Babies; A Cross-cultural Qualitative Study of Social Structure

Even before we are born, individuals are connected to other people (both literally and figuratively).  And after we are born into the world as unique individuals, people are dependent on others for survival. This unit will help you see the connection we have to others and how this social connection affects us.  Since this connection begins even before birth, we will start with an analysis of babies from before they are even born.  This analysis is possible because of a French documentary film called "Babies" (2010).  

This film is like a qualitative, cross-cultural ethnographic study.  The filmmaker follows four babies in four different countries through the first year of their lives.  The filmmaker refrains from commentary or narration so that we may simply observe the social development of these babies and come to our own conclusions.

Babies (2010)

Watch the trailer here

Available on Amazon Prime Video here or here.

Watch the birth scenes (3:35-10:35) and see the very different cultures that each baby is born into.

The movie is rated PG, however, there are scenes of babies breastfeeding. If you have an issue with this, please let me know.

Babies and their birth country:

·       Ponijao, Namibia

·       Bayarjargal, Mongolia

·       Mari, Japan

·       Hattie, United States

A cross-cultural, qualitative ethnographic study;

We will watch the film to gather data in order to hypothesize about how babies' social structures might influence them.

As you watch, think about the social structure that will nurture the babies.

Here are some guiding questions to keep in mind as we conduct this cross-cultural qualitative ethnography:

Culture

One of the first aspects of social influence is culture.  Before birth, culture shapes the baby's growth in utero.  Then, people are born into and surrounded by culture.   Some aspects of culture we can see - like material culture, and some aspects of culture we cannot see, also called non-material culture.  

The shared meaning of tangible things:

1.  What are some examples of material culture in the film and what are the meanings that are given to each example?

and non-tangible things:

2.  What are examples of non-material culture in the film?  What can you hypothesize about the shared meaning that each baby learns about the non-material culture?  What should a family look like?  What is considered normal behavior?  What should a home look like?  What should be valued in life?  

3.  Important agents of socialization in the movie:

Family - what family is around in the video/who is considered family? what importance is shown to family?  

Peers -  how are the babies introduced to peers?  

School - what early experiences do the kids have with school?

Media - what early experiences do kids have with media?

For all of the above, look for both similarities and differences among babies.

This follow-up from Focus Features checks back in on the kids ten years later.

Gun Safety and Mass School Shootings

(Updated 2/14/2023)
Here is a report from NBC news this morning on the murderer from Michigan State.

As a teacher, school shootings are horrific. I have spent most of my life in a school. School shootings are not and should not be considered normal. I do not want to simply move on and pretend like nothing horrific has happened and I will not pretend that mass school shootings are an everyday event of regular life. It is jarring and upsetting. Besides being a teacher, I am also a sociologist. Sociologists study society to make sense of how individuals are influenced. If you want to understand something in society involving groups of people, turn to sociologists. That is our job. Therefore, I want to help my students make sense of the mass shootings as a sociologist.

Personal Well Being

First of all, be mindful of yourself and other people. Take care of yourself. The news and the images are horrifying and even if you feel okay, the news may resonate in your subconscious. Don't be afraid to talk to someone about your feelings. LUC's student wellness has mental health services o. Talk to a friend or parent or teacher. Exercise. Working out provides as much for your mental well-being as it does for your physical well-being. And, get out in nature. A walk along the lake or getting outside for 15 minutes has proven mental and physical health benefits. But also be mindful of others. Students each bring their own unique background to understand this issue. And each student is affected uniquely. Be mindful of your peers. Some students may be deeply affected by these incidents.  And other students may identify with gun ownership as a part of their personal identity.  It may be deeply ingrained just like a person's religion or sports team loyalty.  Discussing guns can be deeply personal.

A Longitudinal Perspective of Violence

Related to your well-being, keep in mind that schools are still very safe places to be.  And, we are living at one of the safest times in American history.  Below are some graphs showing longitudinal levels of school violence, so take solace in the knowledge that schools are safer than ever.  

From the Marshall Project (2022):

from the National Center for Education Statistics:

Not only has school become safer, so has the United States in general.  From PEW research, below is a graph showing crime trends since the 1990s.  This is still one of the safest times in the history of the United States to be living in this country.  Again, the data show that weapons are less likely to be needed now than 30 years ago.  

