Category: sociology

Categories
General post-feminist problems privilege sociology

Everyday Cart-ographies: Navigating the Tricky Terrain of the Grocery Store

Badvertising: None of these mofos are "ripe"
Badvertising: None of these mofos are “ripe”

*The pun in the title is sick (even though the metaphor isn’t perfect), so please get it. 

Nothing is more fascinating to me than the mundane activities of (my) everyday life.

Identifying, thinking about and ultimately navigating the unspoken, implied social rules in any given context is something that I find challenging, but also generally hilarious.

Since becoming a full-on grown up, one of the most challenging activities that I carry-out on a pretty much every-other-daily basis is grocery shopping. Despite all of this very regular practice, I am still incapable of conducting myself like successfully socialized human being while shopping for food: there elements of the entire experience that I simply do not understand. The following (non exhaustive) list outlines the largest sources of my grocery shopping confusion and frustration:

1. Carts: I hate carts. I hate them even more when I have to somehow locate a quarter to release one from a chain of them– so not only do I have to grocery shop; I now have to emotionally reconcile the fact that the grocery store doesn’t trust me not to steal the cart, which as I said, I hate. I almost always end up opting for a hand basket — if I actually manage to find one. Committing to a cart is similar to how it feels to switch from a cool sporty, agile car, to a clunky, but practical mini-van. No one feels hip when they’re pushing a cart, but sometimes your circumstances call for it. The hand basket often works out very poorly for me, because after a few minutes, it gets so heavy that I have to use both hands to carry it. That said, when I do end up with a cart (I usually cave if I have to buy a case of pop), I almost always find myself in/starting a cart jam. I get confused about who has the right of way, and question why we don’t have turn signals or brake lights, or hazard lights (because sometimes you just have to make an emergency stop). It’s always mayhem, and I end with major aisle rage.

2. Avocados: If you want to eat one today, you better remember to buy one 3 days ago.

3. I don’t know where anything is: Where is the sriracha? Is it in the (problematically labelled) ‘Foods of the World’ aisle? Isn’t all food “of this world”? Or is it with the condiments? Where do I find a meat thermometer? What about chapstick? Sundried tomatoes? Peanut sauce is always elusive. I have often googled “which aisle would _______ likely be found in a grocery store?” This works never.  I call for the implementation of a Dewey Decimal-like system, but for food. It just makes sense.

4. The Checkout Process: This really comes down to the cart again. When it is finally almost over and I get in line, and the person in front of me places the conveyor belt relay baton/grocery divider on the belt (do this, it’s rude not to), I have to make a decision: When I ultimately enter the narrow magazine, gum and candy bar-lined lane, do I stay behind my cart, or do I get in front of the cart, and awkwardly pull it? Being in front feels and looks odd, but it is much more efficient in terms of loading the groceries. I’ve actually asked cashiers what they recommend, and the consensus is that it is a very strange question.

5. Bags: I have a stash of reusable bags. We all do. But, I forget them 70% of the time, or I didn’t bring enough. When it comes time, and the cashier asks if I need to buy bags, my guilt and shame almost always lead me to proudly say “no”. It is at this point that I shove as much of the small items in my purse as possible (most will stay lost in there indefinitely), and pile the bigger items on  top of each other until they hit eye level. This leads to the worst walk across the parking lot ever, and I feel strangely raw and exposed, while peering out over my 50 pack of generic brand tampons, trying to find the car.

This is but one of the seemingly mundane, routine activities that leave me bewildered. There are plenty of layers to this, perhaps the most obvious being the gendered element of grocery shopping (like other unpaid work). I was, and continue to be a feminist. But, in my 20s, I thought that I’d be living this awesome, radical and subversive life, where I would be smashing the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy on the reg. Here I am in my 30s, for a billion different structural and personal reasons, leading a really, hegemonically white feminine suburban life, and I’m not complaining because I am privileged, but it wasn’t what I prepared for.

