Current Events, Gender and Sexuality, Power, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Is the NFL ready for Michael Sam?

February 11, 2014 Eric Borja Leave a comment

All-American Defensive Lineman and 2013 SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Year Michael Sam.

by Anima Adjepong

Missouri senior Michael Sam, who was named 2013 SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Year, told ESPN and the New York Times on Sunday he is gay. Following this announcement the defensive lineman’s NFL draft stock fell from 90 to 160; a decline that means the possibility of being drafted in the first four rounds less likely now. Some have argued that the decline in stock has nothing to do with Sam’s sexuality, but with the way he called attention to it. But the question remains, is the NFL ready for an “openly gay” player? I agree with Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates that the NFL will never be ready for a gay player, but in TNC’s words, “ready or not, here he comes.”

Is the NFL ready for an “openly gay” player? In anonymous interviews with SI.com, eight NFL executives and coaches answered in the negative. Football is still “a man’s-man game” and, according to them, introducing a gay player would make the locker and meeting rooms “chemically imbalanced.” In their candid interviews, these men argued for a status quo that is complicit with homophobia in the locker room; a status quo that ensures that to be a “a man’s-man” is to be normatively heterosexual; argued for their right to play “smear the queer” in the locker room.

The question of the NFL’s preparedness for Sam speaks to the way in which sports, particularly American football, is a heteromasculine space. If all players in the locker room are presumably straight, their homosocial desires are subsumed under a discourse of “just playing” or “no homo.” Within this context, “men’s men” can be free to love each other while at the same time denigrating men who love other men. The presence of an “openly gay” man disrupts this homosocial discourse by revealing its need to exclude other sexual possibilities in order to fashion itself as original and natural (for more on this see Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble).

Is the NFL ready for an “openly gay” player? It remains to be seen how Sam’s announcement will affect his NFL career. However, his decision to come out is meaningful. In his interview with the Times, he commented, “I guess they don’t want to ask a 6-3, 260-pound defensive lineman if he was gay or not.” But this 6-3, 260-pound defensive lineman is gay. He changes how football fans and players can imagine what it means to be gay. He opens up the possibility for rethinking what it means to be a “man’s-man.” Chris Kluwe is not gay. But he has been vocal about his support for same-sex marriage and claims that this outspokenness resulted in his release from the Minnesota Vikings. He is currently a free agent and it seems the consequences of deviating from a heterosexual norm in football are still dire. And by the way, Jason Collins still remains unemployed.

Is the NFL ready for an “openly gay” player? The sports world has not shrugged at Sam’s announcement the way that they may have about Brittney Griner’s. And this reaction is telling about how women and men’s sport are differently organized with regard to sexuality – that’s that heteromasculinity I mentioned earlier. To repeat TNC’s words, “ready or not…”

Current Events, Gender and Sexuality, Political Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

America the Beautiful

February 4, 2014 Eric Borja Leave a comment

Super Bowl Ads are as American as apple pie, and this year one Coca-Cola ad in particular has received some xenophobic backlash. The ad, entitled “America the Beautiful” shows images of a diverse America, set to the anthem “America the Beautiful” being sung in a variety of languages. And when the ad aired in the second half of the Super Bowl, people took to Twitter to voice their frustrations and betrayal at Coca-Cola.

These are just a couple of tweets, more can be seen here on the tumblr account Public Shaming.

After watching the commercial, and reading a handful of tweets, I wondered to myself what others thought so I asked my fellow graduate students in the department a few questions.

Do you find the xenophobic backlash the Coca-Cola commercial has received surprising?

Brandon Robinson:

Unfortunately, I do not find the xenophobic backlash to be surprising in the least. For centuries, anti-immigration sentiments have run deep in this country. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Arizona SB 1070 (among a host of so many other anti-immigration laws), we can see, at least legally, how deep this anti-immigration sentiment has been and still is today. So no, I did not find it surprising, but yet, it was still depressing to see people express such xenophobic outrage.

