Assessment 1: The Sociological Perspective

 The Sociological Perspective

Assessment

 

For this first unit, we have been learning about the sociological perspective.  We learned about a few different theories:  Peter Berger’s Social Construction of Reality and C. Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination, and we learned about the foundational sociological paradigms: Durkheim’s Structural-Functional, Marx’s Conflict, and Symbolic-Interaction.  I want you to demonstrate your understanding of the sociological perspective by writing an authentic essay that shows your ability to apply the sociological perspective to your own life.

 

Instructions/Prompt:

Write an original essay that both explains the sociological perspective and applies it uniquely to experiences from your own life. Your essay should include a discussion of at least three of either the theories or paradigms that are italicized above and include unique examples of how each of the theories or paradigms apply authentically to your own life.  To be authentic, your example should apply uniquely to you – it should not be able to be applied to anyone else from our class. Be specific and detailed.  One example of authenticity is the demographic sheet you filled out during our first lesson.  All of those questions were unique to your lived experience.  Other ideas for being authentic are embedded within each of the lessons we did – such as: your name, or your high school or your family, etc…

Turning in your work.

The essay is due by the start of our next class (Tuesday, Feb 7).

When you are finished with your essay, submit it here: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvR3rouXQlx_d1r7oXQYYSD7TFdxe2xEKl6AgEE0iSqMf5eg/viewform?usp=sf_link

If you prefer to hand in your essay using a hard copy (actual paper) feel free to do so.

 

Grading:

Your grade will be out of 40 pts based on the following rubric:

 

Paradigm/Theory Choice #1 (out of 10 points)

10 Fully explained and accurate explanation of how the theory or paradigm connects to your own unique and authentic example(s).

8  Not completely explained or accurate.

7  Not authentic or original.

6 Incorrect explanation. 

0 Not submitted or academically dishonest.

 

Paradigm/Theory Choice #2 (out of 10 points)

10 Fully explained and accurate explanation of how the theory or paradigm connects to your own unique and authentic example(s).

8  Not completely explained or accurate.

7  Not authentic or original.

6 Incorrect explanation. 

0 Not submitted or academically dishonest.

 

Paradigm/Theory Choice #3 (out of 10 points)

10 Fully explained and accurate explanation of how the theory or paradigm connects to your own unique and authentic example(s).

8  Not completely explained or accurate.

7  Not authentic or original.

6 Incorrect explanation. 

0 Not submitted or academically dishonest.

 

Writing (out of 10 points)

10 The writing was well organized and did not include any distracting misspellings or grammar.

One point less for each misspelling or grammar mistake that is a distraction to your essay. 

5 The essay was turned in late.

0 The essay was not turned in.

 

Suggested Structure:

This is not required, but I suggest a structure that looks like this:

·      Paragraph 1:  An introduction of what the sociological perspective is in general.  

·      Paragraph 2:  Explains one of the theories or paradigms and how it fits into the sociological    perspective.  Explain an authentic connection or example from your own life or experience.

·      Paragraph 3: Explain a second theory or paradigm and how it fits into the sociological perspective.  Explain an authentic connection or example from your own life or experience.

·      Paragraph 4: Explain a third theory or paradigm and how it fits into the sociological perspective.  Explain an authentic connection or example from your own life or experience.

 

 

Other tips:

Use a word processing app and save your work there first, Then when you are ready to submit, use the link to Google forms to submit your essay.

You may use first person (I and me).  This is a less formal essay so that is fine.

If you are feeling uncertain about what to write, remember the point of this assessment is to simply explain that you know how sociologists look at the world and demonstrate that you can give a unique and authentic example.  That's it - don't over think it!

If you have trouble, please do not fret alone.

Use Loyola’s writing center.

Email me at csalituro@luc.edu and we can communicate via email, zoom or make an appointment to meet in person.

1.6 Max Weber and Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

 Max Weber and Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

Max Weber's contribution to the development of sociology during the Industrial Revolution

Max Weber (pronounced VAY-ber) studied the development of capitalism in European countries.  He found that countries that became more Protestant also became more capitalist.  This is peculiar because religion and economics seem to be separate.  But Protestants held shared meaning with each other about their wealth and finance.  They saw living within their means and investing their money as signs that they were living righteously within their Christian beliefs.  This created an economy that was based on investment.  It led to the creation and expansion of capitalism, investing profit to make even more profit.   It might seem strange for religion to be connected to the economy, but in their interaction with each other, it was real for them.  


