CH-14-15 Population, Health, and Environment – SOC Sociology 2020 : Chapter Notes

This Document Contains Chapters 14 to 15 Chapter 14 Population, Health, and Environment LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Discuss the study of demography. 2. Discuss the demographic transition and its impact. 3. Discuss the sociological perspectives on health and illness. 4. Discuss social epidemiology and the various findings regarding the significance of social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and age. 5. Discuss health care in the United States. 6. Discuss the sociological perspectives on the environment. 7. Discuss the nature and extent of environmental problems. 8. Discuss the impact of globalization on the environment, including the issues surrounding global warming. CHAPTER SUMMARY Today there are more than 7 billion people on Earth, and billions more are expected in the next few decades. We must live off the limited resources the planet provides. To better understand our life chances, as well as those of others, we must take into account the direction that population trends are heading. Demography—the statistical study of population dynamics—is the discipline committed to studying such patterns. Fertility refers to the number of children born in a given period of time. Crude birth rate refers to the number of live births per 1,000 people in the population in a given year. The total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have during her lifetime given current birth rates and assuming she survives through her childbearing years. Replacement fertility rate refers to the minimum number of children a woman would need to average in her lifetime to reproduce the population in the next generation. The crude death rate refers to the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year. The infant mortality rate refers to the number of deaths in infants less than one year old per 1,000 live births per year. Life expectancy is the projected number of years a person can expect to live based on his or her year of birth. Migration is the movement of people from one population group to another. When individuals join a population group of which they were not previously a member, it is called immigration. When members of a population leave that group, it is called emigration. By combining data on births, death, and migration, it is possible to determine a population's growth rate, the overall percent change in that population per year. The most noteworthy characteristic of population dynamics in recent history is the explosive population growth of the past 100 years or so, which has far outpaced all population growth in prior human history. In An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus argued that there are natural limits to the number of people the environment can sustain. As a result he predicted population growth would eventually lead to shortages and conflict that would temporarily reduce population to a more sustainable level. An alternative model predicts that as societies transform from preindustrial to postindustrial, their population size shifts from small but stable with high birth and death rates, through a period of significant population growth, to large but stable, when both birth and death rates are low. This is referred to as the demographic transition. To understand health, we cannot focus on biology alone. Our conceptions of what it means to be healthy vary from place to place, and thus we must consider relationships, contexts, and the significance and impact of culture and society. The World Health Organization has defined health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” Health and diseases are rooted in the shared meanings of particular cultures. The culture-bound syndrome refers to a disease or illness that cannot be understood apart from some specific social context. To fully understand the scope of health and illness in society, we have to consider how society defines illness, what the consequences of such definitions are, and how social position and access to resources shape health outcomes. The sick role refers to societal expectations about the attitudes and behavior of a person labeled as ill. Physicians and nurses have the power to label people as healthy or sick, and thus to function as gatekeepers for the sick role. Factors such as gender, age, social class, and ethnic group all influence patients’ judgments regarding their own state of health. Theorists use the phrase “medicalization of society” to refer to the growing role of medicine as a major institution of social control. Glaring inequities in health care exist around the world. Health care providers tend to concentrate where the wealth is, as manifested by the brain drain of physicians and other skilled individuals who are needed in their home countries moving to live and work in the United States and other industrialized countries. International health care inequality has serious consequences, as demonstrated by the relatively high infant mortality rates and low life expectancies found in poor nations. According to labeling theorists, we can view a variety of life experiences as illnesses or not. Historically the power to label something as an illness has been used to brand runaway slaves and homosexuals as mentally ill. While physicians use cues to reinforce their prestige and power, patients are not necessarily passive. The Internet is transforming patient–physician encounters. Social epidemiology is the study of disease distribution, impairment, and general health status across a population. Two key measures used in social epidemiology are prevalence— the total number of cases of a specific disorder that exist at a given time—and incidence—the number of new cases of a specific disorder that occur within a given population during a specified period of time, usually a year. When disease incidence figures are presented as rates (.e.g., 43 cases per 100,000 people) they are known as morbidity rates. This is distinct from the mortality rates, the incidence of death in a given population. Studies in the United States and other countries have consistently shown that people in the lower classes have higher rates of mortality and morbidity. The poor economic and environmental conditions of groups such as African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are also manifested in high morbidity and mortality rates. Mexican Americans and many other Latinos adhere to cultural beliefs that make them less likely to use the established medical system, and may interpret their illnesses according to traditional Latino folk medicine, or curanderismo—a form of holistic health care and healing. Research indicates that in comparison to men, women experience a higher prevalence of many illnesses, although they do have a longer life expectancy. Older people in the United States use health services more often than younger people, and their disproportionate use of the health care system is a critical factor in discussions about reforms in the health care system. The costs of health care in the United States have skyrocketed in the past 40 years. The popular health movement of the 1830s and 1840s emphasized preventive care and self-help rather than trained professionals. The American Medical Association (AMA), founded in 1848, succeeded in institutionalizing the authority of “regular” doctors through standardized programs of education and licensing, at the same time marginalizing lay practitioners and female physicians in general. Medicare and Medicaid greatly expanded federal involvement in health care by financing care for the needy and elderly. Health care costs increased dramatically over the last 40 years, putting affordable care out of reach for many uninsured Americans and prompting a desire for reform. In 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Acts were passed, marking a significant shift in U.S. health care policy. A significant proportion of adults in the United States attempt to maintain good health or respond to illness through the use of alternative health care techniques, including holistic medicine—therapies in which the health care practitioner considers the person's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual characteristics. The medical establishment has historically been hostile to holistic medicine and protective of its authority, but in recent decades this attitude has softened somewhat. The environment people live in has a noticeable impact on their health. Likewise, people have a noticeable effect on their environment. Human ecology is an area of study that is concerned with interrelationships between people and their environment. Sociologists and environmentalists have identified several relationships between the environment and people. Analyzing environmental issues from a world systems approach allows us to better understand the global consequences of differential access to resources. Less affluent nations are forced to exploit their natural resources. Western industrialized nations account for only 12 percent of the world’s population, but are responsible for 60 percent of worldwide consumption. The rise in global consumption is tied to a capitalist system that depends upon growth for its survival. Environmental justice is a legal strategy based on claims that racial minorities are subjected disproportionately to environmental hazards. The poor and oppressed continue to bear the brunt of environmental pollution. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people are exposed to potentially health-damaging levels of air pollution. Over 884 million people lack safe and adequate drinking water. The scientific evidence for global warming is clear, consistent, and compelling, yet we continue to struggle with how seriously we should take it. We can again draw on world systems analysis when it comes to seeing who pays the highest price for global warming. Globalization can be both good and bad for the environment. RESOURCE INTEGRATOR Focus Questions Resources 1. What role do population dynamics play in shaping our lives? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: demography, fertility, crude birth rate, total fertility rate, replacement fertility rate, crude death rate, infant mortality rate, life expectancy, migration, immigration, emigration, growth rate, demographic transition 2. What does sociology contribute to something as seemingly biological as health? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: culture-bound syndrome, sick role, brain drain 3. What is social epidemiology and what are the key socioeconomic factors influencing health in the United States? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: social epidemiology, prevalence, incidence, morbidity rate, mortality rate, curanderismo, holistic medicine 4. What environmental lessons do we learn from sociology? