While increased understanding of and ability to alter the body is cause for celebration for many, critical scholars including Bryan Turner and Susan Orbach have been quick to remind us that these advances have not always led to happiness and health. The ability to “conquer” flesh and bone continues to place more responsibility on individuals to maintain the proper aesthetic appearance. And, with the exponential growth in the number of “experts”—now including but not limited to medical scientists, nutritional experts, the beauty industry, yoga gurus, and spiritual counselors—the difficulty of making sense of the overwhelming and often contradictory amount of information about health and bodies only grows. While it would be rather crude to suggest that in a different time, or in a different place, there is or has been a natural body, Orbach’s claim that we have entered an era of increased body confusion seems particularly apt (2009).

On the one hand, sociologists have insisted that our relationship to our bodies and the pressure upon bodies to fit particular aesthetic ideals cannot be isolated from larger social and economic contexts. For instance, scholars Susan Bordo (1999) and Nick Crossley (2001) have examined how bodies have moved further and further away from being tools sculpted by manual labor to expressions of personal preference, cultural pressure, and the leisure time to devote to creating a “pleasing” body (whether that’s for yourself or onlookers). The body has become another object to be prepared for consumption.

Perhaps more important for more culturally oriented sociologists are the subjective and ideological dimensions of shifts in bodies that bring blame and shame or pride and plaudits. Often thought of as the most biological and personal aspect of social life, the body is always already shaped and defined—literally—through culture. In this chapter, we consider two recent talks with experts about framing and defining the proper body.

In the first conversation, Abigail Saguy discusses the dominant cultural frames that stigmatize and attach blame to fatness. Saguy helps us see how the experts we turn to and the language we use normalize and hide judgment damages others who may not possess the “appropriate” or “ideal” body type.

In the second conversation, Natalie Boero and C.J. Pascoe look more closely at the relationship between people’s experience of their bodies and medical ideas of “health.” The authors take us inside the online world of pro-anorexia communities, showing how the chat rooms create safe spaces in which individuals share knowledge, find support, and engage with and resist institutions condemning their bodies and communities.

The studies approach the cultural construction of the body on two very different scales and from two different methodological approaches. However, both turn to bodies to trouble our notions of propriety, health, and bodies—as well as how we see others bodies and self-presentation as illustrative of deeper aspects of the self, including moral fortitude and mental ability.

Saguy began by discussing the importance and difficulties of language about bodies:

I use the terms “fat” and “fatness.” And this is not a perfect solution either… but I’m taking a cue from the fat acceptance movement that has reclaimed fat and fatness as neutral descriptors. This is a common tactic of social movements, we saw this with the Black Power movement, reclaiming black as a neutral or even positive term, with queer, and we see also it with fat. I sometimes talk about “heavy” and “heavier.” Sometimes I use the word corpulence. Other words that people use I don’t use because they have argued and I agree that they’re euphemistic, which also implies that there’s something wrong with fat…

Saguy continued by reflecting on how discrimination against fatness is often overlooked:

We are in the midst of a burgeoning discourse on obesity and the obesity epidemic, and that this is a major public health crisis. And that discourse takes for granted, again, the idea that it is a problem, a medical problem [and] a social problem to be heavy and the solution is making fat people thin as opposed to, for instance, making thin people less prejudiced against fat.

Key to understanding the way fatness is treated by society is to examine the way it is framed. Saguy outlines the consequences of some various frames:

… [P]eople don’t even think they are using a frame when they say “obese, obesity, overweight.” They assume they are talking about a fact. ..,And what I try to do in the book is denaturalize that and say let’s take a step back and think about how and why we talk about fatness.

…So you can think about fatness as a medical problem, and that’s going to have implications: people need treatment, they need to change their bodies, maybe they need to take drugs or have surgery. You can think about; that that’s the medical frame. Or you can think that [fatness is] a public health crisis. That’s become very dominant since—but only since—about 2000. [In this frame], we need to have collective action, government action, to change population weight, to change behavior…

But fatness could also be portrayed as a civil rights issue, in which the problem is not that people, individuals, or the society as a whole, are too fat and therefore unhealthy. The problem is that there’s bigotry and discrimination on the basis of body size, and the solution is not to make fat people thinner, but to make the society at large more tolerant and even celebrate body size diversity.

