American Eating

Want to know what residents of Minneapolis are eating?  Check out the Cub Foods facebook page which is holding a contest for families to win free groceries for a year if they submit a video of themselves making a meal for under 20 dollars.

I was drawn to the page initially because I know someone in this competition, but as I watched other videos I began to get an idea of what people in Minneapolis might call “a homecooked meal.”  Or a “gourmet meal.”  Or the type of parties that they throw for the neighborhood.  Hint: There’s a lot of potatoes, carrots, and chicken.

Of course there are plenty of ways in which this contest self-selects it’s participants by those who use facebook, those who have a means to make a video, those looking for free groceries.  However, it seems to cover a broad age range (60′s to post collegiate) and family type (single, yuppies, families).

Mostly, what I noticed is that, while people are making plenty of pasta dishes and baked chicken, they aren’t making spaghetti and meatballs, and casseroles, or rice and beans.  Three things I bet if Market Basket in Massachusetts sponsored a contest for would be a number of entries.

Also, I noticed a fair amount of vegetables in these dishes, something that Americans are often told of which we are not eating enough.  Lettuces, onion, pepper, sweet potatoes, green beans, and particularly the ubiquitous carrot, all headlined.

Perhaps just this observation is quotidian and trite, but in here, this contest, is a nugget of an idea I plan on saving for later.

Philosophy Meets Infographics

Hopefully you saw the freshly pressed post about “philographics” or infographics created by Genis Carreras to de-mystify some pretty heady philosophy concepts.

If you missed it you can check out the post here

Or Gex’ website here

Positivism was pretty much the domain of Auguste Comte “father of sociology” as they say.

One poster I do wish there was (but I didn’t see it yet) was one about the American school of Pragmatism.  At least, that would have fit right in with GH Mead!

Right now, I’m pages deep in educator Maria Montessori, a scathing critique of Consumerism directed toward babies, and trying to read a collection of Jane Addams essays.

Faith in the Halls of Power – Book Review

My alma mater, Gordon College, has installed a new president, D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist, lately of Rice University.  Lindsay received his PhD from Princeton, and published in 2007 a book entitled Faith in the Halls of Power.  It was explained to me once that the cycle of college presidents rolls from those who are fundraisers, to those who are caretakers.  Every now and then a president manages to straddle both lines.  It is hoped that Lindsay will be a caretaker of students and faculty in the wake of the former fundraising president.

I was excited to hear of the hire because of my new interest in Sociology, so I borrowed Linday’s book from my father-in-law.  Published in 2007 it is an ethnographic study of powerful people who are also evangelicals.   There is also an implicit acknowledgement to C Wright Mills book The Power Elite as predecessor, and in the conclusion an explicit reference to some of it’s findings. The main critiques of the book according to this New York Times article, are that Lindsay is rather accepting of the answers he has been given to his questions.  He does not attempt to muckrake about the lack of women or minorities in these positions of power, nor about the “bottom line” of some of the business deals.  His most censorious statements are about businessmen and money, acceptance of bonuses and their increasing lack of connection to specific location churches.

One of the things that he notes about evangelicals (which is very true, in my personal experience with them) is that evangelicals are serious about bringing their worldview to the workplace.  They are obsessed with the idea of vocation, that they have been “called” (by God) to a certain career, rather than that they have “chosen” of their own free will.  Once in this position they are then to use their calling as a ministry, an extension of their faith.

The other things which Lindsay highlights in his book, which I think is important for the general public to know, is that there are two populations within evangelicalism.  One is a more cosmopolitan segment, and the other a more populist segment. The cosmopolitan segment is more of a supporter of the arts, social justice, and likely to be less hellfire and brimstone.  The populist segment is all about mobilizing large groups of people about hot button issues. Yet, both are committed to their faith, and the evangelizing part of evangelicalism.

Lindsay’s book grew out of his own evangelicalism, and this is almost to be expected based on some of his observations of evangelicals.  Overall, an interesting and important read about a nuanced minority (which is becoming a highly visible minority) in the United States.