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: human ecology, environmental justice LECTURE OUTLINE I. Population • Demography is the statistical study of population dynamics. Studying population trends such as birth, death, and demographic transitions and their implications helps to show how a population changes from one point in time to another or to contrast differences between populations. A. Birth • Births are the primary means by which a population replaces its members from one generation to the next. • To better understand birth trends, demographers study fertility, the number of children born in a given period of time. • One measure of fertility is the crude birth rate, number of live births per 1,000 people in the population in a given year. • Another is the total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman would have during her lifetime given current birth rates and assuming she survives through her childbearing years. • To sustain a population over time—apart from immigration—the total fertility rate must fall no lower than approximately 2.1, which is known as the replacement fertility rate. B. Death • The crude death rate is a measure of the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year. • A population’s infant mortality rate measures the number of deaths in infants less than one year old per 1,000 live births per year. It is generally considered a major indicator of the overall well-being of a population. •Life expectancy is the projected number of years a person can expect to live based on his or her year of birth. C. Migration • Migration—the movement of people from one population group to another—is another factor in the fluctuation of populations alongside birth and death. • Immigration occurs when someone joins a population group of which they were not previously a member. • Emigration occurs when a member of a population leaves that group. • Reasons for joining or leaving a population group can include job opportunities, family reasons, freedom of religious expression, and other factors. Such influences are known as pull factors because they draw people towards a new place. • Other people leave locations to get away from unappealing features of their home population such as violence, oppression, and lack of jobs. Such influences are known as push factors because they encourage the emigrant to leave. • By combining data on births, deaths, and migration, it is possible to create a single indicator that provides a more complete picture of population dynamics. One such measure is a population’s growth rate, which represents the overall percent change in a population per year. • Even though the population will continue to rise by several billion over the next several decades, projections show a substantial decline in the rate of the overall population increase D. Demographic Transition • The most defining characteristic of population dynamics in the past 100 years or so is its explosive growth. • English economist Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, in which he argued that there are natural limits to the number of people the environment can sustain. For Malthus, history is a never-ending struggle over resources in which people attempt to escape want, a battle that those who control resources are more likely to win. • An alternative model is demographic transition. According to this model, as societies transform from preindustrial to postindustrial, their population size shifts from small but stable, with high birth and death rates, through a period of significant population growth, to large but stable, when both birth and death rates are low. This transition has four primary stages. 1. Preindustrial Society • Most of history Preindustrial. • Global population size steady. • High fertility rates and high death rates in most nations; life expectancy short. 2. Early Industrial Society • Advances in technology lead to increased food supplies cleaner water, improved sanitation, and better medical care. • Death rates fall but birth rates remain high. • Overall life expectancy increases. • Results in a population explosion. 3. Late Industrial Society • Society realizes that having many children is no longer necessary to ensure that some survive into adulthood. • As the economy transitions away from agriculture, children are no longer needed as workers to assist in food production; they become consumers instead of producers. • Consequently, fertility rates decline. • Declining fertility rates lead to more opportunities for women. • Because adult population is relatively young, without an overwhelming number of children or elderly people to support, economy often thrives. 4. Postindustrial Society • The demographic transition is complete, with a large but stable population (both birth and death rates low). • According to this theory, as these trends spread it is just a matter of time, perhaps by the end of this century, until we reach a global population peak and stability. • Some demographers have suggested that the demographic transition model needs to be extended to include additional stages to account for population declines and fertility rebounds. II. Sociological Perspectives on Health and Illness • To fully understand the scope of health and illness in society, we have to consider how society defines illness, what the consequences of such definitions are, and how social positions and access to resources shape health outcomes. A. Culture, Society, and Health • The communities in which we live shape how we think about health and the body, as do our access to health care and our exposure to health risks. • The World Health Organization has defined health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” • Health and diseases are rooted in the shared meanings of particular cultures. • Culture-bound syndrome refers to a disease or illness that cannot be understood apart from some specific social context. Example: Anorexia nervosa in the United States. • Until recently, U.S. researchers dealt with the concept of culture-bound syndromes only in cross-cultural studies. But medical practitioners are now being trained to recognize cultural beliefs that are related to medicine. Example: Muslim women being particularly concerned about modesty. B. Illness and Social Order • Illness represents a threat to the social order. If too many people are sick at one time, it undercuts our collective ability to perform tasks necessary for the continued operation of society. • This results in a debate over what constitutes being "sick enough" to be truly ill. • The sick role refers to societal expectations about the attitudes and behavior of a person labeled as ill. • Fit members of society exempt sick people from day-to-day responsibilities and generally do not blame them for their condition. Yet the sick are obligated to attempt recovery. • Physicians and nurses have the power to label people as healthy or sick, and thus function as gatekeepers for the sick role. • Factors such as gender, age, social class, and ethnic group all influence patients’ judgments regarding their own state of health. Example: Younger people ignoring warning signs of a dangerous illness. • Whether one is employed also affects one’s willingness to assume the sick role, as does the impact of socialization into a particular occupation or activity. Example: Athletes who have a “sports injury” not regarding themselves as “sick.” C. Power, Resources, and Health • Eliot Freidson has likened the status of medicine today to that of state religions in the past—it has an officially approved monopoly on the right to define health and to treat illness. • Theorists use the phrase “medicalization of society” to refer to the growing role of medicine as a major institution of social control. 1. The Medicalization of Society • Medicine has greatly expanded its domain of expertise in recent decades. • This makes it more difficult for common people to join in the discussion and exert influence on decision making, and it is more difficult to view issues as being shaped by social, cultural, or psychological factors rather than simply by physical or medical factors. • Medicine also retains absolute jurisdiction over many health care procedures and even places certain health care professionals outside the realm of acceptable medicine. Example: Nurse-midwives. 2. Inequities in Health Care • Around the world, poor areas are underserved because medical services concentrate where the wealth is. • In the U.S. there are about 24 physicians per 10,000 people compared to an average of 2.5 per 10,000 in African nations. • Brain drain refers to the immigration to the United States and other industrialized nations of skilled workers, professionals, and technicians who are desperately needed in their home countries. • Inequities in health care have clear life-and-death consequences. There are dramatic differences in infant mortality rates between developing countries and industrial nations. 3. Labeling and Power • Sometimes the power to label and the power to oppress go hand in hand. Example: 19th-century U.S. medical authorities providing medical rationalizations for slavery. • The “person with AIDS” label often functions as a master status. • Policy makers were slow to respond to the AIDS crisis because those in high-risk groups were comparatively powerless. • According to labeling theorists, we can view a variety of life experiences as illnesses or not. Example: Premenstrual syndrome, posttraumatic disorders, and hyperactivity all recognized as medical disorders recently. • Homosexuality officially labeled as a mental disorder until 1974. D. Negotiating Cures • Physicians use cues to reinforce their prestige and power. Examples: Technical language learned in medical school, white coat and stethoscope. • Patients are not passive. Sometimes this takes the form of noncompliance (taking incorrect dosages, stopping medication early), but their active involvement can have positive consequences (learning about preventive health care, monitoring side effects). • The Internet is transforming patient–physician encounters. III. Social Epidemiology • Social epidemiology is the study of disease distribution, impairment, and general health status across a population. • Initially, it concentrated on epidemics. Now it is also concerned with non-epidemic diseases, injuries, drug addiction and alcoholism, suicide, mental illness, and bioterrorism. • Draws on a wide variety of scientists and researchers, including physicians, sociologists, public health officials, veterinarians, demographers, and meteorologists. • Incidence refers to the number of new cases of a specific disorder that occur within a given population during a stated period, usually a year. • Prevalence refers to the total number of cases of a specific disorder that exists at a given time. • Morbidity rate is the incidence of disease in a given population. • Mortality rate is the incidence of death in a given population. A. Social Class • Is clearly associated with differences in mortality and morbidity rates. Lower classes have higher rates of mortality and disability. Example: A study showing that Americans with 12 years or less of schooling could expect to die seven years sooner than those with more than 12 years of schooling. • Crowded living conditions, substandard housing, financial strain, poor diet, stress, and inability to afford quality health care are major factors in health problems of less affluent. • Some sociologists argue that capitalist societies care more about maximizing profits than they do about the health and safety of industrial workers. B. Race and Ethnicity • The poor economic and environmental conditions of groups such as African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are manifested in high morbidity and mortality rates. • Infant mortality is more than twice as high among African Americans compared to Whites. • African Americans have higher death rates from heart disease, pneumonia, diabetes, and cancer than Whites. • African Americans can expect to live 74.5 years compared to Whites at 78.8 years. • Minorities receive inferior care even when they are insured. National clinical studies conclude that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely than other groups to receive both standard health care and life-saving treatment. • Numerous examples in the history of African American health care demonstrate institutional discrimination. Example: intentional misleading of parents of young, Black male participants in a study from 1992 to 1997 on biological or genetic basis for violent behavior. • The stress that results from racial prejudice and discrimination helps to explain the higher rates of hypertension found among African Americans, which is twice as common in Blacks as in Whites, and is a critical factor in Blacks’ high mortality rates from heart disease, kidney disease, and stroke. • Some Mexican Americans and other Latinos interpret illness according to traditional Latino folk medicine, curanderismo. While most Hispanics probably use folk healers infrequently, perhaps 20 percent rely on home remedies. • Latinos are also much more likely to wait to seek treatment, due in part to a lack of health insurance. C. Gender • Women experience a higher prevalence of illnesses compared to men; however, they tend to live longer. • Women have lower rates of cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, and lower rates of employment in dangerous occupations. Some suggest these rates may explain about one-third of their greater longevity than men. • Some studies suggest differences in morbidity may be less pronounced than data suggest, because women are more likely than men to seek treatment, to be diagnosed, and thus to be included in data analyzed. • Women are especially vulnerable to the medicalization of society (e.g., everything from birth to beauty is treated in an increasingly medical context), and yet they are often excluded from clinical studies. D. Age • Health is the overriding concern of the elderly. • Most older people have at least one chronic illness, although not all are serious. • Older people are especially vulnerable to certain mental problems, such as Alzheimer's. • The rate at which older