[H]ow we frame this issue has very different implications for policy as well as for individual interactions and behaviors and for people’s lives. We’re all affected by this issue in different ways, those who are heavy, especially women, are most penalized by this; face discriminations, they are taunted, their dignity is denied on an everyday basis with strangers and intimate relationships with doctors. Those who are thinner, again especially women, thought this affects men, especially gay men, live in fear of becoming fat. And this can also be a real tyranny in their lives. These symbolic distinctions have huge material consequences.

What about the connections people make between fatness and moral failings?

…Peter Stearns, in his book Fat History, shows that at the end of the 19th century it was considered beautiful and desirable, especially for women, to be heavy. It’s about the turn of the century that it becomes cast as immoral… This history is somewhat contested, there’s a new book coming out, but it’s very clear at least that we start seeing a strong moral argument about fatness at the beginning of the 20th century. [It’s seen] as a sign of sloth and gluttony. This has not gone away. Now it’s combined with the medical and public health crisis frame. So, people take about people who are eating themselves to death: they are eating too much, they are gluttonous, they are slothful AND it has medical implications.

The moral judgment of fatness is often raced, classed, and gendered. It bears more than a passing similarity with the language used to decry welfare:

Weight is highly correlated with economic status; this is especially true for women. Once we consider, among people who take for granted that being fat is a medical problem, a public health crisis, who is blamed? Who is held responsible? I call these blame frames. The most dominant one in the U.S. context is that of personal responsibility. Here it’s the individual fat people who just can’t push away from the table. …[T]he discourse is very similar in terms of the “welfare queens,” and just poor people in general and their insatiable appetites. It’s very raced as well as classed, and politically it is used to say “well, should we be giving these people food stamps?” …It becomes a way of blaming the poor for their misfortune, for their health problems, as opposed to discussing the way, for instance, economic inequality or poverty leads to poor health outcomes.

The use of blame frames by media and public health outlets, Saguy tells TSP, only exacerbates the problem:

All this discussion on the obesity epidemic may be worsening stigma. And this is not just a social justice concern, but it’s also a health concern because we know that being the object of discrimination and stigma has negative effects on cortisol levels, on blood pressure, and ultimately on heart disease and life expectancy.

Many people, especially heavy women, perceive the doctor’s office as a hostile environment. They’re not treated with dignity. They are told that whatever health problems they are presenting have to be due to their weight (and… that it’s their fault). …This can be a life or death situation if a test could have discovered a [treatable] problem and instead the doctor says, “Come back when you’ve lost 50 pounds.”

…The fact that [New Jersey’s] Chris Christie could not be a serious candidate [for the U.S. presidency] unless he lost weight is very telling… “If he can’t control his weight, how can he run the country?” It’s definitely a moral judgment.

The way that he justifies health [as the] reason [for having a lap-band surgery] is very common. The socially accepted account of why people are losing weight [is that] they are losing weight to be healthy. But actually, a colleague of mine, Paul Campos… asked people if they could live longer, would they gain weight to add five years of their lives? They would not. But they were willing to give up years of life to lose weight. Again, it was not a random sample… But it suggests that losing weight for health reasons is what people think is acceptable, but it’s not the real motivation. …It’s interesting to ask now that we have our first black president, to ask, “Could we have a fat president?” Is the prejudice so great, still so great, that it would not be possible?

Where there are powerful frames, there are often opportunities for resistance to those frames. Saguy explains some efforts to offer alternative, more positive framing options for fatness:

…We have a strong tradition in the U.S. of talking about group-based discrimination, [but] there’s very little discussion of weight-based discrimination, and I think this is largely because the frames of medical problem and public health crisis frame are so dominant. The assumption… is that we have to make fat people thin [rather than accept them at their size]. The other two frames I talk about are the beauty frame in which, this comes from the idea of “Rubenesque”: …fat is beautiful… some are trying to reclaim that… [and] the health at every size frame. This is something that is very increasingly important among clinicians. And we see it among those who work with eating disorders as well as nutritionists and doctors. The idea that it’s not unhealthy to be fat, that you can be healthy at any size. We don’t want to treat the fatness, we want to, for instance, get people more active and tell them they can be active at any size. When we try to get people to exercise or change their diet to lose weight it’s usually unsuccessful… we’d do better to just focus on improving health.

While Boero and Pascoe also have an interest in the way weight, fat, and the body is framed, they take a different approach by examining web-based pro-anorexia communities:

Because of the ephemeral qualities of the site and the migration of members from site to site so quickly, it’s next to impossible to get any sort of accurate count on how many people participate. But if you plug-in “pro-anorexia” or “pro-ana” into any sort of Google search, you will find hundreds if not thousands of sites.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, the sites have been a source of negative response and controversy.

