Race and MoMa

This week, I visited The Museum of Modern Art in the city. Studying social theory this semester has made me more acutely aware of the importance interpretation and perception play in decision making and the construction of intellectual products. My academic pursuit has always been one of understanding—I’ve sought to answer how the ugliest of attitudes can develop, and even become pervasive, in a society. Still, ingesting readings on phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, structuralism, standpoint theory and other contemporary sociological theories has opened my eyes to concepts such as a priori knowledge, that not only effect the development of theory but also research methodology, fiction writing, and even works of art.

Hannah Deinhard (1970) writes that the main question that the sociology of art asks is “ How is it possible that works of art, which always originate as products of human activity within a particular time and society and for a particular time, society, or function -- even though they are not necessarily produced as 'works of art' -- can live beyond their time and seem expressive and meaningful in completely different epochs and societies?” Obviously, the beauty to art work is often its ability to be perceived, to hold different meanings to different people. Art clearly becomes socially constructed, and can be used to represent and transmit our own social constructions of concepts such as race and ethnicity. Additionally, it can be used to at least highlight and explain trends in race and ethnicity. These are my interpretations of some of my findings.

This piece is Joseph Kosuth's "The Word Definition." He lists various definitions for the concept of defining. To me, this shows the vast differences we can have in our process of defining. Morning's research on race is on racial conceptualization: what race is, how race differs and what the origins of race are. Race holds different definitions to each of us that are developed through processes of defining, that are different to each of us, even if regularities exist. Kosuth's "defining" is similar to Morning's many measures of conceptualization.

This picture is by Glen Ligon. The texts are inspired by prose from Zora Neal Hurston's "How it feels to be colored me" and Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man." While you may have trouble reading the black on black text, it reads “I am an invisible man…I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” The materials Ligon chooses to use to display these quotes make them difficult to read and understand--this, to me, represents how it is difficult for me, as a white male, to understand feelings of black existentialism and alienation. Also, it represents the difficulty to understand deeply rooted race problems. This invokes thoughts of standpoint theory, pointing to the conceptualization of race according to those of different races. It highlights our difficulty to understand what it means to be a certain race or ethnicity to someone.

This final picture I've chose to note in this blog entry is by Robert Colescott, a favorite artist of mine, and is named "Emergency Room." The piece has a lot going out, depicting racial hardship and even stereotypes. He paints a chaotic emergency room, what in Colescott's words he sees as an "allegory for the whole country." The scene has several different characters being shown. There's a group of apes stabbing eachother with knives in the upper corner; a sickly skeleton with a black female head recieving a blood transfusion; a priest holding a decapitated black head. To me, the picture shows Colescott's view of race in American society as one where blacks are put at a serious disadvantage, suffering from attacks in several areas.

The reason Morning's research is so important is that she provides a multidimensional outlook at defining notions of race. By showing the way race functions in several different contexts we see that only race is a social construct dependent on environment AND that these different context-dependent functionings can relate to racial attitudes and eventually even preference for policy and creation of policy. Kusuth's "The Word Definition" strongly sums up Morning's research, as different ways of defining is at the heart of Morning's studies.

references

Morning, Ann. 2009. “Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century” Social Forces 87, March 2009

Randall Collins Techo-Function Theory

Education is something that occurs in our everyday lives. Whether you’re in school yourself, you have kids in school, or if you’re in the work force. It’s a topic that involves our everyday lives whether we notice it or not.

Randall Collins discusses, in depth, his theories in his piece “Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification”. The first theory is called the techno-function theory. Collins believed skills are important in getting a job because technology is constantly changing. The two processes involved in this theory are the fact that the proportion of jobs asking for lower skills decreases meanwhile the need for high skills begins to increase. The same jobs require high skill requirements wherever you go! Collins states in “Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification”: skill requirements of jobs change with industrialization and concerning the content of school experiences.

Education is tied into these high demands of skills because in school is where these skills are learned. All over the country and the world you find schools offering different programs to help individuals succeed in the work place. Schools such as BOCES on Long Island offer electrical programs, nursing, culinary and other programs to give people a head start in specific fields. My own brother took electrician classes at BOCES and now is working for one of the biggest gas companies in the country and he thanks the electrician program he was a part of for helping him get ahead.