people (75 and older) use health services is more than three times greater than that for younger people (ages 15 to 24). This is a critical factor in discussions the cost of health care and possible reforms of the health care system. IV. Health Care in the United States • The costs of health care have skyrocketed in the past 40 years. In 2000, the amount spent on health care equaled what we spent on education, defense, prisons, farm subsidies, food stamps, and foreign aid combined. • Over time, health care has become a big business. A. A Historical View • The popular health movement of the 1830s and 1840s emphasized preventive care and self-help. By the 1840s, most states had repealed medical licensing laws, and the health care field was largely unregulated. • The American Medical Association (AMA), founded in 1848, institutionalized the authority of “regular” doctors through standardized programs of education and licensing. This marginalized lay practitioners, sectarian doctors, and female physicians. • The medical profession gained control over both the market for its services and the various organizational hierarchies that govern medical practice, financing, and policy making. B. The Role of Government • The first significant government involvement in medicine was the 1946 Hill-Burton Act. • The Medicare and Medicaid programs were enacted in 1965. They have greatly expanded federal involvement in health care financing for the needy and elderly. • From 1999 to 2008, the cost of health insurance premiums rose 119 percent, compared to 34 percent for wages. • 48.6 million Americans were uninsured in 2011. • In 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. The stated aim of the laws is to contain costs and expand coverage. They will take many years to implement. C. Complementary and Alternative Medicine • A significant proportion of U.S. adults attempt to maintain good health or respond to illness through the use of alternative health care techniques. • Interest has been growing in holistic medicine, which refers to therapies in which the health care practitioner considers the person’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual characteristics. • Not all practitioners function outside the traditional health care system. Nevertheless, the medical establishment continues to zealously protect its authority. • The National Institutes of Health (NIH) opened an Office of Alternative Medicine in 1992. • According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 80 percent of people who live in the poorest countries in the world use alternative medicine. WHO’s goal is to compile a list of effective alternative medicine practices, as well as to encourage the development of universal training programs and ethical standards for practitioners of alternative medicine. V. Sociological Perspectives on the Environment • The environment people live in has a noticeable impact on their health. Likewise, people have a noticeable effect on their environment. A. Human Ecology • Human ecology is the area of study concerned with the interrelationships between people and their environment. • Sociologists and environmentalists have identified several relationships between the environment and people, including: (1) the environment provides the resources essential for life; (2) the environment serves as a waste repository; and (3) the environment “houses” our species. • Human ecology stresses the trade-offs inherent in every decision that alters the environment. B. Power, Resources, and the Environment • Analyzing environmental issues from a world systems approach allows us to better understand the global consequences of differential access to resources. • Less affluent nations are being forced to exploit their mineral deposits, forests, and fisheries in order to meet their debt obligations. To survive, they plow mountain slopes, burn forests, and overgraze. Example: Brazil and deforestation of Amazon rain forest. • When people in industrialized countries insist that developing nations change their practices to save the planet, ethnocentrism is involved. The “energy-hungry” industrialized nations are more to blame than poverty-stricken and “food-hungry” developing nations. • Western industrialized nations account for only 12 percent of the world’s population, but they are responsible for 60 percent of worldwide consumption. • The rise in global consumption is tied to a capitalist system that depends upon growth for its survival. This creates a “treadmill of production,” which necessitates creating an increasing demand for products, obtaining natural resources at minimal cost, and manufacturing products as quickly and cheaply as possible—no matter what the long-term environmental consequences. C. Environmental Justice • Environmental justice is a legal strategy based on claims that racial minorities are subjected disproportionately to environmental hazards. • Poor people and people of color are much more likely than others to be victimized by the everyday consequences of economic development. • President Clinton issued an executive order in 1994 requiring federal agencies to ensure that low-income and minority communities have access to better information about their environment, and a chance to participate in shaping government policies that affect their health. • Poor and oppressed continue to bear the brunt of environmental pollution. Example: Goshute Indians' reservation home to environmentally objectionable installations. VI. Environmental Problems • In 2011, 41 years after the first Earth Day celebration in the United States, public polls reflected historically low levels of public concern about the environment. A. Air Pollution • Worldwide, more than 1 billion people are exposed to potentially health-damaging levels of air pollution. • Urban air pollution is primarily caused by emissions from automobiles, electric power plants, and heavy industries. • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million premature deaths per year could be prevented. • Carpooling during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was an attempt to improve air quality. China resorted to drastic action for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But these are only temporary solutions. B. Water Pollution • Waste materials dumped by industries and local governments have polluted streams, rivers, and lakes. Many bodies of water are unsafe for drinking, fishing, or swimming. • Ocean pollution is an issue of growing concern. Fuel leaks and oil spills make things worse. Examples: Exxon Valdez in 1989, Prestige in 2002. • Worldwide, over 884 million people lack safe and adequate drinking water, and 2.6 billion lack access to improved sanitation facilities, further threatening the quality of water supplies. The health costs of unsafe water are enormous. C. Global Climate Change • The scientific evidence for global climate change is clear, consistent, and compelling, yet we continue to struggle with how seriously we should take it. • Kyoto Protocol was intended to provide a unified response. As of 2010, the United States has failed to ratify it. • World systems analysis again helps us understand who pays the highest price for global warming. Core nations that contributed disproportionately to the problem are now calling for reductions by semiperiphery and periphery nations. • Rise in global population is one of the primary factors in global environmental crisis. • Technological advances also contribute. D. The Global Response • Globalization can be both good and bad for the environment. • On the negative side, polluting companies relocate to countries with less stringent standards; multinationals exploit resources of developing countries for short-term profit; industrialization accompanying globalization has increased pollution. • On the positive side, multinational companies have an incentive to carefully consider the cost of natural resources. • There are signs that individuals, countries, and corporations are taking greater responsibility for their global impact. KEY TERMS Brain drain The immigration to the United States and other industrialized nations of skilled workers, professionals, and technicians who are desperately needed in their home countries. Crude birth rate The number of live births per 1,000 people in the population in a given year. Crude death rate The number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year. Culture-bound syndrome A disease or illness that cannot be understood apart from some specific social context. Curanderismo Latino folk medicine, a form of holistic health care and healing. Demography The statistical study of population dynamics. Demographic transition As societies transform from preindustrial to postindustrial, their population size shifts from small but stable with high birth and death rates, through a period of significant population growth, to large but stable, when both birth and death rates are low. Emigration When a member of a population leaves that group. Environmental justice A legal strategy based on claims that racial minorities are subjected disproportionately to environmental hazards. Fertility The number of children born in a given period of time. Growth rate The overall percent change in a population per year. Holistic medicine Therapies in which the health care practitioner considers the person’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual characteristics. Human ecology The area of study concerned with the interrelationships between people and their environment. Immigration When someone joins a population group of which they were not previously a member. Incidence The number of new cases of a specific disorder that occur within a given population during a stated period. Infant mortality rate The number of deaths of infants under one year old per 1,000 live births in a given year. Life expectancy The projected number of years a person can expect to live based on his or her year of birth. Migration The movement of people from one population group to another. Morbidity rate The incidence of disease in a given population. Mortality rate The incidence of death in a given population. Prevalence The total number of cases of a specific disorder that exist at a given time. Replacement fertility rate The minimum number of children a woman would need to average in her lifetime to reproduce the population in the next generation. Sick role Societal expectations about the attitudes and behavior of a person viewed as being ill. Social epidemiology The study of the distribution of disease, impairment, and general health status across a population. Total fertility rate The average number of children a woman would have during her lifetime given current birth rates and assuming she survives through her childbearing years. ADDITIONAL LECTURE IDEAS 14-1: Professional Marginality: Chiropractors The chiropractic vocation occupies a marginal position as a profession. Chiropractors use manipulation of body structures, primarily the spinal column, to bring about healing. Some combine such manipulations with nutritional guidance and even acupuncture. Although they view themselves as professionals, chiropractors are not highly regarded by the medical profession. In fact, the American Medical Association (AMA) has officially labeled chiropractors as impostors in the role of physicians. Some doctors go so far as to use the emotion-laden term quacks in describing chiropractors. Despite these charges, chiropractors resemble a profession in important respects; indeed, they resemble the medical profession. Chiropractors complete a four-year training program that culminates in the receipt of a doctor of chiropractic degree. Like graduates of medical schools, chiropractors belong to professional associations and publish specialized journals. Most establish private practices or work in small clinics. Interestingly, in contrast to the AMA’s position, certain physicians develop informal ties to chiropractors and refer patients to them. According to surveys of public opinion, chiropractic has lower status as an occupation than other medical specialties. Chiropractors do surpass subordinate medical personnel such as nurses and physical therapists in terms of both income and professional autonomy. Yet, chiropractors find it difficult to receive payment for their services through Medicare and other health insurance programs. In good part, this reflects the political power of the AMA and the continuing stigma it has attached to the work of chiropractors. Currently, chiropractors are moving in the direction of even greater professionalization. They have become stricter about qualifications for entry into this vocation and have worked to upgrade professional training in chiropractic. The American Chiropractic Association lists as one of its objectives legislation defining chiropractic “in modern terms and legalizing its practice.” In some states, chiropractors are officially termed “chiropractic physicians,” and they are increasingly identifying themselves with the medical profession. The attempt of chiropractors to win acceptance by physicians indicates that they have not fully moved from the status of an occupation to that of a profession. See George Ritzer. Working, Conflict and Change, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997, pp. 192–193; Denise S. Akey (ed.). Encyclopedia of Associations, vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1981, p. 818; Walter I. Wardwell, “The Reduction of Strain in the Marginal Social Role,” American Journal of Sociology 61 (July 1955): 16–25. 