Darwin's Evolutionary Context

Last night David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin gave a lecture at Centre. His book was read by all the first-year students. This is Darwin year for two reasons - the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

I had known that Darwin had the basic idea of evolution through natural selection long before he published it. I had not really processed, though, just when he had his big idea. Darwin's notebooks show that it was 1838 that he had his big intellectual breakthrough. This is right in the middle of founding era of sociology.

1827 August Comte coins the term "sociology" and articulates the Law of the Three Stages of scientific evolution.

1838 Darwin conceives biological evolution by natural selection.

1848 Marx and Engels publish "The Communist Manifesto" articulating the theory of social evolution through struggle over the means of production.

It was only in 1859 that Darwin finally published the book that made "evolution" a term we think of primarily in biological terms. We are still living with the legacy, though, of the several kinds of evolutionary ideas, biological and social, in sociology. In general, the social sciences turned away from evolutionary theories just as biology was turning toward them. Now that biology is being re-incorporated into social science (especially in family studies), we may see a new turn in sociological thinking on evolution. Or a new reaction.

"Fireproof" is a Decent Marriage Movie

"Fireproof" is about a couple on the brink of divorce working back to real love and respect for one another. It is explicitly evangelical and a little clunky. But its heart is in the right place. It gets Southern evangelical culture right (it is set in Albany, GA). I particularly liked the parallel complaints that husband and wife made to their friends about how the spouse was the real problem because he/she did not give the complainant enough respect.

"Fireproof" has been the talk of the pro-marriage circuit this year because it shows in some detail what steps and what changes a couple who want to save their marriage can take to get on the right track. And the happy ending teared me up, even if it was a little cheesy.

On "Cellphones, Texts, and Lovers"

David Brooks has an interesting column on the way some people use cellphones and texting to create a fluid market in sexual hookups. The data come from New York magazine's sex diaries, submitted by readers.

Brooks' main point is that in courtship in days gone by social institutions provided a set of "guardrails" to help people sensibly get from short-term attraction to long-term commitment. He concludes that it is a loss that young people today do not have such guardrails.

I mostly agree with Brooks. I disagree on two points of emphasis.

First, most young people who court in school, with friends around and families in consulting distance, do in fact have help and guardrails. Some (not most) engage in hookups, especially in the first flush of freedom from home. But most leave that behind when looking for a serious mate.

Second, I don't think the sex diarists submitting their sad erotic adventures to New York magazine readers are young people courting. I think they are likely to be the people who are left over after the rest of their cohort finished their serious courtships, guardrails and all. They are left over, in part, because they did not court when they had the social structure to support them, but instead approached sex as just another way to spend the evening, disconnected from love, marriage, and parenthood.

Soldiers Understand Commitment, Marry Younger

Rev. Charles Rush has a wonderful story of the brief visit of his son and daughter-in-law, both soldiers, home from Afghanistan just long enough to get married.

Young Rush was the first of his siblings and friends, all elite college students and graduates, to get married. Rev. Rush made this striking observation:

And in the college world his friends inhabit, especially the fraternity world, marriage is not exactly at the top of everyone’s list.

In the world of the enlisted men and women, however, a premium is placed on loyalty and steadfast support, and this translates into a high rate of marriage, even among young people who are only in their late teens and early 20s.

Our birthrate is so low, especially among the educated classes, in part because we are delaying marriage longer and longer. One unexpected effect of this war may be to reduce the marriage age in at least one sector of the younger generation.

Alice Rossi, R.I.P.

Alice Rossi, a leading family sociologist, died this week at 87. She was criticized from the right in the '60s for proposing sexual equality. She was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women. In later years she was criticized from the left for allowing that there are some important biological differences between men and women. While not a centrist, she came closer toward the middle on the sex and gender question than most feminist sociologists of her generation.

This picture is from her term as president of the American Sociological Association in 1983.

Best Sunday News: The House Passes Health Care

Our sermon this morning was on approaching life with generosity because God is in charge, versus approaching life with fear because there's not enough. The immediate context of this sermon is stewardship season, when church members make their pledges for the coming year. Most church people are probably hearing similar sermons now.

I heard this sermon in the larger context of the vote yesterday in the House of Representatives that the richest nation in the history of the world can afford to make sure every citizen has basic health care.

God is good.

The Funniest Thing I Saw This Week

Jon Stewart doing Glenn Beck.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

"Synagogue" is Gentile for Shul

The Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity by Sarah Bunin Benor and Steven M. Cohen has some wonderful findings. The main trend is that religiously involved younger Jews are using more distinctively Jewish terms, and are shifting from Yiddish to Hebrew terms.

