I would have saved myself from five hundred years’ imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey.  -The Monkey King from American Born Chinese

I recently finished a young adult book entitled American Born Chinese, the winner of the 2007 Printz Award. The book is a graphic novel that explores issues of race as related to immigrating groups in the United States. The author, Gene Yang, using imagery from Chinese culture to show the struggle a teenage boy endures as he realizes the way race and ethnicity affect his life in both positive and negative ways. American Born Chinese does an excellent job of accentuating the small issues that lead to stressful situations in day-to-day lives of immigrants, and even though it focuses on the hardships of Chinese teenagers one or two generations removed from relatives that were born overseas, the ideas Yang delivers could be applied to most immigrant groups today.

But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to talk about the importance of delivering these messages in a way that adolescents and teens can understand and even relate to. Specifically, the use of the graphic novel by a young adult writer to delve into issues relating to race and ethnicity. The use of a format that is accessible and alluring for teens is important in getting some of these messages out there. Using a graphic novel to tackle tough issues such as race is an eloquent strategy, one that could be employed to deal with a plethora of issues, from sex education to the dangers and consequences of drugs and alcohol. Getting information out there is important so that adolescents and teens have the information to make decisions that are right for them. And letting them know the effects of racism, sexism and classism (just to name a few isms) can help start them out with information about variety in life in an informative and potentially critical way, rather than the complacency that they may have about these issues when information on them isn’t easily accessible or presented in an entertaining way.

There have been a few books that deal with some issues like these transferred into graphic novels. Ever tried to read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States? It’s really informative and amazingly well written. But it’s long. And a lot of people would never be interested in reading hundreds of pages on the History of the United States, especially after taking multiple classes throughout school about American history. But the content is something that people should have access to. So a few years ago, Zinn released a graphic novel version of it, very abridged but keeping the same message and the most important content, entitled A People’s History of the American Empire. The new format for the information was good; much easier to read but still with the punch of the original. The same thing was done with Studs Terkel’s Working. It was adapted into a graphic novel and a musical, allowing it to catch a wider audience than the original ethnography would have been able to access and address.

Taking information on important and relevant social issues and transposing them to a medium that more people have the desire to use is an important way to disseminate more ideas. Addressing these social issues early on can help improve the critical thinking skills for many adolescents and teens by exposing them to a broader spectrum of experiences and ideologies. Hopefully writers continue to use graphic novels as a way to reach a younger audience and educate them about tough topics.

Although it can backfire. I did see a graphic novel entitled The Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb.

And that’s what I’ll do today. Earlier this week, I had an interesting conversation with a customer at the coffee shop where I work. Strangely enough, she’s a sociology graduate student at the nearby university. Since it’s March, the employees at my workplace have been wearing St. Patrick’s Day themed ties. The owners have Irish ancestory. I, however, do not. At least I’m pretty sure. This customer came in and inquired about the ties, asking whether I had Irish ancestors. I said no and followed up by saying that it didn’t really matter. This caught her off guard. She was amazed that I had no ethnic ties to my ancestors’ countries of origin.

I explained to her the way I felt: I’m two generations removed from the relative that moved to the United States, who immigrated with her mother to the United States when she was a little girl sometime around World War II. This person was my grandmother. Since she came her as a young girl, her acculturation was more rooted in American ideologies. She knew German, but used English in day-to-day interactions in school, where she was exposed to American culture. To a large extent, I view my great-grandmother as the last relative who wasn’t fully American.

While this sentiment isn’t necessarily true, ethnic identity is based on how one is raised. I wasn’t brought up being exposed to the food, traditions, or language of the European countries my relatives emigrated from. The only thing I even remember doing that wasn’t American culture was having St. Nick visit on December 5th to fill stockings. And I didn’t even realize it was unusual until this last year, when my girlfriend mentioned that it was neat and my mom explained where it came from.