This is a perfect example of Collins’ techno-function theory. Collins fully believes this is why educational requirements for jobs is constantly rising everywhere you go. I feel because of the high demand for education (to obtain these skills jobs require), more and more people are either going back to school or even spending LONGER to obtain an even HIGHER degree such as a Bachelors or even a Doctorate Degree. Today, high school graduates are constantly asked the famous question “where are you going to college?” because nowadays, NOT advancing your education isn’t even a question. In order to make the “big bucks” it requires you to earn the skills from educational institutions.

When you fill out any job application, one of the very first questions are about your education, what courses you’ve taken that have to do with the job and so forth. It’s something you cant really avoid. And if you don’t have schooling, people look at you like you have five heads.

According from the Opinion article in Newsday titled “Nation Needs More Utility Laborers”, (http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/wheary-need-for-utility-workers-is-a-problem-and-an-opportunity-1.4226041) Jennifer Wheary discusses how in New York, companies like National Grid and Onondaga Community College run a utility worker certificate program that combines technology, math and science courses with on the job training. This is because they are trying to promote more young people to come into that line of work. So many people go right for the academic schooling while that’s all well and good but a lot of people forget about the trade fields. Companies such as Lipa, National Grid and other power companies have the average worker aging 50 years old. The fact that these companies know that education is a huge factor, they are offering programs that not only focus on the books but hands on experience as well. That is something you cannot find in a class room. Wheary states: "We need to rethink the role that high schools, community colleges and utility companies themselves can play in getting more students interested in and prepared for utility careers. And we need to give them the resources to do more. There are successful models in place at the local level, where these groups are working together to fill employment gaps. There just aren't enough of them in operation”.

When I first walked into an interview a few years back for a Clerical position at my job, the first thing the supervisor said to me was “what makes you qualified to even be sitting here right now?” Although it was intimidating, I was able to explain what my skills were. Then the very next question was “How fast can you type? Have you taken computer classes before?” And so forth. When I explained that I was an English major at Suffolk Community College and currently studying Sociology at Stony Brook University. I told her about typing, keyboarding and many other computer classes I have taken. She was pretty impressed and started talking to me differently. She came off very harsh at first but once she knew my background, she stopped. I found this incredible and didn’t realize at the time how having a certain piece of paper can change how people view you. I find this experience as a good example of Collins’ theory of techno-function.

Randall Collins really goes into depth defending his techno-function theory and even today we see examples of it everywhere. Our world is changing and we need education to keep up with the high speed technology and advances needed in our society today.

Habitus and False Dichotomies

In my last post I discussed my thoughts on social space and made a comparison with high school. I had originally wanted to talk about three concepts from Pierre Bourdieu in my last blog but ended up rambling too much about high school and social space. So, in this blog I would like to continue where I left off which is with that picture I posted at the end of my last blog as a teaser.      

To explain this photo I will first review the concept of habitus that I’m matching it to. In society there are social structures that influence an individuals actions, but sometimes an individuals actions can influence the social structures. Individuals have a slight amount of freewill in their actions which allows for variations. In order to make any kind of decision we need knowledge of past experiences and individual judgment based on the context of the situation, that is what habitus is. Habitus is the link between our position in social space and our actions based on our position and the context of the situation. 

So now that I gave a brief summery of what habitus is I can draw the connections between it and my picture. When thinking about habitus I wanted to break down the concept into the simplest ideas possible. First I figured that habitus is partially comprised of your past experiences, so its not only what you know or what you have learned, but it is what you have to work with. You can’t place judgment on anything you know nothing about, you need some kind of experience to access. This is what got me thinking of the tool box. A tool box is a collection of tools that you know from past experience that are available at you disposal.

Habitus is not only your past experiences at your disposal but also your judgment. With a tool box you have the ability to combine your past experiences with your judgment of the situation and take appropriate actions. Different tools do different things and some may be better then others depending on the situation but in the end it is left up to your judgment. There may be multiple routes that end up at the same solution. Or, you can choose a different out come for the situation and do whatever you see fit. This is why the tool box represents habitus. It is a compilation of past experiences and your personal judgment based on the situation in order to take appropriate actions.