It comes from politicians, parents, sufferers of eating disorders. For instance, in France there have been a lot of discussions about getting laws passed that make it illegal to encourage extreme weight loss in online communities. In the United States we haven’t seen laws passed per se, but Tumblr just came out with a statement with their goal of taking down these sorts of pro-eating disorder websites, or microblogs, on their site. You see online service providers also trying to sort of get rid of these sites, even if they’re not technically against the law. This is not new. Yahoo! was pressured to take down these sites 10 or 12 years ago. And interestingly, it’s also feminists who have very much had a negative response to these sites.

And, while the sites are not without fault, according to Boero and Pascoe, much of the criticism focuses on the most extreme aspects of the pro-anorexia communities:

I think overwhelmingly the media has whipped up sort of a moral panic around these [websites]. I don’t mean to sound glib here; eating disorders are a serious issue. [But the media has] sort of taken the most sensational aspects of these sites and put them out there as the Ground Zero for how people develop eating disorders these days. There’s been a very sensational reaction that has focused largely on the supposed desire of “veteran” members wanting to recruit… As these being breeding grounds for anorexia and bulimia and other disorders… as very predatory. [It’s] a very decontextualized moral panic—which is probably the definition of a moral panic. But really, [pro-ana sites have] largely been taken out of context, and the more sensational aspects have been focused on.

In contrast, to these popular accounts, Boero and Pascoe seek a deeper understanding of the sites in their research:

The year and half [we spent] looking at these sites really gave us a chance to look at the nuances…

We are absolutely guilty of looking at these sites and thinking, “Oh my goodness this is horrific! This is awful!” It did take us time—a lot of time, in fact—and I think if we had rushed and tried to get an article out as fast as possible, we would have been guilty of some of the things the mainstream media is in terms of not seeing things in context. I think that one of the things that [makes our research sound is how we became] so familiar with the conversations, the images, and the ideas posted on these sites over time, getting past the initial shock value… to see how a lot of the discussion mirrors more mainstream ideas about weight and weight loss and obesity. And that, to a certain extent, to understand the moral panic around pro-anorexia groups outside of the moral panic of obesity would be a missed opportunity because, if you look on these sites, once you get past some of the more extreme examples, what they’re telling each other to do is exactly what [mainstream society is] telling fat people to do. [Take] what we see as problematic in these communities, cut-and-paste it into a Weight Watchers website and it’s seen as legitimate practice around legitimate weight loss.

Boero and Pascoe explain that it is important for members of pro-anorexia communities to establish authenticity, but it’s complicated by the disembodied nature of a site about bodies.

Rituals are important, but some of the more concrete ways people [assert their legitimacy in these forums] is by displaying their knowledge about the disorders. Talking about their weight and statistics, talking about various side effects that they are experiencing from these disorders that would be characteristic of “real” anorexia. It’s a lot of constant reiteration of talking about their bodies, sharing images of their bodies, and using diagnostic categories to frame their bodies online and challenging other peoples characterizations of their bodies as well.

Some of the groups we observed required that their participants post or have pictures of themselves as their avatar picture or on their site to ensure authenticity. But a lower percentage actually posted pictures of themselves on the discussion groups, because a minority of group members actually posted on the discussion groups themselves [the others tend to read the sites and message boards without contributing]. That’s true across the board; there are more people who are members of discussion groups than actually post on them. [Still], if someone challenged your claim to bodily authenticity, you needed to produce a picture. And that didn’t even necessarily mean you needed to be successful. Someone could post a picture of themselves at a weight that they weren’t happy with, as long as they then did the interactional work of saying, “I’m fat and I want to be skinny.” It was more about participating in the discourse than proving you were actually skinny. You had to say you wanted to be skinny… or prove you are skinny.

[Surprisingly, these sites revealed] incredibly high levels of aggression. They were constantly policing the boundaries, and that’s where the “wanna-orexic” comes in. But they were also very intent on giving each other support in a kind way, in a sometimes humorous way and sometimes in a mildly aggressive way. If one participated in the discourse correctly, one could elicit all sorts of support. If one didn’t participant in the discourse correctly, that’s when you could get called out for being “wanna-orexic,” or not really anorexic.

Once a member has established authenticity, Boero and Pascoe explain, the pro-anorexia communities offer a non-judgmental space and a wide-range of resources for people who want to change their bodies. They report website members sharing dieting tips and ways to hide your eating disorder, how to handle your relationships, and what to do when another member doubted their commitment to body modification or sought help for their disordered eating.

