from Moroco to Bangladesh And among their emigrants in Western countries Rural Pakistan: most common. Palestine: most documented (because of Israeli soldiers) Usually carried out by more than 1 person in the family. Planned ahead of time. Killings usually planned by the family, and carried out by brothers, fathers, cousins. Mothers and sisters also sometimes kill. Hence, different from Western domestic violence, where: Committed by husbands/boysfriends, not family Spur of the moment Not approved by society (whereas, in these majority muslim countries, honor killings are sometimes praised by society, although there is a movement against this) How many? UN: about 5,000 women killed annually. 100 a week. 12 a day. Honor killings: can happen to anyone (not only to the poor, etc), so it's hard to get data. True number is unknown. Victims often young: teenagers. Not always, though. What has she done wrong? Her family and then her husband control her sexuality: extreme patriarchy If she has sex, ACTUAL OR SUSPECTED, that shows that they cannot protect their property And reduces the family's honor The Solution: Lost honor can be regained Through a display of strength: killing what is most important to you The woman is killed more often than the man she had sex with/eloped with. The man is protected by his own kin, or can run away more easily. Morality: This is a system of morality A very strict and severe SEXUAL COLLECTIVE MORALITY Ex. the woman may be at fault even if she is raped The woman has done the one thing absolutely forbidden for her. And has ruined the family's good name in doing so. Honor is Real: some dismiss this as "so called honor." but in small, socially close communities, honor is the most valuable thing a family has. Reputation is important. Without it, people will not talk to, buy from, or marry into the family - pariahs. Ex. man in Turkey returns (his sister had slept with someone). his own cousins drove by and ignored him. The Dilemma: Nobody wants to kill their own daughter/sister But she has disobeyed the rules And the pressure on the family to kill is great! Tension between compassion vs aggression Legal Penalties: Traditionally, few, if any, legal penalties in predominately Muslim countries Countries are changing their legal rules to punish honor killings more severely Ex. Law changed in Pakistan, a few years ago after the death of social media star Kandil Balagh (she had dressed provocatively and been killed). Law against honor killings. Law against forgiving the killer. Western countries treat is as murder and punish it as such. Here, Law and police goes after the whole family, including minors (who are often chosen to kill because if they get caught, penalties aren't as bad for the kids). Higher levels of patriarchy: stricter rules and punishments for women sexuality collective morality: more honor killings But note (qualifications): 1. Degree of patriarchy varies across Muslim majority countries. (ex. Rural Afghanistan -high- vs Istanbul -lower- ) 2. Not all honor violations result in killing Women may be warned, sent off to relatives, married off, etc. If family has choice other than killing her (last resort), they take it. If she has high status support within the family, she is more likely to be spared. Also, if she has support from a human rights group, more likely to be spared. 2 Moralities: (collective and individual) Honor killing is an example of collective morality The individual is less important than the group (family) Collective morality is giving way to individual morality (Frank et al)!!!!! Social Movement: Opposition to honor killings is therefore growing More shelters, pressure groups, training for social workers and police officers, etc. But westerners have to be careful not to be seen to be imposing their values. Ex. Countries w honor killings might be okay with honor killings if it means having Western values, not those "bad western ones." More information: If you want to know more about honor violence, read "Execution by Family: a theory of Honor Violence" 2019 Mark Cooney. Sex and Gender: The gender inequality - sex link provides a good window into gender relations. But to fully understand gender, we need to analyze it in terms of the other dimensions of social life too: Economy Relationally Culture Organization The Sociology of Gender Conclusion: Sexual morality is relative to time and place and context Sometimes free and open, sometimes tightly controlled FAMILY HONOR KILLING is a STRICT AND SEVERE system of SEXUAL COLLECTIVE MORALITY Found in many countries of the world But is facing increasingly strong opposition Job of Sociologist: to understand, not to moralize/demoralize

Popular Justice

Non-legal conflict management (most cases are being handled this way, and this is increasing) -tolerating -avoiding -negotiating -fighting

Points from session w/ Alexa:

Olympics: "The great world agreement." 1. Countries do not all have the same individualistic sex laws, but they are much more similar now than they were before 1945! 2. Even though the written law changed, it is unclear if legal practice changed. -Still, at least now countries want to be seen as forward thinking and individualistic. As socio-economic differences begin to disappear, the notion of "race" is questioned!!! That's why ethnicity is a better term. Refers to cultural differences, not biological. racial categories (%) changing: ex. whites might become a minority later on racial classifications (like names) reflect socio economic standings of groups CA Qualifications: CA does not guarantee long term success. (After all, there are still one hit wonders). CA does not mean that talent and hard work do not matter. They do! BUT, there are lots of talented, hardworking people...

LikeWar The Weaponization of Social Media

PW Singer and Emerson T Brooking

Oct 22: Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice: Attitudes Discrimination: Actions Today we talk about the most controversial subject in USA: race Research: what sociologists bring to the table Race Categories: Racial clarifications: who belongs in which category, varies across space and time! ex. South Africa: they slice up ethnic groups in different ways ex. USA: census in 1700s just classified: whites and slaves. Census now has white, black, hispanic, asian, many more. Social Construction: Sociologists often say race is "social construction:" thought up by people But that could imply that we created racial categories out of nothing. I think it is more accurate to say race is a "social reflection." Racial categories REFLECT strong socio-economic differences between cultural groups (ex. Black-White, Irish-Anglos in 19th century) -Ex. Americans and British hated the Irish when they weren't doing well socioeconomically. When the socioeconomic difference began to disappear, the notion of "race" is questioned. As the Irish prospered, they "became white." Ethnicity: "Ethnicity" is a better term. Refers to culturally distinct groups and does not imply any biological differences. However, it is a term less often used. US Census Categories (uses both race and ethnicity): Ethnicity example: Hispanic/Latino or not Hispanic/Latino Race: White, black, asian, american indian, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander As we've seen, these categories and names have changed a lot over time ex. "Black," "Negro," "African Americans" have been used at different times in the Census (and among public) White-Nonwhite: Traditionally, a very clear racial hierarchy in US, especially south. Whites the dominant group: everyone else inferior, especially blacks. Much discrimination against minorities, especially blacks (Jim Crow segregation laws). Old Classification: White Nonwhite (African America, Asian, Hispanic, etc) Prejudice (Attitudes): Has gone down Since Civil Rights Era, a decline in negative attitudes toward minorities. Decline in prejudice!! Ex. Racial intermarriage B-W marriage was still illegal in 16 states until 1967 Now, has become much more acceptable % of people who oppose marriage with other races (especially marriage with blacks) has gone down dramatically! Discrimination (Actions): Remain a reality (ex. white vs black job opportunities) But has discriminatory behavior disappeared? How could we know for sure? Perhaps majorities fail to see it when it exists, or Minorities see it when it does not exist. People are not necessarily the most valid sources of information about themselves Self reports are evidence, but not conclusive evidence Experiment: Racial discrimination is best measured with experiment Experiment holds everything else constant, allowing the effect of race alone to be analyzed Most social experiments done in the lab (easy to control variables) But the lab is artificial setting Field Experiments: Done in the real world Harder for researcher to control everything, but more realistic than the lab Pager: field experimentation effect of a criminal record on job prospects for black and white men. Does this in Milwaukee, replicates in NY, it is true there too. Those with criminal records received fewer call backs. So too did black applicants. Most to least calls back: white no rec, white rec, black no rec, black rec Disadvantage of being black is about the same (maybe even a little bit more of a disadvantage) as disadvantage of criminal record! Other Field Experiments: Blacks often experience discrimination in: Housing (renting and buying) Obtaining credit (ex. mortgages) Consumer transactions (ex. longer waiting, higher prices) Trends: Until 1965, immigration largely confined to European whites Thereafter, America became much more multiracial Mexico, China, and India provide the largest number of immigrants today Blacks (13%) no longer the largest minority Hispanics (17%) are! And growing fast! Asians (6%) are increasingly rapidly too Non Hispanic Whites: 1960: 85%. Today: 61%. By 2043: expected to be less than 50%. Racial Intermarriage: Increasing And 3% of people now classify themselves as multi racial, especially Hispanics and Asians Racial Intermarriage % is higher for younger people. High intermarriage among young people will breed many multi racial kids in next generation. 2 Possible Directions for the future: 1. Because of immigration and intermarriage (which causes multi racial people), racial and ethnic distinctions become increasingly blurred and indistinct. Multi racialism. 2. A new divide emerges. Not whites vs nonwhites, but... Black vs. Nonblack Whites, Hispanics, Asians, etc blend together, and all move up (socio-economically), leaving behind blacks. Race and Ethnicity: Whether option 1 or 2 prevails will likely depend on the economic and social fortunes of blacks Black middle class has expanded. Black education attainment has increased. But there is also evidence that blacks are being left behind. Ex. Houshold income. All racial groups have gone up, but white has gone up much more, black has only gone up a little. Asians are at the top. Whites are next. Hispanics and blacks about the same (blacks are only a tiny bit ahead). Blacks should be way ahead of Hispanic immigrants (because they are immigrants, and don't have a large income), but they aren't! Gap between white and black is greater now. Gap has widened. With black middle class rise, their wealth should be going up. But it isn't. Race and Ethnicity: Protests in the African American community can be seen as a cry of pain! They know they are being left behind! Summary: Racial prejudice has declined But racial discrimination remains a reality Racial categories vary across time and place US Racial categories continue to change Racial classifications tend to reflect socio economic standing (ex. prospering Irish begin to be perceived as white) The future of racial categories (ex. it used to be whites vs nonwhites. in future, races/ethnicities may blend together, OR it may be blacks vs nonblacks) will largely depend on the socio economic fortunes of different groups.

why the crime decline?

Reasons include:Greater gender equalityGrowth in incomeMaturation of drug markets. Drug gang wars have declined since 1990. Drug gangs collaborate with each other and stay in their own territory.More focused policingMore incarceration (which continued to go up AFTER crime started going down. incarceration continued going up until 2010).

Part of the Delegation/Devolution Movement is moving away from law (toward mediation/negotiation), and also...

Reducing the power of Criminal Justice Laws.

Cooney found that this study might not have been accurate:

Rosenhan

William J. Chambliss: The Saints and the Roughnecks

Saints: went to a pool hall on one side of town or cafe on the other drinking heavily, driving drunk, vandalism, pranks teachers saw no problem, thought they'd make something of themselves local police saw them as good boys polite, always pled for mercy Roughnecks: theft and violence everyone agreed that the not well dressed, not well mannered boys were heading for trouble constantly involved w/ police. mainly engaged in 3 types of delinquency: theft, fighting, drinkingcommunity thought drinking and fighting were the primary things. mistakenly didn't think the theft was that common. it was more serious than anyone realizedtheft for profit, not thrills over the period that the group was under observation, each member arrested at least once Visibility:one gang was infinitely more visible than the other Demeanor:sants apologetic to policeroughnecks were hostile to police Bias:visibility, demeanor, and bias are surface variables which explain the day to day operations of the police Adult Careers of Saints and Roughnecks:Community underestimated degree to which these youngsters would turn out "good" or "bad". these 2 groups had very different futures Reinforcement:the community responded to roughnecks as boys in trouble, and the boys agreed with thatpattern of deviancy was reinforced Selective perception and labelling means that visible, poor, nonmobile, outspoken kids will be noticed (IN A BAD WAY), whether their actions are delinquent or not!!!!!! kids like saints will be invisible in this way 6. Social "Problems" (a relative term). In Industrial societies, increasing inequality breeds a host of behaviors normally defined as "problems." -The Roughnecks were negatively reinforced by society (due to inequality and bias), caused them to continue being deviant. 7. Attention: Social Superiority (high status) attracts favorable attention. Social inferiority attracts unfavorable or no attention. 8. Social Control: Social inferiority (low status) attracts PUNISHMENT AND EXCLUSION.

The Matthew Effect

Same as Cumulative Advantage (CA) The Rich get richer CA: Small initial differences in success can get translated into large long term differences.

Sigheh

Shiites do it, because they think Muhammad approved Mostly poor women Sigheh, agreed between a man and woman sanctioned by a cleric, can last as little as a few minutes or as long as 99 years. Usually, the man pays the woman an agreed sum of money in exchange for a temporary marriage. The usual motive is sex. The transaction differs from prostitution in that the couple have to go before a cleric to record their contract Otherwise, sigheh has few of the responsibilities of marriage

Organizational status

Someone's status within an organization. (ex. police receive special treatment - leniency, when they kill citizens- because they have status as agents of the state)

Thomas Hobbes

Tendency to exaggerate the importance of law is old Ex. Thomas Hobbes: leviathan (1651): "In the absence of law, life is nasty, brutish, and short. The state is essential to maintain order." Without Law: Hobbes was wrong! Some pre state societies were highly peaceful, without law Even those that were violent were not violent all the time - they were largely orderly But suppose we took law away today? Would society be much more violent? Or would peace eventually emerge?

