writing

So I don't think I will ever take people's writing for granted anymore - especially more professional or academic writing.  Each sentence has likely been written and re-written many, many times before it ever reaches the reader.  I have a paper that has been through a few reviews by now and I have been writing and re-writing for over a year now.  Each sentence has been read literally like a hundred or more times and most every sentence has been inserted, changed, removed, moved or any other combination so many times by now. It is interesting to think about whether or not the paper is still the same paper as it was when it started or not.

I can now see why people say that papers and books are never really finished, but are abandoned.  There comes a certain point when you just get tired or reading, working on, or changing the thing and you just want to give up on it and move on.  That is the point at which it is considered 'finished.'  I think this one was 'finished' long ago but it still plagues me, ha....

build it. they may come.

People's health is an interesting beast.  We often think of health as between one person and their immune system, or some variation of this.  There has also long been a correlation between lower income individuals and poor health and, often, shorter lifespans.  There are many ideas and studies showing why this latter relationship may exist, but so often it can be oversimplified.  This becomes a real struggle when we try to make structural changes to fix things (think healthcare reform) - we know something is broken, but if we are not sure why how can we really fix it?  (Before I go on, you should keep in mind that there is neither an explicit nor implicit political point/argument in this blog.  Carry on.)

Here are some thoughts from some recent research in the sociology of health and illness.  Policy makers and people in general often place a high degree of emphasis on the individual.  This usually translates over to things such as focusing on health care and insurance coverage, or even the availability of (affordable) health care.  But, even if these problems were fixed, people still may not use the health care available to them because it is not clear that this is the problem (obviously it is a big problem, but it could be subsequent to other issues).

Going back to the 'poor people' and their healthcare.  We assume that poor communities have poor health because there is no insurance or the care is hard to access.  While this may in part be true, recent research shows that within poor communities, it is not the poor people that are most affected by barriers to health, but middle-class and upper-class individuals living in that location.  In other words, the poor health in poor communities is actually not attributed to the poor people within that community, but the middle and upper class individuals within that lower income community.  This is usually because poor individuals have social networks in place that allow them to deal with their issues apart from the structural solutions in place - they talk to their friends and family to get help with health and not a doctor.  The middle and upper class individuals living within those poorer communities, on the other hand, do not have access to these social networks for solutions and 'suffer' the consequences.  Thus, it is possible that if we provided all of these poor people with health care that it may not change community level health outcomes anyways.  After all, they are not even the ones pulling down the average level of health.

Additionally, poorer individuals are less trusting of those in positions of authority like a physician and also expect worse outcomes from their interactions with doctors.  So, if they did have access and insurance as well as actually use that access, they may still have worse health outcomes than others.  This, again, is not so much a structurally caused health problem, but more cultural.  They have other ways to deal with health issues in their community and have different expectations when they do seek formal help.  Neither of these will be fixed by a shift in the structure of our health care system, but may require something else.  Some think a possible road forward is for all doctors to be more engaged with the communities they serve so that when/if people do have access, they will use it and expect something from it.  Others find it hard to differentiate solutions to these problems from political activism, and as such think no requirement for 'health advocacy' should be imposed as the activism would necessarily alter the substance of the medicine itself.  Either way, it is clear that health requires much more than a mere individual focus and that a structural change is needed in the delivery of health care.  It is significantly less clear, however, what that actually means.

Pretty interesting.  Sorry if that was a bore.  Mostly because there will probably be more.

Erroneous and Skewed

We like categories.  Boxes.  Organization.  I get that and it is clearly necessary for social interactions to work because it lays a bedrock of working assumptions upon which a non-dysfunctional society is based. But it is also very hard to avoid dismissing things you do not like by automatically (miss)categorizing.  I have always tried to avoid labeling people/thoughts/ideas quickly without really thinking about the content.  Doesn't always work, but I try.