Super markets are kind of a metaphor for my life course: unpredictable, difficult to prepare for, and sometimes a little overwhelming…

and really not scary at all, but becomes that way when I’ve over thought it, and turned it into a whole thing, and probably I should just chill out. 

Categories
education General perspectives sociology

A Sociologist in a Strange Place: What I Wish I knew about ‘Going Corporate’

vincentadultman

It has been a year and a half since my last post, where I argued that folks with advanced liberal arts degrees (MAs and PhDs) had  a lot to offer “the business world”. I composed it while I was trying to transition into that space from academia. Months later (after many interviews and exhausting all of my social contacts), I ended up exactly where I thought that I wanted to be, in “business”.

I only managed to make it there for about 5 months.

Although I was doing reasonably well performance wise, I decided to leave because I was basically a fish out of water… or at least a fish in really unfamiliar water, where I didn’t know any of the other fish.

Also, I was doing far too much bathroom crying.

To be clear, I still stand by what I argued in May of 2014. We (liberal arts academics) do have plenty to offer, and perhaps if I had ‘toughed it out’, I would have reached a point where I came to define my experience as ‘successful’. That said, there are a few things that I wish I knew before immersing myself in a corporate environment. These are anecdotal, so they are not necessarily generalizable.

But, for what it is worth, here they are:

You will automatically perform an involuntary institutional ethnography, and nobody will care about your findings.  Coming from Sociology, I immediately problematized my new environment. Within the first month, I had critically taken account of the power relations of all the players, and the processes. I was full of recommendations to make the space more productive and egalitarian.

When I shared my insights with selective new colleagues, they were mostly incredulous. Either they had already had the same insights, and felt I was precociously naive about the power that employees might have to alter the corporate structure, or they felt that I was complain-y, ungrateful or bratty.

Although not always the case, being critical of your institutional environment was rewarded in academia. At the very least, you would have support from colleagues or fellow grad students. And, when enough people agreed with you, you went on strike.

Speaking of which…

Don’t even joke about unionizing. Your colleagues will become immediately uncomfortable.

You cannot take it for granted that your colleagues share (or are even sympathetic to) your politics. I learned this when I threw down (what I thought) was a clever dig at the (then) Harper government.

It was not well received.

That was the first time I met conservatives (irl)  who were under the age of 40. I’d heard of them, and I knew that they existed, but I had never actually (knowingly) met one.

It was a defining moment. You never know an implicit social rule, until you violate that rule. Coming from academia, especially in Toronto, I had never encountered a colleague that leaned to the right. Where I came from, overt irreverence towards Harper was commonplace, and not contentious in the least.

There’s so much that I could say about this– the politics. But, it is worthy a distinct post.

Language use is shockingly different. What is taboo in scholarly settings, is fair game in business contexts, and vice-a-versa. You may hear colleagues, and superiors use words like “chick” or “broad” to describe a woman. I once heard a colleague refer to someone’s “gay lover” (a term I haven’t encountered since I had watched Phil Donahue in the 90s). To me, it was shocking to be exposed to these words in a professional context. It would have been unheard of with my former colleagues.

The same rang true for me: references to “my partner” were met with scepticism from my new workmates (who correctly read me as straight and cis). Years ago, when I started the MA program, I learned to stop saying “boyfriend” when I spoke of my S.O. and use “partner” instead. It was considered to be more inclusive, and thus professional considering the context. This was one of the ways that going corporate was undoing my previous professional socialization processes.

There are also “business buzzwords”, like “buy-in”, “circle-back”, “best-practice” and “scalable”, that I never quite got used to. And imho they are mostly bullshit.

These were just a few of the many lessons I learned during my career transition. Although it was not a good fit for me, I was grateful to have the opportunity to experience a sample tasting of the world of business. Even though they were different from me, in ways that I wasn’t used to, I liked them.  And, the experience opened my mind, ultimately forcing me to flex my atrophying sociological muscles. Since then, my career has been defined by “hustling”, like many other Sociologists Outside the Academy (SOAs).