One development that surprised me is that "synagogue" is not the favored term for Jewish house of worship by any group of American Jews. Reform Jews favor "temple" (50%), while all other denominations favor "shul": Reconstructionist (59%), Conservative (68%), Modern Orthodox (94%), Orthodox (94%), Black Hat (92%).

So what does "synagogue" mean now? For Jews of all denominations, it is the word used when talking to gentiles (80%) or non-observant Jews (62%).

The survey, which was spread virally through the internet, included many non-Jews and non-New Yorkers (including me and my students). They found that the gentiles who use distinctive Jewish words or constructions - "kvetch" or "I don't know from that" - were more likely to have Jewish friends, live in New York, or both.

One fascinating minor puzzle is that gay and lesbian gentiles are more likely to use distinctive Jewish words than heterosexual gentiles are. For example, 64% of gay men say "schmutz" (dirt), vs. only 50% of heterosexual gentile men. This pattern is not found among Jews.

There is much more in this rich study.

Involved Fathers are Good; Fathers and Mothers Working Together Are Better

Laurie Tarkan has a fine article in the New York Times on a nifty new study by the Cowans and the Pruetts (long-time family researchers) comparing a control group, a father-training group, and a couple-training group. The kids of the trained fathers came out better than the controls, but the kids of the trained couples came out better still.

Levi-Strauss, R.I.P.

Eminent anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss died at 100.

My favorite Levi-Strauss story is what happened when he gave a speech at a dinner honoring anthropological pioneer Franz Boas.

Boas died.

This has always struck me as a symbolic handoff.

I don't know who was speaking when Levi-Strauss died.

Go Green, Go Sterile?

British commentator Alex Renton is promoting the idea that the British should have fewer children to reduce the nation's carbon footprint.

This way of looking at children is so backwards that I find it viscerally distressing. Children are not a burden on the economy and the environment. Children are what the economy and the human part of the environment are for.

I am in favor of taking what steps we can and should to improve the environment for future generations. But those changes would lose much of their point if we sacrificed the future generations, too.

Have a Witty Halloween

Deskilling and Feminizing an Occupation

In our Social Structure class we are considering Barbara Reskin's "Labor Markets as Queues" and Warren Farrell's Why Men Earn More.

Reskin notes that an occupation draws more women when it is "deskilled." This also leads to pay going down. She treats this as evidence of discrimination against women.

Farrell notes that an occupation draws more women when the task is made easier and working conditions get better. This also leads to pay going down. He treats this as evidence of what happens when the supply exceeds the demand for a job.

In general, Reskin treats lower women's wages as discrimination against women, even though it costs employers more to hire men at higher wages.

Farrell points out that if employers could really get the same work from women, or any kind of workers, for lower wages, the employers would hire them. If it is not illegal to hire from the less-likely group, then some employers will break ranks with custom to save money and reap a competitive advantage.

Of Course Monogamy is Realistic - It is What Most Married People Have Done Through Human History

The perennial hope of the self-indulgent, especially, rich, self-indulgent men, that some moral authority will let them have all the benefits of marriage while fooling around is being fed by "science" again. But monogamy, the human norm through all times and places, is not about to fade away. Monogamy is not "unrealistic"; it is just a challenge.

Fifteen

The excellent Taylor Swift has a good new song that will do more good than an abstinence-only sex ed class:



You take a deep breath and you walk through the doors
It's the morning of your very first day
And you say hi to your friends you ain't seen in a while
Try and stay out of everybody's way

It's your freshman year and you're gonna be here
For the next four years in this town
Hoping one of those senior boys will wink at you and say
"You know, I haven't seen you around before"

'Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them
And when you're fifteen feeling like there's nothing to figure out
Well, count to ten, take it in
This is life before you know who you're gonna be
Fifteen

You sit in class next to a redhead named Abigail
And soon enough you're best friends
Laughing at the other girls who think they're so cool
We'll be outta here as soon as we can

And then you're on your very first date and he's got a car
And you're feeling like flying
And you're momma's waiting up and you're thinking he's the one
And you're dancing 'round your room when the night ends
When the night ends

'Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them
When you're fifteen and your first kiss
Makes your head spin 'round
But in your life you'll do things greater than
Dating the boy on the football team
But I didn't know it at fifteen

When all you wanted was to be wanted
Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now

Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday
But I realized some bigger dreams of mine
And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy
Who changed his mind and we both cried

'Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them
And when you're fifteen, don't forget to look before you fall
I've found time can heal most anything
And you just might find who you're supposed to be
I didn't know who I was supposed to be at fifteen

Your very first day
Take a deep breath girl
Take a deep breath as you walk through the doors

Thanks to Smartmarriage for the alert

Serial Divorceniks Ruin the Divorce Rate for Us All.