This is even more true now, I would like to think.  Since people have read about some research I have done, many avoid really thinking about the content of the research or the content of their own assumptions of how things work by quickly putting a 'yes' or 'no' label on both me and the work.  Me and the research have been put in every camp possible it seems.  An article I wrote for Christianity Today came out recently and I really started to think more about this after those comments.  There are probably a few things going on.  Many quickly react to the title and don't even read the article it seems.  Other read it but what they already think literally drives what they read, and read some of what is written in literally opposite of what is written.  This could be a clarity issue on my part, but still.  There are some really good comments, too, but they are less fun to post.  Here are a few comment-morsels for you:

• [this is a partial - the person goes on and on, but I have no idea why this is talked about - maybe they think I am a universalist?]  Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares entirely contradicts the universalism of the liberals. So does his injunction not to throw pearls before swine, and his description of the Pharisees as 'offspring of vipers', in other words genetically cursed, and his parable of the 'wicked tenants' or 'wicked husbandmen', describing those who were attempting to usurp the kingdom.- the Edomites, descendants of Esau, described as a people God hates (Malachi 1:2,3), who had been converted to become 'Jews' in about 120BC.
• [I like this one, ha]  Wait wait wait... So you're upset that the author uses statistics to form conclusions? What else would you suggest? And nothing is "proven" in science. What the author is doing is using the facts to support her argument, explaining what they INDICATE. Your discernment is clearly hindered. Might I suggest some Bible reading to boost it? :)
• What an erroneous conclusion from what sounds like a skewed poll.
• [maybe my favorit one]  What a load of baloney. Liberalism is simply encouraging the Government to wrongly assume the role of the church. Keep Jesus out of your socialism.
• [again a partial, but even I am not sure what political viewpoint would be 'evident' and I wrote the thing]  Besides the likely problems inherent in the poll and thus the interpretation that others have pointed out, the political orientation of the author is evident. His criticism of Beck is misplaced, for instance....

Pepper Bells

We had pretty much given up on this poor pepper plant. It got huge, but never produced. Right when the heat slowed it has started to kick out tons of pretty big peppers. Persistant little thing... goes to show even non-sentient things do not like this much heat.

a census tidbit

So right now I am doing some work with the US census and thought I would give you a tidbit. I am looking at regional differences in pay for those in some form of medical profession. One of the comparisons that I am doing is looking at those in 'pink' fields (traditionally jobs held by women) compared to others. In setting up the data to do that, I came across some interesting stuff.

- The least 'integrated' field of medicine is actually not physicians. The lowest rates of female professionals is in podiatry (22%), then dentists (24%), and finally chiropractors (25%).

- On the other hand, the lowest rates of male professionals is first dental assistants (3%), then the dental hygienists (3%), and finally the speech/language pathologists (5%).

Not sure what to think about some of those, but it is interesting that the highest male/female categories each relate to the dental profession. I wonder if this has a structural cause at all, meaning maybe there is something about the dental field that sorts people over and above the dreams and aspirations of the individuals. I bet that the field of physicians used to be like this before there was a stronger push for gender 'equality'. Maybe that has yet to reach the field of dentistry....?

Deviant introduction

So I am a co-teacher of sorts for an introduction to sociology class. We were just going over social norms (expectations we are socialized into) and sanctions (informal and automatic things we do to keep each other in line). As an assignment, they all had to go and observe some norm, like actually waiting in lines at the store, and then violate the norm. Some of them are super creative. Here are some good ones (maybe more later, I am like half-way through 220 or something papers):

- One kid put on flippers, wet suit, goggles, and a snorkel and then went swimming in a fountain on campus. When asked what he was doing he told people he was training to be a Navy SEAL, but didn't know how to swim and was scared of the water and the fountain seemed like a safe place to start.

- Another went to the store and tasted different toothpastes, commented on the flavor, and put the rejects back in the box on the shelf. Some lady kindly (kind of) told her that shouldn't happen. (she did buy all of them anyways)

- Another went to the Wendy's drive through and when prompted to 'order when ready' wrote down her order and drove to the window to hand it to the person.

- Another went to the grocery store and picked up items, telling others why they should buy them, and put them in their carts for them.

- Another came up to kids listening to music, took the ear-bud out of the person's ear and put it in their own to listen to the music. After a few seconds put it back in the other person's and walked away.

- Another went up to random people at the coffee shop and asked if they could have some of the random person's coffee. Another sat down by random people in the movie theater and 'shared' that person's popcorn with them.

There are a ton more. Maybe i'll put more up later.

footnotes

Sara has been contending that most people in the study probably were thinking about personally helping people and not so much the government connection when asked about social justice.  It hit me the other morning that she is probably partially right because there was another question on there about the federal government reducing inequality and no matter what I did, I could not get the same findings out of it.  So, not conclusive, but it may be a hint that the social justice in the study may be more on the person-to-person side of the scale.  I know that was keeping you up at night.  Now you can sleep well.