Maggie Tate:

I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. The responses to Sebastien de la Cruz’s performance of the national anthem during the NBA finals should have prepared me. I must have been distracted by how bad the Broncos were playing.

I was also interested in how many times the metaphor of a melting pot was used to tweet back against the anti-Coke tweets. I would like to see a public debate that calls out the problematic nature of the melting pot, because it is precisely this metaphor that has allowed for the U.S. to be narrated as tolerant and democratic while also engaging in xenophobic, racist, or otherwise discriminatory actions. A melting pot in a country where the definition of the “average American” is white, straight and always English-speaking produces a homogenous image of what being American can both look and sound like. Differences are melted into a nostalgic version of America’s past. The melting pot is about assimilation, which means that the two lines of response that “It’s Beautiful” produced actually stem from the same foundation. In practice, the melting pot of the U.S. has mostly been based on a version of diversity where differences get erased.

The emphasis on the multiplicity of languages can also be seen as code for claims about race. Not only did Coca Cola produce an ad with “America the Beautiful” sung in different languages, but they also visualized many non-white bodies as American. While the backlash against the commercial is verbalized as a problem of language, I wonder if the response would be similar had the same people been animated by an all-English version of “America the Beautiful.” I assume it would, considering that the selection of a young Mexican-American boy to sing the national anthem in English received a similar degree of backlash.

Some may say that those tweets depicted in the Public Shaming post only reflect an extreme opinion, similar to saying that the KKK only reflect the extreme. Do you find these tweets to only reflect the extreme or do you think they reflect a more general sentiment secretly/not-so-secretly held?

Brandon Robinson:

For a couple reasons, I think that those tweets in that post reflect a general sentiment. One, because of the Internet, people experience a disinhibition effect when being online. Because of the somewhat anonymity the Internet provides along with not having to deal with the same type of social responses one might experience in face-to-face interaction, social restrictions are lowered, which I then think allows people to express their feelings in more extreme ways. So, I think, these are people’s general feelings; the Internet just becomes a place where they get exacerbated.

Also, I first encountered this xenophobic response not through that post, but through one of my own Facebook friends writing the status, “America the beautiful in Spanish?” Of course, only mentioning Spanish and not all of the other languages in the commercial tacitly highlights that this is about xenophobia, and specifically against Mexican immigrants. Following the conversation that ensued from this status was also telling as well. Some people thought it was Obama playing politics as usual in pandering to the Latino vote. Of course, Obama had nothing to do with the commercial, but tying these xenophobic sentiments with a man of color – the President – definitely reveals how racism and xenophobia work intimately together.

Another person mentioned that their German ancestors learned English, so immigrants now need to learn English too. Again, we know, it often took generations for earlier European immigrants to learn English when migrating here, and immigrants now are learning English faster than previous immigrant groups. Nonetheless, facts do not matter because xenophobic discourses are often based on using fear to construct an outgroup. The point being that xenophobia runs deep, and it gets used in many ways including those in the post about twitter and elsewhere – but I don’t think any are more extreme than any others as they all perpetuate inequality and are highly problematic.

Maggie Tate:

While they certainly feel extreme, I think the tweets called out by Public Shaming reflect a part of U.S. culture that is more central than extreme. Evidence of this can be seen in the response from conservative pundits, such as Glenn Beck and Todd Starnes, who also tweeted in with their anger towards Coca-Cola. There seemed a sense of betrayal that the corporation would basically endorse immigration reform and gay marriage. Beck and Starnes are spokesmen with very large and devoted audiences, so it would be surprising to me if many of their fans do not share their negative response to the “It’s Beautiful” ad.

As LGBTQnation pointed out, Coca Cola became the first advertiser to feature a gay family in a Super Bowl commercial and GLAAD has praised the ad calling it a “step forward for the advertising industry.” Do you agree with what GLAAD has said?