I’m more optimistic about career outside academia, because I am increasingly becoming aware of a growing number of people in my position. As a friend recently reminded me, we are smart, creative, and we have place. And if we can’t find that space, we will have find a way to create one.  

 

Categories
'race' privilege sociology

What the Fuck are we Supposed to dress up as on Halloween?

I feel a little uncomfortable with my last post for a few different reasons.  Not the least of which was a message I received from a really smart friend of mine. He made me realize that my last post really didn’t contain *my* voice. In order to explain what was missing from my analysis of ‘race’ and appropriation, I’d like to talk a little about humour.

I have a lot to say about humour. In fact, I’ve said many times that a good comedian is a good sociologist; they are able to direct our attention to the absurdities of the taken-for-granted social world, and reframe in hilarious and relatable ways what we typically think of as mundane. An excellent comedian, in my opinion, is able to do this, while revealing something insightful politically. That is the sociologist in me, who believes that if you’re going to represent the taken-for-granted world, you should have something to say about it, and whatever you have to say should be a critique of the status quo and lend support to those who hold less political power.  I know, hilarious, right?

This whole issue was highlighted about two years ago when Daniel Tosh made a rape joke at his show. He was rightfully criticized by feminists, and good humans in general. The ‘feminist consensus’ (haha… that’s like the most oxymoronical oxymoron ever) around rape jokes at the time is that ‘rape is never funny’, so don’t joke about rape. I was always uncomfortable with this rigid, and quite frankly uncritical stance. And as it turns out, so were other feminists.  Perhaps some rape based jokes are funny, especially those that that are constructed in a way that challenge the rapist, and do not occur at the expense of (potential) rape victims.  For example, Jessie Kahnweiler’s “Meet my Rapist” is powerful example of a rape victim using humour and irreverence to challenge rape culture.  This is a great use of humour.

In response to my last post, my friend also suggested that Halloween is not just about mischief and mockery, but for many others, it is about “wit and satire”. And the dude is right. The notion that ‘rape is never funny’, so all rape jokes are wrong, is just a facile, and logically flawed as saying that ‘racism is wrong’, so all costumes that implicate ‘race’ are wrong.   Both are logical fallacies, especially when we think about how ‘race’ based costumes, like rape jokes can be done responsibly.

The formula is simple: At whose expense is the joke being made? Are we being encouraged to laugh at those who already encounter societal oppression (rape victims, women, or racialized people) or those who currently benefit from the oppression (rapists, racism, white privilege or rape culture)? In being encouraged to see the absurdity of privilege, the status quo is challenged, and therefore your joke or costume is progressive. Although I’m quite positive that it is not that simple.

For example, as my friend suggests, what about a white person using their body to depict “Paula Deen in Blackface?” Who would we be laughing at here? Clearly the intention would be a humourous critique of Paula Deen’s own brand of Showboatesque racism. That said, the effectiveness of irony and irreverence has just as much to do with the sophistication of the audience’s politics and awareness as it does the producer. Satirical humour requires and active audience to make sense of the performer’s intention. So, context would be important to consider.

Categories
'race' General privilege sociology

Memoirs of a (White Girl who dressed up as a) Geisha

White people like this time of year. We pick apples, wear sweaters and according to my facebook newsfeed, we visit pumpkin patches. For the most part, we are pretty happy.

That said, it is precisely this time of year that we are also likely to fuck up. Halloween, as many critical Internet dwellers have pointed out is a holiday associated with racism in the form of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation. There are plenty of photos available through social media depicting white folks dressed up a Mexican people, Arab people, Asian people and Black people. And there is so much evidence that this issue is not disappearing.