I remember somewhere in my college education talking about acculturation, specifically when immigrating groups started to dissociate with their country of origin. It generally happens around the third generation. The first generation, the immigrators themselves, keep their language (sometimes learn the language of the new country), dietary habits, and traditions. The next generation down usually knows the language of their parents’ country, but is rooted more in the new one. The second generation has a mixed diet, and learns traditions from both cultures, although the new traditions have a larger impact on their life because of their larger cultural surroundings. Once we get to the third generation, many of these things are completely transferred to the new culture. Learning the new language makes more sense because it allows for more mobility in the new country. Learning the new country’s traditions is the same. And a diet that includes the food of the country one lives in is simpler. An exception tot his trend is groups that live in enclaves in larger cities, such as Chinatown or Greektown. The point is to maintain ethnic identity, so these patterns generally don’t form in these areas.

I’m in that third generation down. I don’t feel any connection to my ethnic roots. The customer I was talking to was down a few generations, too. What made her hold onto her roots when I never had them? The answer I can come up with is that her family held very tightly to their traditions. She still identified as Irish, saying that she regularly ate Irish food and celebrated Irish holidays. Her ancestors never fully acculturated into American society, holding onto the things that separated them from other European groups that immigrated to the United States. I guess I never had that as a kid. I’ve always felt American.

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.  -the Criminologist from Rocky Horror

So obviously it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog. Between a lack of inspiration and a bunch of changes in my life, this is one thing that suffered. Since I missed the month of October completely, my goal is to get back into a groove for November.

But I’m going to start and finish out this month by responding to a YouTube video posted by Hank of vlogbrothers (found here: http://www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers#p/u/1/22RWBe-1ix8). In it he discusses why the Rocky Horror Glee Show was awkward. In the end, Hank ends up saying why he is bothered by Glee doing Rocky Horror Picture Show like this:

“So probably what bothers me about Glee doing Rocky Horror is that Glee isn’t going to be talking about what’s actually cool about Rocky Horror. They’ll take out all of the absurdities; they’ll take out the cannibalistic transvestite space alien stuff; and most importantly they’ll take out the experience of Rocky Horror which was an experience that was created by thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals watching Rocky Horror in different cities across the world and making it their own experience… The cool thing about Rocky Horror is that culture that I was once a part of and that I once needed because YouTube didn’t exist yet.”

So here’s the deal, Hank. An important way that mainstream culture reifies itself is to commodify ideas and trends that exist in outsider cultures. This serves two main purposes that are important for culture to accomplish. First, it allows mainstream entertainment media to “produce” new ideas that help validate it’s existence. Music, movies, and books can take new themes and ideologies from media that is created on the fringes because most people haven’t seen it. These “new” styles can come in with little resistance from the outside because, in general, there isn’t much resistance in comparison to the sales gained by pulling from non-pop culture. In this way, mainstream culture seems new and exciting even though it rarely ever is. Classic examples include but are not limited to: West Side Story and rock ‘n roll. A more modern example of this may be the way rap music has been integrated into pop music (although it still maintains underground music scenes). So the attempt for Glee to reintegrate Rocky Horror is actually pretty common. It works because it sells.

Here’s the second, and in my opinion, the far more crucial impact the commodification process has on fringe culture: it strips it of its fringiness. When hip-hop was rolled into mainstream music, over time it lost much of its social awareness and critique. By integrating these themes and ideologies into the mainstream, they take away the aspects that make them outsider in some way. This actually is a pretty amazing defense mechanism for keeping themes that may critique social norms in check; absorb them so they can’t be used negatively.

So Hank, if you want to keep Rocky Horror the experience that has been created by years of sing-alongs and toast flinging, just don’t stop going to the theater for your Rocky Horror experience. As long as the people that have made the show what it has become keep doing it, it can’t be commodified. That experience is pure. Don’t let Glee take it.

But you can follow my newly created Twitter account as I tweet my way along. Hear exciting adventures about battery acid and 85-year-old tour guides. My username is SocioMatt, a name that was considered for this blog. I decided it was too creepy. Somehow it fits for Twitter.