The development of the Symbolic Interactionist paradigm 

Building off of Weber's work, two sociologists created a third paradigm for which sociologists view the world.   Weber showed symbolic meaning in the Protestants' lives and in their everyday interaction with other people.  Stemming from Weber's work, George Mead, W. I. Thomas and Herbert Blumer focused on the shared meaning in everyday life between people.  This paradigm became known as Symbolic Interaction.  It is more focused on face-to-face interaction, or small groups, as opposed to large-scale institutions.  Much of our interaction with each other holds symbolic meaning to us.  The words we use, our body language, our clothes all hold symbolic meaning for us.  They convey an identity we have to the world. 

How can you use Weber's Symbolic Interaction paradigm to analyze our lifeboat simulation?

How can you apply Weber's Symbolic Interaction paradigm to college?  What is the shared meaning that college holds?  

Apply symbolic interaction to Loyola - 

What does this scarf represent? How did it come to be that way?

Scarves - From CBS, ATJ, and Chicago Tribune.

Other examples: 

• "You let your whole team down!"  
• Wolf hands on free-throw

What is the shared meaning?  

Symbolic Interaction paradigm and names

An example of Symbolic Interaction can be seen through names.  A name isn’t just a random set of syllables.  Names have symbolic meanings that are shared among people, even strangers, within a society.  For example, see the multiple examples below about the ways that names can have shared meaning. 

Names hold important meanings that we might realize at first.  

Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

According to the authors of Conventional Wisdom Tells Us..., what are some examples of the different meanings that names hold?  

What are some ways that Cerulo and Ruane show these meanings affect people?

Baby Names follow trends

Some students will say that their parents just chose the name because they liked it.  But closer research reveals that for many names that parents seemed to "just like," there was a larger meaning behind why parents liked the name.  A respected sociologist from Harvard named Stanley Lieberson studied trends and fashions.  He used the Social Security Names database to study how names spread in popularity similar to how fashion spreads.  You can read this NY Times article (or download it here) about the details of what Lieberson found, but in short, the naming of new babies is not simply personal:

• Name choices, like clothing choices, reflect the desire to be different, but not too different.
• Names branch off of each other with similar suffixes or prefixes 
• Names reflect societal patterns like immigration patterns
• Names are changing more frequently than they used to reflect a stronger desire to be different.

Try your own research with the SSA Baby Name Database.  

Notice that the data shows that names go in and out of style, even if we don't notice it.  For example, my parents named me Christopher, but they just thought that they liked the name.  Looking at the data, it is now evident that Christopher was the second most popular name that year! 

Try find examples of any of Lieberson's finds in the SSA Baby Name Database?  Give a specific example.

 

Names also hold shared meaning because culture assigns meanings to ideas

For more on names and symbolic meanings, you can listen to the Freakonomics podcast episode by Wells, Katharine.  How Much Does Your Name Matter? Freakonomics Radio Podcast. April 8, 2013.

The episode draws from a Freakonomics chapter called “A Roshanda By Any Other Name”and includes a good bit of new research on the power of names. It opens with a conversation with NYU sociologist Dalton Conley and his two children, E and Yo. Their names are a bit of an experiment.  Indeed, there is some evidence that a name can influence how a child performs in school and even her career opportunities. There’s also the fact that different groups of parents — blacks and whites, for instance — have different naming preferences. Stephen Dubner talks to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney about a mysterious discrepancy in Google ads for Instant Checkmate, a company that sells public records. Sweeney found that searching for people with distinctively black names was 25% more likely to produce an ad suggesting the person had an arrest record – regardless of whether that person had ever been arrested.  Names do, however, reveal a lot about the people doing the naming. Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, talks about his new research (with co-authors Thomas Wood and Alexandra Bass) that looks at how children’s names are influenced by their parents’ political ideology.