Longitudinal Perspective of Mass Shootings

Despite the decrease in crime overall during the last few decades, mass shootings have been on the rise.  See the data below from this post on the Society Pages to see that the incidents of multiple-victim shootings involving a shooter who targets strangers randomly.  The incidents have especially increased since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.  This map shows a timelapse of mass shootings.  Note how quickly they increase after 2004.

"...mass shootings have become more frequent over the past three decades.  And, using the Stanford Mass Shootings in America database, we can see this trend here (below) by relying on data that stretches back a bit further..."

Mass Shootings and Mental illness?

After nearly every mass shooting, there will be claims that the shooter was "mentally ill."  Anyone willing to kill other people randomly certainly has something wrong with them.  It goes against our nature to kill others.  We are wired from infancy to connect with other people, to need them and depend on them; to love and be loved.  So yes there is something wrong with people who kill like this but it is not mental illness.

What exactly is the mental illness?

When people say that the cause is mental illness, ask what illness is it?  Is it schizophrenia? Is it ADD?  Is it bipolar disorder?  Many pundits comment that there is mental illness but what illness connects all of the people who do these shootings?  There isn't one mental illness, however, we do know that these mass shootings are disproportionately committed by American males who are white.  If there is a mental illness, why don't women with the same illnesses commit the same crimes?  If it is a mental illness, why don't people in other countries with the same mental illness commit the same crime?   Why are the shootings committed mostly by American white males?  It is because the "illness" is genderized and cultural.

From the Behavioral Scientist:

Research over the last 30 years has consistently shown that diagnosable mental illness does not underlie most gun violence.  In their 2016 edited book Gun Violence and Mental Illness, psychiatrists Liza Gold and Robert Simon summarize the evidence debunking the myth that mental illness is a leading cause of gun violence. As they report, less than 5% of shootings are committed by people with a diagnosable mental illness. Like mentally healthy offenders, the mentally ill are far more likely to shoot people they know rather than strangers.

From Gold and Simon's book mentioned above:

Perhaps never before has an objective, evidence-based review of the intersection between gun violence and mental illness been more sorely needed or more timely. Gun Violence and Mental Illness, written by a multidisciplinary roster of authors who are leaders in the fields of mental health, public health, and public policy, is a practical guide to the issues surrounding the relation between firearms deaths and mental illness. Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides. This book is an apolitical exploration of the misperceptions and realities that attend gun violence and mental illness. The authors frame both pressing social issues as public health problems subject to a variety of interventions on individual and collective levels, including utilization of a novel perspective: evidence-based interventions focusing on assessments and indicators of dangerousness, with or without indications of mental illness.

From the American Journal of Public Health,  Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms:

...little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes....extensive surveys of police incident reports demonstrate that, far from posing threats to others, people diagnosed with schizophrenia have victimization rates 65% to 130% higher than those of the general public.44 Similarly, a meta-analysis by Choe et al. of published studies comparing perpetuation of violence with violent victimization by and against persons with mental illness concludes that 'victimization is a greater public health concern than perpetration'....In this sense, persons with mental illness might well have more to fear from “us” than we do from “them.” And blaming persons with mental disorders for gun crime overlooks the threats posed to society by a much larger population—the sane.

Sports promote toughness and violence.

MMA is a symptom of how males are taught that violence
makes them masculine.

Video Games promote violent masculinity.

Men in the United States are socialized from the moment they are born to be tough.  They are taught to deny their emotions (except anger), to be uncaring and strong.  The ultimate manifestation of not caring and having no emotion and being strong and tough is violence.  And the way to be the most violent is through the best individual weapon one can find.  This enhances the violence that one can create and the more violent one is, the more he can establish himself as being a man and being taken seriously.  So, what we see again and again is that the perpetrators of mass shootings are males.   When males are hurting or upset or unsure of themselves, the only culturally accepted way of expressing themselves is through anger, toughness and violence.  And, mass shooters are disproportionately white males.  Because whites are the majority in this country, white males have lived with a sense of entitlement, but not a sense of ethnic or cultural identity.  White males can feel an entitlement because they have 
never had their position of assumed power questioned.  So, when they feel slighted, they feel justified in asserting themselves through violence.  Sometimes sociologists call this aggrieved entitlement.  This post examines violence in the summer of 2015 and it points out the aggrieved entitlement that people who do not study sociology might not notice.

