Problems of the Environment

When tackling the pressing environmental issues that confront our world, any approach undertaken that is conducive to various effective solutions must necessarily be less about the environmental crises themselves than about interpretations or perceptions of these crises and the subsequent popular and socially collective constructions that result. Between us and our environment there exists our interpretation of the environment. Humanity does not respond to the environment directly. Rather, it is their interpretations of the environment that is being responded to. Therefore, the manner in which the environment is interpreted is dependent upon our past experience.

This understanding is of considerable importance and value in determining the role that sociologists are qualified to play in the environmental debate, considering that these debates primarily concern the natural sciences. Sociologists and critical constructionists seek to understand the problems of the environment by analyzing society's responses to and interpretations of these issues. Given this methodology, I think it is fitting to ponder technology's impact on environmentalism. Technology, as I understand it, is the extension of a mental response, a concrete manifestation of collective perceptions and interpretations of the environment.

In my view, corporate suasion within the environmental debate through mainstream media is very similar to the technological aspect, at least in principle. After all, the media is the means by which shared meanings are constructed and disseminated; the media is in some ways a precursor to or cause of social response. In terms of applying the social problems perspective, both media and technology generally serve the same purpose. Marshall McLuhan, the 1960s media theorist, helped to popularize just such a critical perspective with his famous aphorism "The medium is the message," by which he meant the process by which information is disseminated and registered is actually more important than the content of the information itself. I think this idea can bring to our awareness the methods employed by powerful corporations to sway public opinion about environmental issues.

I am reminded of a book I read a few years ago by Chris Mooney entitled The Republican War on Science, which highlighted and exposed the Bush administration's suppression of scientific research on issues that included global warming. This suppression resulted in Richard Carmona's resignation from his position as Surgeon General after government officials censored portions of his detailed research findings on global warming trends and discarded the rest. This warrants a questioning of the popular notion of "impartiality" on the part of media, whereby the tendency of news journalism to present both sides "equally" obscures the minority status of those who deny global warming as a threat. This obfuscation of minority or even fringe opinions only serves to weaken the argument of the majority. The result is that the public is left with the false impression that 'nobody knows what they are talking about' and there is therefore no need for more regulations on industry or for them to change their consumption patterns. Instances in which corporate censorship is involved further exacerbates the dissemination of misinformation and the confusion it creates. It would appear as if powerful corporations and think tanks that, for monetary reasons, are opposed to environmental measures benefit from the popular notion of an "impartial & objective" news media in order to use the voice of fringe minorities to strengthen their agenda.

In light of these considerations, I here present my thoughts on what I believe to be three barriers in U.S. society and dominant culture to environmental sustainability. In pointing out these political and cultural barriers, I hope to provoke thoughtful considerations and inspire insights that address how we as a leading influential culture might go about remedying these barriers for the good of the entire world.

1) The Cult of Consumerism
One of the most prevalent barriers in U.S. society and dominant culture to environmental sustainability is represented by a deeply-ingrained paradigm of comfort and perceived convenience on the part of most Americans that is intimately associated with the fact that consumerism is the dominant culture in this country. This barrier, most often propagated and kept alive by the mainstream media, consists of popular conceptions of what constitutes the "good life." As a dominantly consumerist culture, we are socialized from early in life to shun delayed gratification and disregard the long-term effects of rapid resource depletion in favor of living comfortably. The prevalence of the "indulge-now-pay-later" philosophy is indicative of the influence that unbridled capitalism and corporate sway holds over the public mindset in the United States. This cultural craving for consumerism becomes so inculcated unconsciously in the psyche of the American way of life that the consumer goods we purchase eventually become extensions of one's very personality. Corporations who spend billions of dollars each year on advertising benefit greatly from this consumerist mindset, a mindset that is extremely detrimental to the environment in the long run. Robert Heiner notes, "As consumers, of course, we all play a pivotal role in resource depletion and waste production. In the United States, one's quality of life is, to a large extent, judged by one's capacity to consume. Consumption has become the principal measure of success, and most of us spend a great deal of our lives striving for it" (Heiner 162). Our cult-like devotion to consumerism as identifying marks of social standing and relevance has become something of a ritual of religious proportions. Interestingly enough, this understanding is perhaps best expressed by the famous musician Billy Joel in his song "No Man's Land" (Give us this day our daily discount outlet merchandise / Raise up a multiplex and we will make a sacrifice).

Annie Leonard's highly influential short film The Story of Stuff emphasizes the cult-like status consumerism holds in our society, pointing out the contribution of corporate advertising in convincing people that the extent to which they should feel fulfilled and socially acceptable depends on the extent to which they support the corporations by consuming. In the film, Leonard illustrates why capitalism constitutes a linear system that cannot be maintained indefinitely and implicates "the golden arrow of consumption" as the engine that drives the entire linear, unsustainable system. "We have become a nation of consumers. Our primary identity has become that of being consumers. The primary way that our value is measured and demonstrated is by how much we contribute to this arrow [consumption]" (The Story of Stuff). This short and concise film powerfully demonstrates that, as Heiner remarks in his book, "capitalism and conservation may well be antithetical" (Heiner 161).

Powerful corporations are not willing to restrict production and distribution by conserving natural resources. People are not willing to detach themselves from an identity that corporate advertisement tells them they should conform to by contributing to the arrow of consumption as a means of fulfillment and as a measure of the "good life." The combination of these aversions on two separate but related levels constitutes a major barrier to global measures that favor conservation and resource sustainability. Heiner asks a crucial and pointed question in relation to these ingrained habits of instant gratification and dependency on an unceasing flow of production: "While the well-being of future generations resonates strongly in political and social discourse, what sacrifices are people willing to make to protect future generations from harm, especially given that the harm is at present theoretical? [W]hat proportion of the public would be willing to cut automobile and electricity usage, garbage output, and shopping in half if that is what it would take to ensure the livelihoods of our distant descendants? The answer to that question depends in large part upon popular constructions of the 'good life'" (Heiner 165).

In an article published E/The Environmental Magazine, environmentalist and city enthusiast Jay Walljasper seeks to arrive at an answer to this question. In this article, he discusses how urban sprawl is a manifestation of the development of suburbia that is detached and separated from urban city centers, a development that expresses the value Americans have placed throughout the last 50 years on driving cars. This development has contributed to deteriorating inner city areas as the financially-affable abandon the inner city to live in suburbs, thus creating miles and miles of urban sprawl that increases dependency on driving cars to work, a dependency that is harmful to the environment due to vehicle emissions. He expresses concern over the fact that "autos are the only way to get from point A to point B. Houses are cut off from stores by impassable swaths of pavement. Schools, day-care centers, libraries and workplaces all sit isolated amid a sea of roaring traffic" (Walljasper 32).

2) The Exploitation of Perceived Uncertainty
Another significant barrier is the illusion of "scientific uncertainty" that is propagated by the media's status-quo method of disseminating information. This particular barrier, which I have already made brief mention of above, is characterized by the tendency of news journalists to uphold the vested interests of the corporations that control their news medium over and above legitimate information that addresses real and pressing environmental concerns that affect all people both now and especially in the long run. The mainstream media propagates the illusion that global warming, ozone thinning, or any number of other problems are scientifically uncertain. This is an illusion when one considers that the vast majority of ecologists and other scientists across the board now recognize these things as real threats. However, because the proposed practical environmental actions to reduce these threats is not representative of the short-term, monetary interests of influential corporations, the corporation-controlled mainstream media is often under acute pressure to conform to these shortsighted capitalistic interests. They do this by operating under the guise of "impartiality" or "unbiased objectivity" when covering significant groups or significant numbers of people who address these environmental concerns. This means news media will often give "equal time" to both sides of a particular environmental debate, even when one side (for example, those who deny that global warming is a legitimate threat that warrants concern) represents a minority opinion or fringe group. The confusion that arises in the viewing public concerning pressing environmental matters arises from the fact that news media makes it appear as if there is actually a significant level of uncertainty by giving this equal time to fringe opinions and not identifying them as such. This ostensibly fails to acknowledge that there is in fact a widespread consensus among the vast majority of scientists that issues such as global warming are indeed threats that demand immediate attention.

Robert Heiner, in discussing this production of illusion, writes, "Though many of the scientists who are skeptical of global warming are sincere and not just 'posturing,' the skeptics do make up a small minority in the scientific community, and the tendency of news journalism to present both sides 'equally' obscures their minority status, thereby weakening the argument of the majority" (Heiner 160). This presents a problematic barrier to environmental sustainability because when the public is fed the false impression that there is actually a wide spectrum of uncertainty, no steps will be undertaken for more regulations on industry or consumption, especially if such regulations for sustainability mandate a sacrifice on the part of a materialistic society whose identity and comfort are connected to consumption.

