A short history of the modern calendar...

Link

"Illegal Limbo": Childhood and Immigration Status

Interesting short piece on the ASA (American Sociological Association) blog "Contexts" about the life-course of the children of non-status ("illegal") immigrants in the US.

In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that children of undocumented immigrants have the right to a free public school education alongside native-born children. But when these undocumented kids leave high school, they transition from protected child to illegal immigrant. That is, the laws support the undocumented child, but not the undocumented adult they’ll eventually become. Roberto G. Gonzales (American Sociological Review, August 2011) explores how these youth experience their status transformation through interviews with 150 “1.5-generation” Latinos in California.

 A man and his son wave the flag of El Salvador at an immigration rally in New York City.

Adolescents, Gonzales writes, first recognize their illegal status in their late teens, when their lack of a Social Security number prohibits such rites of passage as getting a part-time job or a driver’s license. Assimilation alongside their native-born peers led these kids to believe they would have more opportunities than their parents, but undocumented youth get a harsh reality check at graduation: no papers means no future. The young adults must “learn to be illegal,” which includes re-evaluating their future goals. And parents—who often believed that their children would have citizenship by the time they reached adulthood—don’t prepare them for this transition.

Despite speaking fluent English and earning high school (and sometimes college) degrees, undocumented young adults end up no better off in the labor market than their uneducated parents. Gonzales argues that the system has created a “new disenfranchised underclass”—2.1 million young adults who are stuck in what might be called “illegal limbo.”  Link

It's an interesting and little-discussed side of the "illegal immigration" debate in the US.  It also highlights  the arbitrariness of much of the discourse about "saving the children", and of children's right to fair treatment and equal opportunity, a set of entitlements that have a clear and definite expiry date (your 18th birthday). You see this false distinction again when it comes to popular discussions of children and gangs, imprisonment, poverty, etc.  After that point, the discourse shifts from "victim" to "perpetrator", from "innocent" to "guilty" as arbitrarily and suddenly as we go from child to adult. Am I right?

All this has interesting (and expansive) cultural roots in the West - dating back as far as I know, to the Victorian Era, before which childhood was not necessarily associated with innocence.  Okay, this is from Wikipedia, I know, but it's kindof "common knowledge" among sociologists, so trust me ;)

The man usually credited with - or accused of - creating the modern notion of childhood is Jean Jacques Rousseau. Building on the ideas of John Lockeand other 17th-century liberal thinkers, Rousseau formulated childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood. "Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly," Rousseau pleaded. "Why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?"

The Victorian Era has been described as a source of the modern institution of childhood. Ironically, the Industrial Revolution during this era led to an increase in child labour, but due to the campaigning of the Evangelicals, and efforts of author Charles Dickens and others, child labour was gradually reduced and halted in England via the Factory Acts of 1802-1878. The Victorians concomitantly emphasized the role of the family and the sanctity of the child, and broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western societies since then. Link

It's all very ironic, of course, given how prevalent and brutal child labour practices were, but also highlights the bourgeois origins of the discourse.

But why 18, you may wonder? Why is that most often the magic number? I just downloaded a bunch of papers, mostly from legal history journals, which I am too tired to read tonight. But I'm making a mental note for a future post entitled perhaps "Why 18?" or, alternatively, "Boy you 18 now, you grown,  and you need to get yo'self a J. O. B.".  Probably the former, though. 

Meth (cont'd)

The (fantastic) PBS documentary series Frontline did a show on meth a few of years ago, and it's definitely worth watching. Not only because of the almost unbelievable destructiveness and pervasiveness of the drug in some parts of the States, but also because the creators take a legal and structural approach to understanding the spread of meth, as well as the barriers to combatting it.

So they consider how, for example, laws restricting the importation of certain component chemicals that are only manufactured in India had measurable effects on addiction rates nationwide (less of the chemical imported meant less potent/addictive meth in the supply, and lower addition rates). In one of the more disturbing explorations, you also see how lobbyists from the pharma industry strove to block the passage of laws that would further restrict the dissemination of one of the key ingredient of meth (ephedrin or alternately, pseudoephedrine), which, importantly, are found in over-the-counter cold medicines.