So enjoy that. I’ll be back posting here next week.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.  -Karl Marx

After thinking about my post last week and talking with a few people, I decided I needed to post an addendum to it. I noted that it is important for philosophers and researchers to present their ideas and findings in ways that are useful to society. It is equally important that they not go into any scientific process with preconceived conclusions. For example, a researcher that is looking at religiosity and police action needs to avoid going in thinking that there will be a correlation; otherwise, they may skew data to fit their desired model rather than creating a model to fit the available data. But beginning research to create intentional result must be happening. All we have to do is look at “creation science.” Science must be unbiased, but it also should work toward the advancement of society. This is a significant challenge, one that isn’t necessarily easy to overcome or is even easily recognized as problematic.

Going into any scholasticism requires that the individual disassociates with their own personal biases and experiences. While those are important for individual development and to help define a person, researchers could cause damage in inaccurate reporting if their findings are peppered with that individuality.

The rub is trying to maintain this unbiased scholastic questioning while staying connected to society and culture so that observers don’t fester a sense of superiority. It may hard trying to reconcile the necessary sense of self in order to do socially adaptable research and the sense of public servitude that this research would ultimately contribute to. If my sense of self is tied up in my research, it makes sense to be disconnected from the community and the need for meaningful social research. But if I’m working toward community, I already have an idea about where I want the research to go. Rough.

So I think it boils down to something like this. There needs to be more research done on the local level that pertains strictly to specific areas. Within that, there should be a lack of elitism; the people doing the research need to me members of the community. Their research should then be aimed at producing solutions to issues in their area, rather than broad patterns and trends that we are generally assaulted with through media. While studies in national trends are important, some more locally targeted and publicized research may go a long way to helping communities get what they want.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. -Karl Marx

I’ve been hesitant to tackle this next piece of literature if for no other reason then its length. My response may actually be longer than the original work. What I’m talking about is a piece by Karl Marx entitled Theses on Feuerbach written in 1845. From this compact set of statements comes the popular quote above which starts to address a common issue in the social sciences: should researchers be passive observers or should they work to help improve society? Marx recognizes that the researcher and philosopher are not separate from the society they are looking at. He writes:

“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.”

Within this, Marx notes that observers need to be cognizant that they, no matter how intensely they try, are influenced and shaped by circumstances and upbringings. If researchers and theoreticians see cultures and societies other than their own as inferior, they ignore important differences between groups. For example, if someone sees black people as inferior to white, then they may ignore important contributions to culture by black people. Or high-income citizens may quickly dismiss hip-hop and monster truck rallies because they are frequently seen as “low-culture.” The creation of the dichotomy is in itself harmful to society because it damages social relationships. It becomes harder to reconcile disparate groups the more they create unique distinctions that don’t transcend dividing lines.

How all this relates to people that critique and research social structures is simple: once observers see themselves outside of social structures they are in danger of seeing those institutions as inferior to themselves and their research. The placement of negative values on culture and society by those that see themselves as disconnected is not particularly useful for meaningful social change. Pointing out the flaws of “the other” isn’t going to foster an environment where unity and equality can exist. This is the danger in just being a passive observer, of just interpreting. Being disconnected from social systems is far less influential than being involved in them. Marx writes:

“The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove truth, that is, the reality and power, the his-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.”

If objective truth is purely scholastic, than it is necessary to be involved in order for knowledge to be practical. This is what Marx means when he writes, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” We have to be involved, using our observations and research to help with positive and meaningful social change. Otherwise, why do it?

When we look at American society today there are many different forms of subculture. But how often do we get to see the origin of where one starts?  -Midwestern Gentleman on Youtube

I’m going to go ahead and take a stab at the above question: never. Subcultures develop over time, often mashing together characteristics from multiple sources. The punk movement was an amalgamation of various music styles including reggae, rock and folk, and assorted ideologies like nihilism and do-it-yourself. It didn’t come from one source or even one region. In fact, punk developed in many forms and regions simultaneously. So in thinking about the ways in which subcultures come into being, I’d like to address the way in which midwesterngentleman.com is attempting to generate it’s own subculture. (And if you want to watch the Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw68GGCM2SU.)