3) Global Imbalance
The third barrier to environmental sustainability of particular interest and import relates to global imbalance and the dysfunctional relationship between the First and Third World. The unbridled, unregulated capitalistic culture of First World economies has resulted in the inevitable process of creative destruction whereby the economic success of the First World is achieved through exploitation of the Third World. Annie Leonard's film The Story of Stuff strikes at the heart of the U.S. situation in very clear terms: "Our problem is not just that we're using too much stuff, but we're using more than our share. We have 5% of the world's population, but we're using 30% of the world's resources and creating 30% of the world's waste. So [the United State's] response to this situation is simply to go take somebody else's. This is the Third World, which some would say is another word for 'our stuff' that somehow got on somebody else's land" (The Story of Stuff).

But because capitalism and sustainability are completely incompatible with each other, the process of capitalistic exploitation of other countries is not only unethically contributing to global inequality, it is also ultimately self-defeating. Profit and competition must be perpetuated in the capitalist creed, and it is at this point that First World/Third World relations becomes problematic on a number of levels. Robert Heiner elucidates the dilemma thus:

"Given that resources are limited, if the Third World is unable to use its resources for its own development, then that development will be very problematic; if the First World is unable to continue exploiting the resources of the Third World, then First-World economic expansion will become very problematic" (Heiner 173).

As more and more countries in the Third World are pressured by dominant capitalistic ventures exerting their influence from outside to emulate the First World in their economic standards, the problem of unsustainability becomes ever more apparent (as is very clearly indicated by the fact that despite comprising a mere 5% of the world's total population, the United States already expends 30% of its resources). Therefore, the barrier that this dysfunctional relationship represents is one of an implicit (sometimes even explicit) unwillingness on the part of many powerful economic movers and shakers in the First World to sacrifice potential profits and advantages for the good of the global economy as a whole. At the heart of the tension lies a failure to coordinate efforts and a blind embrace of dualistic distinctions (e.g. "First World" and "Third World") that are not only arbitrary but are created by exploitation of less-developed countries by more affluent ones.

References

Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Walljasper, Jay. "New Lessons from the Old World: The European Model for Falling in Love with Your Hometown," E Magazine 16 (March/April 2005). First published in E/The Environmental Magazine.

The Story of Stuff. Dir. Louis Fox. Perf. Annie Leonard. Free Range Studios, 2007.

Crime & Deviance: A Sociological Approach to Solutions

Because the subject of crime and deviance dominates a significant corner of the United States' collective psyche, views concerning crime and its remedies comprise a wide-ranging continuum, ranging from the irrational and emotionally motivated to the very rational and dominantly logical, and everywhere in between. Both extremes are insufficient, and an accurate balance between emotional reactions and dissociated separatism from the issues that affect us all directly or indirectly is called for, especially in a time when national demographics are shifting and evolving. Proposals for solutions to problems of crime and deviance that focus exclusively on the person or group involved and not on the nature of the social structure will almost invariably result in failure or exacerbation of the problem. These individualistic types of solutions often become non-sociological in nature. A sociological perspective takes into account the influence that culture and experience within the social structure has on individuals within that larger social context. Therefore, to propose solutions that favor reform of individuals with no regard to the features of the social structure that may have influenced that individual is to take the issues far out of context. As Robert Heiner points out, the values of fierce individualism and unfettered capitalism that characterizes the United States "help to explain the problem of poverty in the United States, and the connection between street crime and poverty is inescapable" (Heiner 127). In the United States, "the poor are blamed for their own poverty, for their lack of individual initiative. Rather than sympathy, contempt for the poor is not uncommon" (127). Furthermore, while it is accurate to say that poverty itself is not a causal agent of crime, "it could hardly be refuted as a source of crime. The vast majority of people who commit the vast majority of street crimes - both violent and nonviolent - are poor" (127).

The following are three specific things that can be done to reduce the possibility of crimes happening before they occur:

1) Generous welfare reform that makes upward mobility feasible and practical.
In connection with the detrimental tendency on the part of government to focus punitive measures on the individual with no regard for social context, an increased awareness of the root causes of anomie in social constructions would represent a step in a more practical direction toward resolving problems of individual deviance. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines anomie as "Social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values; also: personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals." In the United States, there is a marked dissonance between the achievement of what is popularly considered to be successful status and the means by which that status of success is achieved. Because financial success and high status has been pedestalized through such notions as the "American Dream" and rendered more symbolic than realistic, those in the lower class who experience problematic limitations to realizing this status are susceptible to being impressed with an "end-justifies-the-means" philosophy toward social mobility. When success is over-emphasized at the expense of legitimate means of realizing that success, crime often becomes the only viable means to socially-stratified people who are under-advantaged and marginalized by our capitalistic culture and who desire the symbols of success that the U.S. propagates in the public imagination every day.

This was the heart of a very important theoretical formulation by sociologist Robert Merton. The sociological theory of crime and deviance presented by Merton is both interesting and relevant to our considerations of how crime is related to the popular conception of the "American Dream." Merton's theory can be summarized as follows: When the emphasis on success is so great that any emphasis on legitimate means of achieving that end begins to pale in comparison. People awash in America's individualistic culture are strained and propelled by the goal of success, but it is people in the lower class that are more vicariously susceptible to this strain because they have fewer avenues for attaining the monetary success that our culture has pedestalized beyond reason. They, therefore, experience greater temptation to pursue illegitimate means to achieve the all-important "norm" of success, such as violence, prostitution, drug dealing, etc.

Merton writes in his 1938 essay "Social Structure and Anomie" that the acute pressure "of prestige-bearing success tends to eliminate the effective social constraint over means employed to this end. 'The end-justifies-the-means' doctrine becomes a guiding tenet for action when the cultural structure unduly exalts the end and the social organization unduly limits possible recourse to approved means. Otherwise put, this notion and associated behavior reflect a lack of cultural coordination" (Merton 681). The United States is in desperate need of placing less limitation on "possible recourses to approved means" and coordinating the cultural disconnection by adopting reform of welfare policies that are more generous. Making upward social mobility more feasible for under-advantaged lower-class people through welfare reform would likely result in a notable decrease in crime and the motivation to engage in crime to achieve what is propagated as a supremely acceptable status irregardless of means.

Popular culture often perpetuates the emphasis placed on success at the expense of legitimate action. I found Robert Heiner's description of criminals as "innovators in a country whose claim to fame is innovation" quite fitting and interesting (128). Crime has become something of a cultural art form, which often serves to strengthen the somewhat misleading symbolic nature popularly attributed to it. The rap artist 50 Cent comes to mind, an artist whose album "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" was a huge commercial success that presented a philosophy of subversive, illegitimate capitalism. In fact, having listened to this particular album for my research on crime in popular culture, I immediately discerned how well it works to compare the album with Merton's theory of Anomie in Social Structure. The pervasive influence of crime stories on the public imagination may account for the entertainment value it holds. This is implied when one attempts to deduces the reason why high television ratings are directly related to exaggerated crime stories. The fact that crime has been made into an art form that holds mass appeal and entertainment value can be thought of as an example of how the symbolism of crime is reinforced, symbolism that is not representative of an objective understanding of criminal activities. For this reason, the "War on Drugs" and "The War on Terror" are related. They are both declarations of war against abstractions that are rarely, if ever, clearly and concretely defined. In much the same way that jazz music was once associated with the "deviant" use of marijuana, rap and hip-hop music is today often popularly associated with crime and the black community. The difference as I see it is that African-American rap artists often consciously reinforce these popular perceptions of them because they recognize the entertainment value it represents.

