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A Sociologist visits Occupy Wallstreet

Jonathan Wynn is an urban/cultural sociologist and blogger whose book The Tour Guide, Walking and Talking New York was recently published by the University of Chicago Press.

From the Everyday Sociology Blog:
A Sociologist Visits Occupy Wallstreet

Perhaps we will invite Dr. Wynn to stop by during SXSW, included in his research examining how city stakeholders have adopted “festivalization” as an urban cultural policy, and the affects of city branding on both locals and visitors, event organizers and participants.

“Epidemiography”… Say What?

Sociologists have long been familiar with metaphors, analogies, and theories imported to the social realm from the natural sciences. One of our founders Durkheim viewed society as a living “social organism.”

Fast forward to 2011 where the proliferation of new communications technologies such as Twitter have once again spawned (pardon my biological lingo) new comparisons with the biological realm.

In his recent blog post, Anthropologist John Postill expounds upon some of the basic ideas of his new book Democracy in the age of viral reality: a media epidemiography of Spain’s indignados movement, which we may find applicable to the socially networked social movements/protests/revolts/revolutions happening around the world.

Many of us have already become familiar with the term “viral” when referring to the way comic and political videos quickly become popular on youtube. But Postill applies this analogy to social protests, believing that social media have been a game changer that created a “new media ecology” that foments “outbreaks” of this virus of opposition that regimes in the Arab world and even governments in the developed world have found difficult to “quarantine.”

Contrast this media ecology view with the more material perspective of the Latin American intellectual and journalist Raúl Zibechi who was quoted here as saying:

I don’t believe in virtual spaces, spaces are always material as well as symbolic. It’s another matter to speak of virtual media of communication among people in movement….

This raises the question of the material cost of protest and whether online social media actually constitute a “space” for protest, or rather are simply the latest tool in a long line of printing presses, telegraph machines, telephones, radios, fax machines, cassette tapes, satellite television, and other media used to spread messages of dissent and mobilize protesters and revolutionaries.

Ithiel de Sola Pool seemed to lean more toward the latter in his famous book, Technologies of Freedom.

Is becoming a facebook fan of a protest page anything other than simply a convenient barometer for public sentiment? Is it a viral outbreak of resistance that must be “quarantined”, or is armchair revolution simply not revolution?

In the Egyptian protests last January, Mohammed Bamyeh notes here that some of the most critical moments that led to the downfall of Hosni Mubarak came during the period when the government had actually shut down all internet in the country, and protesters used more traditional means to organize and still were able to have millions protesting around the country.

Contrast this with the “viral” Occupy Wall Street movement, which uses the slogan “We are the 99%”, but is only able to get a thousand or so at a time to show up, even with the full force of social media, the organization of volunteers providing food, and the attraction of performers coming to put on concerts for the protesters.

In the end of the day, is the difference between Tahrir Square and Zucotti Park, even after more than 40 years of authoritarian rule in Egypt, more about family, neighborhood and community than it is about technology? Is it possible to organize a mass social movement in a society that is “bowling alone”?

STATA Geek Out – Tables with outreg2

Aside from the very interesting theoretical and political-sociology oriented posts of late, some of us at the UT Austin Soc blog would also like to encourage other types of posts with a more methodological angle.

Since many of us use STATA for statistical work, I thought a series of posts on STATA tips and tricks would be a good place to start our “geek out” and share some time-saving, or just plain cool commands.

So here I’m going to give a little bit of sample code for getting tables and graphs out of STATA for a more manageable look at results.

TABLES

When it comes to tables, there are a number of useful programs built in to STATA to export results of regressions and other data. STATA 12 now comes with an improved menu button for exporting certain parts of the raw data to excel. “Tabout” is a useful tool for creating summary excel tables of tabbed data, for example average income by gender, if the data is from a certain country.

But many times it is not simple data or tabs that we want to see in excel, but rather more complex results of our regressions. Our eyes can only take so much of staring at the output window and it is hard to make connections without seeing things in neat tables. Sometimes we even need to create publication quality tables to insert into articles.