If names do affect their bearers' chance of success, it may not always be because of the reactions they cause in other people (the "looking-glass self"), they might also be because of "implicit egotism", the positive feelings we each have about ourselves.  Brett Pelham cites the concept in explaining his finding that individuals called Virginia, Mildred, Jack and Philip proliferate in Virginia, Milwaukee, Jacksonville and Philadelphia - he believes they are drawn to live there.  

 

Kerry Wood of the Cubs logged 20 strikeouts in a single game in 1998!

 

Another intriguing 2007 paper, entitled Moniker Maladies, found that people's fondness for the initials of their names could get in the way of success. Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons analysed almost a century of baseball strikeouts and found that hitters with the initial K had a higher strike-out rate ("K" denotes a strike-out in baseball). They also found that graduate students with the initials C and D had a slightly lower grade point average than A and B students, and A and B applicants to law school were more likely to go to better colleges.

Branding as Shared Meaning

Think about the meaning that people share about the things below.  What meaning do they hold? Who shares the meaning? How does that meaning influence our reactions?  How does the meaning get reinforced and/or re-interpreted by society?

Look at the shoes above from StockX.  The prices listed are the prices people bid on the shoes (not the asking price).  In other words those are prices that people are willing to pay!

Why would people pay that much?  What does owning these shoes mean/represent?

How did this meaning come to be?  Look at the following sites that explain how the creation of meaning happened to the Air Force Ones:

• History from Grailed
• History from Complex
• From Business Insider How Nike Defined Cool 
• MJ and Nike
• Pop Culture and Nike
• Nelly's Airforce Ones music video

Do you understand how sociologists view the world through a symbolic interaction perspective?  Any questions about that paradigm?

Apply

Applying Symbolic Interaction to your demographic sheet

Individually:

Look at your answer for what you are proud of and what your various goals are.  Choose one of these answers and think about the larger meaning behind your answer.  Why are you proud of that or why is it a goal?  What does it symbolize to you and how do you hope others view it? 

Small Group:

Compare your answer above to those in your small group.  What similarities emerge? Do others in your group agree with your answer for number 1 above?  (In other words, do they share the same meaning/understanding as you about those achievements/goals?)

Recommended Reading:

https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-3-theoretical-perspectives-in-sociology

1.5 Founding Paradigms Cont'd: Marx's Conflict and Weber's Symbolic Interaction

 This Lesson's Focus:

How did Karl Marx influence the creation of sociology? 

What does his Conflict paradigm focus on? 

How can you apply this to your own life?

Founding Paradigm 2:  

Karl Marx's Conflict Paradigm

The second paradigm that emerged from a scholar studying the changes of the industrial revolution is called Conflict paradigm which developed out of the influence of Karl Marx.  He studied the inequalities in industrial Europe and how those inequalities affected individuals.  For example, Marx found that a working-class person lived an average of 25 years less than a wealthy person.  Like Durkheim, Marx concluded that his findings were not just the result of individual choices.  Instead, people were forced to work in unhealthy conditions and forced to yield to the demands of the wealthy owners of the factories.  They had less access to healthcare, less access to healthy food and living conditions and had to do more dangerous jobs.  Simply put, they had less power to affect their own life expectancy.

Marx's Focus   

Marx's focus led sociologists to examine who had power in society and who did not.  The natural extension of that became the effects of power on groups of individuals and how those in power gained and maintained that power.  Initially, Marx's focus was on social class, especially in Europe, but early sociologists in the U.S. Applied Marx's paradigm to other inequalities in the US:

W.E.B. Dubois 

Dubois (pronounced "Do Boys") applied the conflict paradigm to race.  He was the first black scholar to be allowed to earn a PhD. from Harvard U. and a sociology student.

Alice Paul

Alice Paul applied it to gender in the U.S. after earning a degree in sociology she fought for women's rights to vote and she worked for women and poor immigrants at Jane Addams' Hull House

 

Jane Addams

Oftentimes, the study of inequality and the fight for equal rights led to overlapping movements such as social class and gender led by Chicago's Jane Addams.  Addams was an influential leader in Chicago who used her sociology degree to improve the lives of Chicago's women, poor, and immigrants

Ida B. Wells

Wells applied Marx's theory to race and gender.  She was born into slavery in Mississippi but made her way to Chicago as continued to document lynchings and fight against racism and sexism.  The Association of Black Sociologists established an award in her honor (2020).