Now then, after talking about habitus I want to lead this blog into the next concept by Pierre Bourdieu. When explaining habitus I mentioned that there are social structures that influence an individuals actions, but that the individuals actions also influence the social structure. Well this is an example of a false dichotomy. A dichotomy is something with two opposed groups. Bourdieu believes that we shouldn’t only look at both opposing groups to a dichotomy but also see how much they work together, which makes them false dichotomies. Thinking about this concept I could have come up with plenty of ideas to relate this to but this one in particular stood out to me. 

So what I got here is a picture of a weight and a video game console. Both of these represent activities done by players at commonly misrecognized opposite ends of social space. The video game console would be associated with someone who is not physically active. The weight being associated with someone who is the exact opposite as a physically active individual. Normally what would be assumed is that one who plays a lot of video games uses their free time for that, which involves sitting around for long periods of time, eating unhealthy, and enforcing lazy habits. The individual that uses the weight would want to eat healthier, be active, and enforce active habits. But Im going to argue that this is a false dichotomy, or a misrecognition. I’m not only arguing this stand point from an observationally perspective but a personal perspective. I believe that I actually would be a good example for this false dichotomy. 

I have always been into video games, comics, and anything else that would be associated with a geeky lifestyle but at the same time Im also very enthusiastic about combat sports and exercising. I actually cosplayed at comic con this year as one of my favorite anime characters, and was confident in myself because I wasn’t your average overweight anime fan boy who never leaves his house. Actually there were a lot of people there at comic con who were in great shape and cosplaying like their favorite characters. Its kind of like these characters that you become so attached to help to motivate you to become more like them. After all super heros are suppose to be role models. So when someone would think that video games and comic would lead to a lazy, unhealthy lifestyle, it could in fact help motivate an individual to be more active. This is why I choose this picture to be an example for a false dichotomy. 

Unpacking Implicit Racism: How Morning, and other scholars, have combated the problem of social desirability effects

            I couldn't help but think of this Louie C.K clip when reflecting on Morning's study of racial conceptualization. For me, stand up comedy yields some of the sharpest and most relatable social commentary accessible to a wide range of Americans, both intellectual and nonintellectual. Louie C.K, George Carlin and Patrice O'Neil have highlighted inconsistencies in racial conceptualization in ways that are plenty more entertaining than journal articles. Still, what drew me to this clip when I was thinking about Morning's research was the honesty to which he discusses race. Patrice O'Neil, a black comedian, discusses race in a similar way; however, Louie, as a white male, addresses his ideas on race from his own standpoint. While its similar to theories on white guilt and a utilitarian approach to race relations, he still addresses the issue in a conversational but honest way. One of the major obstacles Morning's research had to overcome was the effects of social desirability--individuals hiding their conceptualizations of race that they may have considered would make them appear racist. However, through solid methodology, Morning is able to make this subtle racism more implicit--or at least, expose the assumptions people make when conceptualizing race.

            Despite the fact that our society is still largely racialized, and the fact that many Americans support policies that would disproportionately punish non-whites, it is generally accepted that being racist is NOT a positive quality in contemporary American society. This is a roadblock for researchers seeking to understand racism, as subjects often do not want to appear racist. This has caused many social scientists to attempt to manipulate their methodology in ways to combat social desirability effects. Feldman and Huddy (2005) studied opposition to racial programs, coining the term "new racism" as hidden symbolic, racial resentment while old, "blatant racism" was easier to detect. Feldman and Huddy found that opposition to race-based scholarship programs are largely driven by racial resentment, despite the claim that opposition to these programs is due to a drive for increased individualism. Payne (2001) addressed this problem even more head-on through his study of automatic activation of stereotypes. Using a priming task depicting a black or white face and a gun or a garden tool, they used a study of automatic activation via reaction time and misidentification errors to prove that racial stereotypes are automatically activated outside of conscious awareness. The real life implications of this can be seen from the Amadou Diallo tragedy of 1999.

