A History of Cultural Sociology

A few weeks back, the orgtheory folks produced a graph that describes the number of books that mention "Organizational Theory" using Google's latest toy: ngrams. I made a similar graph for "Cultural Sociology," and was very surprised to see a spike in the mid '30s.

National Identity and the World Cup

Lawmakers in France, England, and Italy have been busy over the past few days. Not the Continental economic crisis, but soccer was the subject of concern. The inglorious exit of these former soccer superpowers from the World Cup has provoked potent political drama.

Italy's conservative Northern League, for example, blamed immigrants. "By filling up our teams with foreigners" said Davide Cavallotto, "our football players have become useless." Never mind that these same foreigners helped Italy's Inter-Milan team capture this year's Champion's League-- The European equivalent of the Superbowl.

In contrast, the French celebrated their multi-racial World Cup champion team eight years ago. This changed in the subsequent world cup when legendary footballer Zenedine Zidane, the son of North African immigrants, headbutted an Italian player, jettisoning much of this enthusiasm away. When the current team's dark-skinned captain lambasted France's white coach following an embarrassing loss to Mexico, it opened old-- but largely unspoken-- racial wounds from the soccer field to parliament in the aftermath of the event. While England's nativist National Front party has not yet followed its counterparts in Italy and France, British lawmakers also recently passed legislation condemning the "troubling state of British football."

What does the bizarre marriage of sports and immigration policy in the public sphere teach us? Perhaps the lesson is that many Europeans care more about their national soccer team than the politicians who represent them at the EU. But Europe is not the only continent embroiled by a World Cup crisis. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has "suspended" his national team for two years. One can only worry that the North Korean squad faces a similar plight. After an unlikely qualifying campaign that landed them in the World Cup, North Korea was ousted in an embarrassing 7-0 defeat by Portugal. Unfortunately, Kim Jong-Il elected to make the game the first televised international sporting event in North Korea in more than half a century.

And the Americans? Our squad gets a pat on the back for exceeding expectations-- and besides, we always win the world series and the superbowl.

A Bridge Too Far? Xenophobia and Integration in "New" Europe

Who belongs to Europe? This ancient question has perplexed separate tribes of social scientists studying political integration and xenophobia since WWII. Political scientist Ray Taras unites the tribes to explain the protean struggle of Eastern European states, whose accession into the European Union is frustrated by allegations of racism from their Western counterparts. Though previous studies have documented high levels of xenophobia in Eastern Europe, Taras discovers anti-racist laws are paradoxically more robust in “new” Europe than “old.” Taras addresses this puzzle using comparative historical analysis of E.U. institutions, survey data, and content analysis. In so doing, he discovers the apocryphal idea of Europe produced by political elites is widely rejected by ordinary people—many of who are more loyal to sports teams than nations. The backlash is particularly acute in Eastern Europe, argues Taras, where elites are chastised for attempting to meet the hypocritical standards of Western European countries that are themselves sharply divided by race or religion.

Taras’s first agenda is to document how the Cold War shaped the creation and expansion of the E.U. The post-war political integration of Western Europe, he argues, had the unintended consequence of estranging Eastern Europe, despite their mutual “Russophobia.” During this time, Western elites developed a supranational cosmopolitan discourse that was hidden by the Iron Curtain. Even worse, Eastern elites were left pursuing a moving target after the Curtain’s fall, since the unity-in-diversity discourse of Western elites belied significant variation in the implementation of cosmopolitan principles across countries. The very definition of “minority” for example, includes immigrants in certain Western countries, but not others. These discrepancies created complex allegiances between Western and Eastern European countries that may have sabotaged the European Constitution by insisting it affirm the Continent’s Christian heritage or reject Turkey’s candidacy for membership. Taras is not the first to document Western Europe’s “diverse diversities,” but his analysis of how such variation shaped the political integration of Eastern Europe is a welcome addition to the literature.

Taras’s second goal is to determine whether elite discourse is consistent with public opinion. Several case studies of Western Europe reveal an ethnic hierarchy that privileges European immigrants and punishes non-white immigrants—particularly Muslims. Surprisingly, xenophobia in Eastern Europe is scarcely analyzed, besides a brief discussion of Poland, where Muslims and Roma are heavily stigmatized. Because the regions are barely compared, the reader does not learn whether the dissociation between elites and ordinary people in the East explains the book’s central empirical puzzle. Equally surprising is that Taras does not explore the relationship between xenophobia and support for European integration in either region. This is a critical omission if publics in both regions draw strong boundaries against Muslims, since this may unite Easterners and Westerns in opposition to Turkey’s candidacy. To his credit, Taras avoids a Hungtingtonian assumption of “Islamophobia” across Europe. He even describes how the far right in France has reached out to Muslim voters they believe might ignore the party’s nativism in order to appreciate its emphasis on family values.