But, there are lots of whitesplainers  (like those quoted near the end of  this post) that are happy to smugly defend the practice of turning the racialized Other’s culture into a costume by reassuring those affected by the phenomenon that they are ‘taking themselves so seriously’, while others pull the “reverse racism” card arguing that it is actually racist to prevent white people from appropriating the cultural symbols of the ‘Other’, just because they’re white. I think that is definitely my favourite rebuttal. Yes, the implication is that resistance to colonialism is actually “reverse racism”. It takes a keen social scientific mind to spot that historical blind spot. Quick, some add “reverse racist” to Ghandi’s Wikipedia page.

To be clear, I think that it is irresponsible to dress up like someone from another culture. It is disrespectful, racist, and completely irreverent (and not irreverent in a funny way).  In fact, I feel pretty passionate about the whole thing. Whenever I teach in the fall semester, I like to discuss this issue, and assign an exercise where my students are encouraged to notice and critique racist (and sexist) elements of Halloween costumes.

But, despite my current politics regarding the matter, I have a confession; in 2003 my friend and I dressed up as Geishas. I had just finished reading Arthur Golden’s 1997 book, “Memoirs of a Geisha”, a book that would be impossible for me to get through today without squirming and cringing with feminist anti-imperial angst. But, at the time I liked the book, and my friend and I felt that the costume was appropriate, and perhaps even a little feminist.  Of course looking back, it was anything but.

Over the past few years, I have been actively trying to forget the whole thing, but this brand of lifecourse cognitive dissonance is persistent and embarrassing.  So, it is clearly something that has to be resolved. But, how does one repent for their imperial gaze? First off, whitesplainations are out of the question, because they are riddled with privilege, the denial of racism and colour blind racism. I’m also not going to simply apologize, because that isn’t productive or sincere either. Just ask Paula Deen.

I think that the best way to approach a mistake like this (and maybe ‘mistake’ isn’t the right word, as it sound too innocuous in the situation) is to recognize why I felt entitled to use (incorrectly) elements of other people’s culture, which I honestly knew nothing about (except for the ‘information’ I gleaned from some fictional account produced by some white dude).  It was my white privilege that uncritically drew me towards a “memoir” of a fictionalized Japanese woman written by an American male in the first place. It was my fascination with the culture of the Other that lead me to mimic rather than actually learn about Japanese culture and Japanese women. It was my white privilege that allowed me to go several years (which were spent in Masters and PhD programs… In Soci-fucking-ology) without thinking about my own role in cultural appropriation, and the exoticization of Asian women.

I have read about the problematics associated with identifying as an ally. For a long time, I felt that it was acceptable for a non-racialized person to call themselves an ally. I now see that this is indeed problematic. Especially considering that for quite a few of those years after 2003, I would not have hesitated to identify as an ally in terms of ‘race’ relations. And, obviously, I was not an ally, I was actively participating in the imperial gaze like a big jerk.

Categories
education sociology

Social Science and Democracy

I remember getting riled by the engineering and even the kinesiology students during my undergrad for taking sociology. They felt it was a waste of time, and even a bit of a cliche for a young woman to be in that program.   The social sciences have often been ridiculed, but recently one study funded by a large financial institution (CIBC) has provided social science haters with lots of ammunition, particularly when it comes to the return of investment on a degree. This study tells us that pursuing a degree in the Humanities or social science is basically pointless.  Students, instead should be opting to pursue careers in fields like business.

While I’m certainly not prepared to review the particular methods and the validity of the findings here, I think that we should be critical at a larger level. It is troubling to me that a powerful financial institution is producing research that explicitly deters people from entering the only programs that will formally introduce them to critical social discourse.  The social sciences, like History, Political Science, and Sociology provide students with ways to problematize major financial institutions and the subsequent wealth disparities that they perpetuate. This is extremely threatening to the status quo, which banks like CIBC are highly invested in.

That social sciences have a ‘low return on investment’ (if it is true) says nothing about the intrinsic value or applicability of the disciplines to current social conditions. Rather, it is a devaluing of the critical voices that emerge from these programs. This exchange between right wing business douche Kevin O’Leary and Chris Hedges is a perfect example of an attempt to silence such a social scientific critique of neoliberal economic hegemony.  The Humanities are clearly a threat to the institutions that hold power in our culture.