Nov 21: The Online World

The Online World: So much of our social interaction today has moved to be online Internet has the ability to bring us together To inform, educate, save lives, etc. Sometimes altruistic/benign: ex. girl getting emotional support for wearing glasses. But it can also drive us apart - through conflict Modern Conflict: Conflict: clash of right and wrong part and parcel of being human People have always had conflicts But today's conflicts increasingly occur online Much of the content online seems to consist of conflict People complaining, arguing, outing, blocking, deplatforming, etc. Online Conflict: Involves individuals, groups, and states in various combinations Most online conflicts are insignificant - die quickly But some are more consequential - we'll focus on these These have 3 striking features 1. Severe Online conflicts often involve a lot of hostility More so than offline conflicts 2. Shaming They can involve people being deeply humiliated, shamed Anybody can suffer loss of reputation Ex. woman puts "glee spoiler on twitter," gets hate 3. Outsiders They often draw in outsiders A lot of online activity consists of trying to attract outsiders to one's cause Ex. Terrorism Terrorists: Terrorists are using social media to publicize their activities and attackes Ex. March 2019: gunman kills 51 and injures 49 people at 2 mosques during Friday prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand. A white supremesist. Livestreamed the first 17 minutes of attack. Jihadist terrorists have become adapt/skilled at using social media. ISIS online presence scared Iraqi army and police into deserting Mosul (second largest city in iraq) - huge victory for ISIS ISIS: ISIS and its followers opened a huge # of Facebook, Twitter, etc accounts. Most prominent: twitter At the peak, they had 70,000 twitter accounts Operated by professional media people, fanboys, sock puppets (people pretending to be someone else), and bots. Also uploaded high quality videos of beheadings and other extremely violent acts ALL THIS DESIGNED TO ATTRACT SUPPORTERS IT WORKED! By dec 2015, 30,000 fighters from at least 85,000 countries had joined ISIS alone. (who knows how many people joined other groups) The Structure of the Online World: online conflict is often nasty Can spread around the world Can ruin people's reputations These things are a product of the social structure of the internet The online world is a new kind of community. It is a.... Global Village: Concept coined in 60s by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) Visionary 20th century Canadian thinker who predicted the internet Our global village is not a physical village But an electronic village A world where people are physically dispersed, but electronically available to one another An e-village "Global:" The online world has spread to every country!! Not everybody is yet online But more and more people are going online Over half of the world pop is now online 4.1 out of 7.7 billion people in the world!!!!! "Village:" The online world is a village in that EVERYBODY IS AVAILABLE TO EVERYBODY ELSE We all have our own online networks. In this way, the internet is CLUMPY. You're more likely to talk to some people than others. YET, all networks are ultimately all connected Messages can become viral/public and reach people far, far away, in other countries and continents Information: Given the village-like nature of the internet... 1. The MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE ON THE INTERNET IS INFORMATION (just like people exchanging information in a village) -Sometimes, information is abstract (ex. info on how to fix a TV) But mostly, especially, information about OURSELVES AND OTHERS SOCIAL INFORMATION 2. Social Information moves freely across the internet Hence, all information can become PUBLIC - any text, photo, post, etc. Has the POTENTIAL to become public. Public: Because it takes place in a village, you can never be sure your online conversation is private Might be reposted to millions of strangers Great potential for misunderstanding (being misunderstood, especially by strangers). Ex. comments that are jokes, seen as offensive. friends making fun of each other comes across as hostility. Reputation: People's reputations have once again become important!! Reps very important in small-scale communities (ex. small towns) not so much in anonymous communities (ex. cities) By giving strangers potential access to one another, the internet has made reputations important even among those who will never lay eyes on one another Because with a bad rep, anyone could find the whole world against them Sanctions (punishments/effects): We can respond to online conflict through... Toleration Avoidance Negotiation Settlement (asking an expert for an opinion) Agression -phsyical aggression is rare (but does happen. ex. singer and brooks: gangs online - disputes and wallbanging causes people to get drilled in real life). -REPUTATIONAL AGRESSION IS VERY COMMON!! When people have serious conflicts online, they typically seek to punish one another by targeting reputations. The parties and their supporters try to undermine or even destroy the reputation of the other side. But (Qualifications): There are differences between physical and virtual interaction Virtual: much easier to ignore people you don't like, and only get the info you like (preference bubble) Algorithms then feed you more of what you like (filter bubble). Polarization. Social Distance: Also, virtual interaction can never be as close (intimate) as face to face Physical interaction - you get the whole person, not just name or image Non face to face contact: MEANS MORE SEVERITY! -People say horrible things to each other without feeling guilty, like they would in face to face interaction. Not constrained by norms of politeness. One theory: Anonymity (being cruel because anonymous): not valid, because you are not anonymous online. Also, in face to face anonymous situations (ex time square), people are still polite. One valid reason: when people aren't looking each other in the eye, they don't feel guilty about being rude. The somewhat greater social distance of the parties (not close/intimate) in electronic interaction attracts more aggressive responses to conflict -People online are often strangers (great social distance, and not having intimate face to face interatction), they are easily agressive So online conflict often very bitter and nasty - racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc This is AUGMENTED BY LIMITED CONTACT WITH OTHER BELIEFS Global Effects: Recall that the online world is global. EVERYBODY on the internet is ultimately available to everybody else. Information flows across the global internet. People can learn about conflicts happening far away. Partisinship: people can join the conflicts of others Providing support and/or opposition to the other side Although most conflicts die out quickly, some spread like wildfire. quickly and fiercly Can result in online wars between rival groups. Ex. Russia - Ukraine online wars when Russia invaded Ukraine 2014. Unfair fights: but some online conflicts involve groups piling on an individual Online mobs can form quickly ex. cyberbullying public shaming Tim Hunt: 72 year old british scientist, Nobel laureate (prize winner) at a scientific conference in china, made a joke about a woman in science 2 people tweeted the remark went viral/public. he was accused of mysogeny although some senior women scientists stood up for him, the vast majority of people treated him as a sexist Forced to resign by his university and from several prestigious posts Regardless of what you think about his remarks, his reputation (built up over a lifetime of good work that included supporting women scientists) was in tatters - an overnight pariah "I am ruined." When? What befell Tim Hunt and others is rare But it can happen to anybody. If it happened to nobel prize winner, it can happen to anyone. So be careful online. We don't yet understand when a public shaming is more likely to happen! An important issue for the sociology of morality Conclusion: Internet has its own distinctive social structure: That of a global village A VILLAGE THAT CONNECTS PEOPLE INFORMATIONALLY, DESPITE PHYSICAL DISTANCE Conflicts therefore tend to be quite hostile Even though most die out quick, conflicts can spread quickly and widely And target the reputation of the other side, while defending one's own To lose an online war is to suffer devastating loss of reputation

Carnal Intercourse:

The old ways Possibility of conception of a human being Vaginal, non-contraception Sex as procreation Which eventually gave way to sex as recreation! For individual pleasure More individual rights More acceptable forms (ex. homosexuality, porn)... AS LONG AS IT'S CONSENTUAL. Consent: emerged as cardinal rule of sexual reforms. sex crimes reclassified from offenses against morality, the family, honor. TO offenses against liberty, self determinations, or physical integrity, emphasizing individualization in catalyzing global sex law reforms.Individualization strengthened global support for laws protecting individuals.

Dec 3: Course Overview and 10 Points

This course: An introduction to Sociology We've touched on many areas of social life But covered none in depth, by design Science: My main objective: to introduce you to sociological thinking: to the scientific, data driven analysis of social behavior "Scientific" does not mean objective. Does not mean the absence of bias. No science is completely objective. But, it means confining oneself to the facts. If others disagree, let them prove it with research! Different: One thing that is different about THIS Intro Sociology Course: Too often Sociology is parochial (limited, narrow scope) WE have used a BROAD historical and comparative emphasis We understand our society today much better if we can compare it to other times and places (globally, all over the world) Human Societies: So, we began by looking at the major types of human societies: HG, Agricultural, Industrial Saw enormous changes from one to another Wound up by speculating about the future Ex. AI (Artificial Intelligence): positives and negatives Biotechnology (positive: can extend life, individual treatment. negative: challenges of genetic treatment). Perhaps I painted too pessimistic a portrait. If so, consider this. The 2010s: In some ways, it was the best decade ever: wealth, poverty more than halved, child mortality rate reduced, life expectancy increased, decreased laws criminalizing same sex acts, increased laws protecting women from violent partners, global death rate from pollution declines, deaths from climate related disasters declines, consumption rate declining, share who live in "not free" countries declined Course Take-Away: 10 Propositions that summarize much (but not all) of what we have discussed this semester. 5 Propositions about the evolution of societies. 5 Propositions about Social Behavior. Propositions: Testable Statements!!!!!!!!! May be proved right/wrong in the future. Social Evolution: One proposition for each dimension of social life (economy, relationally, morality, organization, culture). These propositions cover major trend in human history, from HG to present. Propositions (Social Evolution) Economy: 1a: Wealth Increased slowly through the agrarian era. In the Industrial era, it EXPLODED. 1b: Inequality of wealth was low, then went up in agrarian, then went down in industrial, then in the US, has grown again and is still going up! Relationality: 2. Human social networks have grown from a multitude of small isolated islands to a single global mass, with 6 degrees of connectedness/separation, and 3 degrees of contagion. ex. Region access. Relationships are global, not local now. People can communicate with/affect/go to regions all around the world. Culture: 3: Local cultures have declined. Global culture (INCREASINGLY INDIVIDUALISTIC) continues to grow. Organization: 4: Although we exalt (praise) the individual culturally, organizations (both state and non state) have increased greatly in number and size, and are now the dominant social actors. Morality: 5: The frequency of punishment was low in HG, increased in agrarian, declined in industrial, and in the US, has increased again (until 2010, and is now declining). Social Behavior: Our behavior is strongly influenced by our social environment. (Ex. Watts- Which songs we like). In particular, by social status AND social closeness Social Status: Wealth + Organization + Membership in Majorities + Education + Good Reputation Social Closeness: Intimacy (involvement in life of another) + Same Culture Propositions (Social Behavior and Status) 6. Social "Problems" (a relative term). In Industrial societies, increasing inequality breeds a host of behaviors normally defined as "problems." ! William J Chambliss: "The Saints and the Roughnecks." ! Sara McLanahan and Dona Schwartz: "Life Without Father: What Happens to the Children?" 7. Attention: Social Superiority (high status) attracts favorable attention. Social inferiority attracts unfavorable or no attention. ! Robert D Putnam: "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis." ! Barbara Ehreinreich: "Nickel and Dimed." ! Annette Laurea: "Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families." ! William J Chambliss: "The Saints and the Roughnecks." ! Sara McLanahan and Dona Schwartz: "Life Without Father: What Happens to the Children?" 8. Social Control: Social inferiority (low status) attracts PUNISHMENT AND EXCLUSION. Robert D. Putnam. "Our Kids." Barbara Ehreinreich: "Nickel and Dimed." ! William J Chambliss: "The Saints and the Roughnecks." ! Western and Petit: "Beyond Crime and Punishment." ! Phelan et al: Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities Possibly...Jonathan Fetter-Vorm comic on Professor Richard La-Piere study: "Attitudes vs. Actions"... but this is more about racial prejudice and discrimination than it is about actual low status 9: Communication: Social closeness causes insider codes of expression. ! Peggy Giordano: The Wider Circle of Friends (yearbooks) ! Albert Bergesen (talks about music): expands on work of Basil Bernstein (socio-linguist sociologist, talks about language): who expands upon work of Emile Durkheim, a French founder sociologist: "Spirituals, Jazz, Blues, and Soul Music: The Role of Elaborated and Restricted Codes in Maintenance of Social Solidarity." 10: Consensus: Social Closeness causes similarity of thought. ! Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing: The Economist: "Political Segregation: The Big Sort" ! Rodney Stark and Roger Finke and John Lofland: "Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion: Religious Choices: Conversion and Reaffiliation" ! Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhDJames H. Fowler, PhD: "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and how they shape our lives." Be able to summarize the main points of the readings that prove prop 6-10, and connect them to the propositions. We are all profoundly shaped by the society in which we live, and by our social status within that society, and by our social closeness and distance to and from others. Pure individuals do not exist. "No man is an island." (Donne, 1624). We are all affected by others, and by society.

Trends:

Trends:Until 1965, immigration largely confined to European whites. Thereafter, America became much more multiracialMexico, China, and India provide the largest number of immigrants todayBlacks (13%) no longer the largest minorityHispanics (17%) are! And growing fast!Asians (6%) are increasingly rapidly tooNon Hispanic Whites: 1960: 85%. Today: 61%. By 2043: expected to be less than 50%.Racial Intermarriage:IncreasingAnd 3% of people now classify themselves as multi racial, especially Hispanics and AsiansRacial Intermarriage % is higher for younger people. High intermarriage among young people will breed many multi racial kids in next generation.