Either way, I stick by the symbolic connection with the word.  That much is clear, but what the symbol is or what pops into peoples' heads is an open question still.

If that is the case, then it is definitely welcome news like some people have commented.  It is always a good thing to get people to care more about caring for people.

I forgot to mention in the last post that it is super ironic, I think, that as far as comments on the study go (not counting the plain jane journalistic reports) Glenn Beck was actually one of the more even-handed commentators on it all.  Almost made me feel bad for singling him out.  It was close.

Symbolic Justice

(Buckle up - this one will probably take a bit)

This has been a very weird week and I have been fairly (ok, very) unproductive.

I have had this struggle with academic work.  I think a lot of academia is very odd because we do all this schooling, we write these massively in depth papers about very small things and topics, very few people actually read them, and then we start the process over again with new academics (like me).  So basically we create knowledge that no one really cares about, few read, and then get others to join the party so we still have a job.  When it comes to publication of research and what not, the question 'why does this matter' is always asked and sometimes my answer - obviously rarely out loud however - is IT DOESN'T! 

Clearly this is a very cynical view of academia.  It does have value even if no one cares about the research and all we are left with is educating undergraduates.  They learn to think, understand their world more, and hopefully see that the world is deeper, wider, and more complex than their small cornfield-surrounded home town.  This is good for them and is good for all of us in terms of both general community as well as civically (yep, one day they may each vote once or twice).  But the research.  The stuff that is often of most interest to us academics - it is usually what is of least interest to non-academics.

Well, that may not really be the case.  Turns out the opposite is even possible.  I wrote my MA thesis on something that I thought was cool, but also thought was deeply specific and although slightly counter intuitive had a general interest only to the degree that knowing what we read matters is of interest. 

In the beginning of July a journalist wrote an article about my paper that was on the ARDA website.  The same article was then posted in a couple of other places.  I didn't even know it was up yet and the managing editor from Christianity Today began to email with me about it, and they asked me to write up a fairly lengthy article about it for an upcoming issue.  Then this week the same ARDA article was publish by The Huffington Post.  Which was crazy - both that they picked it up and the response from it.  Maybe the next day, The Blaze, some kind of Christian news outlet I think, published an article based on the HuffPost article.  Then the other day, after HuffPost and The Blaze, Glenn Beck apparently talked about it on his radio show and put an article on his web page.  Dagen, a Swedish newsweekly or something like that, has an article coming out about it soon.  Yesterday a Dallas radio station did a live phone interview with me about it.  It was also on Beliefnet twice (here and here), and a blog that seems to get some attention, The Friendly Atheist. 

It has all been very weird to me.  It is good to see that people actually are interested in the/some of the work that we do - maybe it is just a matter of wording and story telling.  One of the most odd things about it all, I think, has been the comments, responses, and emails that I have received from people.  I have been labeled both a 'whitey' leftist political preacher, as Sara pointed out, as well as a Bible thumping conservative Baylor religion-defender.  Some Christians adamantly reject that 'social justice' is 'Christian,' a lot of non-Christians are offended that Christians think they have a right to 'social justice,' and some Christians are reassured by the fact that when you read the Bible more the odds of supporting social justice increase.  This is all very interesting to me.  What is it about the term, the concept, or whatever it is that is apparently so strong and somewhat divisive?

I think that each response has its own interesting story, but a few initial thoughts: it is interesting that Christians are so strongly opposed, it is sad that there is something about the Christian community that makes the non-Christians think we have no right to 'social justice,' and although I am glad that some Christians are reassured by the findings the question should be raised about what it is they are reassured about?  We are all about having groups to which we belong and knowing who does not.  The reaction seems to show this clearly, with people seemingly saying either 'we are losing!,' 'You are not one of us!,'or 'we are winning!.' 

More interesting to me, however, is the apparent symbolic importance of this amorphous 'social justice.'  It is not, and cannot be, defined concretely in the study.  The question asks whether people need to be actively engaged with social and economic justice in order to be a good person, and so it seems that many of them may have been thinking about personally doing things - the person to person kind of social justice.  But I think I may contented that many of them may have been thinking of what has become the popular conception of social justice - government to person, and this, I think, is the main reason why at least some of the Christians oppose the findings.