The thought of a society without the social sciences and Humanities quite frankly terrifies me. Dissent and the opportunity to thoughtfully develop it is crucial in a democracy. This not so subtle push towards a post-social science world is absolutely a threat to democracy.

Thanks for telling me about this Ryan!

Categories
girly-girl post-feminist problems sociology

On Love

Photo Credit: http://philleeeeep.tumblr.com/post/13784647854
Photo Credit: http://philleeeeep.tumblr.com/post/13784647854
Photo Credit: http://philleeeeep.tumblr.com/post/13784647854

There is no consensus when it comes to defining love. Poets, philosophers, scientists, and the writers of romantic comedies have put a great deal of effort into understanding why and how it happens. Despite their efforts, no one seems to be able to define, or explain it in a way that satisfies everyone.

My people (sociologists) would most likely talk about it as a social construction that carries with it great meaning in our culture. Then they would probably discuss how definitions and experiences of love vary according to time and space.  You would hear the words “context” and “problematic” a lot. Like a lot. One of us would suggest that it is a tool of the patriarchy, and another sociologist would agree with them, but also make a case that it is an invention of capitalism.

Sociologists aren’t very sentimental. In fact, they will with great pleasure de-romanticize love and any other human experiences that bring joy to people’s lives. They make wonderful friends during a breakup. Incidentally, they can also be pretty supportive when you’ve imbibed in any deviant behaviour, because by the end of the conversation, you will feel that the only things that you violated were a few arbitrary social norms.

But, I unlike my fellow sociologists, do believe in love in an organic and human way. While I don’t have a hard and fast definition, I can explain it…

Love is when you irrationally worry about your partner dying anytime you are apart from them. I know that I’m in love when he doesn’t text me back in a timely fashion, and I immediately assume that he is dead or near death. I know that I’m in love when I begin to work under the assumption that every time we part ways, it will be the last time I see him. For me, a key tell is when I opt to send texts like: “be safe” or “don’t forget to lock the door before you go to bed”, or “When was the last time you tested your smoke detectors?” instead of something sexy.

Naturally, I only feel that my love is reciprocated when I can detect a parallel brand of neurosis from him. I’ll often blatantly ask “Do you ever worry about me dying?” Until I’m satisfied that he is sufficiently irrational about my mortality, I feel my love to be unrequited.

I blame my family for this ridiculousness. Every time it rains or snows each and every one them sends a “drive safely, roads are slippery” text.

 

*I’ll never not think that feminist Ryan Gosling is wonderful. I worry about him.

via http://feministryangosling.tumblr.com/
via http://feministryangosling.tumblr.com/
Categories
'race' education perspectives privilege sociology

Teaching: Privilege and the Denial of Oppression

Whenever I teach intro sociology, I (for better or worse) always hit my students with the most controversial chapters in the first 3 weeks: ‘race’ and racism, gender and sexism, and social inequality. Bam! I do this for many political and pedagogical reasons which I won’t go into here.  But, the effect of this is usually pretty intense. My students tend to experience anger. This anger is either directed at their culture, but often times it is directed at me. I am, after all pointing out the flaws in their culture, showing them that it isn’t always fair, and despite our best efforts, hard work does not guarantee us success. This is a lot to handle. People like to see their social context as fair and just. So, I come up against a lot of resistance.

Learning, especially in the social sciences necessarily entails a level of discomfort. Only when we become uncomfortable with the frame through which we are accustomed to viewing our world through, will we consider changing that lens. This is one of the main goals in teaching sociology. We want to push our students towards seeing all of the taken for granted disparate power relations that operate in all of our social interactions (both micro and macro), our identities/roles and our social institutions.

I always expect a level of resistance.  But one particular form of it drives me bananas… “white people/men also suffer from discrimination… blah, blah, blah, reverse-racism, blah, blah, blah.” Ugh.