Brandon Robinson:

I don’t know what a “step forward” means, but it is definitely a change. I think representation is important, especially media representation, as it is such a large part of our life, and the fact that the couple was not just white is also important, especially when homosexuality often gets conflated with whiteness. But I also have to ponder, what are the limits of representation? Like, how do we know they are a gay family? Could they just be straight friends, and the advertisement is re-defining heteronormative masculinity? How do we know that the child in the commercial is their daughter? They do not speak in the advertisement, so what cues are viewers using to read them as gay? And what does that tell us about how we construct and view homosexuality and gay families in U.S. society? Again, I don’t know if it is a “step forward,” but it is a change – a change that raises many more questions for me…

Do you think tumblr accounts such as Public Shaming actually shame these people or do you think it glorifies them?

Maggie Tate:

I guess it does both. While it calls out twitter users that posted xenophobic or racist responses, it also creates a spectacle out of them in a way that sort of empties the whole exchange of any real debate. Firstly, Public Shaming offers very little analysis along with the tweets, but merely points them out with a few glib comments. Secondly, the collection of them as a form of shaming serves as a public place where others can take a moral stance. If you agree with Public Shaming, you can demonstrate that you are the good kind of American by showing disgust towards those who tweeted against the diversity depicted in “It’s Beautiful.” But, this process doesn’t really bring any debate forward about the issue of diversity and the way that it gets understood in U.S. culture.

The conversation remains mired in the “melting pot” vs. “America speaks English” debate, and effectively distracts attention from other important concerns such as those that might question the interests of Coca-Cola in making a commodity out of diversity. We’re left to wonder how it is that a giant transnational corporation like Coca-Cola became the most “progressive” voice in the room. The Public Shaming forum becomes a site for making individual claims to moral positions, but representations like this ad also have to be understood in relation to broader social dynamics. For example, what long-standing role has Coca-Cola played in the colonial expansion of American culture? What business practices do Coca-Cola executives engage in that exploit rather than celebrate differences in the name of profit? What does Coca-Cola have to gain by representing America in this way? Because, gaining is what advertising is all about, after all, and airing an advertisement during the Super Bowl is a large investment.

Demography, Ethnography, Political Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

If Talk is Cheap, are Tweets Cheaper?

February 4, 2014 Eric Borja Leave a comment

This post was authored by Megha Arora, a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Math who is also an aspiring sociologist, and co-authored by Eric Borja, a third-year graduate student in the Sociology Department. Eric was Megha’s mentor for the Intellectual Entrepreneurship program, and this post came out of their many discussions regarding social media as a data source.

Introduction

According to the World Bank, there are nearly 2.5 billion Internet users worldwide[1], and according to Facebook’s Investor Relations site[2] there are more than a billion monthly active Facebook users. With more researchers mining social media for data, it is important to explore the scope of such a data source. On November 8, Dr. Shamus Khan of Columbia University visited the Ethnography Lab to deliver a talk on his co-authored article with Colin Jerolmack, entitled Talk is Cheap: Ethnography and the Attitudinal Fallacy.

The premise of the article is simple with important implications for the field of sociology: talk is cheap. Jerolmack and Khan demonstrate that “sociologists routinely proceed to draw conclusions about people’s behaviors based on what they tell us,” committing what Jerolmack and Khan call the attitudinal fallacy. Given the concept of the attitudinal fallacy, can social behavior be deduced from analyzing data pulled from the Internet, specifically social media? In other words, if talk is cheap, are tweets cheaper?

This post is divided into three parts, each answering one of three questions. First, what is social media as a source of data? It is important to think through what kind of data is pulled from social media – is it qualitative or quantitative in nature? Second, are methods utilized to analyze social media, even quantitatively, more like ethnography or demography? A large amount of data can be pulled from social media, but does that mean we must use quantitative methods when analyzing it? Finally, what can social researchers discern from data pulled from social media? Can social behavior be discerned from data pulled from social media?

What is social media as a source of data?