Most of this book’s limitations are methodological. Taras is unable to provide a comprehensive comparison of public opinion in Western and Eastern Europe because he relies upon secondary analysis of survey data that is not collected consistently across regions. Admitting the limitations of survey research, Taras presents content analysis of recent novels about European identity as an alternative. But these texts are hardly the “bottom-up” representation of identity Taras wants them to be. Can we be confident, for instance, that the Russian-French novelist Andreï Makine captures public fear of the infamous Polish plumber? Likewise, does Mircea Cartarescu’s international upbringing qualify him to explain prejudice towards national minorities in Romania?

In trying to discriminate between “top down” and “bottom up” explanations of identity, Taras also ignores the meso-level. He hints that far-right parties have capitalized on public backlash to elite discourse in both regions. But previous research suggests the rise of the far right has only strengthened the cosmopolitan commitments of centrist parties. Taras also ignores the social movements credited by previous studies for the uneven dissemination of anti-racist discourse between Western and Eastern Europe. Finally, there is no discussion of the media, which is of interest not only because of its tendency to amplify extremist voices, but more importantly the separate histories of freedom of speech in the two regions.

Overall, this book is a welcome attempt to create interdisciplinary dialogue on European integration and xenophobia. But Taras’s noble attempt to unite the tribes studying these issues may not yet convince them of their shared fate. Still, this book provides an important roadmap for future interdisciplinary experiments, and a highly accessible overview of the European Union suitable for introductory courses on supra-national governance and immigration.

Immigrant Integration in Quebec

Several days ago I had the pleasure of commenting on Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor's excellent report on immigrant integration in Quebec in Harvard's Tsai Auditorium. The case is unique, since Quebec's integration policy legitimates its self-determination vis-a-vis the rest of Canada. The report focuses on the policy of "reasonable accommodation" which the state uses to determine whether minorities face "undue hardship" in maintaining their cultural practices under existing immigration protocol. The result is a unique blend of pragmatist philosophy and sociology of inter-group relations which straddles academic and policy audiences quite successfully.

Since several people asked me to post my comments they are available below:

First, let me thank Gerard and Charles for inviting me to comment on their report this evening. Hopefully, they will accommodate my criticism as patiently and carefully as they have diagnosed the “crisis of perception” in Quebec.

As the report notes, Quebec is not the only Western democracy struggling to create social cohesion between natives and newcomers. To this conversation I bring a panoramic perspective of Europe’s “philosophies of integration,” and Britain in particular. While I agree with Gerard and Charles’ conclusion that Quebec is not as deeply divided as its European relatives, I fear we may have only witnessed the awkward “teenage years” of the debate about reasonable accommodation. Therefore, Quebec may still have much to learn from its Aunt France, where the suppression of the debate about accommodation has been blamed for “ethnic” riots in the suburbs; or its distant uncle Britain, where a particularly generous model of accommodation has been accused of facilitating “home-grown” terror.

My comments will focus on Quebec’s “Inter-cultural” model, which is distinct from traditional forms of multiculturalism in that it demands cross-cultural interaction as well as cross-cultural tolerance. According to the authors, the promise of Interculturalism has not yet been fully realized in Quebec. Indeed, Gerard and Charles attribute the “crisis of perception” to a lack of contact between natives and newcomers. Because it is my task to be provocative, I want to question this conclusion along three lines. First, I will argue that only certain types of inter-group contact are likely to reduce prejudice. Second, I will discuss the limitations of the institutions that shape prejudice in the absence of such contact. And finally, I will argue that government attempts to mediate inter-group contact can actually decrease social cohesion if not properly designed and executed.

The “contact” hypothesis suggests stereotypes and misunderstandings are amplified like a children’s game of “telephone.” Such distortions can only be corrected through meaningful interaction between majority and minority groups that disproves misconceptions. The Bouchard-Taylor Report describes a number of factors that have prevented meaningful contact between natives and newcomers in recent years. Among them, 1) residential segregation; 2) the decreasing number of immigrants fluent in French; and 3) a general decline in civic life that began even before immigrants arrived.