Organizations are very efficient, especially compared to the gov! But they only care about one thing: profit. and they will exploit people and environment to get it.

True

How many honor killings?

UN: about 5,000 women killed annually. 100 a week. 12 a day. Honor killings: can happen to anyone (not only to the poor, etc), so it's hard to get data. True number is unknown!!!!!! Victims often young: teenagers. And often poor. Not always, though.

Because technology could augment us, or take away from our individualization... The future of Individualism is...

UNCLEAR

Who has the largest inequality AND the largest incarceration rate in the world?

US!!

Crime went up 1960-1991 (peak). Since then, an overall decrease. Just a small ______ recently (2015-2018), but still, overall, huge decrease. It very low now. Almost as low as it was in 1960.

Upward tick

Crime Trend

Went up and peaked 1970-1990. Has been going down since then. Small uptick recently, but still, overall, trend is down.

Qualifications for sex law reforms:

While most reforms in this domain increased the scope of legal protections for individuals, a MINORITY of reforms did not. Ex. some reforms lowered the age of consent, gives teenagers more rights to consent, but it PROTECTS these individuals less!

Oct 31: Organization: Types of State, and Police-Civilian Violence

Where we are On Tues, we looked at ghostly creature: organization Today, we look at how variation in org structure can radically affect how the org behaves toward others Org is the independent variable The State: we will look at that ghostly giant called the state Again, we can't touch or taste it But it affects us greatly Ex: Police Shootings: In news recently, a lot of anger about lack of criminal convictions for police who have shot civilians But leniency in such cases is not new And not confined to US Organizational Status: Leniancy: product of social status of parties In particular, organizational status Org status: the status that comes from belonging to a powerful organization, such as the state. Different from class, race, or gender (though these can also matter) States: Many types of state One simple classification of state structure in Cooney's chapter: 3 types 3 Types of State: 1. Democracies (rule by many) 2. Oligarchies (rue by few) 3. Autocracies (rule by one) -Centralization of power increases from 1 to 3 Organizational Superiority: As centralization increases, the status of officials over civilians (organization superiority - OS) increases Gap between the state and civilians increases So what? More OS means more power for state officials And fewer penalties if they offend against civilians 1. Democracies Moderate OS Despite the publicity, killing by police is statistically quite rare. Civilians kill other civilians at least 15 times more often than police kill civilians (though no exact stats). Benefit of the Doubt: Police are subject to internal review (review by their own department) But little or no criminal punishment results There is rarely even indictment from grand juries (who usually indict people very easily) The police say that their lives were in danger, and this gets them the benefit of the doubt Examples: Mike Brown: shot and killed while unarmed in Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014. Eric Garner died after police chokehold, NY, July 2014. Even after the police are charged, full conviction is unlikely. (ex. Oscar Grant, Sean Bell). Still, occasional murder convictions for cops. 2. Oligarchies Greater OS than democracies Many industrializing countries (ex. Brazil) Police often kill in large numbers And with premeditation (plan it ahead of time, execution style) Police often blatantly (openly) manipulate the law, by: Planting evidence to make kills justifiable (planting drugs, guns) Disposing of bodies and evidence Intimidating judges and juries Delaying trials Consequently, police are extremely difficult to convict Occasional exceptions if high status supporters (ex. human rights groups and the media) take up the case 3. Autocracies Autocratic state (ex. dictatorship) - vast OS and centrality State controls virtually everything State can kill huge numbers of people without any punishment Mao Tse Tung (chairman of china) (1949-76): 40 million + Joseph Stalin (1928-53): 20 million + Adolph Hitler (1933-45): 20 million North Korea (1948 - present): we don't know how many yet But upward killings unleash the most severe sanctions Ex. attempted assassination of Hitler Beyond Homicide: Getting away with murder is just one part of autocratic OS Other parts of Autocracy OS/Centrality: Torture and starvation Persecution/mistreatment of "enemies" (political enemies of the dictator, etc) No freedom of speech or religion Bribery and corruption Theft: Autocratic states also steal from their citizens on a massive scale Seize private property without compensation Ex. Collectivization of agriculture in Soviet Union 1930s: state seized the land and grain. Massive famine, 5-7 million deaths. War: We talked about internal violence (within states) Non democratic states also more violent EXTERNALLY - against other states Wars, 1816-1991, Worldwide: 353 pairs of nations engaged in war Non democracy vs Non democracy: 198 Democracy vs Non democracy: 155 Democracy vs Democracy: 0 Actual numbers depend on how you define "democracy." Ex. some might say american civil war was democracy vs democracy. But was the south (based on slavery) really a democracy, though? Democratic Peace Theory: democracies are hesitant to engage in war with other democracies. Several Reasons: Democratic leaders must answer to the people (including soldiers) We can vote them out, so the war had better be worth fighting (ex. have a repressive, non democratic enemy) Autocracies are simply more violent They fight more readily Ambivalence (mixed opinions): we saw that people are ambivalent about business corps Same is true of the state States can be a force for order, equality of opportunity, citizen enhancement, etc. But also a force for repression Very hard to do without a state today Having the right kind of state is therefore very important Democracy: Representative democracy is not perfect "Democracy is the worst form of gov except all the others that have been tried." One way democracy is different: individual citizen is better protected And if not, protest and change is more possible in a democracy Still, the wealthy and organizations have much more say than others! Technology: Could make our democracy more democratic Ex. Direct voting (more possible with technology) But, technology could make us less democratic Power for who control our information Ex. China's social credit system This will be a challenge in the future (ex. in china, it is coming next year!) If you do something good/bad, gov can bring your credit up/down, affecting whether you can get a train/bus ticket, etc. Conclusion: The state is a ghostly giant that can be structured in different ways A democratic structure provides a less violent state Both internally and externally! And grants more liberty to its citizens

Percentage of people who were called back for jobs (Pager):

White no record: 34% White w/ record: 17% Black no record: 14% Black with record: even less

Black Wisconsin Study

Wisconsin Study of Legal Disputes: Black: Wisconsin survey of Americans who had civil disputes worth at least $1,000 Lawyer contacted in only 10% of cases Lawyer filed suit in only 50% of those Only 10% of those went to trial So 1/2 of 1% of the disputes wound up at trial

COLEMAN

Wrote "The Asymmetric Society: Two Kinds of Persons" and the female status letter

Living Wages

minimum wages high enough to support a healthy life

Albert Bergesen (talks about music): expands on work of Basil Bernstein (socio-linguist sociologist, talks about language): who expands upon work of Emile Durkheim, a French founder sociologist Spirituals, Jazz, Blues, and Soul Music: The Role of Elaborated and Restricted Codes in Maintenance of Social Solidarity

restricted code: mechanical solidarity. high solidarity. ONLY THE PEOPLE IN THAT GROUP UNDERSTAND THE CODES IN THE MUSIC. elaborate code: organic solidarity. low solidarity. 3 diff periods:slavery: spirituals: high degree of group identity and cohesion. high solidarity next period: migration: jazz and blues: has lower solidarity, centers on mass migration of blacks from rural south to urban north. dissipation of cohesiveness!! last: civil rights movement: soul: increase in solidarity/cohesiveness/intimacy. collective violence, group consciousness, wanting to further collective goals. when one speaks or makes music in restricted code, one is contributing to the solidarity of the community, whether one is conscious of it or not. 9: Communication: Social closeness causes insider codes of expression.

Netizens:

"netizens" also rally against any perceived weaknesses by THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS, CONSTANTLY PUSHING THEIR LEADERS TO USE MILITARY FORCE.PEOPLE ARE USING INTERNET TO PUSH THE GOV TO USE THE MILITARY AND BE VIOLENT TO OTHER COUNTRIES!EVEN IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES, WAR HAS NEVER BEEN SO DEMOCRATIC!!!

Marshall McLuhan

(1911-1980)Visionary 20th century Canadian thinker who predicted the internet Our global village is not a physical village But an electronic village A world where people are physically dispersed, but electronically available to one another An e-village Coined the term: GLOBAL VILLAGE

Beyond Crime and Punishment Brice Western; Becky Pettit (Inequality causes punishment; punishment causes inequality)

, Changes in gov policy on crime and punishment have put many poor minority men behind bars, more than their arrest rates would indicate. the growth of the penal system has also obscured the extent of economic inequality and sowed the seeds for greater inequality in the future INEQUALITY CAUSES PUNISHMENT, AND PUNISHMENT CAUSES INEQUALITY Even during the economic boom of the 90s, more young black men who dropped out of school were in prison than on the job Released prisoners in 90s often unemployed In these 2 ways (high imprisonment among disadvantaged men, AND poor economic prospects for ex inmates), the penal system affects inequality in the American society. Inequality is disguised, because data on employment do not include the mostly poor men who are locked away behind bars. When we count prisoners among the unemployed, we find that racial inequality in employment and earnings is great!!!!!!! Penal system fuels inequality by reducing wages and employment prospects of released prisoners Deepens divisions of race and class For most of 20th century, imprisonment policies had little effect on social inequality Prison was reserved for only the most violent offenders Change in early 1970s when stricter law enforcement enlarged the prison population Expansion of the penal system 1920-1970: 1/10 of 1% of Americans we confined in prison. In 3 decades after 1970, increased sixfold. 7/10 of 1% of US are in prison today. Current incarceration rate is 5 times the historical average of the 1925-70 period, and 6 to 8 times the incarceration rates in western Europe. With the important exception of homicide, though, American lives of crime are similar to west Europe!! Black male high school dropouts are most disadvantaged: incarceration much higher than everyone else Incarceration rates doubled among working age men between 1980 and 1990 but increased threefold for high school dropouts in their 20s Figures for young black unskilled men are striking. 41% of all black male high school dropouts age 22-30 were in prison 1999. Although 9/10 inmates are male (92%), women represent the fastest growing segment of the inmate population. Female inmate population has grown more than 60% faster than the male inmate population. African American women have experienced the greatest increase. The risks of going to prison are about 3 times higher for high school dropouts!! At the end of the 90s, 14% of the white and 59% of black male high school dropouts in early 30s has prison records. Blacks are 8 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites Drug offenses aside (NOT INCLUDING THESE), about 3/4 of the racial disparity in imprisonment can be linked to racial differences in arrests and in criminal offending Crime rates are known to be highest among young, poorly educated men Young black male high school dropouts are overrepresented in prison, because they commit a much larger amount of crimes, and are arrested for them. BUT THIS IS NOT THE WHOLE STORY. Prison pop has grown steadily every year since 1974 (until 2010), but crime rates have fluctuated up and down with no clear trend. In fact, overall crime has gone down since 1990! But the number of people going to prison has tripled. Exceptional pattern of incarceration among drug offenders provides an important clue to the prison boom: Drug offenders account for a rapidly increasing share of the prison population. Beginning in 1970s, state and federal gov increased criminal penalties and intensified law enforcement in an attempt to reduce the supply of illegal narcotics War on Drugs While total state prison pop grew at about 8% annually, (1980-1996), the pop of drug offenders in state prisons grew twice as quickly! The penal system not only conceals inequality, it confers stigma (shameful label) on ex prisoners and reduces their readiness for the job market. Consequently, ex convicts often live at the margins of the labor market, precariously employed in low wage jobs. SO LOTS OF BLACK MALE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS GOING TO JAIL FOR DRUG CRIMES. (INEQUALITY CAUSES PUNISHMENT). WHEN THEY GOT OUT, LITTLE JOB OPPORTUNITY. MORE LIKELY TO TURN BACK TO CRIME. (PUNISHMENT CAUSES MORE INEQUALITY). It keeps going. Toughened punishment between 1980-1996. Average time served in state prison for murder increased from 5 to more than 10 years California 3 strike law mandates long sentences for second and third offenses. Once you commit your 3rd strike, you're going away for life! Why did the punitive turn in criminal justice policy affect young male dropouts so dramatically? Socially marginal (disadvantaged) men (black high school male dropouts) are most likely to commit crimes and be arrested for them, so this was just simply lowering the threshold for imprisonment (lowering threshold: you can be arrested more easily) Policy was redrawn in a way that disproportionately affected young minority males with little schooling. Ex. Ex. 5 grams of crack cocaine=500 grams of powder cocaine, punishment-wise (under federal sentencing). Poor minorities use crack, while white rich people use powder. Since 2010, 28 grams of crack=500 grams of powder. This is still a big difference. Michael Tonry makes this argument in a prominent indictment of recent anti drug policy. Measures spotlighted drug use among disadvantaged minorities but neglected the trade and consumption of drugs in suburbs by middle class whites! From this perspective, the drug war did not simply lower the threshold for imprisonment, it also targeted poor minority men! Imprisonment adds to the baggage already carried by poorly educated AND minority men, making it harder for them to catch up economically and further widening the economic gap between these men and the rest of society (IMPRISONMENT CONCEALS/CAUSES MORE INEQUALITY) Effects of high incarceration rates ON inequality are now substantial. Although the 90s was a period of economic prosperity, improved job opportunities for many young black men were strongly outwighed by the factor of incarceration. Stalled economic progress in black youth is invisible, because prison inmates are excluded from standard counts of joblessness Standard data: nearly 2/3 of young black male high school dropouts had jobs in 1980. 1990: only half had jobs. when inmates are counted in the pop: 1980: 55% had jobs. 1990: less than 30% had jobs. (1990: things are at their worst. when we include prisoners in population: unemployment/wages are at their worst for young black male high school dropouts) Incarceration now accounts for most of the joblessness among young black dropouts! Its rapid growth drove down the economic rates, even during the 90s economic boom Incarceration also affects the estimates of racial inequality. A simple measure of inequality is the ratio of white to black employment rates: 1999: young white dropouts were about 1 and a half times more likely to hold a job than their black counterparts! Once prison and jail inmates are counted, employment rate for young white dropouts is 2 and a half times larger than blacks! If we relied just on the usual labor force surveys, we would underestimate employment inequality for this marginal (disadvantaged) group by 50%! Isolating many of the disadvantaged in prisons and jail also masks inequality of wages It appears that the average wage of workers has increased. Wage gap between young black and white men would be 20% wider, if all those not working (including those in prison and jail), were counted. Research also shows that incarceration affects the growth of wages. While pay usually increases as men get older, this is not so true for ex convicts. Men with prison records find it hard to get jobs with career ladders or seniority pay. Add up to large economic disadvantages for minority communities. Neighborhoods with many people going to prison develop bad reputations that smear even the law abiding. Reduced Earnings due to Imprisonment widens the inequality between groups. Reduced earnings of ex convicts contributes about 10% to the wage gap between black and white men. About 10% of the pay gap between all male graduates and all dropouts is due to the reduced wages that inmates earn after they are released. Ex convicts return home from prison. Harder to get jobs, and then they have low wages. Become a burden on the whole family. The whole family is affected. He is more likely to return to crime. The Price of Safety: The inequalities produced by the penal system are NOT NEW. The state and federal gov have never imprisoned so many people. This increase is the result NOT of more crime, but of NEW POLICIES toward crime This expansion of imprisonment represents a more massive intrusion of gov into the lives of the poor than any employment or welfare program. May be justified by gains in public safety... Large Proportion of prisoners are violent offenders, after all. From this view, the proliferation of prisoners represents a massive investment in the public safety of disadvantaged urban areas. BUT, can ensuring public safety really be done with policies that deepen social inequality? NO. Effective crime control depends on reducing economic divisions, not increasing them! Strong link between criminal behavior and economic disadvantage!!!!!!!!! To the extent that prison undermines (reduces) economic opportunities. The penal boom may be doing little to discourage crime in communities where most men already have prison records. These men who already have records have little economic opportunity. So they will just break the law again. If high incarceration rates add up to the shame/stigma of residence in high crime neighborhoods: the economic penalties of imprisonment affect law abiding citizens just as much. (you may not be hired because you live in a neighborhood where OTHER people were arrested). UNDER THESE CONDITIONS, THE PUNITTIVE TREND IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY MAY BE EVEN TOUGHER ON THE POOR THAN IT IS ON CRIME Main Points: Crime has fluctuated, overall has gone DOWN (since 1990). Incarceration continued to go up (until 2010), not due to crime, but due to punitive/penal/disciplinary changes toward crime (more strict). You are especially disadvantaged if you are a young black male high school dropout. Higher crime and arresting rates. (these people generally commit more crime, especially violent crime. BUT ALSO, inequality causes punishment: arrested more. ex. crack vs cocaine). In turn, when ex prisoners return, that punishment causes more inequality (can't get jobs, have low wages, especially young black high school dropouts). If we counted people in prisons in our calculations, everything is more drastic. There is much more inequality of unemployment/inequality of wages for young black male high school dropouts than we think. The gov affects the poor by expanding imrpsonment. AFFECTS THE POOR MORE THAN ANYONE/ANYTHING ELSE. Punitive trend in criminal justice policy is even tougher on the poor than it is on crime Link between crime/incarceration and economic disadvantage/unemployment

