Abstract
Veterans' Affairs: A Patriotic Paradox
R. Tyson Smith, who wrote for Contexts in Spring 2009, says military veterans are quietly disappearing from prominent positions in public life. In his op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Smith argues that the retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a veteran of World War II, is symbolic of a growing divide between veterans and civilians. Says Smith, “Americans continue to love what veterans represent—duty, sacrifice, strength, leadership—but we have less and less true understanding of the veteran experience.”
Smith sees several developments at play. One is the ongoing downsizing of the military and the lack of the draft. Just 1 percent of the U.S. population has been deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared to 11 percent during World War II. In a related trend, a greater proportion of combat veterans come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than in previous wars.
As a result, “Many Americans are insulated from the people we expect to die on our behalf.” Smith points out that the disconnect makes coming home to civilian life a truly difficult mission for returning warriors. S.S.
Generations: Suicide Boom
Baby boomers aren't weathering the storms of midlife quite as well as they might have hoped. According to CNN, a new sociological study reveals increased suicides among the middle-aged over the past 11 years.
Historically, the elderly and adolescents have had higher rates of suicide than those in the middle years of life. According to Rutgers sociologist Julie Phillips, “What's notable here is that the recent trend among boomers is opposite to what we see among other cohorts… it's a reversal of a decades-long trend among the middle-aged.”
Phillips suggests that suicide spike may have something to do with unmet expectations. Surveys show that boomers anticipated “aging better”—or at least, in better health—than previous generations, but it hasn't panned out. Instead, they have their fair share of chronic health problems, including high blood pressure and diabetes, which drain pocket books and high hopes.
Stress is another possible factor. Many in this generation are “sandwiched” between children and aging parents, both of whom need care, and economic pressures have led to job losses and other financial woes. Declining health and resources, coupled with increasing care responsibilities, might be pushing more boomers to the brink. S.S.
Activism: Change is in the Details
Quoted in the Arab News, Asef Bayat, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, uses social movement theory to explain how everyday actions create change in the Middle East.
Many people believe that radical Islam expresses the desires of the poor. But, Bayat observes, “the urban poor are generally reluctant to support any kind of political movement. The poor cannot afford to be ideological.” They are, though, “interested in organizations and associations that can help them and answer their needs.”
So, instead of organized politics, everyday life becomes a kind of “street politics.” Bayat says, “Streets allow people to come into contact with each other and share their problems and this can turn a small manifestation into a massive demonstration. Revolutions and protest movements originate on the streets.” H.N.
Milestones: Something to Look Forward To
More and more Americans think marriage is becoming obsolete, but that doesn't change their desires to walk down the aisle. While 44 percent of Americans under the age of 30 believe the institution of marriage is practically extinct, 95 percent of that age group still want to say “I do.”
TIME turned to sociologists to explain our commitment to marriage. “Getting married is a way to show family and friends that you have a successful personal life,” says Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University. “It's like the ultimate merit badge.”
Wedding or no, you can still have cake.
Sociologists also explain why we're “earning” this badge later then we used to: marriage once signified the start of adulthood, but it's now a finishing touch. “Marriage is the capstone for both the college-educated and the less well educated,” Cherlin tells the magazine. “The college-educated wait until they're finished with their education and their careers are launched. The less educated wait until they feel comfortable financially.” H.N.
Culture: More Moynihan
The once-taboo topic of culture as a means to understanding poverty is making its way back into journals, classrooms, and policy debates. A recent article in the New York Times documents the death and resurrection of the approach.
The controversy over the term erupted after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea of a “culture of poverty” to the public in a 1965 report he hoped would inspire the president to improve the social and economic position of African Americans. His description of the poor, urban black family, “caught in an inescapable ‘tangle of pathology’ of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency,” though, was seen as blaming black people for their own misfortune. The idea became central to many conservative critiques of government aid for the needy, but within the generally liberal fields of sociology and anthropology, it was avoided as being in poor taste. However, as a retrospective on Moynihan's report in Contexts (Fall 2009) learned, disdain was generally the result of an overly simplistic reading of the document.
The Fall 2009 Contexts article, “The Moynihan Report, a Retrospective.”
Now, Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton explains, a new wave of culture-oriented scholars is looking back: “We've finally reached the stage where people aren't afraid of being politically incorrect.” The new discussion is more nuanced, and destructive attitudes and behavior are attributed not to inherent moral character but to sustained racism and isolation.
The return of culture offers analytic power. Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson argues that cultural characteristics, like shared perceptions of a neighborhood, do “a better job of predicting a community's future than the actual level of poverty.” Others are successfully challenging assumptions about people in poverty—like, for instance, the idea that marriage is not valued by poor, urban, single mothers.
The surge of interest is particularly timely, as poverty in the United States has hit a fifteen-year high. And the debate extends far beyond the “Ivory Tower,” even reaching Capitol Hill. As Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) stresses, views of the cultural roots of poverty “play important roles in shaping how lawmakers choose to address poverty issues.” K.G.