In Brief

Counting Race

The U.S. population continues to become more racially and ethnically diverse. In fact, most of the growth in population from 2000 to 2010 occurred among those who reported their race(s) as something other than White alone or those who reported their ethnicity as Hispanic or Latino. While non-Hispanic White alone population is still numerically and proportionally the largest racial and ethnic group in the U.S., it experienced the slowest growth rate in this period, and Asians grew fastest, according to Census Bureau staff Karen Humes, Nicholas Jones, and Roberto Ramirez (Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010, Census Brief 2011).

Though the overwhelming majority of the total population of the United States reported only one race, among those who reported multiple races, White and Black formed the largest multiple-race combination. Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska Natives were more likely than other racial groups to report multiple races. People who identified as White were the most likely to report only one race. Hispanics identified themselves predominately as either White or “some other race,” comprising 97 percent of those identifying with the latter category.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census questionnaire.

Since 2000, growth in the Hispanic population has been mostly due to birth and immigration; for Asians it was due, in large part, to higher levels of immigration relative to other groups. The Black population, the second-largest racial group, experienced growth over the decade, but at a slower rate than all other race groups except for White. rita stephan

Taking the Blame for Climate Change

©iStockphoto/Oehoeboeroe

In the United States, responsibility for climate change and other environmental problems is increasingly being shifted to consumers.

Robert Antonio and Robert Brulle, in a 2011 article in Sociological Quarterly, argue that market domination, and the relentless drive for economic growth, is incompatible with ecological limits of any kind. And as Richard York and Brett Clark observe in a 2010 article in Sociological Inquiry, climate change deniers (or more politely, skeptics) are trying to protect free markets by sowing seeds of doubt about whether climate change really exists.

The growing polarization of elites, policymakers, and the public over climate change makes any large-scale compromise unlikely, according to Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap in a 2011 Sociological Quarterly piece. The effect, according to Yannick Rumpala, writing recently in Theory & Society, is a “constrained space of possibilities” for addressing climate change and other environmental harms.

Instead of placing the blame on producers, where most people believe it belongs, consumers are being encouraged to go green. Yet in 2009, Thomas Dietz and his colleagues estimated that changing household practices and technologies will reduce overall U.S. carbon emissions by only 7 percent over 10 years, according to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But as Janet Lorenzen’s 2012 study of “green lifestyles,” published in Sociological Forum, suggests, individuals aren’t renouncing collective action, or reducing their support for government regulation. Rather, they’re altering their behavioral and consumption patterns. Faced with the slowness of institutional change, and environmental policies that are mired in political conflict, they’re doing what they can—right away. eds.

Class Struggle in the USA

Anna Beam (annabeam.com)

The public believes that class conflict is rising. Two-thirds of Americans say there are strong conflicts between the rich and the poor in America, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. The number is up 19 points since 2009. Perhaps society is, as Karl Marx claimed, “more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other.”

Journalist Thomas B. Edsall, in his new book, The Age of Austerity, argues that a zero-sum politics has taken hold as Democrats and Republicans scramble to maintain their share of what they see as a shrinking economic pie. Neither side, however, presents themselves as the “party of the rich” or the “party of the poor”; both claim to represent the middle class.

The vast majority of Americans count themselves as middle class. While today’s imagined class boundaries fall along occupational, regional, and (most importantly) racial lines, what remains consistent is an “us”—comprised of the moral middle class—and a “them”—comprised of the morally inferior rich and morally inferior poor (which may include disloyal or naïve members of the middle class, as well).

For many Americans, class is a moral identity. Americans tend to believe that the poor deserve their fate, and that the rich do not deserve their wealth. They superimpose the moral order of the lazy, the hardworking, and the greedy onto the poor, middle class, and rich.

As long as Americans sort their fellow citizens into moral categories, we’re unlikely to see class struggle in any Marxist sense. But that doesn’t mean we won’t hear the term “class war” used repeatedly from now until November. jeffrey dowd

Diagnosing Everyone

“When does a broken heart become a diagnosis?” asked the New York Times in a front-page article in January, reporting on a controversy over a proposed change to the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to be published next year.