Ten percent of Arkansans have been married 3 times or more. Five percent of all Americans have been married that much.

I think that explains the famous "50% divorce rate," which is puzzling since most marrieds never divorce. The small numbers of serial divorceniks do it so often that they bring everyone's average down to what seems like a crap shoot.

This reminds me of the solution to the statistical puzzle of the higher intercourse rate of men than women. Gay men account for a small portion of the gap. A bigger part of the gap is closed by a small number of women who have sex with many men - that is, prostitutes.

I think it would be helpful to calculate two divorce rates, one for all marrieds, and one for all marrieds except those who have divorced multiple times.

D.C. Marriage Rate Is Low Because People Leave the City When They Marry

The marriage rate in the District of Columbia is half that of the average of states - a bit over a quarter, vs. a bit over half, of all people. Newsweek blogger Katie Connolly got the explanation mostly right, but her analysis was overshadowed by her comment that D.C. is segregated by apartheid.

Connolly cited three factors that reduce the marriage rate in Washington, D.C. Most of the city residents are African American, and a high proportion of them are poor, the two groups with the lowest marriage rates in America. Second, whites who live in the city are disproportionately highly educated young, Democratic, and women - three groups who do marry, but marry late. Third, the homosexual population of D.C., at about 8%, is double the proportion you would find in a state.

The main reason the D.C. marriage rate is low, which Connolly cites but does not lean on as the main reason, is that it is a city, and a poor one at that. When black D.C. residents marry, have children, and start to move up in class, they leave the city for the suburbs, especially Prince Georges County, MD, which probably has the largest black middle class of any county in America. When white yuppies from all over come to Washington to work on public policy they find a fine city to live and work in - until you have children. Then they move to the suburbs.

Or, if you are really fortunate, and Mrs. G. and I were, you move to Danville, KY to raise your kids.

Happy Quasquibicentennial, Presbyterian Church of Danville

Today was our 225th birthday celebration. I got to teach the Sunday School version of all of that history in 50 minutes. That kind of class requires a great deal of compression.

Danville is in the center of Kentucky (that is why Centre College is so called). Kentucky is a border state. Churches in the border states have a strong reason to pursue a moderate course on divisive issues. And no issue was more divisive for the first two hundred years of the congregation's history than racial division. Kentucky was a slave state, and some members of the church were slaveholders. The leaders of the church, and the college they created, were abolitionists, even in the 18th century. They were moderate abolitionists, for gradualism and colonization. The church split in the 1850s, partly over abolition. It stayed split through the long years of Jim Crow segregation. After the Second World War, though, the old division was largely healed among the Presbyterians of Danville. After several false starts, the two congregations reunited in the 1960s, well before the national denominations did.

The Presbyterian Church of Danville began in 1784. The northern and southern Presbyterians finally caught up with our congregation and reunited in 1983. Racism is far from over in America, and there are no doubt pockets of it still in the Presbtyerian Church (U.S.A.). But the spirit of racism is gone. The reunion of the northern and southern branches sealed that change.

I date the new era of the Presbyterian Church of Danville, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), from that date. Happy 25th, Presbyterians!

Fun for Word Nerds: The Fake AP Stylebook

'Hafta' should be avoided, as it might offend the anti-globalization contingent.

If accuracy / Is what you crave / Then you should call it / Myanmar Shave

Actually, "bloviate" has no meaning at all. The word was just a prank on Aristotle that took on a life of its own.

And so forth, and so forth. Enjoy.

Bourdieu and Passeron 5: The Pedagogocratic Ambition

This week I will be blogging on Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society, which we are studying in my macrosociological theory class.

The learned classes have “the pedagogocratic ambition of subjecting all acts of civil and political life to the moral magisterium of the University.”

They made up the word pedagogocratic. It is a lovely word.

It is not wrong to wish that smart people run society. What is wrong is being arrogant about being smart or educated. The moral magisterium of the University is properly one voice in the argument about how things should be run. I think it proper that it be one of the most influential voices. But pedagogocracy would not be superior to democracy, or more precisely, republicanism.