In an instant, a researcher can collect a large number of tweets through social analytic sites such as Topsy, then analyze the data utilizing statistical or computational models, such as agent-based modeling. A number of demographic characteristics can be pulled from public accounts. For instance, a person tweeting or posting a major life event can be recorded and then pulled. These methods can be used to see who is participating in social media, and how. With geocoding, the researcher can spatially understand social networks and trends by pinpointing the location of a specific tweet or hashtag.

Qualitative methods could be utilized to analyze a small subset of tweets. This could involve comparing tweets before and after a specific event to be analyzed, or observing discourse between users. Directly observing people and interactions between people is a form of qualitative research in a new field: the Internet.

Are methods utilized to analyze social media, even quantitatively, more like ethnography or demography?

These methods, though mixed with parts of quantitative and qualitative research, are more similar to ethnography than demography. Demography is used to reveal shifting trends of a given population by analyzing data collected through surveys and censuses. The gaze of the researchers is present whenever a respondent answers a question in a survey or census. In ethnography, people are examined over time in a field. Instead of taking a survey of a respondent’s answer at one point in time, the ethnographer has the advantage of placing what they say in the context of what they do. In the field, the ethnographer can see people “do things” over time and across a multiplicity of contexts. The Internet, then, is a new sort of field.

The Internet as a field, of course, is not physical; but, similar to an ethnographic site, the Internet – specifically its users – can be observed from many perspectives in many different contexts over time. The amount of time you are “in the field” is indefinite because when someone uses the Internet, either through tweeting or posting, this activity is recorded.

On the Internet, people can be observed for as little or as long as necessary, both retroactively and in real time. It is a field in which the observations of this data can be made at any time, and because of the technology now available, data is being collected faster than ever before. Collecting observations where people are not being prompted to answer surveys or interviews and are behaving without recognition of a researcher is much more similar to ethnography than demography. Essentially, the researcher can place what someone says (i.e. what they tweet or post) in the context of what they do.

What can social researchers discern from data pulled from social media?

Within the field of the Internet, data is collected and behavior is observed with mixed methods. Aggregating a large number of tweets and analyzing them statistically uses quantitative methods; however, when observing real people, in whom attitudes and behaviors can differ, when the researcher analyzes and uses that data the methods are also qualitative. These observations of and between people express behaviors because attitudes are expressed when prompted but behaviors are observed. Using the Internet can allow researchers to observe people and interactions both in real time and passed time, within different contexts and from different perspectives, and use qualitative, ethnographical methods to extract behaviors from quantitatively collected and analyzed data.

In conclusion, we claim that social behavior can be deduced through Facebook posts and tweets because what people post/tweet is a close proxy of what they do. Because the users observed are not prompted to answer a series of questions and are instead observed from a relatively outside perspective, the collected data can allow the researcher to observe discrepancies between what people say and do, and provide a more holistic view of social behavior, one similar to ethnography.

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2

[2] http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=802760

Ethnography, Globalization and Development, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

Marcos Perez awarded NSF Dissertation grant

January 31, 2014 porterem Leave a comment

Congratulations to Marcos Perez on the award of a full year of NSF support for his dissertation research in Buenos Aires!

The grant will support Marcos’ research on the Piquetero movement in Argentina. His dissertation explores the processes that influence people’s experiences before, during, and after they are involved in collective action. In particular, he seeks to explain why some activists in the movement are able to overcome significant obstacles to participation (becoming, in their words, ‘iron fellows’), while others withdraw as soon as the relative costs and benefits of involvement change.

Kudos on your outstanding success in an extremely competitive grant competition!

Globalization and Development, Work, Occupations and Organizations

UT Alumna Maryann Bylander’s Borders and Margins book published

January 17, 2014 porterem Leave a comment

UT Austin alumna, Maryann Bylander and photographer, Emmanuel Maillard have published Borders and Margins, a photographic journey using themes from Maryann’s dissertation research to raise awareness of migration issues in Cambodia and Thailand. Proceeds from the sale of the book will help to support Friends-International and their efforts on behalf of immigrant workers and their families in Southeast Asia.