            In Morning's research, she discusses how interviewees often shift the discussion of race to ethnicity/culture. She believes they do this to circumvent the "old racism" biological explanations for racial differences, and avoid engagement with America's long history of racial oppression. Interviewees still, however, make claims that there are insurmountable cultural differences, even when they are not able to locate what they are. This cultural racism is a phenomenon Balibar calls "racism without races." Morning suggests that "culture served as amore socially acceptable rendering of racial difference than biology could alone" (1176).

            Additionally, Morning avoids social desirability effects by her particularly questioning. Through the use of two particular lines of questioning--one on race in professional sports and the other on differentials in infant birth weight--Morning is able to weed out the conclusions that many people still hold notions that blacks are superior physically and inferior intellectually. An interesting conclusion she found was the result of her questioning on hockey. While most subjects provide biological explanations for why blacks were more prevalent in the NFL, they provided cultural explanations for why whites were more prevalent in the NHL.

            Social desirability is an interesting phenomenon. I've never held back any of my opinions on race or gender issues, despite being a straight, white male. As I grow intellectually, I even noticed how many of the old viewpoints I had were wrong, and even offensive. It makes me reconsider my own views on race; still, I have a hard time biting my tongue when I hear someone say that affirmative action programs are unfair to whites, or that women have equality in the workplace. There's so much apparent stratification deeply rooted in our social systems that I can't imagine not discussing it. I recently collected data via survey on race and ethnicity for a project I'm working on, and rather comically, a student put his race/ethnicity as human. I can't think of a better way to describe my own race/ethnicity. While it doesn't take into account the historical and social implications of race, it embodies my own belief that race is a social construct and that as human beings, we're interconnected.

References
Morning, Ann. 2009. “Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century” Social Forces 87, March 2009
Payne, Keith. 2001. “Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon”

High School as social space.

After last weeks blog post I spent a lot of time thinking about the practical applications of the concepts I pointed out by Pierre Bourdieu. I spent some time reading further into his work to try and get a better understanding to help me come up with a clearer idea of how I want to portray them. 

To recap really quickly, in my last post I discussed Bourdieus ideas on Social Space, Habitus, and False Dichotomies. Basically a social space is the same thing as the field in game theory. This is the area of play, with individuals that have roles depending on their position on the field. Habitus is the linking point between your position and your actions. The habitus is determined by your experiences, the current conditions in your situation, and your own judgment. This allows for the social structures that structure action to be structured by action. Then that leads into the last concept of a false dichotomy. A dichotomy is something that is divided into two opposite ends. A false dichotomy is when something is divided or two ends opposing each other but in actuality they don’t. The example from before is structure and action. The structure determines actions and the actions determine the structure so even though they are opposites to each other they both exist together. That is what makes a false dichotomy.

After having some more time to think about this and do a little more reading I believe I have found a few good ways to depict these concepts through photos of the social world. I will probably post other photos on the same subjects in future blogs but for right now this is what I have come up with.

The first of these concepts that I will talk about in the social realm is Bourdieus concept of social space. Social space is a fairly easy concept to under stand and has been include in many other theories by many other theorist. The most recognizable form of social space would be game theory. The reason why game theory is called game theory is because the analogy to a sports game often times works the best to describe this. Basically there is a field that has actors in it. There are sets of rules on the field that influence the actors actions. But the actors actions are also influenced by the constantly  changing situations and variables. Because of this actors can slightly use their freewill or judgment to determine their actions. So actions in a game and in the social world are slightly determined by the social institutions, you place in these institutions, your perceived role in your position, and your own freewill. I feel that the best way to describe the social space besides using game theory would be thinking back to high school.

For this part I wanted to get a picture of the high school I went to, but Im encountering difficulties with that due to obvious reasons, but I should be able to get a photo for next weeks blog. Anyway the relationship I draw from social space to high school is this; growing up in high school every knows that there are kids in different groups from you. High school is so divided that its constantly used in media interpretations for movies and TV shows. Its just kid trying to figure out who they are in this world, and high school acts like the space, stage, or field necessary for them to practice their positions. This is why I feel like high school is a perfect example. Kids at that age create obnoxiously large barriers between their groups in order to emphasis the differences between them and make themselves as individuals more defined. All of these groups that exist, exist in the social space of high school. There are so many roles to be played. There are the jocks, stoners, music groups, emo kids, scene kids, nerds, thugs, book worms, hipsters and probably many more that I can’t think of. Everyone in high school finds a group, or a click to fall into, so that they can define who they are. The school acts like the field, the rules of high school effect how the kids interact and their roles are somewhat limited to the field of the school. After High school they enter into new fields with new roles and new players, so they develop different roles and groups to identify with. 