2) Decreased emphasis on harsh punishment and a greater emphasis on rehabilitation.
A thorough comparative study of crime statistics and incarceration rates reveal that harsher penalties and stricter laws are not effective at reducing crime. This is made demonstrably clear by the fact that the incarceration rate in the United States is among the highest in the world and by the fact that, despite this very high incarceration rate, both violent and nonviolent crime is much more prevalent in the U.S. than in any other country. Furthermore, the U.S. crime rate, as high as it is, has not increased relative to the escalation in punitive measures utilized. Heiner writes, "Interestingly enough, many of the states with the highest incarceration rates also have the highest crime rates (e.g., Florida), and many with the lowest incarceration rates have the lowest crime rates (e.g., Minnesota). If incarceration were an effective and necessary deterrant, we would not expect to find such patterns" (Heiner 135). The ineffectiveness of harsh punitive measures to reduce crime, as well as the fact that rates are for the most part remaining constant rather than growing, may be due to the emphasis on punishment as opposed to rehabilitation. Harsh punishment does nothing to reform an individual or motivate him or her to cease from criminal activity. The only kind of "motivation" it instills is the motivation to avoid the strict justice system. It does nothing to address either the individual's social situation and the external pressures that may be associated with it, or personal transformation of values that motivate one to reform himself or herself. A greater focus on humane rehabilitation that recognizes criminals and deviants as human beings who react to the condition of society would serve to decrease crime rates significantly. This is evidenced by studying societies in other countries that are much less punitive than in the U.S. In his discussion of these other, more progressive societies, Heiner remarks, "In democratic societies, such as the Netherlands or the United States, the treatment of criminal wrongdoers, whether lenient or harsh, depends on the public's attitudes toward them. In the Netherlands, public attitudes are far more forgiving" (Heiner 138). He then goes on to quote criminologist David Downes, who said of the Dutch criminal justice policies that there is "an active fostering of community tolerance and media support for broadly rehabilitative rather than punitive policies" (138). The fact that most European countries experience much less domestic street crime than the U.S. strongly indicates that the explanation for crime in the U.S. lies primarily in the condition of the social structure and the culture that is born out of that structure, rather than on a "downfall" or "moral bankruptcy" of an individual. Again, punishment based on perceptions of a criminal being corrupt in and of himself/herself fails to realize the social context within which that person operated and was influenced. To use a tired but nonetheless (paradoxically) relevant cliche, "No person is an island."

3) Establishing grassroots community-oriented and organizations that assess the infrastructure and address concerns related to it.
Another course of action conducive to crime prevention and reduction is to improve the infrastructure itself. Enhancing the infrastructure through various modifications and adjustments is a crucial step that is only possible through a process that builds from the bottom up. In other words, to render the demographic landscape a safe environment to live, grassroots communities on local levels all collaborating and coordinating their efforts is a predictably successful solution. This includes giving minorities and those in the lower classes a voice. To understand why the United States has the highest incarceration rate compared to any other country despite the fact that there is no corresponding rise or decrease in crime rates, the infrastructure must be examined critically. In an article published in the National Institute of Justice Journal, authors Irvin Waller and Brandon C. Welsh summarize the work of Canada's International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, an organization that undertakes to analyze conditions in the infrastructure that influence crime rates and, through comparative studies of what measures work best in other countries, harnesses these best practice measures and implements them in their own policy proposals. Unforunately, this practice of assessing and implementing successful crime prevention policies from other countries has not been realized in the United States.

Understanding crime prevention as a process rather than an institution of instantaneous results is indispensable to taking steps to establishing democratic grassroots justice organizations. As Waller and Welsh succinctly point out, "Successful crime prevention at the community level begins with a rigorous planning model - a process. It is characterized by a systematic analysis of the crime problem and the conditions that generate it, a review of the services and activities in place to tackle those conditions and ways to improve them, rigorous implementation of the program, and evaluation of the impact of the program on crime and its implementation so that improvements can be made. We view prevention activities that adhere to this model as 'problem-solving partnerships' . . ." (Waller and Welsh 209). The authors elaborate on a series of approaches that have met with success in various countries, including certain regions of the United States where they have been utilized. These approaches, which include fostering better design, mobilizing agencies and facilitating partnerships, are largely interchangeable. In other words, each approach tends to lead to or encourage the others.

Concrete evidence that such community-oriented measures for improving the "ground-zero" infrastructure by fostering better design, mobilizing agencies, and facilitating partnerships is seen in a number of programs both here and abroad, including the Kirkholt housing project in Rochdale, England, in which a project team familiarized themselves with burglary victimization reports that allowed them to formulate a design for enhanced security that was convenient to patrons (Waller and Welsh 27-28). The Quantum Opportunities Program, a program utilized in five U.S. cities that worked for disadvantaged teenagers, came about as a result of a collaborative effort to mobilize various agencies toward a common goal. The program offered these disadvantaged teenagers afterschool community service projects for which they received small stipends and a college fund (28-29). The Netherlands' HALT program worked to promote responsibility by offering intelligent sanctions for juvenile vandalism offenders, a program that was made possible by a facilitation of partnerships that were collectively concerned with enforcing consequences on offenders that were reasonable and that promoted personal responsibility for actions and a heightened social consciousness (29). In all these cases and similar ones, the net result in each area was a notable decrease in the percentage of crimes committed.

This local, decentralized approach not only educates communities about what methods work best, it also encourages communities and governments to reconsider the legitimacy of punishing nonviolent crimes, such as marijuana use. Despite the fact that most experts understand that marijuana is much less harmful (many if not most experts even say that marijuana is not harmful at all), than other drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, cocaine or heroin, the penalties for marijuana possession and/or use is often so severe that they sometimes exceed penalties for rape and murder. According to Eric Schlosser in his book Reefer Madness, there are approximately 20,000 people incarcerated federally for marijuana-related incidents, with another 25,000 to 30,000 people incarcerated at the state level, with severe penalties connected even in conjunction with unnecessarily long prison sentences. The budget invested in marijuana-related criminal justice programs is exceedingly high for something that has little to no harmful effect and is done mostly in the privacy of one's home. If marijuana was legalized and other related nonviolent activities was tolerated, the money spent on these witch-hunt proceedings could be used for more important and meaningful issues, such as improving inner-city conditions and improving the amount of welfare disadvantaged people receive, which in turn would reduce street crime significantly. Freeing up this budget that is now being wastefully expended on the harmless use of a naturally-growing plant that does not induce crime could also be more usefully directed at funding programs such as the ones mentioned above. But such improvements require a movement of collaborative democratic voices at the local level to see fruition.

References

Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Merton, Robert K. "Social Structure and Anomie," American Sociological Review, vol. 3, 1938.

Waller, Irvin and Walsh, Brandon C. 1998. "Reducing Crime by Harnessing International Best Practices." National Institute of Justice Journal (October).

My Thoughts on Family Values

Because families are a reflection in microcosm of the social structure at large, its politics and philosophies are always subject to a state of flux. As society changes and experiences shifts on any number of levels and aspects, so too does the family as they absorb that influence and adapt accordingly. Therefore, when it comes to defining "family values" it is important to develop a pragmatic understanding and approach. Attempting to define what constitutes an "ideal" set of values for all family models is a mistake, for it fails to take into account the ever-changing nature of the social structure the family is an integral part of. Therefore, I believe family values should be receptive to change and able to adapt in a manner that best serves the well-being of society. The particular kind of receptiveness and adaptiveness depends entirely on the situations that emerge in the course of cultural evolution. Family values should reflect a commitment, but not of a dogmatic type that accepts an unchanging template and attempts to superimpose this template on cultural and social conditions to which it does not apply and only becomes a detriment to progress. Rather, family values should reflect a commitment to adapt constructively to changing social conditions. I echo the viewpoint expressed by Vera St. Erlich in her book Family in Transition, who writes "At any moment, there are various different courses of action possible, and people make decisions. Which course they will choose is dependent on subjective considerations, that is on inclinations and predispositions which evolved in earlier periods" (Erlich 394).

Furthermore, family values should be manifested in practical ways; values should not be composed merely of ephemeral rhetoric but rather should be allowing of application. People should maintain a healthy skepticism toward any attempt by popular culture to define a social demographic or institution symbolically rather than realistically or practically. Post-war capitalism fostered just such cultic symbolism in the development of the breadwinner/homemaker paradigm of the 1950s. In his discussion of the family of the 1950s, sociologist Robert Heiner rightly calls into question the popular conception of this period as being "traditional" or ideal for modern society. He writes, "The family of the 1950s - both on and off television - however, was far from traditional. It was, in fact, most unusual and, historically, almost freakish. Men returned home from the war, and a great many of the women who had been in the workforce during the war left their jobs (either willingly or not so willingly). New families were being formed at an astonishing rate, and the baby boom was under way" (Heiner, 76). The 1950s represented a sudden and pronounced shift from previous trends that were characterized by declining birth rates, increasing divorce rates, and marriage at later ages. The popular tendency on the part of many people today to implicitly assume that the 1950s family structure was representative of family life throughout the first half of the century is testament to the power of social and cultural constructions. One could argue that the sudden rise in post-war birth rates explains this current popular assumption that the 1950s was a "Golden Age" of the family, the culmination of time-tested idealized principles. After all, the "baby boomer" generation, by definition, represents a significant number of people who were socialized by the anomalous culture of the 1950s. This leads me to a consideration of functionalism. Functionalism seeks to understand society's institutions at the level of the contribution by each in enabling the smooth running of society as a whole. In light of this perspective, it is clear that the family model that emerged in the 1950s was not functional to any significant degree, since it did not survive longer than a decade and the advantages the model offered were few and short-lived.