Why do black male high school dropouts have the highest incarceration rate?

1. More Crime They have the highest levels of crime (especially violent and drug), but this is not the whole story. 2. More and longer Sentences: Toughened punishment between 1980-1996. -ex. war on drugs. minimum sentences. 3 strike law. 1970-1990 we had 1 and 2. 1990-2010 we had 2. Now we have neither. "This increase is the result NOT of more crime, but of NEW POLICIES toward crime." Inequality causes punishment. (ex. the law targets minorities, especially black high school dropout males. crack vs cocaine laws). Punishment causes inequality. (when they get out of jail, they have low employment/wages, causes them to go back to crime, it keeps on going). Even though the 90s was a period of economic prosperity, improved job opportunities for many young black men were strongly outwighed by the factor of incarceration.

Main impulses for individualizing sex law reforms were

1. Not only local but global, across all sorts of countries 2. Not only particular but encompassing, across domains of sexual activities-Carried by 2 organizational processes: world structuralization, which expanded the basic platforms for global activities, and world legalization, which expanded the basic apparatus of global laws

Sex Law Research

1945-2005 60 year timeline for all 194 nation states in existence then

2 Main issues of crime that sociologists study scientifically:

2 main issues: 1. Patterns of Criminal Behavior - who, what, when, where, etc. 2. Explaining WHY those patterns occur - theory.-Today, we talk about one aspect of crime patterns: crime over time-Most people believe crime is on the rise.-Is it? NO!! 1. Crimes reported to police: Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)But not all crimes are reported to police. Ex. Victims are guilty, embarrassed, threatened, want to protect the criminal (ex. domestic violence). 2. Surveys of Victims - National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): conducted by Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)NCVS undercounts crime as well, because victims won't always report on a survey either.Still, a big improvement. This one doesn't undercount crime as much! Both sets of stats (1 and 2) are good for looking at TRENDS!Each uses the same methodology every year, so they are useful for looking at crime patterns over time.They both undercount crime, but they undercount it the same way every year, so consistent!

Salganik and Watts Popularity vs Quality Info

A song in the top 5 in terms of quality had only a 50% chance of finishing in the top 5 of success when there was popularity info. SI mattered A LOT. And yet, STILL, the experiment undercounted the real world effect of SI, because listeners did not:1. Know who had downloaded the songs (ex. friends)2. Read any reviews of the songs/bands3. Know anything about the band - what they look like, where they were from, etc.The point: even a small amount of SI affects our judgement as much (or more than) the song quality itself 2 lessons from Salganik and Watts: 1. Hits are unpredictableWe can't tell in advance whether a song, movie, book, etc. will be a hit or a flop, even if we do all the market research in the world on consumer preferences.Why? Because what people like changes as they learn of what others like. 2. If we could re run history, we might never have heard of the celebrities we all know and love!-We might have different roster of stars. Ex. Carly Hennessy (might have made it)

Most consequential information attack in history:

Agents of the Russian Federation were organizing an online offensive that would dwarf all others before it!!! Throughout the 2016 US election, thousands of human trolls, backed by tens of thousands of automated accounts, infiltrated every part of the US political dialogue. They steered discussion, sowed doubt, and confused the truth, launching the MOST POLTIICALLY CONSEQUENTIAL INFORMATION ATTACK IN HISTORY. And that operation continues to this day!

Men vs women in prison

Although 9/10 inmates are male (92%), women represent the fastest growing segment of the inmate population. Female inmate population has grown more than 60% faster than the male inmate population. African American women have experienced the greatest increase.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari

Animal species often split, but they never merge Chimbanzies and gorillas split into 2 populations that eventually went their separate evolutionary ways Human tribes, in contrast, tend to coalesce over time into larger and larger groups. Modern germans were created from the merger of saxons, prussians, swabians, and bavarians Mergers don't always last history's direction is clear cut 10,000 years ago, humankind was divided into countless isolated tribes. with each passing millennium, these fused into larger and larger groups, creating fewer and fewer (and larger) distinct civilizations. the few remaining civilizations have been blending into a single global civilization Fundamental unity. Indeed some divisions are made possible only by an overarching common structure. In the economy, for example, the division of labor cannot succeed unless everyone shares a single market. One country cannot specialize in producing cars unless it can buy food from other countries that grow food. process of human unification has taken 2 distinct forms: establishing links between distinct groups, and homogenizing practices across groups. War itself can generate some of the strongest of all human bonds Historians often argue that globalization reached a first peak in 1913, then went into a long decline during world wars and cold war, and recuperated after 1989. this is true of economic globalization, but it ignores the dynamic of military globalization. war spreads ideas, technologies, and people far more quickly than commerce/trade does. people care far more about their enemies than their trade partners a thousand years ago, planet earth provided fertile ground to dozens of diff political models no wonder that even neighboring human groups had trouble agreeing on common diplomatic procedures, not to mention international laws. each society had its own political paradigm and found it difficult to understand and respect alien political concepts. today, in contrast, a single political paradigm is accepted everywhere. the planet is divided between about 200 SOVEREIGN STATES, which generally agree on the same diplomatic protocols and common international laws. Sovereign states enjoy similar rights and privileges Successful states are all alike, but every failed state fails in its own way, by missing this or that ingredient of the dominant political package. Numerous guerilla forces and terror organizations have managed to establish new countries or to conquer existing ones. But they have always done so by accepting the fundamental principles of the global political order. Even the Taliban sought international recognition. No group rejecting the principles of global politics has so far gained any lasting control of any significant territory. 2016 Rio olympics: athletes were grouped into delegations by nationality rather than by religion, class, or language. Except in a handful of cases (like Taiwan and Palestine), determining the athlete's nationality was a straightforward affair Conveniently enough, each country in the world has an anthem that conforms to the same universal model. Almost all anthems are orchestral pieces of a few minutes in length. National flags display the same dreary conformity. With a single exception, all flags are rectangular pieces of cloth marked by an extremely limited repertoire of colors, stripes, geometrical shapes. Nepal is the odd country out, with a flag of two triangles. In 1980 the US and some allies boycotted Moscow Olympics, 1984 Soviet bloc boycotted the LA games. Political storm when 1936 Nazi Berlin hosted the games, and 1972 Palestinian terrorists massacred the Israeli delegation to the Munich Olympics. BUT, on the whole, political controversies have not derailed the Olympic project Suppose you wanted to hold the medieval olympics in rio in year 1016 just ask yourself how to group the competing delegations. today's international olympic committee spends countless hours discussing the Taiwan question and Palestine question. Multiply this by ten thousand to estimate the number of hours you would have to spend on the politics of the medieval olympics. Chinese Song Empire recognized no political entity on Earth as its equal. The caliph in Baghdad also claimed universal hegemony, and in most sunni muslims recnognized him as their supreme leader. It would be confusing: who would represent who? Would they represent the nation, or the leader? As you made your preparations for the 1016 olympics, you would not be able to know in advance which delegations would show up, because nobody could be sure which political entities would still exist next year (because of conquering, etc) Needless to say, the vast majority of these ephemeral political entities had neither anthem to play nor flag to hoist. Political symbols were of great importance, but the symbolic language of European politics was very different from the symbolic languages of Indonesian, Chinese, and tupi politics. So when you watch the Tokyo games 2020, remember that this seeming competition between nations actually represents an astonishing global agreement. For all the national pride people feel when their delegation wins a gold medal and their flag is raised, there is far greater reason to feel pride than humankind is capable of organizing such an event.

Corporations

Business Corporations:Largest business corporations are huge, tooOf the world's 100 largest economic entities, 69 are business corporationsThese global corps have great influence, especially in poorer countries!!!Largest Business Corporation:Walmart (highest revenue)Annual sales of $515 billionEmploys 2.2 million people worldwide2018 after tax profit = $9.9 billion10th largest economy in the world!Revenues exceed those of over 180 countries!Including wealthy/big ones, like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia (pop 230 million).

5 things we find in Morality:

Crime, Punishment, Deviance, Conflict, Law

Data on blacks and whites: employment and wages

IF WE COUNTED INCARCERATED PEOPLE IN COUNTS OF THE UNEMPLOYED, THE RACIAL INEQUALITY WOULD BE MUCH CLEARER/GREATER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES nearly 2/3 of young black male high school dropouts had jobs in 1980. 1990: only half had jobs.when inmates are counted in the pop: 1980: 55% had jobs. 1990: less than 30% had jobs.(1990: things are at their worst. when we include prisoners in population: unemployment/wages are at their worst for young black male high school dropouts) 1999: young white dropouts were about 1 and a half times more likely to hold a job than their black counterparts! Once prison and jail inmates are counted, employment rate for young white dropouts is 2 and a half times larger than blacks!If we relied just on the usual labor force surveys, we would underestimate employment inequality for this marginal disadvantaged group (blacks) by 50%! Wage gap between young black and white men would be 20% wider, if all those not working (including those in prison and jail), were counted. Research also shows that incarceration affects the growth of wages.While pay usually increases as men get older, this is not so true for ex convicts.