I would like to end this blog by setting myself up for next weeks by talking about habitus.  If the social space is high school, and the players in high school have roles or positions to interact then it would be assumed that every interaction could be predetermined based on how the social space of high school dictates that the groups interact. This is not true though. There are cases where kids from different groups interact with each other. They also blend into different groups. This is because of habitus. Their habitus is affected by the social structure of high school, the positions the individuals fall into, and their own decisions. This leads to more flexibility between groups in high school and a more realistic idea of what high school is really like. Its true that there are well defined groups but that doesn’t mean that they static. Finally to end this blog I want to add in a picture I took that I think would represent the notion of habitus very well. Not in terms of high school but if habitus were to manifest into a physical form. I wanted to go in depth about my explanation for choosing this picture but I have decided to post the picture now and let you think about it over the week until I post my next blog and go into detail with my thoughts. 

Tragedy and social behavior: how Morning’s conceptualization of race relates to Hurricane Sandy

Photographing the social world the last two weeks has been a strange experience. Spending my time on the south shore of Staten Island, an area seriously devastated by Hurricane Sandy, I witnessed the transformation of my hometown from a relatively typical American city to an unrecognizable war-zone. Houses, restaurants, and businesses that stood for years, concrete community fixtures, were flooded, destroyed, some to the point of complete collapse. It’s been pretty impossible for me to focus any of my attention and efforts on anything other than recovery from this storm.

Still, while tragedies such as this are atrocious, it is often in these moments of incertitude that the saliency of social psychological phenomenon is heightened. It took the Holocaust for Milgram’s research on obedience to authority, or Zimbardo’s work on social roles in the Stanford Prison Experiment, or Hannah Ardent’s banality of evil theory to surface. It takes war to study the “rally-around-the-flag effect.” While Sandy was bad to Staten Island, it did highlight interesting sociological trends.

Staten Island is consistently rated one of the rudest American cities in the United States. It’s one of the most conservative voting districts in the state of New York. It’s steeped in racial prejudice. There is a literal distinction between the black and white sides of Staten Island, with the “north shore” being a more urban, black area and the south shore being a more suburban, white area. But as I watched the reaction from my fellow Staten Islanders to the storm, I noticed an increase in emotional energy and group solidarity that showed no socioeconomic borders, no racial lines. At first to me, this seemed strange. Isn't it in times of hardship, deprivation and paranoia that we cling to our in-group and show greater rates of out-group hostility?

My theory is that our subconscious conceptualization of in-group changed. The blacks vs. Italians dichotomy that dominated Staten Island social behavior for the last 70 years became temporarily resolved, and in the face of this struggle, we were united as “Staten Islanders.” Was there still out-group hostility? Absolutely. Some of the most troubling arguments occurring over social media were ones regarding which areas got hit the hardest in an almost competitive sort of way. Staten Islanders scolded city-dwellers and Long Islanders for complaining about no power when so many residents of our area were killed. Those on the south shore of Long Island complained their area was just as devastated and under covered in the media. Conflict became both materialist and idealist. Each regional area wanted more emotional and economic support for their recovering areas.

What does this say about the conceptualization of race and ethnicity? Clearly, its strength as a social construction is large enough that it causes people to believe race is an impermeable boundary. But if times of stress show there can be shifts in our interracial social interactions, can we shift these patterns without total destruction?

I’m eager to explore my social world through the lens of Ann Morning’s research on conceptualization of race. Just as I thought the houses in my neighborhood were concrete fixtures, Morning highlights how many conceptualize race as if it impermeable, with biological boundaries. Morning’s different findings on conceptualization of race, and theory on race for hundreds of years, has established race as a social construction. Just as divine right was accepted as unchangeably dictating the limits of human behavior, race becomes one of these seemingly objective characteristics. My research this semester will examine Morning’s ideas and seek to explain how one comes to an understanding of race, what social conditions foster certain ethnic attitudes, and more importantly, how can we use this knowledge to facilitate less hostile inter-ethnic and interracial social interactions while maintaining a sense of cultural identity?