But we must be careful not to romanticize contact theory. It was designed long ago to explain a unique system of American race relations where inter-group boundaries were clearly defined—and even codified by law. In contrast, anthropologist Steven Vertovec might describe Quebec as a society characterized by “superdiversity.” With more than 100 religions, languages, and countries represented in Montreal alone, it is no surprise that Quebecers struggle to define the boundaries of “us” and “them.” And yet certain groups—particularly Muslims—continue to be placed firmly outside the collective project despite their remarkable diversity. How can this be?

The answer, it seems, is that most natives and newcomers encounter one another through virtual contact. While the report is careful not to blame media exclusively for the accommodation crisis, it provides little explanation of why media continues to get the story wrong. One factor is that certain immigrant groups have greater capacity to defend their collective identity than others. Precisely because of their diversity, Muslims have less capacity than other immigrant groups. Yet the central principle of unity in Islam gives marginal groups a sense of legitimacy to speak on behalf of the entire religion. In times of crisis, media is inevitably drawn toward a “minority of the worst,” not only because of its urgent need for information, but also because the “moderate majority” is unorganized.

Why is the moderate majority unorganized? Many immigrants—particularly those who escaped totalitarian regimes—view the media as an extension of the state. This has had two unfortunate consequences in many European countries. First, many immigrants consider views expressed in the media as the views of the state; and second, many immigrants do not engage the media for fear of persecution by the state. The result is that a minority of immigrants angrily react to the media in order to challenge the state, and their anger attracts further media attention in turn. Meanwhile, those immigrants with more moderate views are justifiably fearful that speaking to the media will attract unwanted attention from the state. Indeed, many immigrants with moderate views escaped states that persecuted them for such views. This process might explain the media frenzy surrounding Imam Said Jaziri, whose views appear completely disconnected with the broader Muslim community in Quebec.

So can states control the “virtual contact” produced by the media? Unfortunately, media is necessarily skeptical of states’ attempts to manipulate collective identity. Testifying before a government hearing on multiculturalism, the Editor of a prominent British newspaper expressed the frustration of his industry: The British Secret Service, he said, “circulates disinformation about…individuals… being arrested by labeling them as an Al-Qaeda cell. Then,… journalists publish the information…implying…they had investigated the matter... Then the Government cites the mass media reports as evidence of a terrorist threat and as evidence of public concern, which the Government itself has encouraged.” In other words, media is forced to discriminate between representations of collective identity produced by the state and immigrants themselves with little time to conduct the research necessary to adjudicate between the two. The result is that Quebecers will almost always receive imperfect information about immigrants.

But let us not be too quick to blame stereotypes on the inevitable distortion of immigrants in the media. As Herbert Blumer argued many years ago, stereotypes also protect certain privileges attached to majority group status. Now that overt racism has been stigmatized, it has been replaced by symbolic forms of racism based on language or culture. This “new nativism” might explain the case of Herouxville, a remote town in Quebec which vowed not to entertain accommodation requests despite having no immigrant population of its own. Surely this gesture was not simply the product of misinformation about immigrants, but an indication that the townspeople feared they had something to lose.

Such feelings of threat may only increase in the midst of the deepening economic crisis. We have already seen a backlash in Spain, where the government has offered 10,000 Euros to immigrants willing to leave the country as soon as possible. And last week’s “ethnic strikes” in Britain, will probably reignite the old refrain “British jobs for British people.”

So what should states do? First, let me give an example of what states should not do. In early 2001, the British government produced a document not unlike the Bouchard-Taylor report that explained violent riots in its Northern cities using contact theory. The Home Office subsequently invented a remarkable “community cohesion” program that regularly measured the state of social capital in British municipalities using public opinion surveys. They even dispatched “pathfinder teams” to create social capital in “problem areas” by facilitating neighborhood meetings and events.

The well-intentioned policy has produced no tangible results. To the contrary, three of the young men who attacked London on July 7th, 2005 lived in a neighborhood with one of the highest levels of social capital in the whole country. Even more inconsistent with the contact hypothesis was the revelation that the young men were avid cricket players, social workers, and supporters of the famous soccer team Manchester United.