Like Borders and Margins on Facebook.

University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Another Cool Yule at UT Austin Sociology

December 10, 2013 porterem Leave a comment

Click on the photo to see our 2013 holiday video

Demography, Family Sociology, Sociology of Health, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Congratulations to former longhorn Cathy Liu on her NIH Mentored Scientist Development Award

December 3, 2013 porterem Leave a comment

One of our highly esteemed former graduate students, Hui (Cathy) Liu, (now an assistant professor at Michigan State) received an NIH K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award. This five-year project (2013-2018) entitled “How Does Marriage Get Under the Skin? An Integrative Social and Biological Approach” addresses the way various social, biological, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms work together to forge links between marriage and health. The overall goal of this research is to develop an interdisciplinary model for studying the interactions between biological and social processes through which marital relationships affect health over the life course. This K01 award will enable Dr. Liu to acquire formal interdisciplinary training in order to facilitate her transition to an independent biodemographic researcher. This award is also valuable in helping Dr. Liu to achieve her long-term career goals to integrate interdisciplinary perspectives in research and foster dynamic collaborations across disciplines in order to enhance knowledge of interactions of the social world and biology in producing health outcomes. Congratulations Cathy!

Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Sociology of Gender, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

The gendered burden of development in Nicaragua

December 3, 2013 porterem Leave a comment

Pamela Neumann courtesy of the Gender and Society Blog
click on link above for full post

Flora’s experiences are part of a wider trend in how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments are attempting to incorporate women into social and economic development. Many international policymakers have argued that women’s participation in development programs has the potential to alleviate poverty and advance women’s equality. Yet how do these strategies affect the everyday lives of poor women? To answer that question, I conducted participant observation and in-depth interviews with women who have been involved in various NGO and state-led development programs in a village I call Loma Verde in northwest Nicaragua. Women’s tasks within these programs typically involve some combination of village clean-ups, child care, and/or health education and training.

Austin, Social Logical Austin, Uncategorized, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

Research Q&A: Dr. Penny Green and Austin Americana

November 14, 2013 amias Leave a comment

A "picking circle" in Luckenbach, TX — A “picking circle” in Luckenbach, TX

Recently, faculty member Dr. Penny Green embarked on a research project looking at Austin’s unique music community. We sent our intrepid blog editor to find out more in this edition of “Research Q&A.”

What’s your project about?

My project looks at the Central Texas Americana music community and how it has changed since the mid 1970s when Austin declared itself the “Live Music Capitol of the World”. I’m focusing largely, though not exclusively, on these musicians’ economic positioning and quality of life, and how these have changed over time.

How did you get interested in this project?

Although I’ve enjoyed the “Austin Sound” since I was in grad school here in the 1970s and 1980s, I got interested in the Centex Americana music scene in about May of 2009. I got to know some musicians who introduced me to other musicians, and I kept hearing the same thing over and over. I kept hearing that the pay was staying the same as it had been for years and that it was getting more and more difficult to live in the Austin area. So I figured it was time to find out whether I just happened to be talking to a small handful of disgruntled musicians or if there’s a pattern.

How does this compare to other cities? I know that here in Austin, we’ve got some things like HAAM to try and help struggling musicians, but I can’t imagine that being enough.

I can’t presently answer that question in any definitive manner; it’s one of the things I’ll be looking at in the research. But there was at least one musician who told me that he and his family moved to Lafayette, LA because they get paid better for the gigs and the cost of living is considerably lower. He frequently plays in the Austin area, but Lafayette is now his home base.

Wow, that’s not good for the aforementioned “Live Music Capitol of the World” tagline. Why is that going on?

That’s what I’m trying to find out in the research.

Do you have any hypotheses?