A lot of times this support wasn’t just support in developing and maintain anorexia. But a lot of it had to do with managing symptoms, what to eat, what not to eat, dealing with family members and friends who were concerned about your eating habits.

We would usually see support for whatever people wanted support for. If someone was going into an in-patient program, people would say, “Good luck, I hope you get better.” But if people’s parents were forcing them to go into an in-patient program, they would say, “We’re so sorry you’re going through this, parents don’t understand, nobody understands this.” If a person had established themselves as authentically eating disordered, not just looking for a diet, they generally received support for whatever they asked for support for.

Participants also used the space to share medical knowledge and critique the popular framing of anorexia as a disorder.

We actually see that the participants on these sites have a variety of dispositions about their disorders. Some participants are very open saying that this is a disorder and they want to recover from it; others are very assertive in saying they see this as a lifestyle choice, that there’s nothing to recover from, that it’s not a disease. We seem the same participant, the same person, posting along both of these lines, really teasing out the ambivalence…

That is again one of those findings that took time, that sort of came to us later in the process. We were sort of frustrated that it’s not all “pro-ana, pro-ana, pro-ana”! It’s actually some fairly complex feelings and thoughts and analysis being shared out there about eating disorders. If some of the goals our research is to really think about how we can address eating disorders as a social problem, then understanding that we aren’t dealing with a very cut-and-dried [issue]… is very important.

Boero and Pascoe closed by underscoring that there is no one-size-fits-all model of anorexia, nor is there a one-size-fits-all model for preventing and healing disordered eating. Anorexia as a disease does not, in other words, need to be dropped as a medical or media frame, but the public, the media, the medical community, and individuals need a greater appreciation of nuance and competing expectations about acceptable, desirable body types.

I think it is important to think about the population we are studying. We are studying a largely non-clinical population, which is, in part, what makes this study unique. Among eating disorders, most research has been done amongst clinical populations. I think that what it simply means is that you can’t use earlier characterizations of anorexics based on in-patient studies to characterize pro-ana anorexics. You can’t simply graft on one to the other. It’s a lot more complex.

We have a certain understanding of the person who becomes anorexic, but the communities we’ve been studying who engage in these practices (mostly women) were a lot more varied than these characterizations—primarily of clinical populations—would indicate.

Obviously, we are a society that has a fraught relationship around bodies and food. …We [also] live in a society that ends to individualize. We tend to look for eating disorders in individuals or very small groups or we focus in and blame one structure, like the media. Both have been part and parcel of how we’ve thought about anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders, and both approaches really miss the larger social context.

Despite increasing global attention and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate change has become a contested political issue in the U.S. While Donald Trump has referred to climate change as a hoax, indigenous and environmental activists have mobilized to stop pipelines like Keystone XL and Dakota Access. Yet, why has climate change become politicized and how has the issue shaped the 2016 presidential election?

In this roundtable, we ask three leading scholars about the political and social dynamics of climate change and what implications the election will have on climate change policies. We examine how climate change can exacerbate social inequalities as well as generate social movements for environmental justice.

What implications could the election have on climate change policy?

Timmons Roberts: The stakes are high, as the outcome of the presidential election will have immense ramifications for the future of U.S. and international actions on climate change. Donald Trump has appointed Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to be his climate and environment transition team leader, and Ebell has been a critic of climate change science and a very effective leader in the denialist movement. This appointment signals that Trump would decimate all climate efforts by the U.S. and undermine global agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Eric Bonds: While Clinton on her own might not be a champion for climate change action if elected, her administration would give the climate justice movement an opportunity to develop and push for substantive change. This would certainly not be the case if Trump was elected.  He would likely not be moved by climate advocacy, even if the climate movement was able to increase in size and amplify its voice.  

What’s more, Trump’s emphasis on “law and order” echoes Richard Nixon’s platform when he was a presidential candidate in 1968.  One way the Nixon Administration implemented “law and order” was through efforts to break up and quash the highly developed and effective social movements of that era. If Trump is elected, “law and order” might similarly be translated into attempts to intimidate those who voice dissent in general, along with direct attempts to suppress activism in the climate justice movement and the other important movements of our time, like Black Lives Matter and movements for gender equality and immigrant rights.

To what extent has climate change become an important and divisive issue in the presidential election?