In the movies, a gun makes you a tough guy to be taken seriously.

Whereas, minority males can still feel a sense of identity in their minority status even if they are not being taken seriously.    So, the mental "illness" is really more of an illness of 
masculinity and specifically American white male masculinity.  Sociologists will refer to the extreme violence of males as hyper-masculinity.  This hyper-masculine reaction results in mass shootings, especially where guns are readily available.

Guns are a manifestation of toughness and masculinity.

What are the symptoms of this illness?
If the mass shootings are the result of an"illness", what are the symptoms that lead up to the catastrophic event?  Are the symptoms celebrating violence? If I watch MMA or hockey fights, is that a symptom?  What about calling other people sissy and wuss and other words like that?  When does the mentality become an "illness"?  These shooters are all labeled "mentally ill" after they commit the crime.  It is a way of blaming the individual so that we don't have to deal with the cause as a collective.  If there is something wrong individually with the shooter then we don't have to change our laws or our culture.  We don't have to take any responsibility for the shooting.  We can choose to do nothing and cop-out.  But this doesn't explain the pattern of behavior.  Why the U.S.?  Why men?

Here is research from F. Carson Mencken and Paul Froese, Baylor University sociologists, showing the correlation between white males and gun ownership.

"...it was white men who had felt some kind of economic setback who were most attached to their guns....We have white men who have expectations about what it means to be a white man in America today that are not being met....Economic realities are changing in the United States and there’s this whole population of working-class white men who feel embittered, in the sense that maybe they don’t feel as economically successful or as powerful in their communities as they think they should be....We had this group of white men in the U.S. who were benefiting from hierarchies of power and economic inequalities that gave them a real sense of self and purpose, and so when they lost that—or they perceived that they were losing that—they searched for other ways of feeling masculine, and the gun was a natural thing to drift towards."

The process of becoming a gun owner and the acceptance of gun use.

There is also microsociological research about how gun owners accept guns and accept the act of shooting to kill another person as normal.  University of Texas Sociologist, Harel Shapira, explains his research in this video. Shapira spent hundreds of hours at gun schools going through live fire training programs and talking with other trainees about their interest in guns. In this video, he discusses the socialization process that occurs in these schools that creates gun owners. This might help understand why there is such a disconnect with understanding guns between those who own guns and those who do not. There is a shared meaning being created by guns rights advocates like the NRA, gun training schools and gun owners. This cultural understanding creates an understanding between those who have been indoctrinated to that thinking and those who have not. It feels like the two sides are speaking a different language and it is almost like they are.

Other Types of Gun Violence: Murders, Suicides and Accidents

The mass shootings are horrific and repugnant and like the graphs above show, they have been growing.  But mass shootings are only a tiny fraction (2%) of all gun deaths in America.  So, this is another important reminder during the crisis in the aftermath of a mass shooting.  It is very unlikely that you will be a victim in one of these events.  Instead, most gun deaths (66%) are self-inflicted wounds.  

From Nate Silver's data consulting group, Fivethirtyeight, Mass Shootings Are a Bad Way to Understand Gun Violence,

"...The majority of gun deaths in America aren’t even homicides, let alone caused by mass shootings. Two-thirds of the more than 33,000 gun deaths that take place in the U.S. every year are suicides."

Suicide
More people are killed committing suicide by guns than are murdered. And for all suicide deaths in the U.S., guns are the leading cause.

This is an important point about terminology.  When we discuss gun safety, we have to be distinct about whether it is about mass shootings or murders or gun deaths overall.  Each of these is unique.  If you are talking about making people safer - by far the biggest threat posed by people with guns is to themselves.  