Who provides largest number of immigrants to US today?

Mexico, China, and India

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhDJames H. Fowler, PhD Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and how they shape our lives

Networks: different from groups, because they have CONNECTIONS between the members first, there is connection (separation). particular pattern of ties that connects the people involved, the topology. ties are complicated. second, there is contagion (influence), which pertains to what, if anything, flows across the ties. We shape our networks 1. we decide how many people we are connected to2. we influence how densely interconnected our friends and family are to each other3. we control how central we are in the social network Our networks shape us transivity can affect everything: you are central, you know lots of people who know lots of people people are all connected to one another by an average of 6 degrees of separation. your firend 1 degree away, your friends' friend 2, so on. stanley milgram experiment with letters Omaha to Boston (and another experiment w emails around the world) found it took roughly 6 steps on average 3 degrees of influence/contagion each of us reach about halfway to everyone else on the planet 10: Consensus: Social Closeness causes similarity of thought.

Labeling Theory of Crime:

Once labeled, you are more likely to commit further crimes Ex. Devah Pager - harder to get a job with a criminal record. If you can't get a job, you are more likely to turn to crime again.

Pager's incarceration rate trends

Over past 3 decades, the number of prison inmates in the US has increased by more than 600% roughly 8% of the working age population. of those recently released, nearly 2/3 will be charged with new crimes and over 40% will return to prison within 3 years. the incarceration rate for young black men in the year 2000 was nearly 10% compared to just over 1% for white men young black men today have a 28% likelihood of incarceration above 50% among young black high school dropouts the effect of a criminal record is actually worse for blacks, because employers, already wary of blacks, are more hesitant when it comes to taking risks on blacks with proven criminal tendencies.Discrimination, when combined with knowledge of criminal history: negative attributions will intensify Field Experiment Design: job openings for entry level positions. randomly assigned 15 job openings each week. the white pair and black pair were assigned separate sets of jobs, with the same race testers applying to the same jobs.Total of 350 employers the criminal record consisted of a FELONY DRUG CONVICTION Very little has changed in the reaction of employers to minority applicants The salience of employers' sensitivity toward criminal involvement among blacks was highlighted. Ex. black testers were asked in person whether they had a prior criminal history. None of the white testers were asked this in person. ex offenders are only one half to a third as likely as non offenders to be considered by employers Blacks are less than half as likely to receive consideration by employers over 2 million people behind bars and over 12 million people with prior felony convictions When we combine the effects of race and criminal record, the problem grows more intense.

Notes from 2nd session:

PUNISHMENT MUSHROOMED 1980. INCARCERATION INCREASED FASTER/MORE THAN CRIME STARTING 1980. PROBATION AND PAROLE ALSO MUSHROOMED 1980 Since 1970s, more people of low social status have been incarcerated Seriousness: How people respond to conflict depend in part on the seriousness of the conflict Ex. your roommate makes a loud phone call one night - let it slide (toleration). your roommate does it every night - you respond assertively. But: seriousness is not the only factor many homicides arise out of objectively trivial (not serious) incidents (ex. looking, bumping) also important: RELATIONSHIP OF THE PARTIES Intimates are less aggressive toward one another. civil law suits have increased in US since 1950 -increase of organizations. organizations sue individuals a lot. Tendency to exaggerate the importance of law is old - Thomas Hobbes Levithian

The gov fears big organizations (ghostly giants). Example:

Power of Corporations:2008 Bank Bailout:If you lend too much money, you go bankruptWhen the big banks loaned too much, the gov age them a $700 billion bailout"Too big to fail."Gov gives this money to organizations (not people). Gov knows that bad things will happen if these banks fail, so it helps the banks. Gov respects and fears big orgs like banks!

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage? Duncan J. Watts

Profits of cultural industries depend disproportionately on the occasional outsize success. To offset the many investments that fail dismally. Professional editors, executives, managers are bad at predicting who will make it. Reliable hit prediction is impossible no matter how much you know. A result that has implications not only for our own understanding of best seller lists but also for business and politics. Matter of anticipating the preferences of millions of individual people who participate. Replicating people's past preferences. BUT, these predictions aren't accurate. People almost never make decisions independently. Experience benefits of sharing. BUT, people not making decisions independently has downsides Predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to CUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE. The rich get richer. If one object happens to be slightly more popular at some initial point, it will become more popular still (BIG DIFFERENCES IN THE LONG RUN) Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, generate different winners We know about cumulative advantage has been worked out using mathematical models and computer simulations Experiment: Were asked to listen to, rate, and if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some participants saw only the names of sons and band, while other group also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. The second group (SI: social influence condition) was split into 8 parallel worlds such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn't manipulate any of these rankings: all of the artists in the worlds started out identically, with 0 downloads. because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another. PEOPLE COULD ONLY SEE THE NUMBER OF TIMES A SONG WAS DOWNLOADED BY THE PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN WORLD If people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social influence conditions. Hits shouldn't be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs (the best ones) should become hits in all SI worlds. But song quality doesn't matter as much. Popularity does. In the SI group, the gap between a popular song and a non-popular song was greater, because of CA In all SI worlds, the popular songs were much more popular than in the independent condition The particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds Introducing social influence into human decision making didn't just make the hits bigger; it also made them unpredictable. Because popularity varied in diff worlds, people chose diff songs in diff worlds. diff worlds produced different hits!!!!! so does a listener's own independent reaction to a song count for anything? "good" songs (songs that were downloaded even in the independent condition) had higher market share, on average, than bad ones. But the impact of a listener's own reaction is easily overwhelmed by his or her reactions to others. Because the long run success of a song depends on the decisions of a few early arriving individuals (whose choices are amplified and locked in by CA), and because the particular individuals who play this important role are chosen randomly and may make diff decisions from one moment to the next, resulting unpredictability is inherent to the nature of the market. It cannot be eliminated either by accumulating more info about people/songs or by developing fancier prediction algorithms, any more than you can repeatedly roll sixes no matter how carefully you try What our results suggest is that because what people like depends on what they think other people like, what the market wants at any point in time can depend very sensitively on its own history. There is no sense in which it simply "reveals" what other people wanted all along. This lesson is not limited to cultural products either!!!!!!!! Similar mechanisms affect the competition between technologies that display network effects, meaning the attractiveness of a technology increases with the number of people using it!!!! If markets not only reveal our preferences but also modify them, then the relation between what we want now and what we wanted before - or what we will want in the future - becomes deeply ambiguous Just because we now know that something happened doesn't simply what we could have known it was going to happen at the time, even in principle, because at the time, it wasn't necessarily going to happen at all That doesn't mean we should stop trying to anticipate the future, any more than we should stop trying to make sense of the past. But it does mean that we should treat both predictions and explanations we served (whether about the next hit single, the next great company or even the next war) with the skepticism they deserve.

Nov 7: Punishment and Incarceration

Punishment: Penalties inflicted by authority 2 stories: 1. Long term global story 2. Short term US story Long term story: For most of human history, little or no punishment HGs did not have authority figures - priests, judges, etc Punishment enters with agriculture Reaches its peak frequency in late agrarian societies. agrarian: ineffective but harsh. when they caught someone, it was harsh, painful punishment. overall, punishment was highest then! death penalty was public and painful. Europe then (agrarian) vs US now: US today: around 25 executions per year Europe 1400: 10 executions per 100,000 people annually (Most European countries have no death penalty today, so we can't compare Europe then to Europe now) In US today, this rate of execution would translate into 320,000 executions annually Europe then - RATE was 10,000 times higher than US now! 18th Century (1700s) Death Penalty: Death penalty for murder, and for rape, theft, burglary, robbery, poaching, and many other crimes Death penalty extremely painful In 1775, a man who tried to assassinate King Louis XV in Paris was sentenced to an excruciating painful execution Less physical pain: Over time, punishment has become less physically painful Ex. Evolution of the death penalty Evolution of Death Penalty: Agrarian - short drop hanging - slow, painful, choking death Then, long drop hanging - snap your neck instantly Then, electrocution or gassing or firing squad Now, lethal injection (drugs). Now even this is under challenge for being too painful. Beyond the death penalty: 140 countries have abolished the death penalty And those that still have it tend to use it less often Death penalty is on death row (awaiting going away) Ex. US: US Executions: number of executions since 1976: 1,465 went up and reached a peak in 1990s (around 1999), and then has gone down since then. Industrial Society: Imprisonment replaces death as the most serious regular punishment Shorter Term US Story: Beginning 1980, the US punishment system has MUSHROOMED We now incarcerate 4.5 times more people per capita than 1975 Prison: sentence of a year or more Jail: awaiting trial or sentenced to less than a year But that's not all: Probation and Parole also mushroomed. Especially probation!! Probation: supervision by the law Parole: early release under supervision (rights restricted) Probation takes up more than half of the pie chart. Next biggest is state prison. Then local jail, federal prison, and parole. Prison: (more penal, tough on crime) Got tougher, too Fewer educational opportunities More solitary confinement Why? Why the increase? The war on drugs? War on drugs started with Nixon, mushroomed under Ragan # of people going to prison due to drugs has gone up A LOT, but does not make up the majority! About 0.5 million incarcerated for drugs. 2 million incarcerated total. So NOT the majority. Violence makes up the majority!!! (see pie chart) Only in federal prison does drugs make up the majority. local jales and state prisons: violence makes up majority. More severity: All crimes are punished more severely now Mandatory minimum sentences. Someone has to go to prison for a minimum amount of time for certain crimes. 3 strike law: 3rd felony conviction brings a mandatory life sentence Why more punishment? Many factors But one important one: inequality Inequality and punishment are closely connected 2 propositions: Proposition 1: 1. Inequality causes/increases punishment. Since 1970s, US wealth inequality has become the largest in the industrialized world. And so has our incarceration rate. Also, incarceration is highest in the more unequal states (ex. in the south). Black high school dropouts: most at risk to incarceration Preposition 2: 2. Low social status causes/ increases punishment For the same conduct, low status people (poor, minorities) more likely to be punished Ex. 5 grams of crack cocaine=500 grams of powder cocaine, punishment-wise (under federal sentencing). Poor minorities use crack, while white rich people use powder. Since 2010, 28 grams of crack=500 grams of powder. This is still a big difference. Who? Propositions 1 and 2 put together? As inequality increases, the crimes of the lowest status groups come to be punished more severely. Since the 1970s, more low income Americans (especially black high school dropout men) have been incarcerated (Western and Pettit). Black Men: Black men have the highest rate of violent crime But that has been true for a long time And a lot of incarceration is for crimes other than violent crime Punishment Causes Inequality: Punishment also causes/increases inequality (the inverse is true). Ex. Incarceration: Impacts the lives of others, too Spouse and children have less money Children are less supervised Relationships undermined: breakup and divorce are more likely So, for the children of the person who was incarcerated: greater risks of school failure, early parenthood, committing crime himself, etc. Especially among male children of convicts. Post Prison: A prison record makes it harder to get a job (Pager). Ex. prisoner may be a drain on the family budget (instead of a help to it), addicting to family stress, and temptation to commit more crime. Overall Effect: Punishment causes Inequality: About 600,000 prisoners are released annually Add together all the negative effects for this large group of ex prisoners and their families Result: an underclass that is adrift from society (failing to keep up with the rest) In short, not only does inequality cause punishment, but punishment causes inequality, creating a self perpetuating cycle. Not Inequality Alone: However, inequality alone does not explain punishment Income inequality has continued to increase, but mass incarceration is declining (since 2010) Another Factor of punishment: Crime Rates: Relationship between crime and punishment more complex than you might think More punishment is not always caused by more crime Crime started declining 1990 before punishment did (2010) Crime: Crime increased 1970-1990, and so did incarceration But after 1990, crime rates fell while incarceration rates continued to rise until 2010 Incarceration Rates: Incarceration rates can be driven by 2 things: 1. More Crime 2. More and longer sentences 1970-1990: we had both 1 and 2. Crime and incarceration going up. 1990-2010: we had 2, but not 1. Rates continued to rise even though crime had dropped. 2010-present: then incarceration dropped: many people had served out their long sentences, or died. Low crime rates meant that fewer inmates replaced them (even though the sentences still long). So prison rates eventually caught up with the crime decline, started declining too. In the News: In the last few years, a lot of attention on mass incarceration (and criminal justice reform, becoming more strict on crime). Yet, incarceration has been declining since 2010. Another illustration of the Cooney-Burt point: The amount of attention something receives is often the inverse of how often it occurs. Conclusion: Over the long term, punishment rose during agrarian era (reached an all time high) and fell in the industrial era. Then, 1970, crime and incarceration and inequality started going up again. Then in 1990, crime dropped. Then in 2010, incarceration dropped. Inequality continues to go up. Since 1980, incarceration rates have increased more than crime rates. Incarceration rates are now declining, though they are still very high.