The University of Chicago

You may have noticed the recurrence of Chicagoans in the early establishment of sociology. Chicago was the fastest growing city in the USA during the late 1800s/early 1900s.  The city was an incredible mix of industrial growth, urbanization and immigration.  And so, the University of Chicago was the first sociology department in North America (1892) and Chicago was a leader in sociology for the next 50 years leading to what became known as "the Chicago school" of sociology.

Loyola University Chicago

Loyola followed shortly behind U of C in sociology.  The School of Sociology was one of LUC's earliest departments established in 1914.  This was a 2 year program that allowed women to earn a degree at a time when they were still not permitted in other areas of the university such as the College of Arts and Sciences. Jesuit Frederic Siedenburg was influenced about the importance of sociology's role in the progress of society and he not only established the School of Sociology, but he also became 

"one of Chicago's most significant civic leaders over the next two decades...and he routinely crossed denominational, ethnic, and racial boundaries in his dealings, and he never wavered from his belief that religion could be a progressive force in urban life. In 1915, the Chicago Tribune commented on Siedenburg's role with the American Peace Federation, his appearance with Rabbi Emil Hirsch at Sinai Temple, and his visit to Tuskegee Institute as the guest of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald along with Jane Addams of Hull-House and the Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones, a Unitarian minister ... He also found time to publish ground-breaking articles in the American Journal of Sociology, including 'The Recreational Value of Religion (1922), 'The Religious Value of Social Work (1922), and 'War and the Catholic Church' (1925)."

Ellen Skerrett (2008). Born in Chicago. Loyola Press, Chicago  

For small group discussion:

How would you examine the Lifeboat simulation using Marx's Conflict paradigm?

How can you apply Marx's Conflict paradigm to college?

When we learned about Durkheim's Structural-functional Paradigm, we explored the ways that names might serve a function for larger social institutions such as family, religion, media etc...

Now, thinking about applying conflict paradigm to names, hypothesize some ways that names might create power or inequality.

Small group discussion (based on this lesson from Rabow, et al...):
Has your name ever been mispronounced?  By who? When? How often?
Has anyone had their name changed or taken on a  nickname because of mispronunciation?  If so, were there any benefits to the new name?  Were there any negative consequences?


Below are some ways that something as common and mundane as a name can be analyzed using Marx's Conflict paradigm.  Note that we can analyze the same topic from multiple perspectives - such as how we used Durkheim's Structural-functional paradigm to think about names in our last lesson and now we are looking at those same names through a new lens. 

Names and Power/Opportunity
These articles provide research-based evidence of the importance of conflict perspective in examining names and power:

Emily and Greg v. Lakisha and Jamal

In a study from 2003, called Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan sent nearly 5,000 CVs in response to job advertisements in Chicago and Boston newspapers. The CVs were the same, but half were given fake names that sounded like they belonged to white people, like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, and the other half were given names that sounded African American, like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. The call-back rate from employers was 50% higher on the "white" names then the "black" names. The effects were noted even for federal contractors with "affirmative action" policies, and companies boasting they were "equal opportunities" employers.  The researchers inferred that employers were using first names to discriminate unfairly against black candidates, perhaps at an unconscious level. Those same prejudices might also come into play at the interviewing stage, but a black applicant called Greg Baker, who receives an invitation to an interview, has at least got his foot in the door.

Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan

There is also striking evidence of names triggering different outcomes for schoolchildren.

David Figlio, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the scores of some 55,000 children in a school district of Florida. Instead of just distinguishing between "white" and "black" names, he codified what aspects of names meant that they were more likely to belong to black children and children from low-income families. This allowed him to create a sliding scale, which went, for example, from Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan. Figlio found that the further along this scale he went, the worse the school test scores and the less likely the student was to be recommended for the schools' program for "gifted" students. Strikingly, this held true for brothers within a family, and even - although the sample size was small - for twins. Figlio believes that the fault lies with the expectations of schoolteachers and administrators - at schools with more black teachers, the effects were less marked.  In separate research, Figlio used the Florida school data to show that black boys who are given names more common among girls are more likely to develop behavioral problems when they reach puberty. The problems increase significantly when there are girls in the same year group with the same name.