Now, copying and pasting and formatting by hand is always an option. But over the course of just one project, not to mention an entire PhD program, the countless hours spent making revisions by hand until perfection seem to justify the short-term time-expenditure on learning how to automate tables in your STATA code.

For this purpose then, there are two excellent little programs called “estout” and “outreg”. “estout” enables you to output a specific set of regression (or other analysis) results after first saving them with “esttab.” “outreg” is a bit more automated, and in fact my favorite, which I will demonstrate here is “outreg2”, which has more bells and whistles and seems to work well even with more advanced models beyond simple regression.

For this purpose, I will use a simple country level data set collected from the World Bank website, which includes three variables: 1) country, 2) hiv (average hiv infection rate for the past 5 years), and 3) pov (average poverty rate for the past five years).

DISCLAIMER: I came across the question of whether poverty has a significant effect on HIV infection rates in some development literature, much of which assumes that the two are linked. However, the jury is still out and this simple regression exercise does not in any way claim to offer answers. Rather it aims only to demonstrate some techniques for data analysis in STATA. Statistics probably can tell us something about this question, but for that, a much more complicated model would be appropriate.

So, there are several steps to get our neat excel output. (In case you are totally new to STATA, note that the actual code you type comes on the lines below that begin with periods, and what follows is the output.)

First, we run our basic regression:

. reg hiv pov

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      61
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    59) =    0.76
       Model |  19.0177362     1  19.0177362           Prob > F      =  0.3873
    Residual |  1478.91636    59  25.0663791           R-squared     =  0.0127
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared = -0.0040
       Total |   1497.9341    60  24.9655684           Root MSE      =  5.0066

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         hiv |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
         pov |  -.0190502   .0218708    -0.87   0.387    -.0628136    .0247133
       _cons |     3.1443    .970026     3.24   0.002     1.203282    5.085317
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next, we can call up a list of the estimates obtained from the above regression.

. ereturn list

scalars:
                  e(N) =  61
               e(df_m) =  1
               e(df_r) =  59
                  e(F) =  .7586949891917172
                 e(r2) =  .0126959765324349
               e(rmse) =  5.006633506264527
                e(mss) =  19.01773619459277
                e(rss) =  1478.916364896987
               e(r2_a) =  -.0040379899670153
                 e(ll) =  -183.795077505511
               e(ll_0) =  -184.1847839095903
               e(rank) =  2

macros:
            e(cmdline) : "regress hiv pov"
              e(title) : "Linear regression"
          e(marginsok) : "XB default"
                e(vce) : "ols"
             e(depvar) : "hiv"
                e(cmd) : "regress"
         e(properties) : "b V"
            e(predict) : "regres_p"
              e(model) : "ols"
          e(estat_cmd) : "regress_estat"

matrices:
                  e(b) :  1 x 2
                  e(V) :  2 x 2

functions:
             e(sample)

With these estimates we can use outreg2 to create a simple table.

. outreg2 using OUTPUT_hiv_pov_countries, e(N df_m F rss ll) excel replace
OUTPUT_hiv_pov_countries.xml
dir : seeout

So, it’s as simple as that. Just run your analysis, call up the list of estimates, and plug those in to have outreg2 create a nice excel table like the one below. As you can see, one cool feature of outreg2 is that it automatically adds 1, 2 or 3 stars to your estimates in order to indicate whether they are statistically significant at the .1, .05, or .01 levels. This is not only a publication convention, but is also very useful for a quick eyeball look at your results, to see if you are on the right track.

NOTE ON AUTOMATION:

When you are running a large number of analyses however, it is useful to note a few things about automating outreg2.

1) Advanced formatting: Type “help outreg2” and take a closer look at the advanced features in order to be able to play with the formatting. This can save you from having to format every excel table by hand.

2) Replace: When running a number of analyses, for example the same regression over and over on individual countries, or separately for men and women… using the “replace” option on the very first analysis will make sure that you save over the old versions of your excel file when you re-run your code with the latest tweaks.