First off, the issue with attempting to create subculture is authenticity. Taking a simple definition of culture from Wikipedia (and trust me, this is extremely basic, but it serves our purposes), culture is “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.” What the Midwestern Gentleman has done is unauthentic because it doesn’t reflect collectively held structures in anyway. The website is written unilaterally; a single author does not constitute a shared attitude. Additionally, subcultures have to vary from mainstream culture in some way. Euchre may be unique to the midwest, along with pontoon boats and Faygo, but they certainly don’t vary from general midwest culture. The attempted creation here is unauthentic because it isn’t shared. Culture isn’t laid out and dictated by any one individual. While there may be figureheads, like Sid Vicious for punk, they embody important characteristics that are widely accepted within a subculture. But they don’t do it with a mind toward subcultural creation, just subcultural expression.

The second issue here is that of low transaction costs. In other words, involvement in the Midwestern Gentleman subculture doesn’t cost anything for members, and doesn’t really produce anything either. By costs I’m not just talking about money. Any time commitment is limited mostly to reading new posts, and maybe spending an extra 30 seconds at the grocery store remembering that a Midwestern Gentleman buys single-malt liquor instead of Jägermeister. There isn’t really a commitment to contribute new ideas to the conceptualization of the Midwestern Gentleman since he is independent in authorship. And unless you are donating money to the website or buying single-malt liquor over Jägermeister, there isn’t a monetary commitment, either. Access to this subculture has low transaction costs and thus weak social bonds. Since there is no investment in being a Midwestern Gentleman, especially since people already played Euchre and rode on pontoon boats and drank Faygo before, there is no strong bond linking people to the ideology. And ultimately people don’t get any bonding out of participating in the Midwestern Gentleman subculture because the facets are, for the most part, solitary. They don’t involve large groups. I don’t need to have social interactions to buy Faygo over Coke, or listen to Bob Seger. And would I play Euchre and ride on pontoon boats without being a Midwestern Gentleman?

Let’s take a moment to cellebrate [sic] the fact that one person has brought so many people together in a common interest.  -Facebook Group

Community is important, and the creation of community ties can be difficult. I know I can’t name all the people that live in my neighborhood, or even on my block. But amazingly enough, I can now name the guy in this picture. And it’s not because I looked him up on the internet, although that is a possibility I’ll talk about in a second. It’s because after seeing him walk along a major road in my home town for the last 10 years nearly every day, waving a United States’ flag and frequently accompanied by his dog, I stopped. I never knew his name, but I would occasionally wave when I drove by. Today was different because I realized that after a decade of having a community connection with this individual, I knew absolutely nothing about him.

His name is Colin Campbell. Among the experiences in his life, he was a Marine during Vietnam between 1967 and 1969 and he worked for General Motors doing a variety of tasks for 30 years. In fact, he was raised not that far from where I was raised. We talked about the way that people react to him after years of being a community symbol.

Like the Facebook group that was created commemorating his activity, appropriately titled “I honk at the guy waving the American flag on marsh road.” As of right now, 6,751 people like it. Among the wall posts, the quote up there in the box is juxtaposed with “You know I don’y [sic] even know his name.” Even though many people don’t know his name, his goal is to get to 1 million waves or honks. Despite losing his tally sheet a little while ago, Colin is up to 162,000 acknowledgements, getting somewhere between 800 and 1,000 each day.

Colin is good for creating community ties whether people realize it or not. Even though I don’t know the person who waved to him in the car in front of me, I have a connection with that person. We both participate in the same activity. We are both gaining the same social capital. After I talked to Colin, I continued on to the coffee shop I hang out at. I mentioned to the employees that I had stopped to talk to Colin and they were interested. No one seemed to know anything about him, employees or customers, except what they observe. Strangely enough, I had gained social capital simply because I stopped today and had a conversation. The community has this common denominator of waving and honking, of supporting his walk and perpetuating his symbolic status. And while this connection may not be personally beneficial to any individual, it allows people to relate to each other in a way that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Community ties are important; having a conversation with someone you interact with on a daily basis, like the person you always see at the coffee shop, helps to build that community. And waving at the guy waving the United States’ flag.

