Reading Sociologically: Part 2

Following soft on the heels of the eponymous Part 1 (still very much available for your viewing and teaching pleasure) comes a second eclectic collection of short-but-sweet sociological readings cunningly labelled “Part 2”.

The Reluctant Robbers: Kron and McKorkle (1959)

Three American College students were talking one day about how easy it would be to rob a local bank, based on their observations about the general laxness of the security and how easy it would be to just walk in and remove a large bag of unguarded cash.

“At first the conversation was entirely confined to how easily criminals might manage to steal the money. Somehow it shifted to a personal basis: as to how easily we might get the money. This shift came so naturally that even the next morning we were unable to decide when and by whom the first vital remark had been made”.

As Korn and McKorkle subsequently note “What is interesting about the incident is that none of the participants was a criminal, that each was secretly opposed to the undertaking, and that all were personally disinterested in the goal. Why, then, did they do it?”.

The answer may surprise your students.

Hopefully.

The Saints and the Roughnecks: Chambliss (1973)

In this short illustration of the power of selective perception and labelling, Chambliss details the activities of two small groups of young, high school age, men.

The Saints “Eight promising young men of good, stable, white upper-middle-class families, active

in school affairs, good pre-college students”, were, unnoticed by their parents, community residents and the police, “some of the most delinquent boys at Hanibal High School”.

As Chambliss observes “The Saints were constantly occupied with truancy, drinking, wild driving, petty theft and vandalism. Yet not one was officially arrested for any misdeed during the two years I observed them”.

In contrast, the Roughnecks –  “six lower-class white boys” were constantly in trouble with both the community and the police “even though their rate of delinquency was about equal with that of the Saints”.

What, Chambliss wondered, was the cause of this disparity?

How To Be A Man: tips from 1930s agony aunts: Cawthorne (2018)

Students are increasingly exposed to the idea that gender identities – particularly but not exclusively young, male identities – are “in crisis”. Young men, in particular, it’s argued are increasingly confused about what to means “to be a man”. Young women? Not so much. Patriarchal societies of whatever political stripe tend to have a much clearer concept of what women “should be” – although that’s not to say all women conform to these gender ideals.

Be that as it may, when looking at identity there’s a tendency for students to compare a highly decentred present with a rigidly centred past: to contrast “the past” where gender identities were socially-prescribed and which resulted in clear gender demarcations between men and women, with “the present” in which all such social prescriptions have been stripped away. While this, the argument goes, gives both men and women the freedom to construct gender in whatever way they see fit, it also results in significant levels of confusion about how to be male, female, both or indeed, neither. The fluidities of the present, as it were, are contrasted with the stabilities of the past.

While masculinity may or may not be “in crisis”, the main point here is that this leads to students falling into the trap of seeing “explanations” for this state of affairs being located in recent social changes (the Internet, social media, feminism, etc.). The problem here, of course, is that such an analysis assumes the past to be radically different to the present. As this short reading shows, such assumptions aren’t always valid – young men, in even the recent past, seem to have been similarly prone to confusion over how to “be men” as some, if not necessarily all, of their contemporary counterparts.

As an added bonus the reading questions contemporary assumptions about both family life and the nature of gender relationships within this group.

The Girl Hunt: Urban Nightlife and the Performance of Masculinity as Collective Activity: Grazian (2007)

Still on the theme of masculinity (and you thought I just threw these readings together randomly…), Grazian’s article uses the practice of “girl hunting” – “adolescent heterosexual men aggressively seeking out female sexual partners in nightclubs, bars, and other public arenas of

commercialized entertainment” to illustrate “the performative nature of contemporary flirtation rituals”.

Trust me, it’s a lot more interesting than I’ve made it sound and basically boils down to understanding three things:

First, how some young men “perform their interpretations of masculinity”. In other words, how they think society expects men to behave.

Second, it’s as much about impressing your peers as it is about hooking-up.

Finally, given most “girl hunts” tend to end in abject failure for the men concerned, it’s a collective activity in which young men get “to enjoy the social and psychological resources generated by group cohesion and dramaturgical teamwork” (Goffman 1959).

The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All: Gans (1971)

While the previous reading essentially adopts a neo-Functionalist perspective to explain some forms of contemporary sexual behaviour, Gans takes a more-traditional approach to the perspective when he lists “13 Functions of Poverty” that on the face of things, seem to benefit society.

The further you go down the list, however, the more students will hopefully start to realise that not only is he mocking this general perspective, he is demonstrating how it can be criticised. When thinking about “the functions of behaviour” the obvious question to ask is: “functional to whom?”. In this instance the answer is clearly “not the poor” and this points to a well-disguised weakness of functionalist arguments.

As he notes, “many of the functions served by the poor could be replaced if poverty were eliminated, but almost always at higher costs to others, particularly more affluent others”.

These behaviours, in other words, are not “functional for society” but rather for a very small, specific, affluent section of society…