RACE main points

Racial categories REFLECT strong socio-economic differences between cultural groups (ex. Black-White, Irish-Anglos in 19th century) -Ex. Americans and British hated the Irish when they weren't doing well socioeconomically. When the socioeconomic difference began to disappear, the notion of "race" is questioned. As the Irish prospered, they "became white." "Ethnicity" is a better term. Refers to culturally distinct groups and does not imply any biological differences.However, it is a term less often used. US Census Categories (uses both race and ethnicity) Since Civil Rights Era, a decline in negative attitudes toward minorities. Decline in prejudice!!Ex. Racial intermarriageB-W marriage was still illegal in 16 states until 1967Now, has become much more acceptable% of people who oppose marriage with other races (especially marriage with blacks) has gone down dramatically! Discrimination (Actions): Remain a reality (ex. white vs black job opportunities) How do we know? After all, People are not necessarily the most valid sources of information about themselves. Self reports are evidence, but not conclusive evidence

Robert D Putnam: "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis."

Returned to his hometown, Port Clinton, Ohio THERE IS MORE INEQUALITY NOW. STARK DIVISIONS BETWEEN HIGH AND LOW CLASS. MIDDLE CLASS DISAPPEARED. Low class kids aren't getting any help today (from adults, teachers, etc) Equality of opportunity and social mobility: this is more the focus. Whether young people from diff backgrounds are getting onto the ladder at the same place Now, fewer and fewer of us are exposed to people outside our nicheSorting of households into distinct neighborhoods by income Educational segregation Marriage:People tend to marry others like them In principle, a society might have both high absolute and relative mobility. My classmates benefited from bothAmerican youth now have worst of both worlds: low of both 7. Attention: Social Superiority (high status) attracts favorable attention. Social inferiority attracts unfavorable or no attention. -low class kids not getting any help (from adults or society) to move up 8. Social Control: Social inferiority (low status) attracts PUNISHMENT AND EXCLUSION.

Female Status and Premarital Sexual Codes Coleman Letter

Rigidity of premarital sexual codes varies INVERSELY with female dominance in the determination of family status. Where females are more dominant, that is, where the system is more matriarchal, the sex codes will be less rigid than where the female's ultimate status depends on the status of her husband. She becomes more like the male with the modern ways, having less reason to maintain her sexual activity as a scarce good in a market, more reason to consume it for direct enjoyment. Casts a very diff light on the freer sexual codes observed by Negroes of lower and lower middle class position than those of whites of similar position. Difference: the greater dominance of the Negro female in the negro family, as opposed to the white female in the white family. Negro female has a much more dominant role in determining family position and status This is very different source of change from that commonly proposed: increasing freedom in socialization patterns among parents of white children, leading to less rigid norms among whites, and increasing adoption of middle class standards by Negroes. The present thesis suggests that, whether or not these trends are occurring, they do not constitute the dominant source of changes in rigidity of premarital sex codes.

"Beyond Crime and Punishment" some main points

Strong link between criminal behavior and economic disadvantage!!!!!!!!! Link between crime/incarceration and economic disadvantage/unemployment This expansion of imprisonment represents a more massive intrusion of gov into the lives of the poor than any employment or welfare program. If high incarceration rates add up to the shame/stigma of residence in high crime neighborhoods: the economic penalties of imprisonment affect law abiding citizens just as much. (you may not be hired because you live in a neighborhood where OTHER people were arrested).UNDER THESE CONDITIONS, THE PUNITTIVE TREND IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY MAY BE EVEN TOUGHER ON THE POOR THAN IT IS ON CRIME

Robert Emerson

Study of conflicts among roommates They handle conflict in a variety of ways, but they never contacted police or sued law also rarely used in family/neighborhood/business disputes law tends to be a LAST RESORT, ESPECIALLY FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW EACH OTHER

Trends in Executions

US vs Agrarian Europe: US today: around 25 executions per yearEurope 1400: 10 executions per 100,000 people annually(Most European countries have no death penalty today, so we can't compare Europe then to Europe now)In US today, this rate of execution would translate into 320,000 executions annuallyEurope then - RATE was 10,000 times higher than US now! Fastforward to.. 18th Century (1700s) Death Penalty:Death penalty for murder, and for rape, theft, burglary, robbery, poaching, and many other crimesDeath penalty extremely painfulIn 1775, a man who tried to assassinate King Louis XV in Paris was sentenced to an excruciating painful executionLess physical pain:Over time, punishment has become less physically painfulEx. Evolution of the death penalty Fastforward to... US Executions: number of executions since 1976: 1,465 went up and reached a peak in 1990s (around 1999), and then has gone down since then. 140 countries have abolished the death penalty Imprisonment replaces death as the most serious regular punishmentShorter Term US Story:Beginning 1980, the US punishment system has MUSHROOMED. We now incarcerate 4.5 times more people per capita than 1975 About 600,000 prisoners are released annually

What makes up the majority for the reason people get put in jail/prison?

Why? Why the increase? The war on drugs? War on drugs started with Nixon, mushroomed under Ragan # of people going to prison due to drugs has gone up A LOT, but does not make up the majority! About 0.5 million incarcerated for drugs. 2 million incarcerated total. So NOT the majority. Violence makes up the majority!!! (see pie chart) Only in federal prison does drugs make up the majority. local jales and state prisons: violence makes up majority.

Sara McLanahan and Dona Schwartz: Life Without Father: What Happens to the Children?

although most children of divorced parents do alright, growing up without a father increases risks of undesirable outcomesdisadvantaged. more likely to drop out of high school, less likely to attend college, less likely to graduate college. girls more likely to be sexually active. boys have trouble finding jobs. this phenomenon: similar for all socioeconomic backgrounds. white/middle class kids actually do worse because they lose more. children of widowed mothers fare better. eligible for social security, and a child is less likely to feel rejected by a parent who dies than one who left.. children in stepfamilies fare no better and sometimes worse. cohabitation: we know little about these effects 3 general factors account for disadvantage associated w/ father absense:1. economic deprivation2. poor parenting3. lack of social support 6. Social "Problems" (a relative term). In Industrial societies, increasing inequality breeds a host of behaviors normally defined as "problems." 7. Attention: Social Superiority (high status) attracts favorable attention. Social inferiority attracts unfavorable or no attention.

Rodney Stark and Roger Finke: Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of ReligionReligious Choices: Conversion and Reaffiliation-John Lofland did the research with Stark

conversion: shifts across religious traditions-long distance shifts in religious allegiance Reaffiliation: shifts within religious traditions-nothing as dramatic as conversion neither of these things happen much most people remain within the religious tradition into which they were born Most people THINK they are converting/reafilliating due to DOCTORAL APPEAL, BUT THEY ARE NOT the only ones who joined were those whose interpersonal attachments to members OVERBALANCED their attachments to nonmembers THEY ARE CONSERVING/MAXIMIZING THEIR SOCIAL CAPITAL SOCIAL NETWORKS (relationality) MAKE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS PLAUSIBLEconversion is about BRINGING ONE'S RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR INTO ALIGNMENT WITH THAT OF ONE'S FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS 10. Consensus: Social Closeness causes similarity of thought.

Sex laws to protect individuals are...

criminal regardless of whether pregnancy or marriage is involved

Rodrigo Duterte

elected president of PHILIPINES 2016. He was hailed as the country's first social media president. Duterte was also a demagogue. Dismissive of human rights. Brutal crackdown on not just criminals, but also his political opponents. Backed by an army of feverishly supportive Facebook groups and twitter bots, his administration set about discrediting journalists and rights activists, and bullying them into silence! At the same time, his followers sowed flash stories and rumors that provided justification for Duterte's increasingly authoritarian actions! Duterte's drug war killed more than 12,000 people!

Honor Killings

every year about 40 palestinian women die at the hands of their fathers or brothers in so called "honor killings" that wipe away the shame of a female relative's premarital or extra material sex. the killer usually becomes a local hero. did what had to be done Honor killings better documented among palestinians than elsewhere because of the israeli police recording it. but honor killings happen throughout the islamic world

Crime Stats: number vs rate

number vs rate Crime stats reported as either number of crimes, or (better):Rate of Crime: number of crimes per personFBI reports rate per 100,000 people(# of crimes/total pop) x 100,000BJS reports per 1,000 people/householdsCrime Rates rise 1960-1991. Since then, a decrease. Small upward tick/motion recently, but still, overall, a decrease.

recidivism

repeated criminal behavior. a criminal turns to crime again.

Jo C. Phelan et al (and others, such as Bruce G. Link, and Parisa Tehranifar): Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Health Inequalities: Theory, Evidence, and Policy InterpretationsSocial Conditions (inequality) causes health/mortality, through the use of mechanisms

1. influences multiple disease outcomes.2. affects disease outcomes through multiple risk factors.3. involves access to flexible resources that can be used to avoid risks or minimize the consequences of disease once it occurs (high class).4. association between fundamental cause and health is reproduced over time with the REPLACEMENT of intervening mechanisms (links between cause and effect). SES-health/mortality association was stronger for PREVENTABLE causes of death a superior collection of flexible resources held by higher SES individuals and the collectivities to which they belong, allow those of higher SES to avoid disease and death in widely divergent circumstances... 8. Social Control: Social inferiority (low status) attracts PUNISHMENT AND EXCLUSION.

Annette Laurea: "Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families."

3 key dimensions may be distinguished: organization of daily life, the use of language, and social connections Concerted Cultivation:parent actively fosters and assesses child talents, opinions, skillsmultiple leisure activities are orchestrated by adultsreasoning/directives child contestation of adult statements extended negotiations between parents and childweak extended family ties. child often in homogeneous age groupings often there's so many extracurricular activities that there's no time to visit extended family criticisms and interventions on behalf of the child. Training of child to intervene on his or her own behalfemerging sense of entitlement on part of the child Natural Growth:parent cares for child and allows child to grow (naturally, spontaneously)child hangs out particularly with kin directives: rare for child to question or challenge adults. general acceptance by child of directivesstrong extended family ties. child often in heterogeneous age groupings dependence on institutions, distrust of institutionssense of powerlessness and frusteration conflict between childrearing practices at home and schoolemerging sense of constraint (limitation) on part of the child role of race in daily life is less powerful than expected but when they grow up, race begins to have a bigger effect it is a mistake to see either parenting style as a desirable approach the evidence shows that class position influences critical aspects of family life 7. Attention: Social Superiority (high status) attracts favorable attention. Social inferiority attracts unfavorable or no attention. -middle class kids were seen and heard more effectively by teachers, etc..

Aggregate

parts combined together producing a whole

Trends... Who is the largest minority in US today?

Blacks (13%) no longer the largest minority Hispanics (17%) are! And growing fast! Asians (6%) are increasingly rapidly too Non Hispanic Whites: 1960: 85%. Today: 61%. By 2043: expected to be less than 50%.

Beyond Crime and Punishment (Inequality causes punishment; punishment causes inequality)

Brice Western; Becky Pettit

What are people AMBIVALENT about?

Business corporations (ghostly giants) and The State!

Individualism caused:

Changes in: Sex law reforms, Human rights, Capitalism, Democracy, Mass Education

Female Status and Premarital Sexual Codes

Coleman Letter

Sex law reforms:

Contract: sodomy and adultery laws Expand: rape and sexual abuse laws

Paradox about crime:

Cooney and Burt: as deviance goes down, social control often goes up. Harsher punishments and more news stories+researchThe amount of attention given to crime is the INVERSE of how frequently it is committed.So maybe when something is being given a lot of attention on the news, this is a good thing, because it means that the frequency of this crime is actually going down! When attention is high, crime is low.