I was discussing the phenomenon of “driving while black” in Toronto where we have a racial profiling issue. This is not an issue simply dreamt up in the minds of bored lefties. Even Bill Fucking Blair acknowledges this issue. Yet, this empirical fact is refuted with statements like “My son is white, and he was pulled over the other day, so yeah.”  Not only is this argument illogical, but it reveals this desperation to ‘fight’ for the privileged group, and refute that the oppressed group is actually oppressed.  It’s about aligning oneself with the valued group.

So, I’ve prepped my lecture notes for next week. This one is about sexism. This particular group (43 women, who are 40+) is outspoken in their advocacy for privileged folks. So, in my discussion of feminism, I actually spend most of my time talking about what it can do *for men* (it can do a lot, btw). This is ridiculously ironic, and actually quite manipulative on my end. It is an attempt to get them to stop advocating for men, when I go on to point out that (white middle class) men have more power in our culture by virtue of their gender.

 I will inevitably, at one point this semester hear that “women rape men too” in an effort to degender a discussion of rape and rape culture. But, hopefully I’ll come up with a similar strategy.  

 

Categories
education sociology

Sociology is a discipline with a messy face

“That’s not fair” is one of the first concepts that toddlers learn and use to make sense of their worlds. Perhaps this is proof that a sense of justice is in some way ‘natural’. I normally would be extremely reluctant to claim that any human behavior is ‘natural’ (that’s the job of evolutionary psychologists), but in this case I feel comfortable making such a statement, because that’s what I would like to believe. Sure, the Hobbesians among us might see this tendancy as an indication of selfishness, but I’m content framing it as an innate inclination towards valuing justice.

For many of us, we carry this sense of fairness throughout the our life course. Sociologists (try to) turn it into a career. This certainly describes me.

My soap boxing got more intense in my teens.  I started seeing a lack of fairness everywhere. Sometimes I would feel that I wasn’t being treated fairly, and other times I would see that another human or animal was not getting their fair share. Eventually, I began to notice that it wasn’t just individuals who weren’t treated justly, it was groups and categories of people.

Meanwhile, I was not the best student. I didn’t find much enjoyment in my classes. Math was a joke. I was remotely interested in some aspects of History. My grades were barely good enough to get me into University. The only time I enjoyed school was when we were covering topics that focused on social issues. Whenever I had a choice in terms of school projects, I would write about prostitution, or the role of American First ladies in American politics.

After high school, I ended up at wonderful University. My decision to do so was pretty much based on where my boyfriend at the time attended school. I planned to obtain what I saw as a token 3 year BA. Then I ended up in an Intro Sociology class.  Over the course of the next few months, I was given the tools to see, critique, and make sense of the social inequality. My random observations and emotions began to come together in a cohesive discourse. It was validating not just because my grades were good, but I discovered that the commentary going through my teenage head actually had a name. For years I had been a sociologist, and I didn’t even know it.

My relationship with the discipline/perspective has not always been easy. There have been some great memories, but we also had some difficult times. We even broke up for awhile.  Sociology hasn’t always been fair to me. Sometimes it isolated me from my friends and family. Other times. Currently, we are facing another challenge in our long, passionate and tumultuous relationship; in September, I am no longer going to be teaching at the college where I work.

I remember that intro course that I took many years ago. The first thing that my professor said to us was “Sociology is a discipline with a messy face”. Over a decade later when I had my very own class, I opened with the exact same line, just as I had fantasized that I would.  I’m not exactly sure where I will end up now, but I know I’ll be “committing sociology”.

– DS

Categories
sociology

Sociology as a Liminal Space

*** I wrote this in 2009 during one of our (Sociology and I) most difficult times.

 

Mr. Giant, I’m ready to jump off your shoulder.
The view is mundane, now that I’m older.
I want to crawl back into Plato’s cave.
No need for chains, because I’ll behave.
I’ll stand still and face the wall…
I’ll happily ignore the philosopher’s call.

I’ll trade you my apathy for some ignorance…
if you’ll kindly help me get off this fence.