Socioked

Boycott California?

2008-11-18T18:33:00.000-08:00

Prop. 8 passed in California on November 4th. The same day that swept Barack Obama into office also saw the first constitutional amendment to California's state constitution that eliminated a civil right already accorded to California citizens. As you probably already know, Prop 8 amended California's constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage, and was a reaction to a May 2008 state supreme court decision that legalized marriage equality.

What's an equity-minded sociologist to do? The Pacific Sociological Association and the American Sociological Association both have their annual meetings scheduled in California. The National Communication Association just announced that 300+ members are boycotting their annual meetings because they are being held in a San Diego conference hotel whose owner contributed big bucks to a Yes on Prop 8 organization. (Read more about this here: http://chronicle.com/news/article/5510/scholars-boycott-annual-meeting-of-national-communication-association ). I'm tempted to suggest that PSA and ASA move their meetings away from California, in effect to boycott the state. Several years ago, a tourism boycott of Alaska successfully put pressure on state officials who advocated in favor of aerial wolf extermination. In the past, the ASA has moved the meeting in support of workers. What about in support of marriage equality?

I am not a big proponent of marriage. In fact, I disagree with the assumption that tax, inheritance, and health benefits should in any way be distributed according to marital status. But the fact is that the California supreme court in May 2008 legalized marriage equality, and thousands of people got married. Then a bare majority--52.5% at last count--voted away this civil right. As far as I know, this is the first time in California history that the state's electorate voted away a civil right.

I find it notable that rightwing religious organizations were the primary money and energy resource for Prop 8. I have read several articles that say that most of the money for the Yes on 8 movement originated outside of California. So, obviously, this means that Californians can be swayed by outsiders. So I think that a boycott of California might work. After all, money talks, eh?
Photo of anti-Prop 8 protest from http://xml.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-prop816-2008nov16,1,2339869.story?page=1

The n-word

2008-11-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

Alisha recounts an intense moment when she came to a new understanding of the n-word.

A bit ominous

2008-11-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

Mika describes the incident that pushed him towards an anti-racist activist viewpoint.

I thought it was dead

2008-11-02T18:33:00.001-08:00

Emmanuel remembers an incident during his senior year in high school that changed the way he thought about racism.

Eye opener

2008-11-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

Nate recounts how being in Idaho brought him face-to-face with racism and a life-changing experience.

That's when race affects us

2008-11-02T16:57:00.000-08:00

Melissa tells about color from the eyes of a four year old family member.

Opened my eyes

2008-11-02T15:30:00.001-08:00

Unika tells another race story, this time about how a semester at another university opened her eyes to a different reality.

Awakening

2008-11-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

Korey talks about how college courses helped her to understand inequality, and challenged what she had learned as a child.

I had to learn that

2008-11-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Clare recalls how she learned about ethnicity in her own family, highlighting how we learn to think about difference, that race-based thinking is anything but natural.

Even now

2008-11-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

Unika describes how race-based thinking extends even to family matters.

Parts of who I am

2008-11-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

Jessa talks about the ordinariness, and extraordiniariness, of ethnicity.

What are you

2008-11-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

Amy recounts being asked about her ethnicity, and being confused about what that meant.

Solid as concrete

2008-11-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

Josh relates how some of the people he knows in rural Arkansas think of the racial divide as timeless and unchanging.

Always aware of race

2008-10-28T19:44:00.001-07:00

Brian describes how he is always aware of race, and has been since he was a boy visiting family members in Milwaukee.

Race: why?

2008-10-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

As part of our Race Stories Project, Jing asks the question: what is race? But more importantly, why?

"I just never know that… what is race? You know, I just never understand it. Why people have, why we have, why society has to divide us. I just don’t know the reasons why. I know there are differences between us. White, black, brown, anyhow. I just don’t know why people need the categories. I just don’t understand why."

What white means

2008-10-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

Kari describes the moment she first realized that white meant something.

"So I had a hard time coming up with a race story. I’ve never had… I’ve seen it, but I’ve never been a part of it. So I could, um, when I was trying to come up with a race story, I was thinking about my family, and situations with them. But it wasn’t really my story. It was just a… our past, I guess. Um… but I guess the first time I became conscious of it being an issue of what it meant to be white, I was working down in Philadelphia in an inner-city school program through Americorps. And one of the team members that I worked with, she was black and she was very light skinned. And um… I didn’t really know what that meant."

There is color

2008-10-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

As part of our Race Stories Project, Heather tells about the incident that made her see color for the first time.

"That was probably the point in my life where I was like, you know, there is color. Like there are differences among people and just because of the way someone looks, apparently, you know, other people will hate for it."

Truck Update

2008-10-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

Someone liberated the bumpersticker from the Dodge Ram that sports the Confederate flag license plate. It wasn't me, I swear.