Summary: Mind Self and Society

The Introduction by Charles W. Morris has helped me to succinctly place my fingers on what’s important to take away from these three essays as well as to understand Mead in context of his social setting.  He’s hugely influenced by Charles Darwin, and he’s greatly indebted to Watson’s behaviorism.  Not because he necessarily accepts it, in fact he doesn’t.  As Morris says, “Mead considers Watson’s views as oversimplified.”  Yet, Mead still refers to himself as a behaviorist, attempting to bring behaviorism far enough.

Behaviorism: the belief that all things that organisms do are behaviors, and can be altered without recourse to the mind.  At least, this is what Wikipedia says.  I’m not sure that Mead would define himself as a behaviorist along these lines.  In fact, Morris says Mead did not mean by this, “the denial of the private nor the neglect of consciousness, but the approach to all experience in terms of conduct.”

Mind:

This brings us to Mead’s first section, on the Mind.  He begins with the building blocks of his theories of the mind’s construction: gestures, significant symbols, and language.  And how does the mind arise? “Mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience – not communication through mind.”  (p 50)   These gestures (which are words, or literal hand motions, or any other way of communication) become significant symbols and are able to be communicated to others only when they mean the idea behind the gesture to more than one person.  When the two people communicating have the same idea of the same gesture.  Symbols which are universal should arouse in others what it arouses in ourselves. (149, reminder)   Because of this communication is a constant adjustment to others and to their reactions.  The future becomes possible (and future communication) in the beginning of the actions and reactions that are occurring right now. And, the mind arises as it begins to recognize this reflexiveness.   “Reflexiveness then, is the essential condition, within the social process, for the development of the mind.”

Self:

The mind has then given rise (in reflexiveness and community) to language and these significant symbols, which are then possible and essential for development.  Thus, the self is our reference point for events, emotions, and sensations. (p. 136)  How does the self arise, I think what Mead says, is that it arises through play, and games, and the idea of the generalized other.  That the organized community gives the individual his “unity of self,” and the attitude of the generalized other is that of the whole community. (155)  This generalized other is needed to develop AT ALL.  All of life basically becomes tweaking ourselves to reflect the organized attitudes of group.

(Within this section Mead introduces the concept of “I” and “Me.”  Frankly, I read the section on this four times and I didn’t understand it.  This is where I came across this website, which had a plethora of materials on Mead. I read or skimmed most of them, and felt it gave me a better grasp of the man, and the book. )

The conclusion of the section on Self takes hold of men who have changed both themselves and society through their reciprocal reactions to the gestures of others.  It seems to me that Mead is saying they reflect like mirrors and magnify each reaction of others.

Society:

In his final essay/section on Society Mead brings the culmination of the Mind and the Self into the realm of others (though all along they have been there too.)

Mead says that insects base their societies on their physiological differentiations, not so man.  Man bases his in the society that is around him, in this case the family.  There is a social process arising in this as each reacts to the other.

Man is also continually manipulating his environment in the way that he uses it.  He is attempting to create community by using common language.  There are generalized social attitudes which make an organized self possible. (260)  History is emerging from this, but at the time it is not coherent or able to be followed.  To take the role of the other continues to be vital in contributing to the perpetuation of society.

What one does is determined by others, and this is seen particularly in society in religion and economics.  (“Salvation” and Trading.)  Both of these things call for intense identification with the person with whom one communicates.    Any time the social order changes there is a necessary change in one’s self and a reconstruction through the mind.  For this, self-consciousness is needed.  Yet, the artist or author needs his audience in order to produce, even if the audience is the future.  So far as he is a self, he is organic, and part of the community, and his contribution must be something social.  (324)

In conclusion, The attitude of the group is extremely important, which has risen from significant symbols, which have emerged in mind and reason.  Reason being the thinking of the individual, a conversation between the I and me.  (final page.)

Ugh.

I think that I understand what Mead is saying about man arising in community as a social creature only.  Since this, in Coser, is what makes him primarily a trendsetter, I suppose that I understand the most important part.  Man cannot act on his own, as previous philosophers may have believed, but must always act within society.  This is Mead’s contribution.