Post-note: Of course, racial depiction in the media is completely separate from on-site solidarity. While I haven't studied or noticed issues in coverage of Sandy, Katrina--as many already know--produced horribly racially biased coverage.

(Picture taken from http://pavanvan.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/looters-in-chile/ )

Herbert Blumer

Herbert Blumer, an American sociologist, was interested in symbolic interactionism and methods of social research. His main focus was how actors give particular subjective meanings to different social symbols and objects. This is in relation to how they adjust their behavior depending on the meaning that they have given to the objects, in a significant situation. This lead him to believe that individuals create their own social reality through individual and collective action (Alexander 1987). I have just written a paper on Blumer's position on 'the problem of order'. Due to the research that I conducted, while writing my paper, I feel that I am slowly getting a grasp on his theories and who he was as a symbolic interactionist.

I am an Australian university student, currently studying abroad in the US. I am planning on traveling a lot while I am here and taking in as much of the culture as I can. On my travels so far, I have noticed a lot of similarities and differences in the meanings behind symbols and social objects between Australia and the US. Back at home, people often speak about how Americanised" we are due to the fact that our media is heavily filled on American based stories and information. However, since being here, I have noticed that there really is a big difference in the cultures and the way that society runs, in each country. This week, I ventured in to New York City (again) with some friends. While walking around the streets of Manhattan, it is easy to stumble upon objects that are given specific meanings by society.

While walking along the street, my friends and I stumbled upon a bicycle that had been painted white and was decorated with bright, orange flowers. The first reason that I noticed this was because of the contrast of colours but I quickly realised what this actually was. I had seen this symbol quite a bit at home. Generally, when a bike is placed along a road or in a heavily trafficked area, it represents the death of someone who was cycling. It was a symbol that represented the activity that the victim was participating in at their time of death.

The bike that is pictured above is situated along 9th Avenue, where a cyclist had been killed. Without knowing the people who had organised for this symbol to be placed there, the meaning behind it needs to somewhat be interpreted. It would be fair enough to assume that the bicycle was used as a way to remember this person and their place of death, as well as what may have been their hobby - riding. Attached to the pole that the bike was leaning against, was a plaque that said "RIP" (rest in peace), along with the name and some details about the person who was killed. Even if this plaque was not there, due to socialisation, I was able to understand what the symbol meant.

The use of a bike as a representation of the place where a cyclist has been killed is universal, as I discovered upon doing more research. I found out that this symbol is actually called a "Ghost Bike" and is used as small memorials for cyclists who have been killed or hit on the street, whilst cycling. I found it interesting that this is a symbol that is shared among many cultures and groups withins society.
For more information on Ghost Bikes, you can click on the link below:

Ghost Bikes - NYC

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbPTrbXBkp6NJdsbbV5lfqA4GwpechTQPQGLBculYBN1TD88L_X0Mz3yhTjOJKm4aRsX6c0iHDQT-OkccsroBrAgL8qjtilVm7l0TrwxxLXEaQ-qNGZdOUbdtRmjar6PsuQuaNzzwlbueX/s1600/ghost+bike.JPG

So, how does the use of this symbol relate to Blumer? 

He suggests that members of society give certain meanings to social symbols and objects, which encourages us to adjust our behavior depending on the meaning that the objects and symbols are given, in a significant situation (Alexander 1987; Calhourn, Gertes, Moody, Pfaff, and Virk 2012). As I previously stated, my eyes were originally drawn to the "ghost bike" due to it being visually appealing. For a split second, I didn't realise what it represented, so all I thought about was it's physical characteristics. However, once I saw the plaque and had a quick think, I realised what it symbolised. This realisation caused me to slightly alter my behavior. I instantly regretted calling it beautiful because I felt as if I was disrespecting the person/thing that it was representing.

References:

1.     Alexander, Jeffrey C. Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory Since World War II. New York: Columbia University Press.

2.  Calhourn, Craig, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, and Indermohan Virk. 2012. Contemporary Sociological Theory: Third Edition.