White supremacy in the parking lot

2008-09-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

You might be surprised if I told you that this truck, with its Confederate flag license plate, is located not in the Deep South, but in a university parking lot in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Confederate battle flag is the most widely recognized symbol of white supremacy, and it is quite common in North Carolina, my home. But I do not recall ever seeing it on a license plate in Alaska until this truck showed up earlier this fall. (There is also an extremely sexist bumper sticker on the truck, and perhaps I will take up the issue about the bumper sticker in another post.) Always sociologically curious, of course I searched for analysis of the Confederate flag in the sociological literature. A recent post in the Contexts blog notes that there seems to be a revival of the Confederate flag, or a "resurgence", as the author puts it. The author theorizes that the resurgence of the flag is backlash against globalization and immigration as much as it is a symbol of persistent racism. I wonder if the owner of the truck is knowingly participating in a backlash movement against globalization. Or deliberately trying to flaunt hus racist beliefs. Many Confederate flag apologists claim that the flag is about "heritage, not hate." Regardless of the owner's beliefs about white supremacy or the Confederate flag, I wonder if the owner knows that hu is violating a state statute by not displaying both license plates (A.S. 28.10.171). It's an $85 fine, BTW.

Unruly Soc Students Strike Again!

2008-08-07T14:22:00.001-07:00

On April 22, some sociology students chalked the sidewalk to commemorate Equal Pay Day, the day in late April when women's average salaries catch up to the average salaries men earned by December 31 of the previous year. Click below to catch them in the act.

Busy summer

2008-08-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

This was a busy summer for me. I did more traveling than usual. I just returned from the American Sociological Association annual meetings, held this year in Boston. Heard lots of good papers there, endured a handful of mediocre ones, and went to a useful workshop for new department chairs. Before that, I was at the American Association of University Professors annual Summer Institute in Rhode Island, where I networked with other academic activists. And before THAT, I was on the road from my previous home in North Carolina driving a U-Haul and pulling a vintage trailer named Camille. Camille and I survived the floods of the Midwest and a tornado in North Dakota. Along the Alaska Highway we saw wild horses, bison, grizzly bears, and other assorted fauna and flora. Many of the campgrounds where I stayed had wifi access. I am still figuring out the sociological implications of that.

I went to several workshops this summer, too. Not only did I go to the ASA chairs workshop and the Summer Institute, but also attended a full week of workshops conducted by UAF's Center for Distance Education (CDE). I vicariously benefited from Kayt Sunwood's attendance at a podcast workshop. I presented at a workshop on teaching gender at the ASA conference, and learned from the other participants as well.

New toys this summer include a Mylo COM 2 personal communicator (wifi only, so I can maintain my anti-cellphone persnicketiness) and a Wacom Intuos tablet. Also got the wow-whee Mac set up, though that required me to let go of some anti-Mac snobbishness, a process which is not yet complete.

Joy Morrison and I wrote a grant that was funded, and about which we are totally socioked. We have a two-year project funded by the National Science Foundation's ADVANCE IT--Start program. We will be conducting an institutional ethnography of UAF, focusing on women faculty in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. Our project is data gathering, but we will be doing it with an eye towards institutional transformation.

And here it is, nearly time for school to start again. Welcome back, everyone! Get socioked.

What is socioked?

2008-05-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

Socioked: (so-see'-oak-d) the chronic condition of experiencing sociological insights. Symptoms include: 1) an understanding of the sociological imagination; 2) a persistent urge to talk and/or write using sociological perspectives; 3) an overwhelming need to read sociology journals or books; 4) common usage of sociological insights to analyze social phenomenon.

Why be Persnickety about writing?

2008-05-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

Why, you might ask, am I so persnickety when it comes to the discipline of sociology and sociological writing? There are several reasons. First, writers are heard more clearly when their readers are not distracted by annoying errors such as writing "wether" when the writer meant "whether." (Look up wether, whether, and weather. You will find that "wether" is a neutered male goat. Surely there might be some reasons why you would want to refer to a neutered male goat in your writing at some point, but there are limited uses of the term in college classes.) Second, I am persnickety about requiring students to use sociological viewpoints so that they will, well, learn sociology! I do not believe students can truly expand their sociological imagination when they persist in thinking, talking, reading, and writing non-sociologically. Third, students pay valuable tuition dollars to learn how to read, write, think, and talk sociologically; the University pays me to examine their work carefully and help them learn how to read, write, think, and talk sociologically. This means pointing out where students' work can be improved. Though at first you may think I am just being persnickety, stick with me. I believe my enthusiasm for the discipline of sociology and my passion for teaching the tricks of our trade will make you a better reader, writer, thinker, and talker of sociology.