3) Append: Using the append option for your outreg2 code after each additional analysis that you wish to include in the same excel file will ensure that you have one big comparable table, which will list results for other regressions right along side the first one.

This was just a simple example to show outreg2 in action. However, one nice thing about this command is that it works well with more advanced analyses as well, including multi-level models, and can give you additional statistics such as Inter-Class Correlations… Basically, anything you can get STATA to estimate will appear in the “ereturn list” and can be outputted with outreg2.

Although it’s a bit basic, I hope you found this little geek out useful.

Please share with us some of your favorite STATA tips and tricks either in the comments, or perhaps as a guest blogger.

“Don’t Fall in Love with Yourselves”: Slavoj Žižek Speaks at Occupy Wall Street

“It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.” – Slavoj Žižek, Senior Researcher, Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana; President, Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Full transcript: http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/slavoj-zizek-at-occupy-wall-street-transcript

Inside Higher Ed reports on Sociologists in Sin City

Inside Higher Ed found the juxtaposition of Las Vegas and Sociology irresistible:

Sociologists in Sin City

There is something both jarring and perfectly apropos about bringing thousands of sociologists to Sin City. As the ASA press release delicately observed, “Las Vegas [is] vibrant and fascinating from a sociological perspective” – but it’s not difficult to conjecture why the conference had never been held here before. The very aspects of Las Vegas that might make it fascinating to a sociologist — the emphasis on consumerism and decadence; the unapologetic obsession with (and exploitation of) female flesh; and the city’s most celebrated pastime gambling, whose appeal is particularly mystifying to some with a background in statistics — are also the sorts of things that tend to be off-putting to academics, especially (or at least) in the presence of their colleagues. Little wonder that ol’ Lost Wages is one of the least-educated cities in the country. (As David Dickens, professor of sociology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, likes to say: “Thank god for Fresno.”) And little wonder, too, that even those who have dedicated their careers to studying human society weren’t wholly enthused about being thrust into the heart of this particular society, however fascinating it might be.

Tuesday, August 23rd at ASA

Presenting UT SOC research:

Browne, Simone
Thematic Session. Towards a New Racial Studies
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Presenter: “Flying While Black: Border Control, DNA and the Case of the Lips”

Cabrera, Sergio Antonio
Table 09. Culture as an Educational Tool
Section on Sociology of Culture / Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable.
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Presenter on individual submission: “Neoliberal Consumer Citizenship and Relationship Management Marketing: A sociological analysis of marketing textbooks”

Section on Children and Youth Invited Session. Sociological Perspectives in Federally Funded Research on Children Unit: Section Invited
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Session Submission Role: Panelist
Section on Children and Youth Paper Session. Social Context, Public Policy, and Child and Adolescent Well-being
Unit / Sub Unit: Social Context, Public Policy, and Child and Adolescent Well-being.
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Child Care and Common Illness Among Preschoolers”

Kendig, Sarah M
Table 10. Family and Adolescence Section on Social Psychology Roundtable. (co-sponsored with the Sociology of Emotions)
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Presenter: “Race/Ethnic and Class Differences in the Timing of First Sex and Adolescent Pregnancy: Considering Girls’ Mattering?

Minagawa, Yuka
Table 10. Comparative and Historical Criminology
Sub Unit: Section on Crime, Law, & Deviance Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Presenter: “The Social Consequences of Post-Communist Structural Change: An Analysis of Suicide Trends in Eastern Europe”

Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. New Perspectives on Gender Inequality in Education
Unit: Open Topic on Sociology of Education (4 Sessions).
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Session Submission Role: Presider
Table 08. International and Comparative Perspectives on Educational Outcomes
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable.