Both of the above is an example of how conflict sociologists view society and how inequality is created and maintained.  Read the following and look for how studying names can be viewed through a conflict paradigm.

Ethnicity, immigration and names

From American Immigrants and the Dilemma of the White Sounding Name in the Atlantic (2019),

A lot of research on immigration and names examines the subject from an economic perspective. A 2016 paper in the American Sociological Review looked at the first names given to the generation that came after the wave of immigration to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. “Native-born sons of Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrant fathers who were given very ethnic names ended up in occupations that earned, on average, $50 to $100 less per year than sons who were given very ‘American’ names,” the researchers wrote. “This represented 2 to 5 percent of annual earnings.” (They determined the “ethnic-ness” or “American-ness” of a name based on how frequently it was given in each immigrant and native-born population at the time.) 

Some of this effect, the researchers estimated, was due to class differences among parents (which remain a strong determinant of a child’s future job prospects), but most of it had to do with the symbolism of the name itself. Interestingly, the economic advantage that came with having a “more American” name still applied to people with surnames that clearly indicated their parents’ foreign origins. The researchers surmised that American-sounding first names, then, functioned more as a signal of “an effort to assimilate” than a means of “hiding one’s origins.” 

Immigrants in that era frequently felt pressured to change their own first name. A separate study, also from 2016, found that “at any given time between 1900 and 1930,” about 77 percent of immigrants had an American-sounding first name, and it was the norm for them to have dropped their original name within a year of entering the U.S. There were economic overtones here too: Male immigrants were more likely to change their name if they lived in counties where other immigrants had trouble getting jobs.

School and Conflict Paradigm

From PBS's, Why Getting a Student's Name Right Matters

For more info, you might want to visit the My Name, My Identity website[vi].

For students, especially the children of immigrants or those who are English-language learners, a teacher who knows their name and can pronounce it correctly signals respect and marks a critical step in helping them adjust to school.  But for many ELLs, a mispronounced name is often the first of many slights they experience in classrooms; they’re already unlikely to see educators who are like them, teachers who speak their language, or a curriculum that reflects their culture.

It can also hinder academic progress.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

• Mispronunciation can hinder academic progress, and make students feel invisible.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

Carmen Fariña, a native-Spanish speaker, had a teacher who marked her absent every day for weeks because she didn’t raise her hand during roll call. The teacher assumed Fariña was being defiant, but the future New York City schools chancellor never heard her name called; the teacher had repeatedly failed to pronounce it correctly, including rolling the r’s.

Mispronouncing a student’s name essentially renders that student invisible, Fariña said Teachers Please Learn Our Names! Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom, is littered with stories of students who endured shame, anxiety, or embarrassment, and sometimes a mix of all three, when their names were called in class.

There’s the tale of a Portland, Oregon-area student with a traditional Chinese name who had her name garbled by a vice principal during an honors ceremony. Set to present the student with an award, the principal laughed at his mistake, drawing chuckles from the audience.  To avoid embarrassment, the student slumped in her seat, refusing to rise to receive the prestigious award. She later skipped her graduation.  The mispronunciation wasn’t an isolated event. Having endured years of slights, she felt the need to become invisible long before the principal’s laughter marked the tipping point.  The woman, who went on to become an educator, changed her first name to ‘Anita.’ “If someone mispronounces your name once as a high school student, you might correct them,” said Kohli, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India. “But if this has been your entire existence in education, what do you do?”  Kohli’s own brother had a teacher mispronounce his traditional South Asian name, Sharad (‘shu-rudth’) as Sharub during a ninth grade class. The teacher and the students decided it was easier to call him Shrub, and it stuck for the rest of high school. The nickname forced him to check part of his identity at the door.

While the diversity of the nation’s public school student body has exploded in the last few decades, the number of African-American, Latino, and Asian teachers hasn’t kept pace. Gonzalez, a former teacher in school districts in Kentucky and Maryland, said she often observed a ‘these people’ attitude from her mostly white female colleagues. “They approached it like, ‘It’s your fault for having a weird name,'” Gonzalez said. To some degree, Gonzalez understands the struggle students face. She grew up with a Russian surname, Yurkosky, that befuddled teachers and classmates. She said it rhymes with “her-pots-ski,” minus the “t” sound in pots. “But I did not experience all the other stuff and other ways that a person can feel discriminated against,” said Gonzalez, who is white.