Delegation Movement (Jurocracy in America, Donald Black)

Legal Devolution: Although raw statistics about the number of lawsuits and lawyers might give the impression that law is everywhere expanding its involvement in american life, that would be mistaken. There is, in fact, a delegation movement afoot in the US., and its impact has been considerable For example, numerous programs have recently appeared throughout the US to develop alternatives to the courts. one preferred option is mediation, a variety of conflict management in which a restoration of harmony takes precedence over the rule enforcement and in which the parties themselves decide the result, typically a compromise. Mediation: a form of settlement (there is a third party), but the 2 groups are settling it out and deciding the outcome, usually a comrpmise Devolution movement/Legal Devolution: people relying less on legal system now Considering other ways (like mediation). or reducing the power of criminal justice laws returning to simple ways

Nov 12: Conflict

Conflict: Everyone has conflict: the clash of right and wrong Part and parcel of being human Can arise out of anything Causes of conflict: Being too loud or being too quiet Too inquisitive or not enough Too successful or too unsuccessful Too friendly or not friendly enough Handling Conflict: many ways we can respond to conflict 5 broad categories of conflict management: 1. Toleration 2. Avoidance 3. Negotiation 4. Settlement (mediation, or law. 3rd party). 5. Aggression Seriousness: How people respond to conflict depend in part on the seriousness of the conflict Ex. your roommate makes a loud phone call one night - let it slide (toleration). your roommate does it every night - you respond assertively. But: seriousness is not the only factor many homicides arise out of objectively trivial (not serious) incidents (ex. looking, bumping) also important: RELATIONSHIP OF THE PARTIES Intimates are less aggressive toward one another. Wait: But what about domestic violence? True, a lot of domestic violence. But intimates generally require more conflict or provocation BEFORE they resort to violence. Whereas strangers can go from 0 to violence much faster (ex. bar fights). Intimates: are SLOW to use the legal system as well many domestic violence cases are never reported to the police. and even fewer result in a trial. Law: bringing the law into a conflict is a big deal now the state is involved likely to destroy the relationship this is one reason why people are reluctant to bring the law into their conflicts still, legal system is large, and handles millions of conflict each year there are 2 types of law Criminal and Civil 2 Types of Law 1. Criminal: state prosecutes the offender, to convict (find guilty), and punish him/her 2. Civil: one private party (individual org) sues another, often seeking compensation for loss or injury -very common for an org to sue a person Diff standards of proof: Criminal: BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. No other logical explanation can be derived. Higher bar, because the stakes are higher (going to prison is a higher stake than paying a fine). Civil: preponderance of evidence (whoever has more evidence wins). Criminal and Civil cases can arise out of the same incident Ex. Homicide: criminal prosecution and, sometimes a civil suit for wrongful death (family of victim seeks compensation) - OJ Simpson Criminal Cases: criminal cases go through several stages police learn of crime arrest prosecution (state brings about charges) conviction by judge, jury, or self (pleading guilty, most common. Happens 90-95% of the time). Cases drop out at each stage. So MOST CRIMES DO NOT RESULT IN A CONVICTION Conviction: Survey - 2,077 people reported being a crime victim # of convictions = 26 Most of the crimes probably not very serious More serious crimes are less common!! Conviction rates are higher for serious crimes!! Still, at least 1/3 of American Homicides do not result in conviction! Legal Penalties Rare: hence, many crimes do not trigger legal penalties same is true of civil cases Civil Suits: civil law suits have increased in US since 1950 this is not surprising Factors that predict litigiousness have increased ex. now, there are more organizations (which sue individuals) BUT, law suits (litigation) still used only in a small minority of disputes Wisconsin Study of Legal Disputes: Black: Wisconsin survey of Americans who had civil disputes worth at least $1,000 Lawyer contacted in only 10% of cases Lawyer filed suit in only 50% of those Only 10% of those went to trial So 1/2 of 1% of the disputes wound up at trial Medical Malpractice: despite what many doctors think, Americans don't sue doctors at the drop of a hat. Studies show that only 1 in 7 possible medical malpractice claims result in a lawsuit being filed. and most of these are settled before they make it to trial. "Junk" Law Suits: law suits to shake somebody down for money ex. a man sued budweiser because a beautiful woman didn't materialize when he drank. he lost, as do most such cases when the plaintiff wins, there is usually a good reason!!!! plaintiff: person doing the suing. ex. McDonald's Coffee Case McDonald's Case: 1992: woman bought coffee, spilled it on herself, and sued McD's. Jury awarded her $2.86 million Seems crazy but look more closely she suffered 3rd degree burns over 6% of her body. Needed 2 skin grafts and hospitalized for 8 days. sought her medical expenses from McD's ($20,000), who refused. Her lawyers discovered that McD's heated their coffee to dangerous temperatures. Had received 700+ complaints of burns in 10 years And judge reduced damage award to $640,000, but that's still a lot of money. She won for good reason. Beyond Law: Law handles only a small % of disputes in US life Most cases are handled through non-legal conflict management (popular justice) -tolerating -avoiding -negotiating -fighting (but this is criminal unless self defense) Popular Justice: ex. Robert Emerson's study of conflicts among college roommates they drop hints, make requests, avoid, tolerate but nobody ever called police or sued law also rarely used in family/neighborhood disputes, or even business disputes law tends to be a LAST RESORT (ESPECIALLY FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW EACH OTHER) Hobbes: Tendency to exaggerate the importance of law is old Ex. Thomas Hobbes: leviathan (1651): "In the absence of law, life is nasty, brutish, and short. The state is essential to maintain order." Without Law: Hobbes was wrong! Some pre state societies were highly peaceful, without law Even those that were violent were not violent all the time - they were largely orderly But suppose we took law away today? Would society be much more violent? Or would peace eventually emerge? Summary: Law is a very prestigious and prominent institution in modern societies Lawyers are well paid and respected (despite the jokes) BUT, law actually plays a much smaller role in settling conflicts than many people think

Being Sane in Insane Places DL Rosenhan

Conflicting data on the reliability, unity, and meaning of such terms like sanity, insanity, mental illness, schizophrenia diagnoses are not valid Noramality and abnormality are relative/variable/not universal!!! What is viewed as normal in one culture may be seen as abnormal in another Some behaviors are deviant or odd. Murder is deviant. So are hallucinations. Anxiety and depression exists. BUT NORMALITY AND ABNORMALITY, SANITY AND INSANITY, AND THE DIAGNOSES, MAY BE LESS SUBSTANTIVE THAN PEOPLE THINK The view has grown that psychological categorization of mental illness is useless at best Getting normal people admitting to psychiatric hospitals and determining whether they were discovered to be sane, and if so, how. If the sanity was detected, distinguished from the insane. If, on the other hand, the sanity was never discovered, serious difficulties would arise for those who support traditional modes of psychiatric diagnnosis In reality, Psychiatric diagnosis shows little about the patient himself, but a lot about the environment where the observer finds him!!!! but we misinterpret this, and we think it is the individual's innate characteristics. Context matters 8 sane people gained secret admission to 12 diff hospitals! pseudopatients and their settings One was a psychology graduate. the remaining 7 were older and established. 3 were women. 5 were men. all of them employed pseudonyms (fictional name). with the exception of myself (I was the first pseudo patient), the presence of pseudo patients and the nature of the research program was not known to the hospital staffs 12 Hospitals in the sample were located in 5 diff states on east and west coasts After calling the hospital for an appointment, the pseudo patient arrived at the admissions office complaining that he had been hearing voices beyond falsifying the name, vocation, and employment, no further alterations of the person were made!! so the person did appear normal once he was in the hospital! so the experiment was biased IN FAVOR OF THE HOSPITAL DETECTING SANITY, BUT THEY DIDNT Immediately upon admission to the psychiatric ward, the pseudo patient ceased simulating any symptoms of abnormality Spoke to patients and staff as he might ordinarily Indicated that he was fine. no longer experienced symptoms each was told that he would have to get out by his/her own devices, essentially by convincing the staff he was sane they were motivated to behave sanely and be paragons of cooperation reports uniformly indicate that the patients were friendly, cooperative, and exhibited no abnormal indications!! and yet, sanity was not detected The Normal are not detected as sane: pseudo patients were never detected. Admitted, except in 1 case, with the diagnosis of schizophrenia If the pseudo patient was to be discharged, he must be naturally "IN REMISSION." but he was not sane, nor, in the institutions view, had he ever been sane IT WAS QUITE COMMON FOR THE OTHER PATIENTS TO DETECT SANITY Patients recognized normality when the staff did not Physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick than a sick person healthy!! Better to err on the side of caution, to suspect illness even among the healthy But what holds for medicine does not hold equally well for psychiatry Indicated that the tendency to designate sane people as insane can be reversed when the stakes are high THE STICKINESS OF DEVIANT/PSYCHODIAGNOSTIC LABELS: Having once been labeled schizophrenic (formal label, especially sticky), there is nothing the pseudo patient can do to overcome the tag. The tag profoundly colors others' perceptions of him and his behavior. Normal behaviors were overlooked. The perception of his circumstances was shaped entirely by the diagnosis The facts of the case were UNINTENTIONALLY DISTORTED BY THE STAFF, TO ACHIEVE CONSISTENCY WITH A POPULAR THEORY of the dynamics of a schizophrenic person All behaviors and personal history was interpreted as MANIFESTATIONS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA All pseudo patients took extensive notes publicly The staff members did not question these notes at all The writing was seen as an aspect of their pathological behavior... Given that the patient is in the hospital, he must be disturbed. And given that he is disturbed, continuous writing must be a behavioral manifestation of that disturbance. Behaviors that are simulated by the environment are commonly misattributed to the patients disorder!!! Assumed that his upset derived from his pathology, not from his present interactions with staff members. Never were the staff found to assume that one of themselves or the structure of the hospital had anything to do with the patient's behavior! Once the assumption has been formed that the patient is schizophrenic, the expectation is that he will continue to be schizophrenic! When released, considered to be in remission! Self fulfilling prophecy. The patient himself accepts the diagnosis, and behaves accordingly!!! Powerlessness and Depersonalization: Eye contact and verbal contact reflect concern and individuation I have records of patients who were beaten by staff for the sin of having initiated verbal contact Tempers were often short Powerlessness was evident elsewhere. The patient is deprived of many of his legal rights. Pseudopatients had the sense that they were invisible. Abusive behavior, on the other hand, terminated quite abruptly, when other staff members were known to be coming. Staff are credible witness. Patients are not. Staff behavior went unnoticed by the hospital throughout The consequences of labeling (STICKY) and depersonalization: We tend to invent knowledge and assume that we understand more than we actually do We have known for a long time that diagnoses are often not useful or reliable, but we have nevertheless continued to use them. We now know that we cannot distinguish insanity from sanity. how many people are sane but not recognized as sane? how many have been stripped of privileges because of this? how many have feigned insanity to avoid criminal consequences? diagnoses are well intentioned but still often incorrect the error in psychiatric diagnoses is rarely found. the label sticks, a mark of inadequacy forever!! How many patients might be sane outside the psychiatric hospital, and insane in it, because they are responding to a bizarre setting? Mortification: an apt metaphor that includes the process of depersonalization that have been described It is difficult to believe that these processes of socialization/depersonalization to a psychiatric hospital provide attitudes/habits for living in the real world

Intimate partner domestic violence trends (rates)

Male on Female killing: (declined): 1976: 1.4 per 100,000 Now: 0.8 per 100,000 Female on Male killings declined even more: 1976: 1.2 per 100,000. (almost as much as male on female). Now: 0.2 per 100,000.

Delegation movement:

People moving away from the courts/legal settlement and toward other methods, like mediation/negotiation.

Criminal Justice System:

Learn of crime, make an arrest, prosecution (state brings about charges/indictment), conviction (by judge, jury, or, in 90-95% of cases, individual pleads guilty) -case can be dropped any step of the way. most crimes DO NOT result in a conviction

Worldwide trends in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1945-2005

David John Frank, Bayliss J. Camp, and Steven A. Boutcher

Barbara Ehreinreich: "Nickel and Dimed. On (Not) Getting by in America."

Disguised herself, worked low paid entry level unskilled jobs Wages too low, rents too high! Employers distrusted her because she was "poor." Employers of upper class people do not feel the need to do drug/personality testing. vicious cycle at work: extreme inequalityfor reasons that have more to do with class, prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear/distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing. and these things cost money, so the cost of this repression results in even more pressure to hold wages down. never ending cycle. reinforcement. top 20%: professional managerial class. decision makers, politicians, opinion sharers, culture creators, professors, lawyers, executives, entertainers, judges, writers, producers, editorswhen they speak, they are listened toif they complain enough, someone far below them in wealth and influence will be fired 7. Attention: Social Superiority (high status) attracts favorable attention. Social inferiority attracts unfavorable or no attention.

Jurocracy in America

Donald Black

_______ is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not recidivism (returning to crime) will occur

Employment

Nine Parts of Desire The Hidden World of Islamic Women

Geraldine Brooks

If homicide rates had continued at the 1980 rate (high)...

If 1980 homicide rate had continued to today, we would have had an additional 300,000 people killed (3 Sanford Stadiums and then some). By contrast, only 66,000 US soldiers have been killed since the Vietnam war.