Perez, Marcos Emilio
Table 10. Income Inequality – Empirical Evidence
Unit: Section on Economic Sociology / Section on Economic Sociology Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Presenter: “Opportunities for a Few: Pro-market Economic Policies and the Regressive Redistribution of Income”

Reczek, Corinne E.
Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session. Mechanisms of Health: Qualitative and Quantitative Perspectives
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 12:30pm – 2:10pm
Presenter: “The Promotion of Unhealthy Habits in Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Intimate Partnerships”

Shifrer, Dara
Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. Exploring Racial-Ethnic Inequalities from Kindergarten to College
Open Topic on Sociology of Education (4 Sessions).
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Session Submission Role: Presider

Williams, Christine L.
Thematic Session. Gender Disparities in Careers across the Occupational Hierarchy
Scheduled Time: Tue, Aug 23 – 12:30pm – 2:10pm
Presenter: “Gender and the Neoliberal Career”

Monday ASA Events

Monday, August 22th UT SOC presentations:

Adut, Ari – Thematic Session: Scandal Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm
Session Organizer – Presenter on individual submission: Scandal and the Public Sphere

Bhatt, Wasudha
Table 06. Roundtables: Immigrants from a Race, Gender, and Class Perspective
Unit / Sub Unit: Section on Race, Gender, and Class / Section on Race, Gender, and Class
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Presenter on individual submission: Racist Medicine: Indian physicians’ experiences with racism, and sexism in U.S. medical workplaces

Julie Beicken
Table 03. Impacts and Outcomes
Unit: Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 11:30am
Presenter: “The Impact of Eugenics on U.S. Coercive Sterilization Legislation in the Early 20th Century”

Blanchard, Sarah
Table 08. International and Comparative Perspectives on Educational Outcomes
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Session Submission Role: Table Presider
Presenter: “Scholars without Borders: The Graduate School Trajectories of International Students at a Major Research University”

Brown, Letisha
Table 05. Democracy and Social Organization
Unit / Sub Unit: Theory Section / Section on Theory Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 8:30am – 9:30am
Presenter: “The Black Panther Party for Self Defense: A Marxist, Maoist, Black Nationalist Organization”

Charrad, Mounira Maya
Section on Comparative/Historical Sociology Paper Session. Islam and the Modern World
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Presenter on individual submission: “Patrimonial Politics: Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq”

Crosnoe, Robert
Section on Sociology of Education Council and Business Meeting
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm
Session Submission Role: Participant

Cuvi, Jacinto
Regular Session. Historical Sociology/Processes II: States, Societies, & Symbolic Power
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Presenter: “Blowing the institutional gridlock: informal institutions and symbolic action in the reform of Sunat”

Danielle Dirks (PhD 2011, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Occidental College)
Student Forum Workshop. Different Types of Publication Opportunities for Students
Unit: Student Forum Sessions
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm
Session Submission Role: Panelist

Ha, Hyun Jeong, Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Paper Session.
Open Topic on Collective Behavior and Social Movements.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Presenter on individual submission: “Islamic Feminism, A New Paradigm to Crack out Patriarchy in Egypt”

Paul Stanley Kasun
Table 10. Public Opinion on Immigration
Unit: Section on International Migration Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 11:30am
Presenter: “Immigration Perspectives Structured Racism and Religion; Attitudes of Welcoming, Economic Threat, Illegal Immigration Toward Immigrants”

Lodge, Amy
Section on Aging and the Life Course Paper Session. Age and Sociological Imagination: Individual and Micro-level Dynamics
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Presenter: “Age and Embodied Masculinities: Mid-Life Gay and Heterosexual Men Talk about their Bodies”

McFarland, Michael
Table 23. Religion and Health
Unit: Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Presenter: “Does a Cancer Diagnosis Influence Religiosity? Integrating a Life Course Perspective”

Mueller, Anna Strassmann
Table 08. International and Comparative Perspectives on Educational Outcomes
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Scholars without Borders: The Graduate School Trajectories of International Students at a Major Research University”
Table 18. Friends and Peer Networks in Schools
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Adolescent Society and the Social Dynamics of Friendship Formation in American High Schools”