A prominent psychiatrist had argued that the categorization of depressive disorders should include symptoms of sadness after the loss of a loved one even after just a few weeks. While the DSM taskforce rejected the proposal, controversies such these are becoming more common as diagnostic categories have come to encompass less severe symptoms and normal “problems in living.”

Likely to appear in DSM-5 is a new depression diagnosis called “Mixed Anxiety/Depression,” combining symptoms of anxiety and depression, and “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder” (PMDD), which includes the monthly symptoms like fatigue, sadness, and bloating that most women experience.

Who really benefits from these expanded diagnostic criteria?

In their 2007 book The Loss of Sadness, sociologist Allan Horwitz of Rutgers University and co-author Jerry Wakefield suggested that depressive disorder increasingly encompasses “normal sadness.” Horwitz warns that the trend of expanding diagnostic criteria is “creating a massive amount of pathology without [offering] corresponding benefits to those who truly need treatment.”

Though patients who could not afford, or would not have been offered, treatment may receive it, as less severe problems become part of disorder categories and are potentially covered by health insurance, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals will be able to treat more people than ever before.

Psychiatry will reap the rewards as the field claims more authority over everyday problems. As those with less severe symptoms will be targeted for new and existing medications, pharmaceutical companies will certainly gain. Antidepressants are already the most prescribed drugs in the US; their use may expand even more. dena t. smith

Gabriela Molina (gabrielamolina.com)

Too Many Friends

If you’ve spent any time on Facebook, you have probably wondered if people really have as many friends as their profiles claim. But perhaps a better question is whether people can maintain so many “friends” without compromising the quality of those relationships.

Robin I. M. Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropologist and primate behavior specialist, addresses this question in a neuro-cognitive theory known as “the social brain hypothesis.” Dunbar has found a positive correlation between the size of different primate species’ neocortex (the part of the brain responsible for consciousness and reasoning) and the size of their social networks.

He suggests that the brain has a limited capacity for keeping track of social relations beyond a certain number. For humans, the mean number, he says, is 150—now known as “Dunbar’s number.”

The average internet user who “follows” individuals on Twitter, “friends” people on Facebook, and gets “LinkedIn” with other professionals, “knows” many people. According to the June 2011 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the average American social network site user has 636 social ties, and those numbers are only going up. Nielsen Media Research reports an increase from 2010 to 2011 in social networking activity in every internet-connected demographic group studied, around the globe.

By pushing our cognitive limits, Dunbar’s theory suggests, social ties may become more diffuse; social relationships may grow increasingly casual and less bounded by reciprocity and commitment.

Some sociologists say there’s little cause for alarm. Writing in the British Journal of Psychology last year, Barry Wellman, a leading authority in social network analysis, suggests that human social networks are too complex and comprised of too many kinds of social relations to be characterized by one number. It is also possible that our brains may further develop to accommodate these enlarged networks.

Or we may succumb to Facebook fatigue, cancel our accounts and return to more “personalized” modes of interaction. maria v. malyk

It Takes a Care Village

©iStockphoto/SaulHerrera

We all know that Americans are living longer. But some of us are living much, much longer.

According to the latest Census, the number of people living to age 90 and beyond has tripled in the past three decades—to almost 2 million—and is likely to quadruple by 2050. And 70 percent of nonagenarians are female.

Studying the gender gap in aging, sociologist Meika Loe, in Aging Our Way: Lessons for Living from 85 and Beyond, says that women may have a leg up when it comes to managing self-care in old age. Skills like cooking, cleaning, and caring for others clearly impact the ability to care for oneself.

In addition, nonagenarians maintain autonomy and control by asking others for help, which may be easier for women to do. But asking also requires good social networks. These tend to shrink as people age.

To counteract this problem, Loe shows how some elders have begun creating “informal care villages”—neighbor-helping-neighbor volunteer systems that allow individuals to share local resources at a cost savings or exchange personal services for free. They might trade driving or transportation for emotional support, for instance, or take turns delivering hot meals or checking in on one another.

Only 22 percent of elders live in institutional facilities. Forty percent of those 85 and older live by themselves. Informal care villages enable interdependence and actually increase elders’ ability to remain independent. They ensure that elders’ needs continue to be met, especially in a climate of limited federal support for aging at home.

It turns out that traditionally female skills, like asking for help, make a huge difference in the aging process. Men: take note. jennifer hemler