Dunlap: Human-caused climate change has not become an important and salient issue in the presidential election, even though Hilary Clinton has taken a pretty strong proactive position while Donald Trump has basically denied its reality. Still, while the views of the two candidates, and the positions of the Democratic and Republican party platforms, are almost diametrically opposed on climate change, it is not close to being a top-tier issue. Climate change was barely mentioned by the moderators and candidates in the debates, and the media paid little attention to it.  

My assessment is that with issues like economic problems, immigration, and terrorism being so salient, Clinton is not too keen on raising an issue that can be easily turned against her in fossil-fuel producing regions, especially coal-mining areas like southern Ohio.  Republicans have already painted Democrats as waging a “war on coal,” so I think Clinton and many other Democrats feel the need to be cautious when talking about climate change.  Especially in this election, slogans seem to trump (pun intended) serious discussion of policy issues, such as the need to transition to clean energy.

Roberts: The two candidates are very divided on climate change. Donald Trump is proclaiming how coal can save our economy and be made “clean.” Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, continues to describe a big push on solar energy, but there is a lack of salience with the public on climate change compared to her other core issues.

What impact have the climate change and climate justice movements had on national politics?

Bonds: The climate justice movement certainly had an impact in national politics in terms of its opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. But I think that the true impact of this movement is yet to be felt. Possibly more impactful than social movements and grassroots pressure on recent climate policies are the numerous economic and national security policy experts who are aware that climate change poses tremendous challenges to society. I think these concerns motivated the Obama Administration’s climate policies in the past few years. But it’s important to stress that pushing beyond these reforms to really tackle the issue of climate change will require a very powerful social movement, which is yet to fully develop.

Roberts: I believe that the People’s Climate March in 2014 was important to show a new level of the scale of grassroots and popular mobilization on climate change. The climate justice movement has also had very strong local effects, especially in opposing pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. These efforts are adding up to have a national impact on the direction the Obama Administration has taken on climate. More mainstream and faith-based efforts like Interfaith Power and Light, that are working between faith communities to build on Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, have also had an impact in raising awareness and political pressure. Still, fossil fuel extraction, like fracking, continues with devastating impacts on communities and the environment that will exacerbate environmental injustices.

Dunlap: In my opinion, neither climate change nor the climate justice movement has had a major impact on the current election, despite the efforts of climate activists like Bill McKibben to make climate change more politically salient. The climate justice movement might be able to mobilize at least a significant segment of the public — especially Millennials — concerned about climate change, but this is not certain and the impact on the election remains to be seen.

What accounts for climate change denial in the U.S.? Why do you think denial is particularly common in the U.S.?

Dunlap: I think the key is the dominance of the fossil fuels industry and prominence of neo-liberalism. My research, along with other sociologists such as Jeremiah Bohr, Robert Brulle, Justin Farrell and Aaron McCright, has shown that fossil fuel corporations like Exxon Mobil were early funders of denial, and they were quickly joined by conservative think tanks such as The Marshall Institute (check out an overview of the research). Fossil fuels corporations have a material interest in denying the significance of human-caused climate change, and their opposition to reducing carbon emissions is aided by modern society’s extreme reliance on cheap energy. The conservative movement, with its neo-liberal ideology opposing governmental regulations, views efforts to deal with climate change as posing enormous threats to the free-market economy. A major accomplishment of what we term the “denial machine” in the U.S. is turning “global warming” into a core element of conservative ideology, joining God, guns, gays, abortion, taxes and immigration. The result is that the Republican Party has become a key actor in climate change denial, with the GOP Congress in particular attacking climate science and doing its best to block Obama’s actions. Denial was first planted in the U.S., but quickly diffused (with the help of key American actors) to Australia, Canada and the UK, and to a lesser degree several other nations.  

Bonds: There are a number of factors that contribute to comparatively high rates of climate change denial in the U.S. Important research contributions from Riley Dunlap, Aaron McCright, Robert Brulle, and many other scholars show that denial comes from somewhere, and that some groups are much more receptive to climate denialism than others, such as political conservatives. Individuals and corporations that are heavily invested in fossil fuels have mobilized extensive resources in order to develop and promote climate denialism.  Their work is bolstered by very wealthy conservatives who are ideologically opposed to environmental regulations and the pro-active role of government. In sum, the stark political and economic inequalities in U.S. society are very conducive to climate denialism.