Muller, Chandra

Section on Sociology of Education Council and Business Meeting
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm
Session Submission Role: Chair
Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. Transitions, Adjustment, and Mobility in Educational Attainment
Unit: Open Topic on Sociology of Education (4 Sessions).
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Non-Presenter: ” The Shape of the River from Middle through High School: Race, Gender, and Grade Trajectories”
Table 07. Academic and Social Determinants of College Attainment
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable – Presider
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Table 08. International and Comparative Perspectives on Educational Outcomes
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Scholars without Borders: The Graduate School Trajectories of International Students at a Major Research University”
Table 18. Friends and Peer Networks in Schools
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Adolescent Society and the Social Dynamics of Friendship Formation in American High Schools”

Pattison, Evangeleen
Table 02. Classical Theory and Contemporary Sociology
Unit: Section on Theory Roundtables
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 8:30am – 9:30am
Presenter: “Education and Stratification: The Role of Class and Status in Structuring Educational Opportunities”
Table 20. Extracurricular Influences on Equity in Academic Outcomes
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Session Submission Role: Table Presider
Presenter: “The Role of Sports Participation on Advanced Math Course-taking for Black and White Males”

Pudrovska, Tetyana
Table 16. Mental Health
Unit: Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Non-Presenter on individual submission: “Spousal Mental Health Concordance”
Table 23. Religion and Health
Unit: Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Does a Cancer Diagnosis Influence Religiosity? Integrating a Life Course Perspective”

Reid, Megan
Table 09. Race, Gender, Class & Policy
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 3:30pm Roundtable
Presenter on individual submission: “Deservingness” and Waiting for Help After Hurricane Katrina”

Rodriguez, Nestor P.
Table 06. Immigrants from a Race, Gender, and Class Perspective – Roundtables
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Presenter: “Racist Medicine: Indian physicians’ experiences with racism, and sexism in U.S. medical workplaces”

Ryan, Tricia
Table 03. Comparative Health Policy
Unit: Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Presenter: “Unintended Consequences to Health Reform: Patient Responses to Family Medicine and Village Health Committees in Kyrgyzstan”

Sakamoto, Arthur
C. Table 03. Migration
Unit: Open Refereed Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Non-Presenter: “Revisiting Malthus for Developed Nations? Non-Poor Population Growth as a Population Characteristic”

Sasson, Isaac

C. Table 03. Migration (3)
Unit: Open Refereed Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Presenter: “Revisiting Malthus for Developed Nations? Non-Poor Population Growth as a Population” Characteristic

Shafeek Amin, Neveen Fawzy

Table 03. Immigrant Education
Section on International Migration Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 11:30am
Presenter: “Religiosity and Academic Achievement among Immigrant Adolescents in the U.S”

Shifrer, Dara
Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Religious Movements and Institutions
Unit:Religious Movements and Institutions.
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Presenter: “Education and Religion: Compromises toward the Preservation of a Separatist Community”

Sutton, April M
Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. Transitions, Adjustment, and Mobility in Educational Attainment
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Presenter: “The Shape of the River from Middle through High School: Race, Gender, and Grade Trajectories”
Table 22. Exploring the Influence of Cultural Capital Across Diverse Settings
Unit: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Session Submission Role: Table Presider

Thomeer, Mieke
Table 16. Mental Health
Unit: Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtables
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm
Presenter on individual submission: “Spousal Mental Health Concordance”

Umberson, Deb
Section on Aging and the Life Course Paper Session. Age and Sociological Imagination: Individual and Micro-level Dynamics
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 8:30am – 10:10am
Non-Presenter: “Age and Embodied Masculinities: Mid-Life Gay and Heterosexual Men Talk about their Bodies”

Wheatley, M. Christine
Table 06. Legal Status and Deportation
Unit: Section on International Migration Roundtable
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 11:30am
Presenter: “Push Back: U.S. Immigration Policy, Deportations, and the Reincorporation of Involuntary Return Migrants in Mexico”

Williams, Christine L.
Special Session. Postindustrial Culture and the Flexible Self: Beyond the Cubicle
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 10:30am – 12:10pm
Session Submission Role: Discussant

Young, Michael
Thematic Session. Scandal
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm
Session Submission Role: Discussant