Surely, Quebec does not face the same challenges currently crippling Britain. I remain unconvinced, however, that the Bouchard-Taylor Commission has resolved the accommodation crisis in and of itself. While I cannot disagree that many people benefitted from the numerous public meetings facilitated by the Commission, I am deeply concerned about those who did not attend these meetings. In Britain, those who do not attend community cohesion meetings are precisely the ones most likely to benefit from meaningful contact with other ethnic groups. Many of these people already feel oppressed by the state because of their class, and therefore see little incentive to participate in uncomfortable discussions where they may be accused of racism. In short, they do not join the debate because they think the terms of the discussion require them to forfeit the already fragile privileges attached to their status.

To convince these people that “dialogue makes a difference,” Quebec must eradicate the metaphor of a “slippery slope” of cultural relativism. An appealing alternative, I believe, is for Quebec to promote itself as a web of ethnic groups. This metaphor takes its inspiration from Georg Simmel, who defined identity as the unique combination of group affiliations. The web metaphor underscores the reality of interconnectedness, but also the centrality of French Canadian identity. Instead of balancing group interests, the web provides incentives for entrepreneurs who bridge the weakest parts of the web. It also acknowledges that differences between immigrants themselves threaten the integrity of the entire web. Consider, for instance, that Hindus are responsible for most hate crimes against Muslims in Canada; or that Muslims commit the majority of hate crimes against Jews in France.

In closing, the web metaphor might convince Quebecers that collective identity is not only about shared values, but more importantly a sense of shared fate.

Anti-Americanism

Unimpressed by AJS or ASR from time to time? Wonder how an article with glaring methodological errors made it to the top, or shrug helplessly when your work is misquoted in our flagship journals? Economist John Ioannidis has an explanation.

The theory of the “winner’s curse” predicts the highest bidder in an auction has likely paid too much. The “true” value of the item being auctioned is closest to the period where the greatest number of bids are made. And so it is for journal articles, according to Ioannidis. In their eagerness to publish cutting edge research, Editors routinely sacrifice standards of replicability necessary for robust scientific findings. Because cutting-edge fields are usually smaller than other parts of the discipline, Editors are often left without a choice in the matter. Cutting edge fields are also characterized by greater flexibility in research designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes, of which there is little consensus within such tiny academic tribes.

Analyzing a series of popular articles in medical journals with more than 1,000 citations, Ioannidis finds that most “breakthrough” theories are refuted within a few years time. To make matters worse, once cutting-edge theories become widely accepted, Ionnidis finds that most subsequent studies are simply reflections of the prevailing bias. Because flagship journals are read more frequently than others, these errors are seldom corrected within the mainstream of academic fields.

A counter-argument can be made for the very visibility of flagship journals creating increased imperative for replication and scholarly oversight. Still, if these critical errors are not corrected in high circulation journals, the danger persists that false findings will remain seminal references in a given literature.

So does this apply to sociology? Setting aside tired questions about the balkanization of the discipline, I do not believe Ionnidis’ logic holds for our field—or at least cultural sociology. Insofar as we are interested in uncovering the relationships between actors that shape the variables of interest for other fields, we avoid the sub rosa paradox. Yet how often are “process-models” replicated? Surely well-farmed network data has produced breakthrough findings that were later refuted with more sophisticated methods.

But what of our many qualitative studies? Here, we rarely even make our data publicly available. Nor do we replicate our instruments across time and space, leaving a long parade of graduate students to question the foundation of the research question, instead of the findings themselves. And how can we blame them? In a market with greater returns for marketability than meta-analysis, will cultural sociology go the way of cultural studies?

Obama Ignorance Crosses Party Lines

Trolling through public opinion data this morning I came across this fascinating table from a recent Pew Survey. Apparently, equal numberes of Democrats and Republicans mistakenly identified Obama as a Muslim! Further details about the complexity of American ignorance (regardless of party) can be found here. This is either: a) evidence of the pitfalls of response rates below 30%; or b) a sorely needed reason to cancel my subscription to the New Yorker. We may also have George Stephanopoulos to blame.

Instant Lit. Review

ISI Web of Science has released a beta "Citation Map" feature which graphically displays all references in a given article as well as subsequent citations of the same article. The picture to the left is a screenshot of Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman's AJS article "Culture in Interaction." The left side of the ellipses contains all citations made by the authors and the right side is all articles in which they are subsequently cited. The unique feature of ISI is that one can click on any reference in the map and pull up the full citation record (and create separate maps for this citation).