Thinking Sociologically: “the Help”

I, like everyone else, jumped on the bandwagon of reading “The Help.” Kathryn Stockett’s got an engaging story, humorous, a little edgy, and controversial for numerous reasons.

First, there’s the lawsuit she’s facing for borrowing a little too heavily from real life, and insulting an actual nanny who works for her family.  Then there’s the plethora of opinions which can be found about whether the book is racist for it’s appropriation of black vernacular coming from the “mouth” of a white woman.  For the accusation that once again there’s the “white savior” in the form of Skeeter standing up for all the (poor/defenseless?) black women in the town.  I think Caroline Garrod has got a good point asking “Can a white woman never write about black people without being accused of racism or racializing.”  But, truth is, I don’t know, I’m also white.

However, over and above this, the book is based on the premise of a sociology project like what C Wright Mills suggests.  From that, I realized I’m a lot farther off in my sociology project than even Scooter Phelan.  Her editor in New York suggests she makes a list of all the things that bother her in life, and then send it to her to get some feedback.  Never mind that Scooter’s ideas are derivative, drunk driving, cigarettes, etc according to the editor.  She’s got a list of at least 20.

That is thinking sociolocially.  So I suppose, my “Research Ideas” category should be turned into something different, perhaps titled “Things that bother me.”  And write them down.  Then research them.

On a final note, one of the things that bothered me the most about the book “the Help” is that Skeeter, while acknowledging that she is placing the other maids in danger, perhaps even of their lives, never quite realizes that she owes even the idea of her book to Aibileen.  Additionally, the newspaper column that she writes is also completely Aibileen’s mental effort.  Skeeter mostly edits.  This is, of course, work.  However, Skeeter has leveraged Aibileen’s life story as well in order to further her own career.  In the end Aibileen is forced to write, an outcome she desired since her childhood, however, it’s thrust upon her as her last choice.  For all this, however, I still found the book enormously enjoyable.

Three Sociological Things I’m doing right now:

1. Watching the movie Babies.  I suppose it also verges on anthropology, and employs… what was that word I learned from Hochschild’s book? Oh yeah, ethnographic, methodology.  Regardless, it’s fascinating to me right now.

2. Reading Everything is Obvious *If you know the Answer. By Duncan Watts.  So far he’s disabused my appreciation of Malcolm Gladwell.  In some ways this is a good thing.  I can always use a reminder that people can only tell their own story.  They will not critique their own work.

3. Looking over my Notes from GH Mead’s first essay, “Mind” and getting ready to summarize what I learned.

George Herbert Mead

The first thing I had to wrap my mind around with GH was that he worked three roles:  sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher.  I wonder now if sociologists define themselves in this way, as a combination of three things, or if there is just too much to accomplish and learn to honestly appropriate all three titles.  Nevertheless GH Mead is listed as such.

He was born in Massachusetts (represent!) in 1863, and began life as a Congregationalist.  However, education, the vicarious encounters with Darwin through his books, and other authors, pulled him away from these original sensibilities. He was, according to Coser in Masters of Sociological Thinking, a man with “encyclopedic learning.”  This no doubt accounts for his ability to span several sciences.

He subscribed to (perhaps founded) social psychology, which deals with the way people act and think in relation to others.  As I’m reading “Mind Self and Society” which is from the point of a social behaviorism, it seems he owes a great debt to Watson’s behaviorism too, though he goes beyond it with his insertion of the consciousness into the act of mental life.

Mead had a great deal of friends who were philosophers (Dewey, W. James, Baldwin, and Cooley are mentioned.) and he was able to interact with some of them while he taught at Chicago.  Additionally (surprisingly, to me) he was a proponent of Jane Addams Hull House settlement work.  Excellent, pragmatics following theory.

Yet overall, Mead is known as a reticent, humble man.  He published little, and his essays were collected by students.  Thus, like Aristotle, we have his lecture notes to read, and not his own writings.  He died in 1931.