The evangelical right-wing movement today is egregiously attempting to re-define society in dogmatic terms that blocks all form of progress and acknowledgment of shifts in social structures that necessitate adaptation. Vera St. Erlich writes what I recognize to be a critical constructionist viewpoint: "Values can be more easily recognized by looking at the reactions of people than listening to their words and slogans. If some economically backward people or groups complain about the misery of their life, that does not necessarily mean that a higher standard of living is their most cherished value. If they do not care to repair their poor homes, nor to become literate, show indolence toward hygiene and medicine and little enthusiasm to irrigation and tractors, it is evident that a high standard of living is not their most important goal. That does not mean that they do not share the common human values of a better life. But it shows that they don't want these achievements at any price" (Erlich 394, emphasis mine).

With that in mind, there are two specific shifts in the social structure and its policies that I think would help U.S. families to better live out a set of family values that is receptive to progress and a changing consciousness:

1) The United States should follow the relatively recent example of Canada and open its doors to gay marriage, accepting it as a legitimate union and a legitimate foundation upon which a family can be based. Acceptance of gay marriage represents veritable progress beyond petty discrimination based upon genitalia alone. It is also conducive to encouraging healthy, family-oriented activity rather than, for example, prostitution or unhappy and unfulfilling heterosexual marriages that result from society looking down on a person's sexual orientation and forbidding that person to marry someone of the same sex. Thus, the acceptance of gay marriage in the U.S. at large could potentially precipitate a decrease in divorce rates as individuals pursue relationships that are truly in line with their personal orientation. Consequently, children benefit not only from the increasingly rare luxury of being raised by two adults, but also by being instilled with progressive values that educate and discourage the socially detrimental homophobia that many children, from elementary grades even to high school, are often heard to express. Clifford Krauss, writing for the New York Times about Canada's dramatic social shift towards being identified as a tolerant society, attributes this progressive transformation to the fact that Canada has become a very multicultural society within the last generation, as well as to the fact that Canada enjoys a more evenly distributed government. He writes, "Increasingly, Canada has been on a social policy course pursued by many Western European and Scandinavian countries, gradually moving more out of step with the United States over the last few decades" (Krauss 68).

It is my contention that family life is greatly enhanced and benefited by the kind of cultural diversity that Canada exhibits, and this includes tolerance of same-sex marriage and may even be an issue that warrants high priority in light of its civil rights nature. The U.S. would do well to overcome its narrow-minded nationalism and follow the example of our more culturally evolved and revolutionary neighbor. To put it another way, family values should not be concerned with matters of mere reproductive ability, but with matters of more profound cultural and social import that take into consideration long-term issues, such as overpopulation, that will have an impact on future generations of families.

2) U.S. policy leaves much to be desired and improved concerning its attitude toward childcare and family leave. In the United States, child care is by and large a peripheral priority for the government, as parents are expected to bear the financial responsibility for expensive programs that are not even meeting standardized criteria for quality and adequacy. In a country where influential politicians and corporate pundits often engage in rhetoric that refers to children as "our nation's future" and "our most precious resource," it is striking to see just how much of this rhetoric is simply lip service to better enhance the success of a political platform. It is an illustrative example of Erlich's distinction between words/slogans and actions; between what people say they care deeply about and what their actions actually reveal. Applying this concept to U.S. child care and family leave policies, a comparative analysis with the policies of other countries reveals unambiguously where America's priorities lie. Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel, in an article from the journal Contexts that details the results of just such a comparative analysis, write, "Any child care program or funding system has social and political assumptions with far-reaching consequences . . . these emphases entails different national assumptions, if only implicit, about children and parents, education, teachers, peers and societies as a whole" (Clawson and Gerstel, 28-29).

Family life and the values intimately associated with it would be vastly improved and enhanced if U.S. policy engaged child care and family leave reform in a manner that does not target the poor. The current U.S. policy emphasis on subsidies for poor families and their children is inadequate to resolve issues of inequality and accessibility to quality child development. As Clawson and Gerstel point out, "Subsidy systems favor the poor, but subsidies (unlike tax breaks) depend on the level of appropriations. Congress does not appropriate enough money and, therefore, most of the children who qualify for subsidies do not receive them" (Clawson and Gerstel, 30). Besides this practical problem, there are other potentialities to consider. For example, through the government's singling-out of the poor for appropriations that rarely come to fruition, the self-fulfilling prophecy has the potential to become a significant factor, and one that ends up maintaining the status quo rather than creating a viable and practical solution to inequality. Other countries such as France and Denmark, while both different in their emphases on the importance of early education, are both representative of a better alternative than the United State's capitalistic policies. Essentially, families in the U.S. would be much better off financially and socially if the government established a combination of publicly-funded child-care for children that incorporated a preparatory educational program (as in France) and paid family leave for working parents with infants and younger children (as in Sweden).

References

Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel. "Caring for Our Young: Child Care in Europe and the United States," Contexts (Fall/Winter 2002).

Erlich, Vera St. Family in Transition: A Study of 300 Yugoslav Villages. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Krauss, Clifford. "Social Shift Opens Door to Gay Marriage Plan," New York Times (April 13, 2003).

The Roots of Family Problems in America

The politics of family structure and the historical trends that illuminate its current popular constructions is a field of study of particular import to sociology. The family is in many ways a microcosm of societal structures at large, a model that features a basic formulation behind all the varieties and undulations to be discerned within its manifestations. Thus, by understanding family structures and politics, one can arrive at an understanding of society and culture overall. This is because culture exerts a certain influence that family models tend to emulate on a much smaller, more diluted scale that allows for concise analysis. Although inferences to the larger, more complex nature of society from concise family structures may not represent factual or practical views of society, it does reflect perceptions and popular constructions of that social universe. These perceptions and constructions are wide-ranging and very diverse, but out of this diversity certain identifiable trends emerge over time, trends that have accelerated in the past century.

When attempting to understand the social problems associated with U.S. family life, sociologists have pointed to several key roots of these problems. There is much debate among sociologists who identify deleterious factors that have influenced American families, and these debates are often specialized depending on what aspect of social problems is being discussed. There are of course many historical factors that have contributed to the current condition of the family, and they all apply to general considerations of key roots. Among the most pronounced and significant of these influencing factors was the marked shift in gender demographics in the workplace in the 1970s. The effects of deindustrialization accounted in large part for this shift in demographics. Sociologist Robert Heiner writes, "The demand for high-paying blue-collar workers, in automobile and steel manufacturing, for example, began to shrivel; and the demand for low-paying 'pink-collar' workers, sales clerks and secretaries, for example, began to expand. With several economic recessions in the 1970s, men faced unemployment and stagnating wages. Women moved into those pink-collar jobs and into other jobs as well; and though their wages were lower, they were able to offset the declining financial situation of their families" (Heiner, 80). According to the documentary The Motherhood Manifesto, "In 1960, 70% of our families had a breadwinner who went to work everyday and a homemaker who went home and took care of the children or an elderly parent or a sick relative. That has completely changed; it's reversed."

Contrary to the popular conceptions disseminated by various corporate media relations, the gender disparity associated with "pink-collar" jobs (most notably sales clerks and secretaries, among other like vocations) does not have its roots in women's liberation and a victory for feminism on an economic level. Rather, as more and more men lost their jobs as manufacturing dwindled in the face of deindustrialization and the introduction of an increasingly high-tech workplace, many women found themselves with no other alternative but to enter the workforce. Furthermore, the prevalent breadwinner/homemaker culture of the 1950s had instilled in many women the "cult of domesticity." Economist and feminist Julie A. Matthaei writes, "Since a homemaker would enter the labor force only if her husband's income was insufficient to provide for family needs, her labor-force presence signaled his inability as head of household. Only if he earned sufficient income to provide for the family's basic commodity needs could she specialize in domestic homemaking, allowing the couple to live out clearly polarized masculine and feminine lives" (Matthaei, 121). This polarization of gender roles and cultic attitude toward female domesticity had an effect on women even as she entered the workforce in terms of what she settled for in the way of salary. On this note, Heiner remarks, "In that women demanded less in terms of salary, . . . many company owners and managers came to prefer hiring women because they were 'better adapted, cheaper, more reliable and more easily controlled' than men." (Heiner 80). The disparity in income between gender was a direct result of women being socialized to assume their role in society was homemaker (a role that men used to reinforce their social reputation of independent masculinity) and this socialization caused women to be content with a salary that did not represent the amount of work she actually performed. This in turn led to the development of "sex-typed" jobs, abstract designations that produced the gender disparity between manufacturing jobs and "pink-collar jobs" mentioned above. In her seminal American Quarterly article "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-60," Barbara Welter wrote, "Somehow through this mixture of challenge and acceptance, of change and continuity, the True Woman evolved into the New Woman - a transformation as startling in its way as the abolition of slavery or the coming of the machine age. And yet the stereotype, the "mystique" if you will, of what woman was and ought to be persisted bringing guilt and confusion in the midst of opportunity" (Welter, 174).