14-2: Bad Blood In late July of 1972, the Associated Press broke a story about a medical experiment that the federal government had been conducting for 40 years in Macon County, Alabama, in and around the county seat of Tuskegee. The government conducts experiments all the time, but the details of this one—the Tuskegee Study, as it came to be called—were shocking. It involved 399 Black men with syphilis who were left untreated while the course of the disease was observed. Syphilis is a very serious disease. If untreated, it causes skin lesions, tumors, liver damage, paralysis, blindness, deafness, and eventually death. All these complications were known to medical science when the Tuskegee Study began in 1932. Other aspects of this dreadful experiment are less clear. For example, there is contradictory evidence about whether the Black men were ever informed of what was being done to them. In any event, however, the men were poor and illiterate, and the “pay” they were offered for participating, about $100, must have seemed irresistible in 1932. As the experiment progressed and the skin lesions appeared, the men were told that they had “bad blood.” Occasionally, the men would come to the attention of medical personnel outside the study group. When that happened, representatives of the study would advise the subjects that they should not take any outside treatment or they would be dropped from the study and lose all their benefits. Treatment for other illnesses (such as antibiotics) would also be withheld if it might affect the course of the syphilis. Treatments for syphilis were developed after 1932, including penicillin, which became generally available in 1953. However, the subjects were given no opportunity to have their painful condition eased. This experiment was not a secret; in fact, it was reported from time to time in government and medical journals. The reaction to such reports was always strong, but the erroneous assumption was made that the men would be treated. The fact that all the men were Black says something about the racial considerations underlying the Tuskegee Study, although the government officials have repeatedly denied charges of racism. Why did the experiment continue year after year, even when it came under fire? Historian James H. Jones contends that the researchers soon realized that autopsies yielded far more reliable data than clinical observations. (See Jones. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. New York: Free Press, 1981.) Threatened with closure, the researchers and their supervisors would continue “a bit longer” to provide more subjects for autopsies. The result was the longest-known medical experiment involving untreated subjects. Given the ethical questions, one might ask what was really learned. Late in 1970, Dr. James B. Lucas, the assistant chief of the Venereal Disease Branch of the Public Health Service, declared, “Nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States” (Jones 1981: 202). Eventually, the survivors of the Tuskegee Study were treated. In 1973, a payment of $37,500 was authorized for each of them, in order to avoid lawsuits. Smaller payments went to the heirs of the subjects who had died. Two years later, the government extended treatment to members of the subjects’ families who had contracted syphilis (414). 14-3: Contagious Immigrants People who are devalued are also not viewed as healthy. Historian Alan Kraut has shown how epidemics and disease have been linked in the public mind with immigrants. The Irish in New York were wrongly blamed for the cholera epidemic of 1832, the Chinese in San Francisco were vilified for causing bubonic plague in 1900, and the Haitian “boat people” arriving in south Florida in the 1980s were stigmatized as AIDS carriers. One such example is what medical author Stephen S. Hall termed the “adenoid riots.” This little-known chapter in the history of civil unrest in New York City began to unfold toward the end of the school year in 1906. A group of well-intentioned physicians descended on P.S. 110 on the Lower East Side and, in a bloody but minor surgical procedure, snipped away the adenoids—growths of lymphoid tissue between the back of the nose and the throat—of a number of schoolchildren, acting with the consent of the mostly immigrant parents. The rationale for such surgery, Alan M. Kraut writes, was that swollen adenoids “often caused youngsters to breathe through their mouths, a practice that physicians of the day believed could lead to insufficient oxygen reaching the brain. Allowed to continue, mouth breathing might yield a feebleminded person.” So the surgeons snipped, and ill-founded rumors spread of bloodied and irreparably mutilated children. Within a week, outraged parents, first Eastern European Jews and then Italians, stormed neighboring schools, disrupting commencement ceremonies and requiring 75 police officers to disperse the caterwauling mobs, which were protesting a medical practice that, incidentally, holds no currency today. See Hall, “The Contagious Other,” New York Times Book Review (February 27, 1994): 12, 14; Kraut. Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace.” New York: Basic Books, 1994, p. 415. 14-4: The Nun Study At age 93, Sister Nicolette reads, crochets and plays cards, and, until a recent fall, walked several miles a day. Her younger sibling, Sister Mary Ursula, is confined to a wheelchair and can barely lift her head or hands: She is a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. Both these real-life sisters had a similar family background, and both lived for most of their lives in the same Roman Catholic convent under the same conditions. Why is one so robust and the other so afflicted? This is one question that Dr. David Snowdon, a scientist at the University of Kentucky, hopes to answer from his long-term study of an order of nuns living in Mankato, Minnesota. Snowdon is particularly interested in detecting the causes of Alzheimer’s disease and in finding ways to delay or prevent its onset. He began studying the lives of the 678 nuns in 1986, when the sisters ranged in age from 75 to 103. As of 2001, 295 were alive, all over age 85; some were suffering from Alzheimer’s and other diseases of the brain, while others were entirely symptom free. The order of nuns presents an ideal research group for an epidemiological study because the participants lead such similar lives. They eat the same meals, receive the same health care, do not smoke, drink very little alcohol, and have not experienced physical changes associated with pregnancy; most were teachers. These similarities allow the researchers to discount some factors that often contribute to illness, such as diet deficiency or smoking. It is also significant that the entire group is made up of aging women. In the past, most medical research of this type concentrated on middle-aged men, despite the fact that women constitute the great majority of the elderly population. Snowdon examines the nuns each year, taking blood samples and testing their cognitive ability to trace the course of their health. He has persuaded the nuns to donate their brains after they die, because a brain autopsy is the only sure way to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Although all this information was helpful to Snowdon, he had to rely on the nuns’ memories to establish facts of their background before they entered the order, and memories in the elderly can be unreliable, especially among those afflicted with brain disease. Then he ran across a treasure trove of data—archives documenting the births, parentage, and socioeconomic backgrounds of the nuns. These data helped to establish health risk factors for each nun earlier in life. Perhaps the most valuable research tools in the archives were autobiographies written by the applicants to the convent when they were in their 20s. From examining these writings and looking at the current health status of the nuns, Snowdon concluded that an active intellectual life, an ability to express oneself with complex ideas, and a positive outlook all correlate with healthy aging and a long life. Snowdon has found other factors associated with healthy aging, including a good diet and avoidance of stroke-causing behavior. He does not discount the value of spiritual and communal living. But he hopes other studies will back up his findings about the importance of early language ability and a positive emotional outlook. Sources Pam Belluck, “Nuns Offer Clues to Alzheimer’s and Aging,” The New York Times (May 7, 2001): A1; Michael D. Lemonick and Alice Park Mankato, “The Nun Study,” Time 157 (May 14, 2001): 54–59, 62, 64; The Nun Study. The Nun Study: What’s New. Accessed May 25, 2005 at http://www.healthstudies.umn.edu/nunstudy/; David Snowdon. Aging with Grace. New York: Bantam, 2001. TOPICS FOR STUDENT RESEARCH AND CLASSROOM DISCUSSION 1. Ask students to research recent public attention on obesity becoming an epidemic health risk in the United States, and discuss how various sociological views would likely explain the origins of such concerns. 2. Ask students to predict the reactions of society when learning of a famous movie celebrity, a military veteran, and a gay man all of whom are diagnosed as HIV positive, and then discuss the social factors affecting each designation from a labeling perspective. 3. Ask students to identify recent United States government decisions that could create environmental consequences for populations, and discuss the various sociological views on environmental issues. REEL TALK Silver Linings Playbook (The Weinstein Company, 2012, 122m). After a stay in a mental institution, Pat Solitano, a former teacher, moves back in to his parents’ house and tries to patch things up with his ex-wife. Then Pat meets Tiffany, a mysterious woman with problems of her own. Tiffany offers to help Pat reconcile with his wife, as long as Pat helps her with a dance competition. The two of them form an unlikely bond throughout the course of the film as they traverse the ups and downs of luck, friendship, family, and mental illness. Director: David O. Russell. Tiffany: Jennifer Lawrence. Pat: Bradley Cooper. Topic: Health. Chapter 15 Social Change LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Discuss the global nature of social change. 2. Discuss the sociological perspectives on social change. 3. Discuss the issues relating to privacy and censorship in a global village. 4. Describe the issues surrounding advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering. 5. Describe the influence of various factors that create resistance to technology. 6. Describe the approaches used to explain social movements. 7. Explain the importance of gender in understanding social movements. 