For some of them they see social justice as the government forcibly stepping in and removing their possessions to give them away to someone who has less.  The 'needy' person may indeed have less, but they may just be lazy and there is no reason why my hard-earned 'stuff' should go to them just because, they think.  Additionally, it would seem that this has political connotations because clearly socialism, communism, and Marxism all support this approach to the world and none of the attempts have ended very well and most all that we know of have also been very opposed to religion.  The worry may be that people are human and humans are broken and selfish, so it may only be a matter of time before that forcibly removed money starts to be squandered, wasted, and possibly not even find its target anyways.

As far as the charge of the term 'social justice,' I think some parallels can be drawn to what Owen Chadwick talked about regarding the shifting European mind of the 19th century (I know it sounds terribly boring, but it actually is really awesome).  In many ways Europe was divided and it was one of the first times where regular people were able to be more involved with politics and ideas were flying around faster than before thanks to the new(ish) invention of newspaper.  People wanted to take sides on topics, but they didn't want ideas and beliefs, they wanted platforms and sides to join.  This is what the press provided; stronger opinions through more charged symbols attached to some platform.  So some idea would be attached to one platform, say communism, and each side then merely reacts to the presence or absence of that symbol.

Back to today.  We are clearly a politically divided country, and people want/need platforms to be a 'part of.'  I think that social justice has, through its discussion in the media and press, generally become symbolically associated with socialism and communism.  For good reason people think, thanks to the efforts of Marx and friends, the ideas of socialism couple tightly with atheism.  So because communism and socialism were anti-God and had some failed field-trials, it is a very strong political symbol for all that is bad.  Thus we get to the point now where social justice is in some ways generally linked to socialism symbolically and prompts a very strong reaction from all sides.  Some Christians oppose because they see it as the great 'other.'  Maybe some Christians support it because they have either been insulated from the symbolic coupling or have thought beyond mere symbolism.  Or maybe they are on board with that political platform and so the news is reassuring that they are on the 'correct' side.  Many non-Christians are opposed to the coupling because they do welcome the political platform but do not see Christians as a part of their club.  Somehow those crafty Christians created fake ID cards.  Or, and here is possibly the saddest option, they are opposed to the findings because social justice tries to help people and they think Christians are a failure at that and so they are offended by some research that shows Christians support it.  Clearly only in thought and not deed, they may be thinking.

Anyway you slice it, this whole week and the response to all of this has been very interesting.  It has prompted me to possibly look more into this stuff as a research topic.  We'll see.  Any thoughts are welcome, and you get a cookie for making it this far.  Like a mini-pizza size one, of your choice of course.  It is waiting for you in your kitchen right now.  If not, it must have gotten lost in the mail.  Talk to your local post office to rectify this wrong.

"Whitey"

So apparently I am married to a leftist political philosophist Preacher?!?! While on vacation in Durango with Aaron's family a few weeks ago, Aaron got an email form a blogger who writes about religion and then had a phone interview with the guy. This guy (David Briggs) then wrote a blog about Aaron's Master's thesis and its findings. He has been getting a few random emails from various people around the country who have read the blog post and had some questions, but now things have exploded after the article was published on the Huffington Post today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/frequent-bible-reading-ti_b_897017.html.

There are currently 454 comments. One that one of Aaron's colleagues found is below and is quite entertaining.

"Who is Aaron Franzen? Christ teaches us in the Bible to “love God with all our hearts, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength and to love our neighbor as our self”. He doesn’t teach that we are to follow a leftist political philosophy of getting even with “whitey” for slavery. What Franzen preaches is leftist politics not Holy Scripture."

The comments are interesting and many disheartening. Some encouraging, some downright angering or mean, and some entertaining. Mentioned in the comment above - I'm pretty sure that Aaron is not 'preaching' anything, but simply stating what he found when comparing different issues with level of Bible reading. Many don't seem to understand the findings in a correlational study. I was talking to one of my friends a week ago about Aaron's paper - she said she thought the findings were refreshing, that you would hope people that read the Bible more would be more into social justice and being more open to science and religion being compatible and such. I totally agree with her and think it is sad to see so many close-minded comments - both from Christians and obviously non-Christians.

Regardless, I am very proud of him and think it is fascinating how much interest the article has provoked! Check out the article link!