This came to represent a problematic development for family life in a number of ways. The "cult of domesticity" and the resultant development of sex-typed jobs that Matthai writes extensively about in her book An Economic History of Women in America helped the symbolism of women as homemakers to survive even as more and more women entered the workforce. According to Heiner's research, "[M]ost women working outside of the home basically have two jobs because they also do most of the housework. This undoubtedly causes stress and resentment and decreases marital satisfaction among many women. Another part of the correlation between dual-earner families and divorce is explained by the fact that a woman earning an income has greater independence and is better able to exit a failed marriage and live on her own" (Heiner, 81). Thus, the dual-earner family model represents a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the presence of women in the workforce afford them the opportunity to leave a failed marriage and thus become independent and liberated from an out-dated model of domesticity. On the other hand, the potential for divorce has a deleterious effect primarily on families with children, not to mention the fact that most couples depend on a dual-income to maintain their financial security. The aforementioned documentary The Motherhood Manifesto brings to the forefront of the discussion how the marginalization of working mothers and the divorce rates that are sometimes associated with it has a negative impact on childcare and is correlated with the extremely high rates of child poverty. According to the film, single moms earn 34-44% less than their male counterparts. "We're the wealthiest nation on earth and we refuse to take care of our children and their families."

References
Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Matthaei, Julie A. An Economic History of Women in America. New York: Schocken Books, 1982.

The Motherhood Manifesto. Dir. Laura Pacheco. Perf. Mary Steenburgen. Bullfrog Films, 2006.

Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-60." American Quarterly, 18 (1966).

Thoughts on Europe's Work-Time Alternatives

Anders Hayden's informative and revealing article on "Europe's Work-Time Alternatives" presents the European work model as a viable and progressive template that the United States would greatly benefit from if adopted and incorporated: "While Western Europe is not a worker's paradise, its various shorter work-time policies are valuable examples of ways in which public policies can foster 'time affluence' alongside material affluence." Hayden's cross-cultural comparison clearly demonstrates that a greater emphasis on time affluence will directly serve to improve material affluence. This is illustrated by the fact that Europe as a whole produces more per year than America, despite the fact that most of Europe has brought the workweek below 40 hours: "Several shorter-hour innovators in Europe - Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Norway - are actually more productive per hour of labor than is the United States."

As I understand it, this is due to the fact that a shorter workweek results in greater employment: "In 2001, France's national planning agency found 'indisputable' evidence that work-time reduction was creating vast numbers of new jobs, helping to bring unemployment down from 12.5 percent in 1997 to an eighteen-year low of 8.6 percent." The more people are employed, the more productivity will result. The ultimate irony is that America was once a pioneer in international work-time reduction policies, blazing a trail that European nations quickly caught on to and incorporated. As Hayden points out, "After World War II, the American shorter work-time movement ground to a halt, while many European nations caught up with and surpassed American standards."

If European nations can learn a valuable lesson from what America once was and apply that learned principle to go on to become a successful and prosperous nation whose quality of life is much greater than in America, what is holding us back from gleaning insight from Europe's example? The barrier, as I see it, is manifested in the current capitalist agenda that has a stranglehold on our economic principles. As Hayden points out, "The work-hour advantage of some European countries is, however, related to 'social democratic' institutions and policies, such as progressive taxation, public funding of health care and college education, and relatively low income inequality."

Reference
Anders Hayden, "Europe's Work-Time Alternatives," pp. 203-210 in Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America, edited by John de Graaf. Barret-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco, CA.

The Coming Era of Wealth Taxation

In a very timely article entitled "The Coming Era of Wealth Taxation," political economist Gar Alperovitz describes the necessity of wealth taxation in times of economic disaster. He expresses an optimistic outlook, detailing trends that are pointing toward prospects for a new era in which large concentrations of wealth are appropriately taxed. After I read and reflected on the article, I was once again reminded that the gap between the rich and the poor is intimately connected with economic instability. This gap in turn is the result of the conservative capitalist creed, which mandates that the rich should continue getting richer while the poor become poorer. With this in mind, Alperovitz begins his article with the bad news: "Broadly, in any one year the top 20% garners for itself roughly 50% of all income, while the bottom 80% must make [do] with the rest. The top 1% regularly takes home more income than the bottom 100 million Americans combined." This is indeed what Alperovitz calls a "medieval concentration of power."

The remainder of the article details the good news, as Alperovitz chronicles the emerging signs of change that will inevitably tend to strongly motivate reform. Interestingly enough, early in the article Alperovitz states, "The only real question is when its scale and implications will surface as a powerful political issue." It is instructive to note that this article was written in 2004. Five years later, the reader is keenly cognizant of the fact that the daunting scale and troubling implications of wealth inequality has surfaced as a very powerful and indeed volatile political issue. This is demonstrated in the recent nationwide tax day protests, some of which quickly took a violent turn. In light of this, I quote Alperovitz's concluding remark: "But as with all important political change, the real answer will be found only if and when pressure builds up both intellectually and politically for a new course of action. The challenge, as always, is not simply to propose, but to act." Today the pressure has built up, and yet it is those who are pushing for the much-needed taxation of wealth that are finding themselves on the receiving end of conservative polemical attacks and knee-jerk reactions. Furthermore progressive tax reform supporters seem to be doing very little in the way of counter-argument, much less progressive action.

In light of recent events and our current economic crisis, the challenge now, as I see it, is to support a policy whereby the middle/lower classes receive tax breaks. This would help stimulate the economy and get it back on its feet, for unlike the wealthy upper class, the lower classes would then be in a position to spend more with their breaks. When the wealthy get tax cuts, they tend to only invest and outsource, and therefore often fail to stimulate the larger economic landscape. This drives home an excellent point that Alperovitz concisely states: "Moreover, as Democratic politicians have come increasingly to realize, the 'logic of small versus large numbers' could potentially neutralize a good part of the suburbs politically, painting conservatives into a corner where they're forced to defend the very unreasonable privileges of the very rich."

Reference
Gar Alperovitz. "The Coming Era of Wealth Taxation," pp. 162-167 in The Wealth Inequality Reader, edited by Dollars & Sense and United for a Fair Economy. Cambridge, MA: Economic Affairs Bureau, 2004.

Affirmations of the New Skepticism

Paul Kurtz recently published the following affirmations in the May/June 2009 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. These affirmations strongly reflect my own, and represent the standards I accept as my foundation for the development and growth of my own knowledge

AFFIRMATIONS OF THE NEW SKEPTICISM

The methods of critical inquiry used so effectively in science need to be extended to all areas of human interests. All claims to knowledge should be open to revision in the light of inquiry.

Skeptical inquiry is essential for the development of human knowledge. It represents a historic tradition in science, philosophy, and learning. We may distinguish skeptical inquiry, with emphasis on inquiry, from classical skepticism, which was apt to be negative, even nihilistic. This form of skepticism is a new skepticism, for it is positive and constructive; its principles are essential for the development of knowledge about nature and human behavior. With these considerations in mind, a set of principles serves as guidelines for skeptical inquirers:

WE BELIEVE in the possibility of discovering reliable human knowledge. We affirm the positive powers of human intelligence. We believe that the methods of scientific inquiry can expand the frontiers of knowledge and that these can be used for the betterment of humankind.

WE SUBMIT that skepticism is an essential part of scientific inquiry and that it should be extended to all areas of human endeavor—science, everyday life, law, religion and the paranormal, economics, politics, ethics, and society—and that the standards of rationality apply to each area of human interest.

WE BELIEVE that critical thinking is inherent in all worthwhile inquiry about the world and that it can be enlisted to solve problems, neutralize animosities, compromise hatred, and negotiate differences.

WE BELIEVE in clarity rather that obfuscation, lucidity in the place of confusion, and linguistic definitions to overcome vagueness or ambiguity.

WE DO NOT reject any claim to knowledge prior to inquiry. We insist, however, that claims be framed in testable form and that the burden of proof rests primarily with the party asserting the claim.

WE ASK for facts, not suppositions; experimental evidence, not anecdotal hearsay or conjecture; logical inference and deduction, not faith or intuition.

WE DO NOT believe in absolute dogmas or creeds, whether set in stone or proclaimed as official doctrine.