"The Meth Epidemic" tells the story of two potential solutions to the crisis and examines why neither was fully tried. In the mid-80s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration first proposed controlling the retail sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in cold medicines by having customers register at the counter and limiting how much they could buy. Pharmaceutical companies, however, resisted the DEA's plan. Allan Rexinger, a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, felt the DEA was overreacting and unfairly punishing a legitimate business: "They have a different way of thinking. DEA agents carry guns; DEA agents are killed in the jungles of South America. But when you're working in Congress, you don't need to carry a gun. We felt like we were being treated just like a Colombian drug lord." Meanwhile, Gene Haislip, a former deputy administrator at the DEA, says: "They live in the business community, where the name of the game is to make money and sell product. They're highly skilled, very well organized and very well funded, and they can be quite formidable." Faced with a choice, the White House and Congress ultimately exempted cold medication from the regulatory proposals.

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/etc/synopsis.html#ixzz1dtmLzgmj

Here is the full documentary.

Choice

Courtesy of Nick Rose.

Boys are 'brilliant'; girls are 'beautiful'

This sucks

The Map of a Woman's Heart

Nineteenth-century ideals of womanhood and beauty expressed as much about women as they did about the society in which they were germinated. At a time of radical sociocultural and economic shifts — rapid urbanization, new modes of transportation and communication, increasing mechanization of industry — the expectations for women’s role in society shifted as well, with an idealized version of what was known as “True Womanhood” underpinning pop culture representations of women in everything from newspaper advice columns to art.

Map of the Open Country of a Woman’s Heart was a map created by D. W. Kellogg circa 1833–1842, in the tradition of these maps of the human condition you might recall, subtitled “Exhibiting its internal communications, and the facilities and dangers to Travellers therein.” Though it mostly depicts Woman as a sentimental, selfish, and superficial being driven by vanity, it places Love at the center of her heart, with Good Sense, Patience, and Prudence at its tip — or bottom, depending on the interpretation.

From the always delightful Maria Popova at BrainPickings

Chris Rock on race and "progress"

Interviewer: How do you think things have changed over the last couple of decades?
CR: Umm... white people have gotten less crazy. (...) You can say there is progress and all this, but... when you say it's "progress", you're acting like what happened before wasn't crazy. You know what I mean. So, "Oh, segregatio, we've made a lot of progress and there is no more segregation"... Segregation is re-tarded!..."

The debate ends here.

Alex, Alex, Alex...You know what the problem here is?

You're just not a good young liberal white person. I love you and all, but there it is.
I can't have a dialogue with someone who works for a living, who pays these taxes I wish to disperse into the ether of human need, who has no aspirations that involve graduate school, or marrying an indie-ish chick with bangs (and perhaps an ironic tattoo). You may have gone to an Ivy League School, and wish to live by a body of water one day, but that's incidental... it's all incidental (Plus I think Wharton is like a small island of not-Ivyness in the otherwise beautiful clear Blue of the archipelago).

You don't even drink coffee, for fuck's sake.

All you need to know is that I am a sociologist -- it is inscribed in the genealogy of my very profession to know what's best for poor people (this is also, incidentally, inherent to my whiteness ...Double-Rainbow.)

I work with immigration detainees, I am sensitive to the injustice of the world, and I am all 'round a more advanced person.

So just trust me on these things, ok?

( I know baba's with me on this. Hey, bro, facebook me)

Casting NYC in a different (red) light

1870 GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY BROTHELS

The New York Times has made available a digital copy of The Gentleman’s Directory, a guide to New York City published in 1870. The guidebook informs travelers of a particular type of local attraction: brothels. Of course, the information was for curiosity’s sake only:

Not that we imagine the reader will ever desire to visit these houses. Certainly not; he is, we do not doubt, a member of the Bible Society, a bright and shining light…But we point out the location of these places in order that the reader may know how to avoid them… (p. 6-7)

Certainly passages like this, from p. 13, make it clear that such establishments are to be avoided:

It also included pages that were simply ads for particular brothels:

Interestingly, the NYT checked the 1870 Census for the houses listed in the guide. In general, the women living there were described by Census workers as domestic servants or women who “kept house.” However, they found a few cases where the Census openly listed them as working at a “house of prostitution” or “house of assignation.”