Putting loved ones at risk
Second to suicide, is the threat to other people who live in the house with the gun; these people are at a higher risk for being killed by the gun as a result of domestic violence or accidents.  In fact, see the next fact below from the AMA and AAP.  Guns are the 2nd or 3rd leading cause of death in children (depending upon the age of the child).

The American Medical Association and American Association of Pediatrics have published extensively showing that guns in the house are a risk factor. Guns are the 2nd leading cause of death of children in America!! Also the AAP has published about the extreme cost of guns in terms of ER visits and trauma. The annual cost from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons is about 70 billion dollars in expenditures and lost productivity. Gun violence affects more than 100,000 Americans each year.

And statistics show the more guns a state has, the more murders and suicides.

Three Important Ways America is Unique When It Comes to Guns
From the NY Times Interpreter column:

1) Gun ownership correlates closely with gun violence.

2) American gun ownership is different in quality as well as quantity.

3) American political culture toward guns is unlike any other in the world.

These numbers correlate almost directly.  Not just from state to state within the U.S. but also internationally from country to country.  The American Medical Association (AMA) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Trauma Surgeons and numerous other medical groups see guns in the house as a risk factor.

The looser gun laws (despite Chgo), the more murders and suicides.

This is true across the states and correlates very closely.  Here is research from the AAP.

But won't bad guys just get guns anyway?

The idea that there will always be people who break the law so we shouldn't limit the rights of everyone else doesn't hold up in my opinion.  For example, we don't allow people to monitor themselves for drinking and driving.  Some people can drive fine with a couple of drinks but they still might be prosecuted for any BAC above .08.

This is similar to many rules that we all follow to keep society safe.  We don't violate red lights even though there's no traffic around.  Why not just allow people to go through the light?  There will always be people who break traffic laws, so just get rid of the laws.

Why not legalize drugs?  Not everyone will abuse them, but some people will find a way to get them anyway.  

This argument can be applied to almost any sector of society.  If people will break the rules, why have any rules - they just get in the way of allowing responsible people to do whatever they want responsibly.

Additionally, everyone is a good guy with a gun, until they aren't.  In other words, everyone is a law- abiding citizen until they decide to use the gun against other people or themselves.  This research shows that the majority of guns used in mass shootings were purchased legally. 

How to Reduce Shootings 

From Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times, How to Reduce Gun Violence, policies focusing on gun control have been ineffective.  Instead the issue should be a public health issue.  Thorough data showing that the problem is an American problem related to the number of guns.  But there are solutions that do not involve taking away guns generally. We have reduced auto fatalities by 90% by implementing regulations and technology.

What Explains Mass Shootings?  International Comparisons Suggest an Answer

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html
"The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns."

Practical Advice:  Run, Hide, Fight


Finally, because there have been so many mass shootings, there is a plethora of research about who survives and who doesn't and the microdynamics of how to survive.  Researchers have identified a three step plan to remember: Run, fight, hide.  This is simple and easy to remember so that when a catastrophic event occurs, you have a simple mantra to remember so that you can stay focused on how to survive:  Run, Hide, Fight
Run: Your first option is to get out of harm's way.  Know the exits, wherever you are.  Whether it's a school, a theater or a club, know the primary exits and secondary exits.  How can you get out of there if something happens?  Is there a window?  Is there a backdoor?
Hide: If you can't run, hide. This is when a lockdown goes into effect. If you can't run safely, hide.  Get out of sight.  Get away from the door, find a closet, stay silent.  I recommend while hiding, prepare yourself to fight.  If you are found which direction will the shooter come from? How will you confront him?
Finally, if confronted by the shooter, be ready to fight.  Have a weapon.  Even if it is a textbook or table leg or even your cell phone.  Attack first.  Use the distraction to eliminate the distance between you and the shooter. Knock the weapon loose.  Attack the eyes, nose and other vulnerable spots.

Research and resources that support this post:

Control and Fear; What Mass Shootings and Domestic Violence Have in Common

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/world/americas/control-and-fear-what-mass-killings-and-domestic-violence-have-in-common.html?smid=tw-share
Control and fear; the link between mass shootings and domestic violence.  
"...When Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, analyzed F.B.I. data on mass shootings from 2009 to 2015, it found that 57 percent of the cases included a spouse, former spouse or other family member among the victims — and that 16 percent of the attackers had previously been charged with domestic violence."