WE REJECT mythologies of salvation whether based in ancient fears or current messianic illusions, unsubstantiated by corroborative empirical grounds. We believe in inquiry rather than authority, reason in the place of tradition.

WE MAINTAIN that reason and science can be used to develop new technologies, alleviate suffering and reduce pain, and ameliorate and enhance human happiness.

WE SUBMIT that rational inquiry can help us to develop and test ethical principles, moral values, and social policies and thus can contribute to human well-being.

WE ARE NOT negative skeptics, naysayers, debunkers, cynics, or nihilists. We simply wish to oppose hypocrisy, cant, deception, and illusion. We emphasize instead the tests of evidence and rationality.

In short, we believe that critical inquiry is the best way to frame our means and fulfill our ends.

~ Paul Kurtz

The Gospel According to the Media

The world as we know it is chaotic and disorienting, with the only constant to be discerned being that of constant change. Individuals within the larger societal structure often find it difficult to orient themselves within the undulating, seemingly random fluctuations that contribute to society's evolution. Meaningful patterns are often detectable only when seen from a bird's-eye view perspective, which accommodates a view of the larger scope of the path society is taking. In this chaotic and changing world, the media culture tends to portray itself as an anchor in the storm, a paragon of reason, and a source of information that promises a solid sense of direction and orientation. This portrayal is worthy of criticism, for beneath the polished and professional veneer of mainstream media outlets, certain political and social influences are at work behind the scenes. These influences carry with them a penchant to cast the media in a light that often does not reflect reality. The media, while portraying itself as a window through which the average member of a society may observe his or her culture, is itself a cultural construct. The concept of the media as a window through which society's changes and fluctuations can be accurately observed and charted is increasingly becoming a failed and unfounded concept. The misinformation that the media has been known to feed the public in favor of its corporate interests warrants critical analysis and a healthy skepticism on the part of all informed and rational members of society. Because the media holds such a strong influence on how social ills and social health are to be defined, an analysis of the media is integral to all critical constructionist studies.

Possessing the ability to influence the social structure is part and parcel of being in power. In the context of the media culture, this is both relevant and applicable, and it is important to bear this mind when attempting to deconstruct the media through critical constructionism. Sociologist Robert Heiner writes, "Those with relatively little power tend to accept the status quo, not necessarily because they are forced to, but more often because they believe in it. Our norms, values, and beliefs are products of the social structure. Therefore, the ability to influence the social structure is the ability to influence the way people think" (Heiner, 7). Incorporating this understanding of the media into our process of critique readily allows us to synthesize Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interactionism, which is what critical constructionism does. When applied to the analysis of media, Conflict Theory, as developed by Karl Marx, addresses the relationship between those who have the power to construct social values and problems and those with relatively little influence who accept these status quo constructions and apply them to their everyday life. Symbolic Interactionism addresses how meanings are constructed out of various interpretations and how they come to be collectively shared by a significant number of people, despite the differing interpretations. Social psychologist George Herbert Mead argued that language-based communication is what differentiates human beings from other animals. Whereas the communication patterns of other animals is genetically programmed, human interactions are based on language (which are abstractions by definition) and therefore require interpretation. According to Mead, the form of communication characteristic of human social organization requires "the appearance of the other in the self, the identification of the other with the self, the reaching of self-consciousness through the other . . . a type of communication distinguished from that which takes place among other forms which have not this principle in their societies" (Mead, 253). In the process of developing his arguments, Mead was well aware of the role Symbolic Interactionism plays in media relations: "The vast importance of media of communication such as those involved in journalism is seen at once, since they report situations through which one can enter into the attitude and experience of other persons" (Mead 257).

Critical constructionism emphasizes the role played by the elites in constructing meanings that come to be shared, often for the purpose of serving their own interests at the expense of those with the least power. In other words, critical constructionism takes into account the basic relational interactions that all people are familiar with and applies the social psychology of these interactions to the elite classes who harness the power of influence. The role played by the elites often accounts for the possibility of conflicting interpretations of social constructions being resolved or synthesized, regardless of whether or not the acquired consensus is entirely accurate. In this context, the media has become a buffer preventing what Karl Marx described as the "inevitability" of disadvantaged workers rising up against their capitalist oppressors. It is primarily through the mainstream media's diligent maintenance of the status quo that the elite have been able to avoid such an uprising. After all, the media is an institution "associated with the production of knowledge and culture" (Heiner, 11). Antonio Gramsci, an outspoken socialist who was incarcerated and imprisoned by Italy's Fascist government in the 1920s, called this elite-serving preventative influence "hegemony." It is both accurate and instructive to assign this terminology to the mainstream media's cultural status. In connection with his views on hegemony, Gramsci wrote extensively about what he discerned to be the relationship between the "intellectuals" and the world of production that they control: "The functions in question are precisely organisational and connective. The intellectuals are the dominant group's 'deputies' exercising the sub-altern functions of social hegemony and political government" (Gramsci, 12).

This leads us to consider the mainstream media in a new light. Rather than serving as an accurate and trustworthy source of information concerning social problems and their solutions, has the media become a social problem in and of itself? The deleterious effects of ethnocentric hegemony strongly indicates that this is indeed the case. In his essay "The Media and Social Problems," Douglas Kellner candidly expresses this concern: "The media do not address significant social problems if these issues threaten corporate power or dominant economic interests and by undermining democracy and not engaging the significant social problems of the era, the corporate media themselves become a social problem, requiring a democratic media politics" (Kellner, 10). Kellner's essay as a whole elaborates on how deregulation of the media has contributed to a suppression of the democratic process and how it continues to strengthen the profit-driven market model currently dominating media outlets. In light of this, how should an informed and skeptical citizenry go about remedying the situation? Considering that the media's power to shape society's perceptions is so far-reaching, the need for "alternative media" avenues to combat these "deputies" of the status quo is being keenly recognized by a growing number of sociologists interested in objectively analyzing the media.

In the film Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: The Public Relations Industry Unspun (a documentary produced by Media Education Foundation) John Stauber, in conjunction with radio program Democracy Now! turns a piercingly critical eye to the dishonesty and misinformation propagated by the Public Relations industry. The documentary's expose of the tactics utilized by mass corporate media illustrates the need for media that is focused solely on serving the public good. The PR industry is analyzed as an example of the tension that exists between media for profit and media for democracy, and this tension is brought to the forefront of the viewer's attention. Public Relations is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States, and the reach of its influential power to shape public policy is expanding just as rapidly. Employing over 200,000 people and earning millions of dollars per year for the firms, corporations, and think tanks involved.

At one point in the film, Stuart Ewen, a professor at Hunter College, echoes Mead's perspective concerning Symbolic Interactionism: "Part of the role of a corporation in the democracy, part of the job of a corporation in the democracy, is continually to massage reality in which ordinary people will see an identity between their own interests and the interests of a corporate enterprise system." John Stauber points out early on that not all Public Relations are a negative influence. It should not be discarded as a dishonest industry in and of itself, for it can be a beneficial influence on society as well as a nefarious one. The film points to the work of Ivy Lee in the early twentieth century as an example of how PR can be a benign influence. But a comparison of the honest and genuine efforts of Ivy Lee with figures like Edward Bernays, whose life work and support of propaganda to steer social direction gave birth to what we now know as the Public Relation industry, is implied in the film and illustrates a strong point. Stauber's critical approach is one that is more concerned with instigating reform of the PR industry by raising awareness in his audience of how PR has in fact become a social problem.

A critical constructionist approach to analyzing the mainstream media's influence on society is crucial because it recognizes two key facts. First, the mainstream media is controlled by powerful corporations who are under tremendous pressure to maintain their bottom line and create profits, often at the expense of accurate information. Second, the corporate-controlled mainstream media influences a vast number of people within a society, from rich to poor, and affect the everyday interactions among these diverse members of society. Due to the hegemony of elites, non-elites are led to believe what is good for those in power is good for them, and herein lies the subtle advantage corporate media holds over the public. A crucially important step to take in the way of remedying the situation is to strengthen the cause of democracy by placing the tools of communication and influence in the hands of ordinary people. But it certainly does not end there, for if and when democracy accomplishes this, a method of accountability to ensure accuracy and to prevent regression into sensationalism will be indispensable.

References
Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self, and Society. Edited by C.W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From the Prison Notebooks. Translated and edited by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.

Kellner, Douglas. "The Media and Social Problems," in George Ritzer (ed.), Handbook of Social Problems: A Comparative International Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004.

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: The Public Relations Industry Unspun. Dir. Loretta Alper & Sut Jhally. Perf. Amy Goodman and John Stauber. Media Education Foundation, 2002.