A doctor advertised “imported male safes,” i.e., condoms:

His ad also describes an unspecified cure for women that may very well refer to abortions (at the time, products that caused abortion were often advertised as helping with menstrual regulation or any type of “menstrual stoppage”):

In addition to an article about the directory, the NYT put together a map showing the locations of the establishments it mentions (which were a small proportion of all brothels in NYC, where prostitution was illegal but widely available at the time):

What if Americans AREN'T bad at geography after all...

*gasp!*

Bourdieu, the "hipster", and the authenticity of taste

This was taken from a sociology blog, and talks about the the underpinnings of Hipster culture from a Bourdieuian perspective.

Pierre Bourdieu is a French sociologist who went into great detail theorizing on how the upper class's hold on power in society is in part its ability to dictate 'good' taste. He also detailed how each class in his France partakes in the hierarchy. Class is expressed in everything from taste in music, to style of dress, to how, what and how much food is presented to guests at a dinner party... These cultural schematas are internalized individually and collectively in what Bourdieu called habitus, and go a ways towards explaining how society is structured in terms of culture.

Basically, individualness is an illusion, and structure rules all... yay, sociology!

BOURDIEU, THE “HIPSTER,” AND THE AUTHENTICITY OF TASTE

by lisa, 2 days ago at 01:42 pm

Mark Grief wrote a fantastic analysis of the “hipster” in the New York Times. Drawing on a book he edited,”What Was the Hipster?“, with Kathleen Ross and Dayna Tortorici, Grief offers an analysis based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu.

Bourdieu observed that the rich justified and naturalized their economic advantage over others not only by pointing to their bank accounts, but by being the arbiters of taste. Bourdieu shows us that taste…

…is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit.

Style, in other words, is not just arbitrary; it is about establishing that you are better than other people.

Those below us economically, the reasoning goes, don’t appreciate what we do; similarly, they couldn’t fill our jobs, handle our wealth or survive our difficulties.

But the rich aren’t the only ones who attempt to use taste and style to gain and preserve status. Indeed, hipsters may be the purest example of this phenomenon.

“Once you take the Bourdieuian view,” Grief explains, “you can see how hipster neighborhoods are crossroads where young people from different origins, all crammed together, jockey for social gain” by liking cool things first.

(source)

I will quote Grief liberally because he does such a fantastic job of describing the field:

One hipster subgroup’s strategy is to disparage others as “liberal arts college grads with too much time on their hands”; the attack is leveled at the children of the upper middle class who move to cities after college with hopes of working in the “creative professions.” These hipsters are instantly declassed, reservoired in abject internships and ignored in the urban hierarchy — but able to use college-taught skills of classification, collection and appreciation to generate a superior body of cultural “cool.”

They, in turn, may malign the “trust fund hipsters.” This challenges the philistine wealthy who, possessed of money but not the nose for culture, convert real capital into “cultural capital” (Bourdieu’s most famous coinage), acquiring subculture as if it were ready-to-wear. (Think of Paris Hilton in her trucker hat.)

(source)

Both groups, meanwhile, look down on the couch- surfing, old-clothes-wearing hipsters who seem most authentic but are also often the most socially precarious — the lower-middle-class young, moving up through style, but with no backstop of parental culture or family capital. They are the bartenders and boutique clerks who wait on their well-to-do peers and wealthy tourists. Only on the basis of their cool clothes can they be “superior”: hipster knowledge compensates for economic immobility.

All hipsters play at being the inventors or first adopters of novelties: pride comes from knowing, and deciding, what’s cool in advance of the rest of the world.

This, Grief concludes, is why everyone, especially hipsters, hates to be called a hipster. The whole idea is to have authentically superior tastes. Once you are revealed as someone whocares about having the right tastes, you are disqualified as a person who has good tasteeffortlessly. Likewise, if you are suddenly one who has the same tastes as everyone else, you are just one of the masses. Being a hipster, it turns out, is a perilous identity that must be constantly re-worked and re-authenticated.

(source)