Roberts: The climate denial movement, which was devised in the late 1990s by a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute, has been very effective at delaying policies and regulation directed at climate change and reducing fossil fuel emissions. Corporations and industry groups have focused on the U.S. because of the access lobbyists have to the legislative processes and the possibility of unfettered campaign contributions, especially after Citizens United that enabled anonymous political spending.

How will action or inaction on climate change impact different communities? Will it contribute to inequalities?

Bonds: Failure to transition our society away from fossil-fuel dependency will create terrible harm in the world as sea levels rise and as the climate takes up more energy and becomes more volatile.  As Timmons Roberts and others have so convincingly argued, climate impacts will, no doubt, harm those individuals who contributed least to the crisis and who have the fewest resources to adapt. The major fossil fuel companies that fight carbon emission regulations and spend millions of dollars lobbying to thwart climate legislation, are all actively working to create conditions that will ultimately cause vast harm through climate change impacts. I think it is important for society to recognize that even if such outcomes are not intentional, they are predictable and avoidable.

Roberts: An all-out push for renewables and energy efficiency can be done with equity and justice, or it can be done in ways that reproduce inequalities and injustices. It all depends on how the transition from fossil fuels is done. As advocate and scholar Michael Dorsey says, if the approach to cleaner energy focuses on solar panels charging Teslas in McMansion driveways with poor working conditions for people making the products and disregard for the devastating impacts on communities where the materials are extracted, then creating a renewable energy economy will sharply contribute to inequalities. The poor could be left paying the maintenance costs of the huge electrical grid and paying higher rates due to increased costs of electricity generated from renewable sources, while the upper classes could have their electricity bills slashed by affording the latest technologies and efficiency upgrades. In our system, these are the business-as-usual outcomes we should expect. But there is an alternative. Approaches like community solar projects and weatherizing low-income housing, along with protections for workers in the green economy, could make a significant difference on how energy is produced and work to reduce social inequality.

Since the Tea Party entered the political scene, candidates, analysts, and observers have tried to discern where it came from, whether and how it has been politically effective, and to what degree it will remain a force. Virtually everyone agrees that the Tea Party still matters, but precisely what it is and how it can and will influence politics is far from clear. We asked four scholars for their views; while they agree that the Tea Party is, has been, and will be an important political and social force, they offer surprisingly different takes on why.

First, we asked who and what comprise the Tea Party today. Is it primarily a network of local activists or a national ideological movement?

Meghan Burke says the Tea Party started as a network of grassroots movements, but has been heavily influenced by national media.

The movement in its early years was relatively autonomous and independent. Local groups communicated with one another and shared a larger conservative agenda, but they were not taking marching orders from outsiders. Instead, they hoped to assert influence on those very political powerhouses so that they could better represent the interests of the movement, which is not strictly Republican.

Robert Horwitz suggests that, as the Tea Party has grown and gained national exposure, agendas have begun to filter down from above.

Existing Washington-based lobbying organizations, such as Americans for Prosperity, have attempted to channel Tea Party mobilization through cash infusions and ideological support, and right-wing talk radio and Fox News endeavor to set the agenda, bolstered some by religious broadcasting. Although local Tea Party organizations profess to guard their autonomy, as they have entered into electoral politics they have become more integrated into the networks of the more established think tank and lobbying organizations
that hover on the right wing of the Republican Party.

Ruth Braunstein’s research indicates that, beneath the layers of media and elite influence, there remains a local core that has, at times, been frustrated with the nationalization of their movement.

Increasingly, when people refer to the Tea Party, they refer to its most visible representatives—the national leaders and elected officials who speak in its name. But local Tea Party groups have not disappeared. Of the Tea Party activists I have been following since 2010, many are still active and still identify with their local group. But much has changed since their earliest days. Their founder and original leader stepped down in early 2013, citing frustration with the slow pace of change and disillusionment with the representatives they had sent to Washington and the statehouse in 2010. In part because of this frustration at the national level, the group has increasingly honed in on state and local issues.

Andrew Perrin sees the Tea Party today as less a movement or set of movements than a politicized mark of conservative legitimacy.

The Republican gains of 2010 and 2014, along with President Obama’s reelection in 2012, have served to move much of what gets identified as “Tea Party” into Congress. Where the term once referred to social movement-style activism and participation, “Tea Party” now serves mostly as a modifier attached to the names of certain members of Congress, identifying them as reliably and defiantly conservative.

Perhaps the key takeaway is that the Tea Party is not a monolithic movement, but a contested political label that can be applied to local activist networks and national political figures alike.