Billy Joel vs. Bruce Springsteen

Chuck Klosterman's book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs includes a chapter that consists of a detailed assessment of the artistic legacy of Billy Joel. His attempts at psycho-analysis of the man behind the music is less about critiquing the music itself than it is about using the legacy of Billy Joel to illustrate a point. In his witty deconstruction of Billy Joel, Klosterman brings to the forefront of the reader's mind two defining characteristic of the world of rock music. The first is the tension that lies between the perception of the artist and the artist's product. According to Klosterman, there exists an abstract relationship between these two manifestations that often has the potential to unfairly obfuscate the aesthetic merits (or lack thereof) of the music itself. The second defining characteristic has to do with the tendency on the part of the listening audience to arrive at foregone conclusions about the artist based on the iconography or projected image prior to actually developing an informed conclusion about the music itself. In other words, there seems to exist an unspoken consensus among consumers of rock culture that the idea of what the music is supposed to offer is more important the aesthetic value of the musical/poetic component itself.

This chapter provoked my thoughts. I quite agree with Klosterman's take on this particular aspect of pop culture. This is why I find it illustrative to compare, for example, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. As far as songwriting is concerned, Billy Joel possesses far greater poetical prowess than Bruce Springsteen (which, Klosterman would undoubtedly point out, is not saying much at all). Yet Bruce Springsteen is much more highly esteemed and held in reverence in popular culture than is Billy Joel. The reason for this lies in what the music-listening public perceives to be Springsteen's image and ideology, irrespective of quality. On the other hand, Billy Joel is unpretentious to such a great extent that his music and lyrics stand on their own. The underlying messages expressed in his music do not require an iconography or an image accompanying them in order to be sensed, understood, and taken to heart. Furthermore, Billy Joel's music is unpretentious in another, more significant sense. His lyrics read like a self-reflection, an internal memoir not unlike a series of distilled journal entries set to melodic rock music. This allows the listener to empathize and relate to Billy Joel's musings on a truly personal level. Bruce Springsteen's lyrics may be as juvenile as "Born To Run" (Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims / And strap your hands across my engines) or as cliche-riddled as "Working on a Dream" (Out here the nights are long, the days are lonely / I think of you and I'm working on a dream). But because Springsteen has inexplicably become the icon of the downtrodden who rise above circumstance and is popularly recognized as the common man's symbolic messiah, it is this image and this ideology that takes precedence over quality.

What this means is that, despite the fact that Bruce Springsteen presents himself as the voice of the common man, he nevertheless represents an unattainable symbol, an example that nobody can practically live up to. The subjective nature of artistic taste being what it is, I cannot speak for anybody else. But when I listen to Bruce Springsteen, I cannot connect or relate to the music or lyrics in any way whatsoever. The philosophy of Bruce Springsteen is an aloof philosophy. He has become little more than a mythology that has utterly overshadowed his humanity or artistic skill. This is not unlike the popular mythology known as the "American Dream" and indeed, Springsteen is viewed in the eyes of popular culture as the incarnation of this idea. It is almost as if Bruce Springsteen is to the American Dream what Jesus is to Christianity's God. What's worse, his iconography is paradoxically a glorification of humility. He projects himself as perfect in his imperfection, and this projection comes off as painfully feigned and pretentious. This is why, in my opinion at least, Bruce Springsteen appeals primarily to pseudo-intellectuals. For example, if Bruce Springsteen is to music what John Steinbeck is to literature, that would make Billy Joel the Ernest Hemingway of music. To understand my point, compare any Steinbeck novel with any Hemingway novel. If that is too time-consuming, compare Springsteen's 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad with Billy Joel's 1989 album Storm Front.

In stark and refreshing contrast, Billy Joel represents no more than what he offers: his personal introspection and reflections. Billy Joel possesses no superimposed iconography that overwhelms his humanity and poetry. Billy Joel writes and sings with the confidence of one who is not concerned with popularity, not preoccupied with catering to any given audience. Popularity and commercial success hold no appeal for Joel, and in fact he look upon such things with disdain. For demonstrable evidence of this, one need look no further than his self-deprecating song "The Entertainer." Another great example is his 1980 album Glass Houses, which is about somebody who feels trapped and artistically-suppressed by his own success. His art operates according to a what-you-see-is-what-you-get, take-it-or-leave-it philosophy. When I listen to Billy Joel, I connect so strongly that I almost invariably see myself in his music. I do not see any trace of a distracting platonic icon or an identifiable mystique that I am expected to strive to relate to. I do not even see Billy Joel half the time. Listening to Billy Joel is like looking in a mirror, or like reading an anonymous journal and wondering if you had written it. The themes he wrestles with and the experiences he shares are that comprehensive and universal. This is why, in my experience, having a Billy Joel song stuck in my head often feels no different than hearing voices of my conscience in my head.

This is not to say that iconography and image is a detriment in and of itself, and I am not advocating iconoclasm in any way, shape or form. Indeed, art is by definition an exercise in abstraction. Iconography and symbolism is central to any art form, and music is certainly no exception. The Beatles, for example, is one of the greatest rock bands in history (perhaps even the most important) and their importance is largely due to their mystique. They captured the spirit of the 1960s in a profound way, and this "60s spirit" is indisputably an abstraction. Whenever I listen to any Beatles album, I feel transported to their world, and when this world is once experienced, leaving it is not very much anticipated. This is why I discover something new and insightful every time I listen to Rubber Soul, Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper, no matter how many times I listen to it. And this is exactly the point I am trying to make. The Beatles were not a great quality band because of a pre-supposed or otherwise assumed mystique, rather their mystique was born out of the artistic quality they already possessed. The reason I am fascinated and compelled by Billy Joel is not first and foremost his lack of a larger symbolic construct representing him, but the fact that he is a rarity who became famous in spite of himself, not to mention his ability to operate without a definable image. His evolution as an artist is proof that he is truly talented, even if few people recognize this. The reason I cannot appreciate Bruce Springsteen's music is not because he represents an idea, but rather because the idea he does represent is presupposed, one-dimensional, and unattainable. This is why I find myself amused whenever I hear people talk about how terrible Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" is. I have no doubt if Springsteen wrote that song, it would be praised and celebrated by the very people who now bash it, merely because it would have Bruce Springsteen's name attached to it.

This is why I do not like the connotation of the word "fan" one bit. "Fan" is of course simply shorthand for "fanatic" but for some odd reason it has still earned euphemism status whose negative connotation has all but faded into the periphery. A "fan" is literally someone who follows the object of his or her adoration (or, to be more accurate, obsession) with blind allegiance. This results in the fan readily accepting whatever the object of their obsession produces as "great" talent, art or writing, with no consideration for quality or actual content. Because any given "fanaticism" is primarily about the ideological platform of the artist rather than said artist's actual "art", this fan mindset discourages the artist from growing or evolving for fear of losing his or her dewey-eyed audience. This is why I always strive to critically assess any album I listen to, any film I see, or any book I read based on context and actual content regardless of who it is that created the work. For example, I consider Pink Floyd to be one of the most profound and most important bands in rock history, and yet this doesn't alter the fact that I think A Momentary Lapse of Reason is one of the worst albums ever made (now that I think about it, the title of that album quite accurately describes the album in one sentence). On the other hand, I consider the Rolling Stones overall to be a terrible and untalented band. This doesn't alter the fact that I think "Paint It Black" and "Sympathy for the Devil" are brilliant and profoundly meaningful songs. These are not contradictions on my part, nor am I guilty of an aesthetic cognitive dissonance. I am simply a critical thinker who does not judge the quality of any given band solely on the basis of the name attached to the product in question.

This is why the music of Bruce Springsteen's foregone ideological conclusion, one-dimensionality, and deceptive "common man" facade is perfectly conducive to the mindset and lifestyle of a "fan." Billy Joel's work is different. Claiming to be a "fan" of Billy Joel does not really say anything definite about who you are, any more than saying you are a "fan" of introspection and self-examination. At this point, anyone who is cynical enough to accuse me of being obsessed with Billy Joel most likely has not read this essay in its entirety. I am no more obsessed with Billy Joel than I am about myself. And if I am obsessed with myself, then so is anybody who has ever taken the time to examine their self through introspection or who has taken time to reflect deeply about the world and their place in it.

The Inequality of Educational Attainment

In 1988, an ABC News special titled Burning Questions: America's Kids - Why They Flunk began with the following interview conducted with various middle-class high school students:

Interviewer: Do you know who's running for president?
First Student: Who, run? Ooh. I don't watch the news.
Interviewer: Do you know when the Vietnam War was?
Second Student: Don't even ask me that. I don't know.
Interviewer : Which side won the Civil War?
Third Student: I have no idea.
Interviewer: Do you know when the American Civil War was?
Fourth Student: 1970.