8. Discuss how sociology can be seen as a verb, and how it can be practiced. CHAPTER SUMMARY We are in an era of dramatic global social change, change that sociology can help us to understand and predict. Social change involves significant alteration over time in behavior patterns and culture, including norms and values. Theorists have examined social change from several perspectives. Evolutionary theory views society as moving in a definite direction. Early evolutionary theorists generally agreed that society was progressing from the simple to the complex, which they assumed was superior. The idea that societies will follow this singular path is flawed, but it does provide a helpful metaphor when thinking about how change happens. Another approach contends that societies naturally seek to attain stability. Talcott Parsons, an advocate of this view, developed the equilibrium model, which states that as changes occur in one part of society, adjustments must be made in other parts. But some groups in society are able either to inhibit or to facilitate social change because they control valued resources. Karl Marx argued that conflict is a normal and desirable aspect of social change, and that change should be encouraged as a means of eliminating social inequality. However, since certain individuals and groups have a stake in maintaining the status quo, efforts to promote social change are likely to meet with resistance. Social economist Thorstein Veblen coined the term vested interests to refer to those people or groups who will suffer in the event of social change. In general, those with a disproportionate share of society’s wealth, status, and power have a vested interest in preserving the status quo and resisting social change. Communities also protect their vested interests, often in the name of “protecting property values” (e.g., NIMBY). Technological advances have brought striking changes to our culture. The Internet provides a potential for immediate global connection that previously was virtually and physically impossible, but a digital divide persists. There are also concerns about privacy and the possibility of censorship. Another area in which technological advances have spurred global social change is biotechnology. This has raised concerns about genetically modified food, cloning, and sex selection of fetuses. While biotechnology offers great potential for good, it is in constant need of monitoring, and raises difficult ethical and political questions. Biotechnology could alter our environment in unexpected and unwanted ways. The Luddites were craft workers in 19th-century England who resisted the Industrial Revolution by destroying new factory machinery. Today, the term neo-Luddites refers to those who are wary of technological innovations and who question the incessant expansion of industrialization, the increasing destruction of the natural and agrarian world, and the “throw-it-away” mentality of contemporary capitalism. We have the power to bring about social change. Sociologists use the term social movements to refer to organized collective activities to bring about or resist fundamental change in an existing group or society. Sociologists have used two primary explanations of how and why social movements emerge—relative deprivation and resource mobilization. A relatively deprived person is dissatisfied because he or she feels that their present situation does not meet their legitimate expectations. It takes more than desire to start a social movement, however. Resource mobilization refers to the ways in which a social movement utilizes such resources as money, political influence, access to the media, and personnel. Leadership is a central factor in mobilization of the discontented into social movements. In our male-dominated society, women often find themselves cut off from leadership in social movements, even though they serve disproportionately as volunteers. Before the 1960s, most social movements were focused on economic issues and were often led by labor unions. More recently, new social movements have organized to take collective action that addresses values and social identities, as well as improvements in the quality of life. Many have complex agendas that go beyond a single issue, and even cross national boundaries. New communication technologies facilitate activism and social movement formation. Ultimately, social change happens because we begin to act in new ways. Sociology is a tool that can help us in this regard, but we need to move from thinking of sociology as only something we learn about to thinking of it as something that we do. Partly this means practicing personal sociology, recognizing the impact our individual position in society has on who we are and how we think and act, and taking responsibility for the impact we have on others. It also means practicing public sociology—the process of bringing the insights gained through sociological observation and analysis into the public sphere, thereby seeking to bring about positive social change. Together, they can encourage discussion that can lead to a better future. RESOURCE INTEGRATOR Focus Questions Resources 1. What are the sociological perspectives on social change? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: social change, evolutionary theory, equilibrium model, vested interests 2. What are the key issues concerning technology and privacy and censorship in the global village? 3. Why do people resist technology? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: Luddites 4. What are the main sociological perspectives on social movements? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: social movement, relative deprivation, resource mobilization, new social movement 5. What is meant by personal sociology and public sociology? IN THE TEXT Key Terms: public sociology LECTURE OUTLINE I. Global Social Change • We are in an era of dramatic global social change. Examples: Computer revolution and explosion of Internet connectivity, Arab Spring, collapse of communism, major regime change, AIDS, cloning, terrorism, global warming. • The transformation of society has been a fundamental concern of sociologists since the beginning. Sociological theory and research provide us with tools that allow us to make sense of where we are now and where we are headed. • Sociology pays attention to both the large-scale, or macro, shifts that alter the basic landscape of society and the relationships among groups, and the small-scale, or micro, changes in social interaction within which decisions can be made that can alter the course of history. • We have the power to change society by altering the choices we make. Some people, due to their control over valued resources, have more power than do others. II. Sociological Perspectives on Social Change • Social change involves significant alteration over time of behavior patterns and culture, including norms and values. • Theorists have examined social change from several perspectives. A. The Evolution of Societies • Social theorists used Darwin’s theory of biological evolution to propose the evolutionary theory of social change, which views society as moving in a definite direction. Early evolutionary theorists generally agreed that society was progressing from the simple to the complex, which they assumed was superior. • Auguste Comte saw human societies moving forward in their thinking from mythology to the scientific method. • Émile Durkheim maintained that society progressed from simple to more complex forms of social organization. • The idea that societies will follow a singular path from simple to complex, from primitive to modern, is flawed. The notion that traditional societies are simple or primitive is both incorrect and ethnocentric. • Evolutionary theory does provide a helpful metaphor when thinking about how change happens, and it highlights the role that context or environment plays in shaping change. B. Equilibrium and Social Order • Rooted in the principle that societies naturally seek to attain stability or balance. • Talcott Parsons developed the equilibrium model, which states that as changes occur in one part of society, adjustments must be made in other parts. If not, equilibrium will be threatened and strains will occur. • Parsons maintained that four processes of social change are inevitable: (1) differentiation—increasing complexity of social organization (e.g., job specialization); (2) adaptive upgrading—social institutions become more specialized in their purposes; (3) inclusion of groups previously excluded because of their gender, race, ethnicity, and social class; and (4) value generalization—development of new values that legitimate a broader range of activities. All four stress consensus—societal agreement on the nature of social organization and values. • One source of potential strain involves technical innovation; e.g., William F. Ogburn’s distinction between material and nonmaterial aspects of culture. He introduced the term culture lag to refer to the period of adjustment when the nonmaterial culture is still struggling to adapt to new material conditions. Example: The Internet. • In some cases, changes in the material culture can strain the relationships between social institutions. Example: Birth control, large families, and the Catholic Church. • The dominant theme in this model is stability. Society may change, but it remains stable through new forms of integration. • Critics note that this approach virtually disregards the use of coercion by the powerful to maintain the illusion of a stable, well-integrated society. C. Resources, Power, and Change • Some groups in society, because they control valued resources, are able either to inhibit or facilitate social change more effectively than others. • Karl Marx accepted the evolutionary argument, but he did not view each successive stage as an inevitable improvement. • Marx argued that conflict is a normal and desirable aspect of social change, and that change must be encouraged as a means of eliminating social inequality. • Marxist theory is appealing because it does not restrict people to a passive role in responding to inevitable cycles or changes in material culture, and offers a tool for those who wish to seize control of the historical process and gain their freedom from injustice. • However, since certain individuals have a stake in maintaining the existing state of affairs, efforts to promote social change are likely to meet with resistance. • Social economist Thorstein Veblen coined the term vested interests to refer to those people or groups who will suffer in the event of social change and who have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Example: The American Medical Association’s strong stand against midwifery. • In general, those with a disproportionate share of society’s wealth, status, and power have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. • Economic factors play an important role in resistance to social change. It can be expensive to meet mandated standards (e.g., safety, environmental). If businesses have sufficient power, they can effectively avoid the costs or pass them on to others. • Communities protect their vested interests also. Example: NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) regarding landfills, nuclear power facilities, and group homes. Those with the fewest resources often end up on the losing end of such battles. III. Technology and the Future • Technology is a form of culture in which humans modify the natural environment to meet our wants and needs. • Technological advances have brought striking changes to our culture, our patterns of socialization, our social institutions, and our day-to-day social interactions. Examples: Airplanes, automobiles, the Internet, cell phones, computers. A. Computer Technology • Computer access has gone global. The Internet provides a potential for immediate global connection that previously was virtually and physically impossible. • Asia and Europe have the greatest number of users, but a larger portion of the population in North America has access to the Internet than in any other continent. • A digital divide persists, and the pattern of inequality is global. The core nations have a virtual monopoly on information technology. • One Laptop per Child program is an attempt to address this divide. B. Privacy and Censorship in a Global Village • Computer technology has made it increasingly easy for businesses, government agencies, and even criminals to retrieve and store sensitive information about us. Example: Identity theft. • Powerful groups can use technology to violate the privacy of the less powerful. Example: Internet censorship in China. • Legislation hasn’t always upheld citizens’ right to privacy. Example: Patriot Act in the U.S. • Some people seem less vigilant about maintaining their privacy than before the information age. Example: Popularity of social networking sites. C. Biotechnology and the Gene Pool • Advances in biotechnology have provoked controversy. Examples: Sex selection of fetuses, genetically engineered organisms, cloning. • Sociologists see many aspects of biotechnology as an extension of the medicalization of society. • One area of concern is genetically modified (GM) food. Critics refer to such products as frankenfood. They object to tampering with nature and are concerned about the possible health