Given the complexity of the contributors’ views on what makes the Tea Party today, we asked next about parallels and distinctions between today’s Tea Party and conservative movements from earlier in American history. Our experts find more agreement here, noting that the Tea Party embodies a familiar style of contentious politics, but they also take the opportunity to point out that what counts as “conservative” is itself an important question.

Horwitz suggests that the Tea Party is not really new. Rather, it is,

the latest eruption of what historian Richard Hofstadter calls the “paranoid style” of American politics. After World War II, American conservatism broke into two factions. A majority reluctantly came to terms with the New Deal, but a smaller faction called for its rollback and demanded a more severe response to communism. Hofstadter theorized that this rage stemmed from the “status anxiety” of the white Protestants who saw themselves becoming displaced by new groups and new social mores. A similar kind of rage can be found among today’s Tea Party. Fear of “Islamo-fascism” now substitutes for the old fear of communism. The demographic profile of Tea Partiers is similar to those Hofstadter examined: older, whiter, better off economically, better educated, Protestant (particularly Evangelical), and small business owners.

Perrin agrees that the Tea Party has historical precedents, but suggests that “calling it a conservative movement misses what’s perhaps most important about the historical comparison.” What we think of as a conservative movement today is a relatively new form of Civil Rights-backlash politics,

a coalition that emerged in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement’s legislative successes. These coalitions have since become nearly ubiquitous ways of organizing political identification, and they tend to accept the “rules of the game”—to take for granted the distinction between “liberal” and “conservative” viewpoints—rather than challenging those rules. Data show that the Tea Party coalition is much the same as the coalition that makes up the Republican Party, so given that the Tea Party has mostly ebbed as a social movement and become a legislative caucus, the real question is whether it will change any of those coalition dynamics. My guess is that it won’t.

Noting a distinctly religious dimension to the Tea Party group she worked with, Braunstein argues that the movement harkens to a set of moral values that Tea Party members feel are under threat. But this doesn’t mean that the Tea Party is simply the political arm of the religious right.

It’s common to associate the Tea Party with the Christian Right, but the group I studied tells a more complex story. My research included members with diverse religious identities and practices. Some identified as conservative Christians, but others’ relationships to faith and organized religion varied from indifference to individual spirituality to atheism. The group leader and others explicitly distanced the Tea Party from the Christian Right and from faith-based groups that organize around single issues like abortion. They insisted that the Tea Party sought to bring conservatives back together around broader unifying themes, especially strict adherence to the Constitution and a restored commitment to Judeo-Christian values. Even atheists among them expressed their belief that a citizenry untethered from religious values would run roughshod over the Constitution; that there could be no democracy without religion.

Our experts all note a reactionary component to Tea Party politics—is this a sign that what’s really driving the Tea Party is anger?

Braunstein believes anger fuels all social movements to some degree, but she has also observed more complex motivations for Tea Party activism. Consider, she says,

the complex emotional culture of the movement. For the most part, when members of the group I studied gathered, their interactions were marked by expressions of pride in their decision to stand up and try to make a difference, and love for their country, their children, and this newfound community. At the same time, they also expressed frustration, disappointment and resentment: as when the media portrayed their work in a negative light; when their neighbors did not join their efforts; and when their political opponents dismissed them as racists or demagogues. Over time, while the group’s mutual affection, pleasure and pride appeared to reinforce their solidarity, their frustration, resentment, and anger replenished their sense of moral indignation and confidence that their efforts were necessary.

Horwitz cautions that “anger” doesn’t capture the full range of what Tea Party members are motivated by.

Anger and perceived victimization are prominent features of the Tea Party movement, but movement intellectuals also articulate a coherent political philosophy based on traditional conservative and libertarian ideas. The Tea Party also evokes perceived victimhood. Members see themselves as the virtuous—the deserving, hard-working, tax-paying, regulated-to-death people who actually create economic value. Many see themselves squeezed between the irresponsible freeloaders from below and subject to the government-backed whims and cultural snobbery of the liberal educated elite above.” This perceived victimhood is partly rooted in anger, to be sure, but it is also heavily conditioned by a deeper political philosophy as well as a real sense of economic and cultural distress.

Burke suggests the Tea Party is a particular kind of logical, if misinformed, reaction to economic struggles and cultural conflict.