Teaching Her A Lesson; Media Misses Boys Rage Relating to Girls in School Shootings
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1741659005050245
Thus far, this post has addresses only mass shootings, but mass shootings are only a tiny percentage of the deaths that guns inflict. If one is analyzing gun safety, it is important to look at all gun deaths. Instead of worrying about being killled by a stranger, Americans are far more likely to be killed by someone who is their same race than by someone from a different race, and you are even more likely to be murdered by someone you know than by a stranger (let alone another race).
This is another piece of evidence that doesn't support the necessity of gun ownership for protection or because of zenophobic fears.

Violence from teen boys who feel rejected by girls.  
"...An analysis of media coverage of 12 United States school shootings, which took place between 1997 and 2002, shows a previously unnoticed pattern: nearly all the boys who killed in these shootings specifically targeted girls who rejected them, or minimally implied that they acted due to a perceived rejection by a girl. This research highlights the media’s blindness to significant social problems that are hidden behind society’s ‘boys-will-be-boys’ attitude toward harassment of and violence against teenage girls."

America's Unique Gun Problem Explained in 17 Maps and Charts
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-chartsThis site explains most of everything explained throughout this whole post.

The Sociological Explanation For Why Men in America Turn to Violence

https://qz.com/1095247/the-sociological-explanation-for-why-men-in-america-turn-to-gun-violence/

The sociological explanation for why men in America turn to gun violence.  Article includes an explanation of why the US, and why men.  Includes quotes from social psychologists as well as sociologists Michael Kimmel and Kieran Healy.

Thoughts on Vegas and Why Men Keep Doing This

https://byrslf.co/thoughts-on-the-vegas-shooting-14af397cee2c
Men have gotten lonelier and their mental health has suffered.

Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5172/hesr.2010.19.4.451
We examine three recent American cases, which involve suicide, to elucidate how the culture of hegemonic masculinity in the US creates a sense of aggrieved entitlement conducive to violence. This sense of entitlement simultaneously frames suicide as an appropriate, instrumental behaviour for these males to underscore their violent enactment of masculinity.

Profile of a Mass Shooter: The Domestic Violence Link
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-first-impression/201605/profile-mass-shooter-the-domestic-violence-link
Acts of violence specifically aimed at women continue to be marginalized in our culture. Perhaps if we more explicitly fuse domestic violence with mass shootings, the threat will be taken more seriously, and policymakers will have an even greater incentive to keep women safe.

The Trace https://www.thetrace.org/
"The Trace is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to expanding coverage of guns in the United States. We believe that our country’s epidemic rates of firearm-related violence are coupled with a second problem: a shortage of information about the issue at large." 

The Gun Control Paradox https://contexts.org/articles/the-gun-control-paradox/
While a majority of Americans are more likely to support gun regulations, the minority of Americans who support gun ownership are far more likely to write their legislators and donate money.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Center for the Prevention of Injury
https://injury.research.chop.edu/violence-prevention-initiative/types-violence-involving-youth/gun-violence/gun-violence-facts-and

• 1.7 million children live with unlocked, loaded guns - 1 out of 3 homes with kids have guns.
• In 2014, 2,549 children (age 0 to 19 years) died by gunshot and an additional 13,576 were injured.
• Those people that die from accidental shooting were more than three times as likely to have had a firearm in their home as those in the control group.
• Among children, the majority (89%) of unintentional shooting deaths occur in the home. Most of these deaths occur when children are playing with a loaded gun in their parent’s absence.
• People who report “firearm access” are at twice the risk of homicide and more than three times the risk of suicide compared to those who do not own or have access to firearms.
• Suicide rates are much higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership, even after controlling for differences among states for poverty, urbanization, unemployment, mental illness, and alcohol or drug abuse.

Responding to an Active Shooter Situation from the FBI
https://www.fbi.gov/about/partnerships/office-of-partner-engagement/active-shooter-resources/responding-to-an-active-shooter-crisis-situation

Run, Hide Fight from Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-act-violence/201408/the-truth-behind-the-run-hide-fight-debate