Along with demographic questions, give a national sample of police officers from different religious backgrounds (not just different Christian denominations but other religious traditions) three different Likert scale questionnaires relating to religion. These would be questionnaires relating to religiosity, religious fundamentalism, and intrinsic/extrinsic religiousness. Hopefully with a large enough sample, geographical differences in propensity for ticketing is able to be taken into account. Pair this data on religiosity with statistics for each officer on activity, most notably traffic pull-overs and fines given. Compare and contrast. Of course this is simplified, but the premise is there.

The question is, when the data is analyzed, will there be statistically significant differences between religiosity, religious fundamentalism, and intrinsic religious value and the number of tickets written by an officer. The idea arises because of the different moral value systems varying religious traditions have. For example, an officer in the Catholic tradition may view the nature of man as sinful and something that needs to be redeemed through submission to dogma, while an officer that practices Buddhism may see the attachment to materialism as destructive to human nature. The varying ideas behind religious ideologies produce different ways of living life, setting out different philosophies on how to live. So why wouldn’t officers from different backgrounds have different tendencies? If people need to be punished for sins, then ticketing seems like the natural solution. If people aren’t responsible for their nature, was it really their fault they were speeding, and is ticketing a viable answer?

I don’t have a conclusion; I haven’t done any research.

But here are some potential pitfalls when thinking about this hypothetical study. First off, finding a diversified group of officers may be a challenge in itself. If networking works like so many studies have shown it has, the potential for people to interact with others that have differing ideologies is small. Hiring works within networks; if I have a friend inside a police department, it is significantly more likely that I will get hired than somebody else, assuming mostly everything regarding qualifications is equal. This means that it is likely police departments consist of individuals who share similar paradigms of thought, and religiosity plays into this.

Another issue is controlling for other external factors, such as race, gender, and geography. Some areas contain religious traditions that aren’t prevalent in other part of the United States. In Utah, would differences be attributed to Mormonism or the fact that an officer was from Utah? You may not find Mormon police officers in the rest of the country, so any comparison would be hard to make. Controlling for demographic differences may be hard given the low number of police officers in each geographic region compared to overall population. Doing this study in a single large city may be the answer, but then issue of diversified police forces comes back into play.

I don’t want to set the world on fire.  -The Ink Spots

This post is solely related to the linked video below, entitled The Logorama. It’s a short film that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. So before reading this, if you haven’t seen this animated short, spend the 15 minutes and watch it. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81d8SUaCMJo.

We can pull a few concepts from the video in relationship of social issues. First, it’s easy to see a critique of something called the McDonaldization affect. First identified by George Ritzer in the early 90s, the process is characterized by a few changes to social organizations, including an increase in efficiency and conformity (for more information, check out Wikipedia or read the book by Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society). The animation depicts, as it’s main tangible villain, Ronald McDonald. The metaphor, while less clean-cut than my interpretation would like, is that the global increase in McDonaldization is destructive and ultimately crooked. Ronald steals a truck full of volatile weapons, things that are generally seen as harmful to civil society. The act of stealing is representative of how McDonaldization has stolen culture and society; these are now determined by efficiency and conformity. Social institutions focus on these features. Culture is frequently slaved to how efficiently it can be reproduced and disseminated, and this standardized system of cultural production determines what stays and what disappears. The initial antagonism in this animated short deals with these societal issues.

The second main commentary is the dependence of global corporations on oil, which has potential to crack the entire system. I interpreted the message here very simply, although there are depths of meaning. The need for oil is essential to all corporations, and metaphorically it runs through all of society. Eventually, if something has so much power over social processes, it will become a consuming force that overtakes all others. In the short, oil overwhelms all other corporations, showing a potential outcome of heavy dependence on the fossil fuel industry.