effects of GM food. Supporters argue it is a way to help feed the growing populations of Asia and Africa. • Cloning and genetic manipulation are further areas of concern. • While advances can be beneficial, vigilant monitoring is needed. It raises difficult ethical and political questions. Biotechnology could alter our environment in unexpected and unwanted ways. D. Resistance to Technology • Some have questioned whether technological innovation equals progress. • Luddites were craft workers who resisted the Industrial Revolution in England beginning in 1811 by destroying factory equipment. • French workers threw sabots (wooden shoes) into factory machinery to destroy it, thus giving rise to the term sabotage. • Their primary concern was with the impact technology had on their employment, their communities, and their way of life. • Neo-Luddites resist postindustrial technological changes. They are wary of technological innovations and question the incessant expansion of industrialization, the increasing destruction of the natural and agrarian world, and the expendable mentality of contemporary capitalization with its resulting pollution of the environment. • Sociologist Jacques Ellul questions the modern tendency to maximize efficiency at all cost and to regard that which is difficult to measure as suspect. • Communication professor Neil Postman calls on us to recognize ways in which our choices are influenced by the technological system that we live in, so we can resist unconscious acceptance of new technology and exercise freedom of choice. IV. Social Movements • We have the power to bring about positive social change. • Social movements are organized collective activities to bring about or resist fundamental change in an existing group or society. • Social movements have had a dramatic impact on the course of history and the evolution of the social structure. Examples: abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights workers, anti–Vietnam War activists, Arab Spring protests. • Social movements change how we think and act. • Social movements can influence cultural attitudes and expectations in ways that open people up to future change. • Sociologists have used two primary explanations of how and why social movements emerge. A. Relative Deprivation • Refers to the conscious feeling of a negative discrepancy between legitimate expectations and present actualities. • Relatively deprived people are dissatisfied because they feel downtrodden relative to some appropriate reference group. Example: Blue-collar worker relative to corporate executive. • For a social movement to occur, people must feel they have a right to their goals and that they deserve better. • The disadvantaged group also must perceive that its goals cannot be attained through conventional means. The group will not mobilize into a social movement unless there is a shared perception that members can only end their relative deprivation through collective action. • Critics note that people don’t have to feel deprived to act. Also, this approach fails to explain why certain feelings of deprivation are transformed into social movements, whereas in other similar situations, no collective effort is formed. B. Resource Mobilization Approach • Refers to the ways in which a social movement utilizes resources such as money, political influence, access to the media, and personnel. • As people become part of a social movement, norms develop to guide their behavior. Members may be expected to attend meetings, pay dues, recruit new adherents, etc. • Leadership is a central factor in mobilization; often led by a charismatic figure. Example: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. • Social movements can be become bureaucratized, but it is not inevitable. • Karl Marx stressed the importance of recruitment to promote awareness of being oppressed and engender class consciousness. Feelings of false consciousness (attitudes that do not reflect a person's objective position) must be overcome in order to organize a revolutionary movement. C. Gender and Social Movements • Consciousness-raising groups were a critical tool used by women’s liberation activists in the 1960s and 1970s. • Gender continues to be an important element in understanding social movements. • In our male-dominated society, women continue to find themselves cut off from leadership positions in social movement organizations. Though they serve disproportionately as volunteers in these movements, their contributions are not always recognized, nor are their voices as easily heard. • Gender bias causes the extent of women’s influence to be overlooked. • Traditional examinations of the sociopolitical system tend to focus on male-dominated corridors of power. Example: Legislatures and corporate boardrooms. • Women’s social movements are foreseeing opportunities for change and taking advantage of these opportunities. Example: Role of women in protests surrounding the 2009 Iranian presidential election. D. New Social Movements • Traditional social movements focused on economic issues. • New social movements are organized collective activities that address values and social identities, as well as improvements in the quality of life. • Many have complex agendas that go beyond a single issue and even cross national boundaries. • Educated, middle-class people are significantly represented in new social movements. Examples: Women’s movements, gay and lesbian rights. • Government not usually viewed as an ally in the struggle, and members often call into question the legitimacy of arguments made by established authorities, even scientific or technical. Example: Anti–nuclear power activists using their own experts to counter those of government or big business. • The environmental movement is one of many social movements with a worldwide focus. • New social movement theory offers a broader, more global perspective on social and political activism. E. Communication and the Globalization of Social Movements • Although some social movements protest against technological advances, new technologies also facilitate activism and social movement formation. Examples: Social networking technologies. • Significant social action can occur without the participants ever having met in person. • Potential power of new technologies made apparent during Iran’s postelection protests in June 2009. V. Sociology Is a Verb • Social change happens because we begin to act in new ways. Sociology is a tool that helps open up new pathways for us. • We need to move from thinking of sociology as only something we learn about to thinking of it as something we do. A. Personal Sociology • The process of recognizing the impact our individual position has on who we are and how we think and act, and of taking responsibility for the impacts our actions have on others. • As individuals, we need to see the degree to which we follow visible and invisible rules, and ask whether our current paths represent the values, norms, and goals that we really want to follow. B. Public Sociology: Tools for Change • Public sociology is the process of bringing the insights gained through sociological observation and analysis into the public sphere, thereby seeking to bring about positive social change. • Existing systems—the structure and culture we create—are not inevitable. We can choose to change them. But we cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility for the systems we end up with. • Personal and public sociology can encourage discussion that can lead to a better future. C. Practicing Sociology • Change comes because people continue not only to believe that is possible but also to act on their hopes and dreams. • We can change the world by becoming more informed about ourselves and others, and then acting on that knowledge. • Some possibilities for action: (1) practice personal sociology, (2) become more aware of privilege, (3) become more informed, (4) interpret what you learn, (5) vote, (6) participate in local politics, (7) run for office, (8) volunteer, (9) join, (10) organize, and (11) fight for change. • It is only by seeing those things that limit us that we can move toward freedom. By simultaneously holding the past, present, and future together in our minds (like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol), we can act to make the world a better place to live. KEY TERMS Equilibrium model The view that society tends toward a state of stability or balance. Evolutionary theory A theory of social change that holds that society is moving in a definite direction. Luddites Rebellious craft workers in 19th-century England who destroyed new factory machinery as part of their resistance to the Industrial Revolution. New social movement An organized collective activity that addresses values and social identities, as well as improvements in the quality of life. Public sociology The process of bringing the insights gained through sociological observation and analysis into the public sphere, thereby seeking to bring about positive social change Relative deprivation The conscious feeling of a negative discrepancy between legitimate expectations and present actualities. Resource mobilization The ways in which a social movement utilizes such resources as money, political influence, access to the media, and personnel. Social change Significant alteration over time in behavior patterns and culture, including norms and values. Social movement An organized collective activity to bring about or resist fundamental change in an existing group or society. Vested interests Those people or groups who will suffer in the event of social change and who have a stake in maintaining the status quo. ADDITIONAL LECTURE IDEAS 15-1: Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians Toward the end of the 19th century, metal tools began to filter into the territory of the Yir Yoront, a tribe of the Australian Aborigines. Of particular significance to the Yi Yoront was the introduction of the steel ax. While the Aborigines themselves could not manufacture steel ax heads, a steady supply came from missionaries. Tribal members who attended mission festivals were presented with steel axes, but older members of the Yir Yoront shied away from such gatherings because of their earlier experience or knowledge of White people’s harshness. Therefore, women and younger men were more likely to own a steel ax. Ownership of a steel ax emerged as a measure of status. This was especially significant because the stone ax had generally been possessed by elder males and thus was a symbol of authority. Other tribal members would have to come to an elder if they wanted to use a stone ax, but the possession of the superior steel axes by women and younger men changed all that. A wife or a young son, still uninitiated into adulthood, no longer needed to bow to the husband or father. Instead, the elder, confused and insecure, might have to borrow a steel ax from them. For the woman and boy, the steel ax helped establish a new degree of freedom that was readily accepted as they moved away from traditional values. Also, women, by virtue of ownership of this artifact of outside culture, had a trading power denied to older men. By the mid-1930s, the Yir Yoront had maintained some of their Aboriginal identity amidst the increasing acceptance of European inventions and values, but the general passing of their culture led Lauristan Sharp to conclude that the Yir Yoront “has passed beyond the reach of any outsider who might wish to do him well or ill . . .” See L. Sharp, “Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians,” in Technological Change. New York: Russell Sage, 1952, pp. 69–90. 15-2: Changes in the Family In 1934 sociologist William F. Ogburn prepared a report for a Presidential Research Committee on Social Trends that dealt with the effects of social change on the functions of the family. Ogburn argued that the family has been altered by the process of differentiation identified by Parsons as an inevitable aspect of social change. Specifically, Ogburn discussed these functions of the family: 1. In colonial times, the family carried out its economic function entirely within the household. But in the 20th century, while some Americans still bake their own bread or sew their own clothing, very few make their own soap or furniture, and family members no longer have to rely only on each other for economic security. 2. The family’s protective function has been turned over to outside agencies such as hospitals, mental health clinics, and insurance companies. 