Statistics of sex law reforms globally

In americas, europe, and oceana, individualizing reforms comprise over 90% of total reforms, while in africa and asia 71-74%. middle east: 48%. Individualization prevailed everywhere except middle east, when there, nearly half the reform followed the global individualizing trend We observe a propensity for revisions that are isomorphic (the same)domestic reforms reflect global templatesthe local actors who animate the case study literature appear to read from globally institutionalized scripts

Oct 29: Ghosts and Giants

Ghosts and Giants: Ghosts: organizations All around us, and becoming more numerous all the time. Real and powerful. States, business corporations, non profits, student clubs, frats and sororities, etc Organizations: Organization: capacity for collective action This capacity sets us off from other species Humans: the only species who can do both: cooperate in large numbers AND cooperate flexibly (everyone does something different, specialization) We form organizations You can't see, touch, smell, taste, or eat an org Where is UGA? In our collective heads No physical body Can live forever Can be in more than one place at a time (parallel presence) Organizations: Fictional entities/fictional people (the old term). Corporate actors (the new term) - ghosts How do they act? Through agents/servants like you and I!!! Coleman: "Social world is made up of 2 kinds of actors - individuals + organizations." Ex. UGA is a social actor separate from the people who work or study here. We will pass on and through. UGA will go on. Yet, UGA acts through us! We are the agents/servants of the UGA ghost. 3 Types of Relationship: 2 types of social being means we have 3 types of socia relationships/interactions (Coleman). Type 1: Individual - Individual (ex. you and your friend) Type 2: Organization - Individual (ex. UGA and you) Type 3: Organization - Organization (ex. UGA and NCAA) Type 1 vs Type 2: Since orgs usually act through individuals, Type 1 and Type 2 often LOOK the same Ex. Our dining hall server is our friend. Switch back and forth between type 1 (interacting as friends) and type 2 (interacting w/ the organization) Type 2 is different: For most of history, all interactions were Type 1 But now we find ourselves more and more in Type 2 (ex. organizations sue individuals a lot now) Type 2: Being collective, the org (ghost) has much more power, especially when large (giant). It: Defines the terms of the contract (ex. you might ask UGA if u can graduate in 3 years but they say no because it is the policy THEY have defined) Knows more about you than you know about it Has greater resources Can we resist its power? We'll come back to this. 2 Population Explosions: Number of social ghosts has grown greatly. This is a second, less well known population explosion # of people on earth: 1900: 1.6 billion 2019: 7.7 billion No exact data on orgs, but they became vastly more numerous Ex. Lawyers, doctors... Used to work alone, but now work in and for organizations Giants: Many orgs are small But some are huge - giants The largest are states, and after that, business corporations Largest business corporation is... Walmart!!! (bigger than some states) United States: About 2.8 million civilian employees Plus about 1.3 million in US military (and 800,000 reserves) US national debt: $22 trillion!! (trillion = 1,000 billion) Business Corporations: Largest business corporations are huge, too Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 69 are business corporations These global corps have great influence, especially in poorer countries!!! Largest Business Corporation: Walmart (highest revenue) Annual sales of $515 billion Employs 2.2 million people worldwide 2018 after tax profit = $9.9 billion 10th largest economy in the world! Revenues exceed those of over 180 countries! Including wealthy/big ones, like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia (pop 230 million). Power of Corporations: 2008 Bank Bailout: If you lend too much money, you go bankrupt When the big banks loaned too much, the gov age them a $700 billion bailout "Too big to fail." Gov gives this money to organizations (not people). Gov knows that bad things will happen if these banks fail, so it helps the banks. Gov respects and fears big orgs like banks! Most Powerful? Power of a corporation can be measured in several ways: Wealth # of People employed # of customers reached Ambivalence (mixed opinions): Very mixed opinions about orgs Because they are ghostly, we never fully see them And because many are giants, very powerful Love/Hate: People admire big, successful orgs But also fear them Love/hate relationship Virtues of Corporations: Provide food and products from all over the world at low prices Provides mass employment Our standard of living would be impossible w/o corporations In short, amazingly efficient (especially compared to the gov) Critiques: Corps only interested in one thing: Profit!!! Will exploit people AND the environment to do that Ex. many corps don't pay a living wage (don't pay workers enough to live on) And bad working conditions (ex. working conditions in other countries) And cheat customers And pollute the environment Power: Jefferson, Lincoln, and others - predicted/feared that corporations becoming too powerful Today, they are a lot more powerful Ex. (Recent): Tech Companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft All giants: amazingly successful Provide us with all kinds of new goods and services But at a price, which is largely hidden: Corporate surveillance! Organizations can get info of you through technology, and use it in ways you aren't okay with. Resisting Organization Power: Several Methods: 1. Disrupt/steal from the org (Coleman: story about working at a drug store, stealing stuff to give to his friend) 2. Take our business elsewhere (most frequent) 3. Fight fire with fire - forming orgs can be effective. (ex. consumer orgs, labor unions, political orgs). 4. Shame orgs through bad publicity (the media giving orgs a bad reputation). -these methods are less effective if the org already has a monopoly. Summary: We live in a world increasingly populated by social ghosts (orgs). Sume of which are powerful giants Whether the giant ghosts are benign or hostile is up to us Although they are more powerful, they are not all-powerful

Is Killing Wrong? A Study in Pure Sociology Mark Cooney

Homicides: commonly done in public. Term homicide is rarely used. More often, the term Capital Punishment: a state execution of convicted criminals. Illustrates the power of a kew variable in Blackian theory: organization Law: Organization, or the "capacity for collective action," is an autonomous dimension of social space Organization is a type of social status!!!!!! In upward direction (the higher your status is), sanctions increase with organizational distance. The more central a society is, the greater organizational distance (the greater the gap) between the state and the people. Organizational status is enjoyed not just by organizations themselves, but by the individuals who act on their behalf (ex. police officers) More serious to kill a store worker employed by a large corporation than a self employed worker More serious to kill a corporate executive than a factory worker The State: Most organized organization is the state killing of state officials is and has long been a particularly grave crime Some states are more organized than others, however. A key indicator of state organization is its centralization, the concentration of the decision making. The most centralized states invest a single individual with control. All policies tend to centralize in times of national crisis, such as war, natural disaster, or terrorist threats. Centralization widens the status gap between the state and the citizenry (greater centralization, greater gap, greater Organizational Distance/superiority of state over citizenry) 3 broad types of state can be distinguished on the continuum of centralization: democracy (rule by many), oligarchy (rule by few), and autocracy (rule by one). Considerable differences across 3 states in handling of homicide committed and against state agents Democracy: most likely parties to official homicide in a democracy: police and citizen!!!!!! Citizen-police homicide- Triggers a heavyweight legal response!!!! 63% were convicted of murder 13% were sentenced to death, and 51% to life imprisonment Only 2% not punished of the 1,280 persons arrested and charged, 40% wound up being sentenced to death or life imprisonment. that is markedly higher than in comparable studies of citizen victims. killing of a police officer elevates the risk of a sentence of death The privileged position of officers in homicide cases goes well beyond their elevated victim status in capital trials. It extends to officers who kill citizens Police-citizen homicide: Leniency: legally justifiable, and neither discipline nor punishment results study of 1500 police-citizen killings, 1952-69. only 3 officers were convicted of any crime. the killing of an officer by a citizen was therefore over 40 times more likely to result in a conviction!!! Exploring contrast: An alternative explanation: police typically kill in circumstances permitted by law, while citizens do not. rules are different for officers who kill than for citizens who kill higher social status (and organizational status) gets translated into more advantageous outcomes Unless there are extraordinary circumstances, law enforcement officials will receive a GENEROUS BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT Homicides are classified instead as self inflicted fatalities affected by provoking the police to lethal violence -seen as self defense once ruled a homicide, the case is usually investigated internally by members of the same department, who are inclined to construct the event favorably to the killer Attempt to make the incident look as clean and professional as possible In many jurisdictions, police officers are able to delay making a statement to investigators, allowing ample time for them to formulate, rehearse Police departments compel officers involved in shootings to provide a statement. The law forbids these compelled statements from being used in criminal prosecutions. Only the strongest legal cases are likely to make it to trial, but even then, a conviction is far from inevitable, since those deciding the matter tend to be understanding of officers Juries: reluctant to brand the officer as a criminal. Jurors usually see the victim as unsympathetic. Deserved what they got. Even if there is an indictment, conviction is rare. In NY, not a singe on duty police homicide resulted in a conviction between 1977 and 1995. the contrasts, then, in a legal response to police-citizen and citizen-police homidies are considerable in democratic states. EVEN MORE CONSIDERABLE in oligarchic states. Oligarchy: A small elite (group of powerful people), usually wealthy, perhaps hereditary, monopolizes the higher reaches go ov. leaders stay in power a long time elections, if held, are frequently accompanied by corruption, intimidation, and violence. POLICE ARE MILITARISTIC, SHIELDED FROM SCRUTINY: Police departments tend to be shielded from effective public influence and scrutiny, operating under a militaristic and centralized model of organization. Many 3rd world countries. Oligarchies are more tolerant of killings by officials: more victims: rates of official homicides are high, but rates of official conviction for homicide are low Very few of those killings were punished, some were even officially praised. More groups of victims. They massacre them in large groups. Brazilian military police stormed a Sao Paulo prison. 111 prisoners dead More violence. More violence than is necessary to eliminate the victim. Indiscriminately attacked and killed civilians, including 6 elementary school chidren Police also torture and mutilate with some regularity More premeditation: police shootings have high levels of fatality, suggesting high levels of intent to kill!!!! planned ahead of time, execution style!! Less effective emergency medical care explains some of the differences While police kill more civilians than they wound, civilians wound more police than they kill, again suggesting that many police homicides are not occurring in shoot outs but in deliberate pre-mediated executions!!!!!! more blatant manipulation of the law: Including: claiming self defense. they claim to be defending themselves in shoot outs, but when outsiders manage to investigate encounter killings, they discover the victims were already in the custody of the security forces when they were killed. Also stigmatize the victim (make up disgraceful rumors): public often favors stern measures against the victims, who the police claim "are criminals." Disposing of the corpse. Political suspects picked up by the police have disappeared. Even ordinary criminal suspects are sometimes never seen again after they enter police custody. Intimidating witnesses and officials. Individuals who participate in cases against police officers are often threatened, beaten, killed Co-opting the medical profession. Police may get doctors to write false medical reports to back up their claim that the person they murdered committed suciide. Or the state may underfund and undertrain its forensic doctors to the point that they cannot conduct proper investigations Delaying the case: cases against police officers may take years to come to trial, by which time the chance of conviction, never very high, has dwindled to low proportions. Allowing them to flee, valuable evidence is lost, or family members and human rights groups pushing for justice are forced to give up. Oligarchies thus provide a safe haven for officials who kill civilians. Not all oligarchies are the same. The weaker they are, the less pronounced the above tendencies will be. Equally, the more oligarchies strengthen and centralize, the more they tolerate state killing. When they are experiencing civil wars, insurgencies, and other armed political conflicts, typically kill large numbers of citizens. Virtually, no one is ever punished for these killings. In that way, they resemble autocracies. Autocracy: Autocracy "works on the theory that all conduct should emanate from a single will." Highest level of organizational superiority, centralization, organizational distance. The autocratic leader controls all political decision. Restricts personal liberty. The state controls mass communications, gathering information on all its citizens while remaining secretive about its own affairs. Notoriously harsh and punitive toward their own people The most extreme kill citizens in large numbers Saltan of delhi, aztec emperor, 19t century zulu king 20th century autocracies just as lethal. Soviet union, china, cambodia. nazi germany exterminated millions of its own citizens. very few of the victims had attacked the state. most were killed because they were members of social categories suspected of disloyalty. MEMBERS OF ETHNIC MINORITIES. only in the most exceptional cases were their killers punished. autocracies, then, are the most murderous of regimes. they commit more multiple victim homicides, up to and including massacres and even genocides, than oligarchies, and vastly more than democracies never carry any legal penalties. the written law is largely IRRELEVANT!! In autocracies, mass official slaughter is legitimate in effect. Victims: In stark contrast, homicides directed upward against autocratic regimes are deeply illegal he could expect to die slowly and agonizingly in july 1944, group of german army officers attempted to assassinate hitler. they got gruesome torture, and death sentences.

Sexual Violence Trends

Rape and sexual assault, 1995 NCVS rate: 5.0 per 1,000 females aged 12 or over. 2014 rate: 1.1 per 1,0002018 rate: 2.7 per 1,000 Peaked in 1990, then went down a lot. Small uptick since 2014, but overall, trend is down. NCVS says: A 46% decline overall FBI says rape: 30% declineThese are different rates Why the difference?Why did the NCVS rate decline much more than the UCR rate?These days, more rapes are being reported to the police. So, they don't see as much of a decline.UCR data supports this (up to the year 2000): UCR 1973-2000: % of rapes reported to police rose from 50% to 60% College Sexual Assault:Rape on campus remains a realityBut the current awareness campaign is flowing with the tide of historyRape on campus peaked around 1990, and has gone down since then. (Nonstudent rape is higher than student rape, surprisingly)