Butchered names are not just a problem for English learners and immigrants; students from a number of cultural backgrounds have their names garbled or ridiculed. Hawaiian and African-American students, with names that link to their ancestry, also shared stories of how constant mispronunciations made them feel uncomfortable with their names.

• Names can even lead to direct mocking of a student:

In an extreme case, a teacher in Wayne Township, New Jersey, lost her tenure status and job in 2015 for mocking a student’s name on Facebook. Several letters in the student’s name spelled out a profane word, legal documents show. More often, the mocking is more direct and reflexive: laughing off pronunciation, asking the student to take on a nickname, or making a spectacle of their name, Kohli said. “It matters what you do when you’re in front of a child and struggling with their name,” Kohli said. “Is it framed as my inability to say someone’s name or is it framed as the student doing something to make your life more difficult?”

The episode called "Substitute Teacher" from Key and Peele is a funny take on how student names can be messed up by a teacher and how that can affect students.  The skit is funny because in everyday life in the U.S.A., the dynamic is usually the opposite; that is, the teacher is from a group in power such as white, male, native-born American citizen who mistakes names from so many other groups.

For individual reflection:

Using the Demographic Survey, please answer individually:

• What are some of your responses that might result in you being treated differently?
• How might that treatment differ?  Are there ways you might be limited or advantaged because of your identity?  Are there similarities within your group about how some of you may be limited or advantaged by your identity?

Max Weber and Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

Max Weber's contribution to the development of sociology during the Industrial Revolution

Max Weber (pronounced VAY-ber) studied the development of capitalism in European countries.  He found that countries that became more Protestant also became more capitalist.  This is peculiar because religion and economics seem to be separate.  But Protestants held shared meaning with each other about their wealth and finance.  They saw living within their means and investing their money as signs that they were living righteously within their Christian beliefs.  This created an economy that was based on investment.  It led to the creation and expansion of capitalism, investing profit to make even more profit.   It might seem strange for religion to be connected to the economy, but in their interaction with each other, it was real for them.  


The development of the Symbolic Interactionist paradigm 

Building off of Weber's work, two sociologists created a third paradigm for which sociologists view the world.   Weber showed symbolic meaning in the Protestants' lives and in their everyday interaction with other people.  Stemming from Weber's work, George Mead, W. I. Thomas and Herbert Blumer focused on the shared meaning in everyday life between people.  This paradigm became known as Symbolic Interaction.  It is more focused on face-to-face interaction, or small groups, as opposed to large-scale institutions.  Much of our interaction with each other holds symbolic meaning to us.  The words we use, our body language, our clothes all hold symbolic meaning for us.  They convey an identity we have to the world. 

How can you use Weber's Symbolic Interaction paradigm to analyze our lifeboat simulation?

How can you apply Weber's Symbolic Interaction paradigm to college?  What is the shared meaning that college holds?  

Apply symbolic interaction to Loyola - 

What does this scarf represent? How did it come to be that way?

Scarves - From CBS, ATJ, and Chicago Tribune.

Other examples: 

• "You let your whole team down!"  
• Wolf hands on free-throw

What is the shared meaning?  

Symbolic Interaction paradigm and names

An example of Symbolic Interaction can be seen through names.  A name isn’t just a random set of syllables.  Names have symbolic meanings that are shared among people, even strangers, within a society.  For example, see the multiple examples below about the ways that names can have shared meaning. 

Names hold important meanings that we might realize at first.  

Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

According to the authors of Conventional Wisdom Tells Us..., what are some examples of the different meanings that names hold?  

What are some ways that Cerulo and Ruane show these meanings affect people?