3. The family once played a major role in religious life. For example, it commonly read the Bible and sang hymns at home. Today, churches, synagogues, and other formal institutions of religion have assumed this function. 4. Similarly, whereas education once took place at the family fireside, it is now the responsibility of professionals working in schools and colleges. 5. Even the family’s recreational function has been transferred to outside groups such as youth organizations, athletic clubs, and community-sponsored recreation halls. The adaptive upgrading noted by Parsons is evident as the family’s responsibilities are shifted to religious schools, day care centers, and even video arcades. 6. Ogburn identified a sixth function of the family, the conferring status, which has also been diluted in the 20th century. In the past, membership in a particular family largely defined one’s status in a community and significantly influenced whom one would marry, where one would live, and what occupation one would pursue. Currently, because of geographical and social mobility, the family plays a much smaller role in determining one’s status and future within society. 7. Ogburn pointed to the status of the “family defunctionalization,” the loss of functions of the family unit, as a factor contributing to marital unhappiness and divorce. But he stressed that the family retains responsibility for the function of providing affection. It offers warm, intimate interactions that contribute to individual satisfaction and societal stability. By giving companionship and emotional support to its members, the family reduces social isolation and serves the interests of the larger society. See Ogburn and Clark Tibbits, “The Family and Its Functions,” in Recent Trends in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1934, pp. 661–778. 15-3: Assessing Social Change through Reality TV Although we all know that social life has changed a great deal during the past 150 years, being able to grasp the enormity of those changes can be a challenge. Historical documentaries can be one useful tool for trying to understand how much our lives have changed in a relatively short period. The problem, though, is that the people we see in documentaries have never known any other world. How can we know how much the social world has changed since they lived, if the “old” life seems so normal to them? Recently, several TV series have sidestepped this issue by plucking people from the modern-day world, and asking them to live as they would have a hundred or more years ago. In Manor House, about two dozen contemporary Brits lived for three months in a wealthy English country home, refurbished and equipped to look as it would have in 1905. Each of the participants filled one of the social statuses that would have been common in such a home: the master of the house and his family “upstairs,” and an array of servants—each with very strictly defined roles and privileges—“downstairs.” In 1900 House, a British family, the Bowlers, spent three months living in a London house restored to the conditions and technology that would have been available to a middle-class family at the turn of the 20th century. In Frontier House, three American families—the Clunes, the Brookses, and the Glenns—spent five months in Montana living as 19th-century pioneer homesteaders would have lived. These “reality TV” shows take as their premise the idea that Western societies have changed so much in the past century, that 21st-century people would have a rough time adjusting to life in the past. In Manor House, a key expectation was that the very strict social hierarchy in a wealthy Edwardian home, along with the long, backbreaking work days expected of servants of the period, would be a difficult challenge for modern day people. Indeed, it was amazing to see how quickly tensions and animosities formed at Manor House, most of them reflecting differences in privileges and workloads among people in the household hierarchy. Many of the servants, for example, formed a strong animosity toward the master of the house, John Olliff-Cooper. Among other reasons, he was resented for the fact that he was so oblivious to the backbreaking labor that his servants undertook in order to make his life comfortable. Edwardian social expectations were often the source of such tensions. In Mr. Olliff-Cooper’s case, dictates of the time required that his interaction with the servants be very limited, leaving him unaware of most of their daily activities. Another very interesting clash of historical role expectations developed around Avril Anson, the sister of Mr. Olliff-Cooper’s wife. An unmarried, independent, professionally accomplished woman in the 21st century, she found herself something of a socially anomaly in the Edwardian world. Despite being in her 50s, her status as a single woman in an Edwardian home meant that her autonomy was severely restricted. Essentially, her days were scheduled according to the needs of Mr. Olliff-Cooper and his wife, and she was unable to pursue her own interests without their permission. As the show proceeded, it became increasingly apparent that such a restricted social position was wearing on her nerves. At one point, she expressed frustration that she was not even allowed to take issue with any of Mr. Olliff-Cooper’s mealtime commentaries. In the end, she became so overwhelmed that she had to leave the show for some time during the course of its taping. By contrast, Frontier House and 1900 House explored the tribulations of modern day people as they adjusted to technology from an earlier era. Apart from demonstrating that daily life was much more physically demanding in the past, these shows also did an excellent job of showing how technology can influence our social relationships, beliefs, and social roles. On 1900 House, Mrs. Bowler was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of housework expected of a middle-class turn-of-the-century woman. The first time that she took on the family laundry pile, for example, the task took the entire day to complete, and she had to keep two of her daughters home from school to enlist their help. As a result, she became increasingly resentful of her husband, who was allowed to leave the drudgery of household chores every morning to go to work. By the end of the series, she had become very interested in early feminist movements. On Frontier House, living the difficult lives of homesteaders had a strong impact on the quality of family relationships. For Mark and Karen Glenn, hard work and lack of sleep created new tensions in their marriage, and after leaving Montana, they decided to separate. For the Clunes, on the other hand, frontier life brought a new family closeness. One senses that this wealthy California family spent little time together in the modern world. Once wrested away from busy jobs, shopping, and teenage peer groups, they came to know and appreciate one another in a new way. Use any or all of these excellent shows as the basis for lectures or discussions on social change, or on technology and social change. Tapes of all three shows can be ordered through the PBS website at http://www.shoppbs.org. Web pages with extensive information on each show can also be found at the PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/1900house/index.html http://www.pbs.org/manorhouse/ Additional reading ideas: Anita Gates, “And You Complain About Long Hours?” New York Times (April 27, 2003); Marc Peyser, “Television: Prairie Home Companions,” Newsweek (April 29, 2002); Marilyn Stasio, “Getting Back to Basics. It Isn’t Pretty,” New York Times (April 28, 2002). 15-4: Resisting Social Change In 1994, Saudi Arabia took steps to ban satellite television dishes as part of efforts to defend its religious and social mores. A cabinet decree, carried by the Saudi Press Agency, banned the use, import, or manufacture of satellite dishes, microwaves, or any parts of either one in Saudi Arabia. The decree also said that “no person or company” has the right to deliver television satellite feeds to subscribers in the kingdom by any means. Violators would pay fines of between $26,666 and $133,333, and equipment would be confiscated. “The Ministry of Information will carry the responsibility of reception of external television broadcasts by international satellite stations and will deliver viewers in the Kingdom by a cable system according to the religious and social mores of the country,” the decree said. In recent years, the use of satellite dishes has spread in the conservative kingdom. Viewers are eager to see the Saudi-owned Arabic-language Middle East Broadcasting Company from London, CNN (Cable News Network) International, and the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). It was not immediately clear which services would be rebroadcast by cable. See the Reuters news report in The Daily Citizen 1 (March 11, 1994): 13. 15-5: Amish and Social Change The Amish, numbering 100,000 people in the United States, are usually seen as resistant to social change. Traditionally, the Amish have taken great pains to stay apart from the world at large, not through self-segregation, but by rejecting many elements of 20th-century life (from radio and air conditioning to movies and jewelry). Nevertheless, the Amish must plan for and control change. Jerry Savells conducted observation research among eight Amish communities during the 1980s. He interviewed not only Amish people but also non-Amish who had regular contact with the Amish as merchants, mail carriers, delivery personnel, and the like. Although isolated, the Amish do not live in a social vacuum. Indeed, they are surrounded by cultural, economic, and political changes and regularly interact with farmers, business leaders, and real estate dealers. Reviewing Savell’s research, we can identify the following areas in which the Amish accommodate social change but maintain the basic character, norms, and values of their distinctive subculture. • Employment. While the Amish seek to be self-supporting within their self-contained farmsteads, this is not always possible. Males sometimes commute to nearby towns or cities to accept employment. Occupations selected (i.e., carpentry or agriculture related) are not hostile to Amish culture and transportation is provided by non-Amish drivers. • Redefining boundaries. How should a subculture deal with innovations from the outside world when it is anxious to preserve its own character? How should it draw boundaries regarding what is acceptable? Some Amish people use cosmetics, but only creams; makeup would be considered too “worldly.” Dairy farmers in the Amish community must use diesel power to supply their barns (not their houses) with electricity to meet government standards for proper refrigeration of milk that will be sold commercially. A few have taken this accommodation a bit further: They use generators or bottled gas to operate household appliances (but will not run electrical lines to their dwellings). Because of the hard soil in one area of Oklahoma, some Amish farmers began using tractors. As a result, other members of the Amish community left the area in protest. • Politics. While Amish read and subscribe to newspapers and news magazines, they remain politically uninvolved. (In one election that Savells studied, less than 15 percent of adult males voted.) The Amish believe that, as part of a church, they must remain completely separate from government. The Amish do not view change or technology as inherently evil. But they do see elements of technology, such as the radio or the automobile, as sources of temptation (especially for the young) that can lead to conflict and social disharmony. Nevertheless, the Amish realize that they must make compromises and, in some instances, work within the dominant culture of the United States. As one Amish man remarked, “You cannot put a ship in the middle of the ocean and expect the deck to always stay dry” (Savells, 1990: 16). Sources: Jerry Savells, “Social Change among the Amish in Eight Communities,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 13 (July 1990): 12–16; William M. Kephart and William Zellner. Extraordinary Groups: The Sociology of Unconventional Life-Styles, 5th ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994; “Some Amish to Use Tractors; Those Opposed May Leave Town,” New York Times (April 16, 1995): 20. 