I’m thinking that perhaps more of the bars and other venues are no longer owned by local people; perhaps they’ve gone under corporate control. There are also other things happening. Americana musicians and their audiences seem to be predominantly white; at least that’s what I’ve observed. As the region becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, it’s possible they’re being marginalized as the Austin music scene grows more diverse. There’s also an age issue. When I go to Americana live gigs, most the people there are in their mid-thirties, or older. If you go to the Kerrville Folk Festival, for example, you’ll see a lot of gray hair. If the population of Austin is getting younger, then that could be contributing to the marginalization process. By the same token, we know that Austin, and perhaps much of Central Texas, is a beacon for retiring Baby Boomers; the size of the 65+ population has definitely increased over the last 10 years. I haven’t had a chance to systematically analyze the numbers to see what’s happening to the age structure of the population. And don’t forget about widening income inequality. One of its most problematic consequences is an increase in the cost of living, especially the cost of housing; widening inequality is inflationary. That’s definitely hitting musicians hard. Another component of widening inequality is wage stagnation for most people, except those at the very top. What appears to be happening to Americana musicians may be a special case of this more general phenomenon.

For someone who’s not familiar with the genre, how would you define Americana?

Well, that’s one of the questions we’re asking the musicians. [laughs] But my understanding is that Americana is a mixture of bluegrass, country western, blues, some jazz, and gospel….there’s a heavy emphasis in Americana on lyrics. This is not “ear candy”. It seems to appeal to an older, more mature audience. It’s a more serious kind of music.

So it’s kind of building off that folk tradition of political and social activism in the lyrics?

You can definitely pick up an undercurrent of activist themes in some of the music, but not all.

What places in Austin can you still find this music?

In Austin, you can find Americana at the Cactus Café and Threadgill’s. You can find it at the Continental Club and the Broken Spoke. You can find it at Waterloo Icehouse. Looking at Central Texas more broadly, you can find it at Poodie’s Roadhouse out Highway 71 west, Hondo’s in Fredericksburg, River City Bar and Grill in Marble Falls, and the Badu House in Llano. There are Americana venues in San Marcos and New Braunfels. And, of course, you can hear it in Luckenbach. Americana musicians also play a lot of house concerts.

And if we think back 20 years ago, we would find more of this kind of music happening within Austin at places like the Armadillo World Headquarters or Threadgill’s…

The late, great Armadillo World Headquarters. Photo courtesy of Steve Hopson Photography

The Armadillo and Threadgill’s on North Lamar are two key venues where the “Austin Sound” was born in the early to mid-1970s. Unfortunately, the Armadillo was torn down and replaced by a city building, I think in the early 1980s. But as I mentioned previously, you can still hear really good Americana at Threadgill’s, both north and south.

But a lot of the downtown, central Austin action has been taken over by other music whether that be for business, cultural, or demographic reasons, as you said earlier.

That’s what I suspect, but I don’t know for sure yet.

And how are you going to know “for sure”? What’s your methodological strategy?

Sociology Undergraduate Advisor Debbie Rothschild (left) strumming the guitar fantastic.

I’ll be doing a number of things. First of all, I’m conducting interviews with Central Texas Americana musicians, using snowball sampling. I’m also looking at demographic changes that have occurred in an 11-13 county region around Austin, as well as income inequality data for those counties. I want to see how the distribution of income and cost of living have changed over time. I also want to interview other members of the music business: producers, maybe some members of the Austin Music Commission and probably some venue owners. But I haven’t gotten that far yet.

I see that you have a guitar here in your office. Do you play as well?

I played as a kid; and now I’m taking lessons from Tommy Byrd, a very talented singer-songwriter here in Austin. Debbie Rothschild, who is a very talented Americana singer/musician, has also been helping me. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. I’m also trying my hand at songwriting. I want to immerse myself, as much as time permits (laugh), into the community that I’m studying. One thing I’ve already learned is that, when you hold a full time job, as many musicians do, it’s real hard to find time to work on your music. I look forward to continuing my work on this project.

Excellent!

UT Austin SOC