The social phenomena referred to by students of symbolic interactionism as the "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" is a very revealing phenomenon. In the comprehensive textbook Understanding Social Problems, Linda A. Mooney has written a very informative chapter on the social problems of education inequality. The concept is introduced as a primarily microlevel issue, as opposed to a macrolevel issue: "The self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when people act in a manner consistent with the expectations of others" (Mooney, 263). This is a microlevel issue because here we witness social constructions of shared meanings occurring at the level of the individual or small group. The classic 1968 study by Rosenthal and Jacobson which Mooney makes mention of (263) demonstrates quite convincingly that each individual member of a society gradually becomes what he or she thinks other people perceive them to be, regardless of whether that perception was originally an accurate assessment of character.

This observation holds crucial implications when viewed in the context of the inequality of educational attainment that a concerned citizenry has been working to bring to the public's attention for the past several decades. Precisely because the nature of society is such that it wields such powerful placebo-like influence on the collective unconscious, the fact that education is an important institution simply cannot be overstated or overemphasized. A renewed focus on combining bilingual education with decreased dependence on local taxes (for which we need a more centralized government) are viable solutions that can alleviate the problems of inequality plaguing the educational system. Among the many positive side effects of devoting more energy to maintaining bilingual education, I discern within its goals a potential for generating a greater distribution of racial composition in schools, resulting in less racially-concentrated schools and engendering greater cultural diversity. This increased cultural diversity, in turn, has the potential to become a quality learning experience among students.

In addition, and in connection to the problems of racially-concentrated composition, it is my opinion that all school districts should subscribe to a system of accountability both to the government and to the public. The need for such accountability is evident in James S. Coleman's 1966 study entitled "Equality of Educational Opportunity." Mooney reports that despite the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that segregated education was unconstitutional, "[Coleman's] study of 570,000 students and 60,000 teachers in 4,000 schools found that almost 80% of all schools attended by whites contained 10% or less blacks and that whites outperformed minorities (excluding Asian Americans) on academic tests" (Mooney 269). This is why accountability is crucial and a personal effort on the part of all in society to conscientiously break our habit of defaulting to unconscious stratifying assumptions of what others are capable of is much needed.

Reference
Mooney, Linda A. Understanding Social Problems. Wadsworth Publishing, 2008.

Thoughts on Creative Destruction

And I don't want you and I don't need you
Don't bother to resist, or I'll beat you
It's not your fault that you're always wrong
The weak ones are there to justify the strong
~ Marilyn Manson, "The Beautiful People"

The process known to economists as "creative destruction" refers to that ideal which is perhaps most sacrosanct to the corporate capitalist philosophy, namely survival of the fittest. In critiquing this principle, Heiner defines creative destruction as the process by which "policies, practices, businesses, or industries that are not competitive will ultimately be destroyed by, or give way to, ones that are more competitive" (Heiner, 42). This philosophy is the primary foundation upon which that infamous pseudo-science known as "social darwinism" has been constructed, a philosophy that erroneously combines two mutually incompatible fields of study, namely natural biological forces and culturally-constructed models of morality.

Heiner elaborates on his analysis of creative destruction, describing what he perceives to be the natural consequence of maintaining capitalism's illusion of social darwinism: "Unfortunately, in many ways, the European democratic socialist model is competing with the American corporate capitalist model and may itself be in danger of creative destruction" (Heiner, 43). The inevitable outcome, as I see it, portends consequences that are much more dire and troubling in their effects, surpassing Heiner's verdict of where this will ultimately lead us. When democracy becomes obsolete in the face of oligarchical corporate interests which shunt the democratic process off to the side, the beast must still be fed. It is in this respect that capitalism is a self-defeating philosophy. When there are no more competing interests to destroy, corporate capitalism will turn on itself, for profit and competition must be perpetuated in the capitalist creed. Heiner concludes his discussion of capitalism's threat to the democratic models of other nations with this profound question: "Can they effectively compete in the global economy without abandoning their government-moderated economic models that have, thus far, helped them to maintain a civil society?" (Heiner 43).

Heiner's answer is objective and appropriately agnostic when he states that the answer to the question remains open. However, as I read thoughtfully through the text, I found myself curiously reminded of Ayn Rand's massive novel Atlas Shrugged, a tortuously arrogant and poorly-written glorification of egocentrism which I read some time ago. My speculative proposal involves a complete reversal of what Ayn Rand portrayed in her novel: what if those of us who are the benign, environmentally-conscious, democratic socialists were to retreat from the world's economic and political stage? What if they were to go on strike, vanish from the public scene, and leave the corporate capitalists to their own destructive devices? When the dust settled, these democratic socialists would then find themselves enabled to return to the world stage and rebuild the economy.

The rock artist Marilyn Manson, that great purveyor of the dark side of human nature, expresses this point very compellingly in his song "The Beautiful People" when, in the spirit of Nietzsche, he croons "the weak ones are there to justify the strong." Does not corporate capitalism depend on the less fortunate to remain afloat?

Reference
Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Inequality By Design in the Eyes of Critical Constructionism

Any critical analysis that seeks an unbiased foundation upon which to construct a rational groundwork for relevant application must take into account both the comparative and contrasting elements present in the subject's counterparts. When applied to the study of the social problems burdening the United States, the comparative perspective reveals an inequality by design. When compared to all other advanced, industrialized countries, the United States "has more serious social problems than those found in the countries most similar to it" (Eitzen, 4).

The deleterious effect of overzealous nationalism and the glorification of capitalistic ideologies at the expense of social equality constitute a formidable barrier to the adoption of more generous policies found in countries whose citizens enjoy a much greater quality of life than do Americans. A society is not something that people stumble across from outside and adapt to. A society by definition is a construct, built of a community of individuals that form a whole and is supported by the social contract as its foundation. D. Stanley Eitzen says, "The political-social-economic system of a society does not just evolve from random events and aimless choices. The powerful in societies craft policies to accomplish certain ends, within the context of historical events, budgetary constraints, and the like " (Eitzen, 9).

Because the troubling effects of inequality in any country is by design, the most rational road to a solution is through a careful study of how the meanings of various social problems are built by those in power, and how these interpretations often favor elitist agendas at the expense of the middle and lower class. In other words, an exercise in prioritization through what sociologist Robert Heiner calls critical constructionism is sorely in need of being utilized, for it is through such a perspective that we can rationally discern between what is a legitimate social problem and what is propaganda distortion that favors elitist agendas.

"Critical constructionism is different from social constructionism only in that it emphasizes the role of elite interests in the process of problem construction. Borrowing from conflict theory, the critical constructionist argues that the way social problems are constructed, conceived, and presented to the public, more often than not, reflects the interests of society's elite more than those of the mainstream and often at the expense of those with the least power" (Heiner, 10).

References
Eitzen, D. Stanley. Solutions to Social Problems: Lessons From Other Societies. Boston: Pearson and Allyn and Bacon, 2007.

Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

The Study of Social Problems: An Objective Approach to Abstraction

When approaching the daunting task of comprehending the nature of society, the acute observer will inevitably be undertaking an exercise in abstraction. The intrepid member of the very social structure he or she is examining will invariably encounter the tension that lies between objectivity and subjectivity. The sociologist who turns his or her keen, reductionist eye to societal patterns is analogous to the art critic who comprehends a painting. The painting is a representation of reality, and therefore an abstraction. The natural world itself is not seen in the artwork, but rather the artist's subjective interpretation of a small slice of that natural world. Likewise, the sociological sub-discipline which specializes in the study of social problems is hard-pressed by the scientific method's standard of objectivity to avoid value-laden assessments and judgments of the "painting" known as social problems, which render said judgments subjective in nature, and therefore no longer scientific by definition.

Sociologist Robert Heiner defines a social problem as "a phenomenon regarded as bad or undesirable by a significant number of people or a number of significant people who mobilize to remedy it " (1). Thus, in order to maintain the level objectivity crucial to any science, the sociologist does not engage in the critical analysis of a social problem itself, for the "social problem" becomes such only once it is defined as such by a significant number of people or a number of significant people. Rather, the objectively-conscious sociologist examines the group within the social structure that decries a problem in the social matrix, for that is the best way to fully understand that which is being described as a problem by these mobilizations. The social problems student seeks to understand a socially-construed abstraction that represents a perceived event in the social world, in much the same way that an objectively-conscious art critic assesses the artist's abstraction of the natural world. This ushers in considerations of synthesization. Is the field of sociology both an art well as a science? It is this student's opinion that it is.

1. Heiner, Robert. Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 3.