15-6: Public Opinion and Nuclear Power Sociologists Eugene A. Rosa and Riley E. Dunlap have reviewed the trend in public opinion concerning nuclear power over the last 30 years. After the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and then after the April 1986 explosion of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, there was a decided downturn in support of nuclear power. Skeptics said this attitude change would be short-lived. However, the sociologists found that the trends in the longest survey questions showed public opinion to be increasingly unfavorable to nuclear power. Solid majorities of the public oppose the construction of more nuclear power plants and are likewise opposed to siting them locally. This is the NIMBY (not in my backyard) phenomenon. Yet an equally solid majority believe that nuclear power should be and will be an important energy source in the nation’s future. The researchers see this not as a contradiction, but as a pragmatic view on the part of the public to distinguish between nuclear power in principle and practice. Source: Rosa and Dunlap, “Nuclear Power: Three Decades of Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly 58 (Summer 1994): 295–325. 15-7: Why Do People Join Social Movements? There are numerous organized efforts in the United States to bring about or prevent social change. Why do people join some movements and not others? Are some factors more significant in explaining recruitment to one type of social movement as opposed to another? Sociologist James M. Jasper and Han D. Poulsen of New York University collected data at protests to learn more about why people join each of two different social movements—animal rights and anti–nuclear power. They sampled the people present at the protest at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in August 1984, people at a rally of about 1,000 people protesting experiments on monkeys at New York University in April 1988, and those at a rally of 100 people opposed to animal experimentation at the University of California, also in April 1988. Some of the surveys were completed at the protest; others were distributed and returned by mail later to the researchers. At each of the three protests about one third of the demonstrators completed the questionnaire. The activities at the three protests were similar: speeches accompanied by chanting or picketing, followed by a small group of those present offering themselves for arrest by blocking roads or entrances. The duration of the events ranged from one to three hours. Based on the review of the literature, one would hypothesize that preexisting social networks are the most significant factor that leads new members to join together for a particular social cause. Beginning with Karl Marx, who outlined the necessary conditions for the proletariat to revolt, numerous social scientists have pointed out that the physical concentration or gathering of those with a common grievance is a prerequisite for social action. Thus, it is hypothesized that previous personal contact with someone in the movement is the most important factor in explaining a person’s involvement. Prior activism or the value of political activity helps to make this contact more likely and increase the tendency to affiliate with a social protest activity. Jasper and Poulsen asked the protesters to estimate the importance of personal networks in recruitment activities. They found that the relative importance of social networks differed between the two groups. Very Important Somewhat Important Not Important Anti-nuclear sample 51% 29% 19% Animal rights sample 31% 22% 47% The hypothesis appears to be confirmed with the demonstrators against nuclear power but less so with animal rights activists. This latter group seemed to be motivated more by “specific events” that had caused them to act and to come to the protests even without friends. Among those in the animal rights sample, 72 percent had found “things they read” to be “very important.” For example, one animal rights protester said, “I remember my first photos of cats being tortured in experiments; it was at a table on Fifth Avenue in 1987. I didn’t know anybody in the movement—in fact I thought they were a bunch of weirdos. But they were right about animal torture.” (p. 501) Although they sampled a third of the participants of each of three relatively large protests, the authors acknowledge that a single group of protestors cannot fully represent an entire movement. So they went beyond their questionnaires, conducted interviews with people active in the movement, and did content analysis of movement publications and leaflets. This all served to confirm that the network hypothesis held true for anti–nuclear power but not for animal rights activists, who seemed more affected by experiences or information they had come by personally. Both movements emphasize a human relationship with the environment and view technology as being out of control, but the anti–nuclear power mobilization effort depended more on personal networks. While the presence of nuclear power is obvious—there are the familiar cooling towers and the occasional story (fictional and nonfictional alike) of a nuclear “disaster”—the symbols are not nearly as familiar to people as animals are. Eighty percent of the animal protesters had pets, compared with 61 percent of all U.S. households. Comparisons to their animal friends were obvious, as one New Jersey activist recalls: “But I went by a table one day and saw these terrifying pictures. That’s what goes on inside our country’s best, most scientific labs? There was a tabby [cat] that looked just like mine, but instead of a skull it has some kind of electrodes planted in its head. I thought about that a little bit, right there on the street, and I brought home all their literature. I decided, that’s gotta stop.” (p. 506) What Jasper terms these “moral shocks” are what first recruit strangers into some types of social movements such as animal rights. He and Poulsen help us to better understand the many factors that are involved in social movement mobilization, which is a more complex process than one of friends recruiting friends. Sources: James M. Jasper. The Art of Moral Protest: Cultural Dimensions of Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997; M. Jasper and Jane Poulsen, “Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social Networks in Animal Rights and Anti-Nuclear Protests,” Social Problems 42 (November 1995): 493–512; David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, Jr., and Sheldon Ekland-Olson, “Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment,” American Sociological Review 45 (1980): 787–801. 15-8: The Social Movement for Prostitutes’ Rights In the view of its supporters, prostitution is a service industry, and prostitutes are professional sex workers. However, prostitution is illegal in most of the United States and around the world. Prostitutes are often arrested, though their clients generally are not. Given the common stigma attached to prostitution, it is no easy task to work for the rights of prostitutes. COYOTE (an acronym for “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics”) was the first and remains the best known of the prostitutes’ rights organizations in the United States. Established in 1973, COYOTE has grown into a national organization based in San Francisco, with branches and affiliates in at least 12 major cities in the United States and ties to similar organizations overseas. COYOTE and its allies advocate the repeal of all existing laws against prostitution, the reconstitution of prostitution as a credible service organization, and the legal protection of prostitutes as legitimate service workers. Activists in COYOTE view prostitution as a victimless crime and therefore favor full decriminalization of such consensual sexual activity. They flatly oppose legalization of prostitution, whether in the form of registration and licensing, special taxes, compulsory health examinations, or “red light districts.” COYOTE believes that any such regulations will inevitably perpetuate the stigma attached to prostitution while unfairly regulating what women do with their bodies. Sociologist Valerie Jenness suggests that COYOTE has had many successes. Among these are (1) holding conferences and leading demonstrations to raise public awareness concerning the rights of prostitutes, (2) persuading public defenders to assist women charged with prostitution, (3) pressuring government agencies to establish free health clinics for prostitutes, (4) building coalitions in support of prostitutes’ rights with certain feminist organizations, and (5) serving as a crucial link between sex workers and public health agencies as the AIDS crisis has intensified. By contrast, sociologist Ronald Weitzer points to the failures of the prostitutes’ rights movement. In his view, COYOTE and other activist groups have failed to shift public opinion (which remains hostile to prostitutes’ rights), there have been few significant legislative concessions, and movement leaders are rarely consulted by policy makers. Weitzer contends that the movement’s resource-mobilization efforts have been largely unsuccessful: The limited resources of activist organizations have not been supplemented by meaningful alliances with other social movements or more established interest groups. Nevertheless, Weitzer acknowledges that the prostitutes’ rights movement has enhanced the self-images of activists, while assisting individual prostitutes, attracting media attention, and winning certain legal battles. It is not easy to assess the success or failure of a social movement; indeed, sociologists do not agree about the criteria that should be utilized. In one study, sociologist William Gamson traced the activities of a representative sample of 53 social movements that emerged in the United States between 1800 and 1945. Gamson measured the relative success or failure of these movements by examining whether or not they gained new advantages and gained acceptance from their antagonists. He found that 31 of the social movements studied (58 percent) gained either new advantages or acceptance, while another 20 movements (38 percent) gained both. Judged against Gamson’s criteria, the prostitutes’ rights movement would thus far appear to be a movement (like 4 percent of those studies) that has not genuinely gained either new advantages or acceptance. Nevertheless, despite formal norms against prostitution and negative public opinion, the prostitutes’ rights movement has not disappeared, and it continues to work for what it sees as social justice. Sources: William A. Gamson. The Strategy of Social Protest, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990; Valerie Jenness, “Can COYOTE Guard the Chicken Coop?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Cincinnati, 1991; Jenness, “In Search of Legitimacy: Prostitutes’ Rights Organizations and Contemporary Feminism.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, Spokane, WA, 1992; Jenness. Making It Work: The Prostitutes’ Rights Movement in Perspective. New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1993; Ronald Weitzer, “Prostitutes’ Rights in the United States: The Failure of a Movement,” Sociological Quarterly 32(1) (1993): 23–41. TOPICS FOR STUDENT RESEARCH AND CLASSROOM DISCUSSION 1. Ask students to locate evidence of collective activities that are encouraging or discouraging efforts by United States government officials to halt terrorism, and discuss the approaches used in developing social movements 2. Ask students to search the Internet for websites that are intended to protest certain behaviors or activities, and discuss the connection between technology and social change. 3. Ask students to research a controversial building project within their community that segregated portions of the community by maintaining their vested interests, and discuss economic and cultural factors associated with resistance to social change. REEL TALK Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2012, 93m). Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in a fictionalized Louisiana Bayou community called the Bathtub in this fantasy drama that incorporates elements of magical realism, environmental commentary, and family drama. Going on a journey in search of her absent mother, Hushpuppy must brave the elements, outside social pressures, the challenges of poverty, and ultimately must come to terms with her father falling ill and not being able to protect her from the outside world. Director: Benh Zeitlin. Hushpuppy: Quvenzhané Wallis. Wink: Dwight Henry. Topic: Social change, technology. Instructor Manual for SOC Sociology 2020 Jon Witt 9781260075311, 9781260726787, 9780077443191