Identity Goes to Work: "Bringing Coal to Coalville"

At a recent conference in the idyllic countryside of Manchester England— birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and the original meeting place of Marx and Engels— I had the pleasure of meeting Nobel Laureate George Akerlof. In an act of true academic courage, the economist presented a paper on identity to an audience of sociologists and social psychologists. Having seen the title of his talk, a colleague and I predicted a reincarnation of the rational choice model of identity. What we witnessed, however, was much more intriguing. Akerlof spent the better part of four years attending graduate courses on symbolic interactionism, ethnography, and immigration at Berkeley. The result is an elegant—if entirely unsubstantiated—model of identity (Published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics) that models the “definition of the situation” as a utility function that is not constrained by the assumption of perfect information among agents in a given system. Akerlof and co-author accomplish this by defining the situation as the product of an individual’s conception of all possible definitions—which result from interaction between individuals in a system that can be stratified according to structural dimensions such as inequality, segregation, and the like.

Akerlof humbly rejected much of the uninformed criticism of the audience—many of whom had overlooked the elegance of the model in addressing both the multidimensionality of identity and its situated/nested nature. Over dinner later that night, however, I was able to convince him that his model ignores two important dimensions of boundary-work: 1) the tendency of boundaries—or identity “dimensions” in his terminology—to take on meaning independent of interaction (as with the widespread stigmatization of race as a legitimate source of exclusion since 1945); and 2) the network theory of identity that allows one to model “identity entrepreneurship” in Harrison White’s terminology. Time permitting, I am hoping to write a brief piece with he and his co-author that adds block-modeling to their model based on simulations of “identity mutations.” In the meantime, I remain absolutely impressed by Akerlof’s self-described attempt to “bring coals to coalville,” which I believe may be more useful to those who are quick to dismiss him than they realize.

Sociologists of Knowledge, Unite!

New toys from the MIT Media Lab! This nifty picture is a "history-flow" visualization of edits to the Wikipedia entry for "Capitalism." Each parallelogram represents a unique sentence or paragraph. The 'Y' axis represents time. Therefore, the "wavy" lines represent periods where a particular claim was heavily contested by users, or-- sadly-- the U.S. government. The program uses Wikipedia "meta" data, which can be easily downloaded here.

Upon further investigation I discovered a lively literature on the social production of knowledge in Wikipedia. Needless to say, these folks couldn't spot A.N.T. in a pile of T.P.S. Reports. But should we sociologists care? After all, about 5% of Wikipedia users write 95% of the entries. Moreover, much of the edit history is coordinated by a cadre of computer scientists with an uncommon obsession with punctuation and grammar. Still, a quick glimpse at the data yielded a few promising controversies (including a four week battle about the proper definition of "terrorism."). In the end, this may be further evidence of my ongoing obsession with pretty pictures of social science.

In Memoriam: Mary Douglas

Mary Douglas, preeminent anthropologist of the late 20th century, died this year at 86. Within sociology, Douglas is most often remembered for Purity and Danger, a classic treatise on the maintenance of boundaries between social groups. Often overlooked, however, is her later work Risk and Culture, co-authored with political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. This book, which defined Douglas's intellectual trajectory in her late career, presaged Ulrich Beck’s work on risk by nearly a decade. In the few citations of the book in sociology today, the majority focus on Douglas and Wildavsky’s discussion of the mobilization of risk-consciousness by environmental movements. Among the more fascinating chapters of the book, however, is their analysis of the ways fear activates boundaries towards fringe groups at the margins of society. Douglas would later extend this line of thought from her early work on the Basai of Congo to the philosophy of Al Qaeda in recent years. This move mirrored her long-term interest in the abominations of Leviticus, which continue to interest biblical scholars to the present day.

Douglas’s key contribution was to show how taboo or “dirt” reflected the key role of classification in human groups. Above and beyond Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, however, Douglas introduced a new typology of “grid” and “group” with which to classify the function of classification in a wide range of societies. “Grid” refers to the amount of classification used to guide everyday behavior among different segments of society. A “Group” is therefore defined by the amount of classificatory force that holds people together. Societies with strong grids are hierarchical, whereas those with weak grids produce opportunism and entrepreneurship. Extremist groups exist where grid is strong but group is weak: “Enclavists have formed a group of like-minded friends who reject the rankings, formalities and inequalities of the outside society.” Hence, Douglas interpreted the motivation of Al Qaeda in symbolic—not instrumentalist—terms.