Baby Names follow trends

Some students will say that their parents just chose the name because they liked it.  But closer research reveals that for many names that parents seemed to "just like," there was a larger meaning behind why parents liked the name.  A respected sociologist from Harvard named Stanley Lieberson studied trends and fashions.  He used the Social Security Names database to study how names spread in popularity similar to how fashion spreads.  You can read this NY Times article (or download it here) about the details of what Lieberson found, but in short, the naming of new babies is not simply personal:

• Name choices, like clothing choices, reflect the desire to be different, but not too different.
• Names branch off of each other with similar suffixes or prefixes 
• Names reflect societal patterns like immigration patterns
• Names are changing more frequently than they used to reflect a stronger desire to be different.

Try your own research with the SSA Baby Name Database.  

Notice that the data shows that names go in and out of style, even if we don't notice it.  For example, my parents named me Christopher, but they just thought that they liked the name.  Looking at the data, it is now evident that Christopher was the second most popular name that year! 

Try find examples of any of Lieberson's finds in the SSA Baby Name Database?  Give a specific example.

 

Names also hold shared meaning because culture assigns meanings to ideas

For more on names and symbolic meanings, you can listen to the Freakonomics podcast episode by Wells, Katharine.  How Much Does Your Name Matter? Freakonomics Radio Podcast. April 8, 2013.

The episode draws from a Freakonomics chapter called “A Roshanda By Any Other Name”and includes a good bit of new research on the power of names. It opens with a conversation with NYU sociologist Dalton Conley and his two children, E and Yo. Their names are a bit of an experiment.  Indeed, there is some evidence that a name can influence how a child performs in school and even her career opportunities. There’s also the fact that different groups of parents — blacks and whites, for instance — have different naming preferences. Stephen Dubner talks to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney about a mysterious discrepancy in Google ads for Instant Checkmate, a company that sells public records. Sweeney found that searching for people with distinctively black names was 25% more likely to produce an ad suggesting the person had an arrest record – regardless of whether that person had ever been arrested.  Names do, however, reveal a lot about the people doing the naming. Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, talks about his new research (with co-authors Thomas Wood and Alexandra Bass) that looks at how children’s names are influenced by their parents’ political ideology.

If names do affect their bearers' chance of success, it may not always be because of the reactions they cause in other people (the "looking-glass self"), they might also be because of "implicit egotism", the positive feelings we each have about ourselves.  Brett Pelham cites the concept in explaining his finding that individuals called Virginia, Mildred, Jack and Philip proliferate in Virginia, Milwaukee, Jacksonville and Philadelphia - he believes they are drawn to live there.  

 

Kerry Wood of the Cubs logged 20 strikeouts in a single game in 1998!

 

Another intriguing 2007 paper, entitled Moniker Maladies, found that people's fondness for the initials of their names could get in the way of success. Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons analysed almost a century of baseball strikeouts and found that hitters with the initial K had a higher strike-out rate ("K" denotes a strike-out in baseball). They also found that graduate students with the initials C and D had a slightly lower grade point average than A and B students, and A and B applicants to law school were more likely to go to better colleges.

Branding as Shared Meaning

Think about the meaning that people share about the things below.  What meaning do they hold? Who shares the meaning? How does that meaning influence our reactions?  How does the meaning get reinforced and/or re-interpreted by society?

Look at the shoes above from StockX.  The prices listed are the prices people bid on the shoes (not the asking price).  In other words those are prices that people are willing to pay!

Why would people pay that much?  What does owning these shoes mean/represent?

How did this meaning come to be?  Look at the following sites that explain how the creation of meaning happened to the Air Force Ones:

• History from Grailed
• History from Complex
• From Business Insider How Nike Defined Cool 
• MJ and Nike
• Pop Culture and Nike
• Nelly's Airforce Ones music video

Do you understand how sociologists view the world through a symbolic interaction perspective?  Any questions about that paradigm?

Apply

Applying Symbolic Interaction to your demographic sheet

Individually:

Look at your answer for what you are proud of and what your various goals are.  Choose one of these answers and think about the larger meaning behind your answer.  Why are you proud of that or why is it a goal?  What does it symbolize to you and how do you hope others view it? 

Small Group:

Compare your answer above to those in your small group.  What similarities emerge? Do others in your group agree with your answer for number 1 above?  (In other words, do they share the same meaning/understanding as you about those achievements/goals?)

Recommended Reading:

https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-3-theoretical-perspectives-in-sociology