Abstract
Public Opinion: Notes on a Scandal
In the midst of a salacious political scandal—the arrest of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges related to the sexual assault of a hotel worker—the French were first besieged by media, then by a swarm of social analysts looking to dissect the situation.
The day after Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, a poll found that 57 percent of the French population and 70 percent of Socialist sympathizers believed Strauss-Kahn was an innocent man, the victim of a conspiracy. The public’s fascination with possible manipulation or entrapment even prompted warnings against conspiracy theories as threats to democracy. Sociologist Denis Muzet, quoted in the Guardian, suggests so many have fallen for the conspiracy theories as a function of their utter shock—essentially, it’s collective denial. Political analyst Stéphane Rozès, though, maintains that public opi nion will continue to vacillate between those who believe Strauss-Kahn is a sick man revealed and those who say he’s the victim in this situation.
Long after Strauss-Kahn’s criminal trial ends, the trial of public opinion is sure to wage on. The people’s ultimate verdict of “DSK”—fallen from greatness, finally exposed, or unjustly set up— remains to be seen. A.C.
Sociology of Culture: Canines and Class Conflict
Judging by the popularity of cat videos on the Internet and the high ratings of animal-behavior shows, it seems safe to say that pets fill important roles in our society. However, as Benedict Carey explores in a recent New York Times article, the pet’s position within the family can be contentious.
David Blouin, a sociologist at Indiana University, explains there are three basic categories of belief concerning pets: “Dominionists” see pets as a useful and beloved, but replaceable and ranked below humans; “Humanists, cherish their pets and elevate them to the status of a favored child; and “Protectionists” base their views on what they think is “best” for each animal. Each group is critical of the others, and when they live within the same family, there can be problems.
According to sociologist Elizabeth Terrien, whether you believe Fido should be nestled under the covers or relegated to the yard each night isn’t simply a matter of personal preference. Rather, these views vary by class, ethnicity, and geographic location. “One clear trend that has emerged is that people from rural backgrounds tend to see their dogs as guardians to be kept outside, whereas middle-class couples typically treat their hounds as children, often having them sleep in the master bedroom, or a special bed.” These cultural and class-based differences can lead to groups judging each other negatively and even characterizing others’ treatment of their pets as abusive.
Carey’s article provides an important reminder that sometimes even the most personal choices—for instance, whether a pet is included in your will—is linked to larger social forces. Class matters, even for dogs and cats. K.G.
Religious Studies: The Heathen Box
Religion isn’t hard to find in the U.S. The hottest Broadway show is “The Book of Mormon,” Heaven is for Real recently topped the best-seller list, the highest-grossing R-rated film is The Passion of the Christ, and 80 percent of Americans reported that religion plays a “very” or “fairly” important role in their lives in a recent Gallup poll. Considering all of this, the absence of religion as a major theme on national television networks is surprising.
Reporter John Rash of the Star Tribune turns to social scientists for answers. Professor Jeanne Halgren Kilde, director of religious studies at the University of Minnesota, explains that even without exploring explicitly religious themes, network TV engages in many related debates: “Questions about good and evil, justice, personal destiny, love, about relationships—these are the narratives we see on TV that are the same questions religion has been asking, and answering, forever.”
The show might not focus on religion, but Christ tops the list on Family Feud.
Penny Edgell, a sociology professor at the same school, provides further context. Edgell suggests that the decline of shows centered around traditional religion and the dramatic increase in the number of shows with spiritual and paranormal themes—think Medium, Supernatural, and The Ghost Whisperer— shows networks responding to the larger social trend “of people thinking about spiritual things, but drawing on a different kind of repertoire that’s more about relationships and flexible personal contacts that might shape your own life that don’t have anything to do with a doctrine or a church.”
Rash reminds us that religion has found one home in a rather unlikely place—America’s longest running cartoon, The Simpsons—with the Catholic Church’s official newspaper noting that “[Homer] finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets His name sensationally wrong.” K.G.
Same-Sex Marriage: Good for Business Good for Equality
As multiple states contemplate gay marriage, proponents often highlight how marriage equality could promote tourism and local economies.
Pacific University sociologist Jaye Cee Whitehead argued in a recent New York Times op-ed, however, that “supporting marriage on economic grounds dehumanizes same-sex couples by conflating civil rights with economic perks.” Beyond the “marriage is good for business” argument, an economic line of reasoning points out that legalizing same-sex marriage may reduce spending on welfare programs. This, too, is problematic according to Whitehead, since “this narrative neglects the most economically vulnerable gay and lesbian couples and plays into the inaccurate stereotype of same-sex couples (particularly male couples) as being mostly well-educated and affluent.”
Instead, Whitehead proposes that supporters of same-sex marriage consider marriage a form of governance, not commerce. “The vast expansion of the government over the past century has embedded marriage into all areas where the state and the individual intersect, from tax obligations to disability benefits to health care decisions to family law. As with any other structure of governance in a democratic society, we ought to think about its participants as citizens rather than consumers.” H.N.
War on Terror: Goodbye, Bin Laden
On May 1st, President Obama broke into Sunday night programming to announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed. His announcement, a decade after the September 11th attacks, was met with many emotions. Some spoke of a sense of closure, others of relief tempered with trepidation, and still others, well, they partied. Within hours, revelers gathered outside the White House and at Ground Zero. They draped themselves in flags and openly celebrated bin Laden’s death in a display that looked more like a sporting event than a reaction to death.
Francesco Duina, a sociologist at Bates College, told the Christian Science Monitor that people singing “Na Na Hey Hey” was actually to be expected: “The percentage of Americans who embrace competition is higher than the percentage in any other industrialized country in the world.” To many people, bin Laden’s death is a confirmation that our approach to life is superior to his. “That’s what’s being celebrated, and that’s why you see the flags.”
Political differences are obviously part of the explanation. But sociologists also point to generational differences. Young people experienced September 11th differently than those in older cohorts, said Andrew Perrin, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “If you were 8 or 9 at the time, by the time you began thinking about world politics, 9/11 was a thoroughly interpreted, thoroughly understood, if you will, cultural event,” Perrin told LiveScience. “So you didn’t go through the same level of experiencing this unsettled time and doing the work of interpreting it. You experienced it as something that was thoroughly understood before it was presented to you.” For young people like these, there was no question: when Enemy #1 gets taken out, it’s time to break out the champagne. H.N.
Young people celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden in Washington, D.C.