Anger implies a hotheaded irrationality that mischaracterizes the movement. The Tea Party absolutely relies on some deeply misinformed beliefs about things like welfare, immigration, and Islam, but it’s important to recognize that despite the filtered nature of many Tea Party members’ worldviews, their lens on the world makes sense to them. They are watching their kids struggling to find jobs and to pay their bills, and they see people who should be enjoying retirement working at Wal-Mart to make ends meet. It’s wrong that they believe racist myths about how welfare works, but it’s not wrong that they’re angry at the economy and their communities that are crumbling around them.

Perrin adds that Tea Partiers are motivated by their political and social identities as much as by economic and cultural threat.

At the outset, it was a movement primarily based on opposition to President Obama. Some of that might have been anger, but much of it was honest cultural and political disagreement. Some of it was also nostalgia; a Tea Party organizer said, “We want to go back 200 years, to where our country was founded and say it was working great then, let’s get back to those values!” Fundamentally, I think much political engagement is driven by cultural and emotional identification. Tea Party support, in that sense, is like many other kinds of political identification. We find some evidence that racial identification played a role, and, of course, the images of blatantly racist signs and slogans at Tea Party rallies affirms that. But like anger, race is far from the whole story.“At the outset, it was a movement primarily based on opposition to President Obama. Some of that might have been anger, but much of it was honest cultural and political disagreement.” —Perrin

Our experts’ perspectives highlight local and national dimensions of Tea Party politics; the roles of reactionary anger, emotions, and political philosophy; and action at the grassroots and through elite channels. What imprints will the Tea Party leave on our politics and culture?

Horwitz and Perrin emphasize a lasting impact on politics and gridlock in Washington, while Burke observes a surprising empowerment of women in Tea Party culture and Braunstein notes developments in the construction and contestation of in the public sphere.

Horwitz:

At the very least, the Tea Party has helped move the Republican Party, and political conversation in general, to the right. Tea Party populism managed to put a distinctly right-wing spin on the anxieties fostered by the Great Recession. The Tea Party movement both reflects and reinforces a kind of conservatism and a corresponding Republican political style that has become deeply dogmatic and absolutist.

Perrin:

It’s going to be tough to distinguish between the specific influence of the Tea Party and the more general no-holds-barred style of contemporary Washington. The existence of the Tea Party as a social movement may have helped foster that style, and the Tea Party caucus in Congress is distinguished in part by it as well. But that style was established before the 2008 election, before the Tea Party emerged, and it has other causes.

Burke:

One effect that might surprise people is the empowerment of women. I quickly realized that lots of women were finding voices in their Tea Party communities, many of them for the first time in their lives. I quickly began to think of the Tea Party as a women’s movement. It is largely women doing the social movement work. This empowerment cannot be ignored, but almost no one focuses on it. Some of the women even expressed ideas that could be labeled feminist—talking critically about the “old boys’ clubs” in their communities, for example. Another, I think, is that we are really learning how much cable news, which functions primarily as entertainment for profit, impacts our political system and weakens our democracy. Cable news keeps us so deeply misinformed, and locked inside our political echo chambers, that we cannot often see our common frustrations or work to meaningfully understand the world around us.

Despite being relatively new, the Tea Party has had discernible effects on our political system. It has ignited popular concerns about an overactive federal government, but less visibly, it has also been part of a transformation in the relationship between religion and politics in America today. For the past several decades, religious arguments were primarily voiced by conservative groups, and primarily in public debates about sexual politics—most notably abortion, gender roles, and same-sex marriage. But over the past few years, the Tea Party and increasingly vocal progressive religious actors have elevated the moral salience of economic issues—from healthcare affordability to taxes. These actors have called upon religious Americans to reorient their focus on the family—from the bedroom to the kitchen table—and to think in new ways about which party (if any) truly represents their values. While the consequences of this shift are yet to be seen, it is possible that we are seeing a political realignment that will test the decades-old alliance between religious (social) conservatives and corporate elites.“The Tea Party and increasingly vocal progressive religious actors have elevated the moral salience of economic issues—from healthcare affordability to taxes. These actors have called upon religious Americans to… think in new ways about which party (if any) truly represents their values.” —Braunstein

In this roundtable, we asked three renowned scholars to discuss the lasting significance of the “culture of poverty” rhetoric, and what social scientists could do to contribute to (or end) this debate. 

How has the culture of poverty debate evolved over the years?

Mario Luis Small: There has been some evolution, but it has probably been less in the political sphere than among social scientists. Political commentators seem to think of culture as the sum of people’s norms and values and of “the culture of poverty” as the norms and values that cause people to enter or remain in poverty. This model is much more common among commentators on the right than among those on the left, for whom this kind of explanation merely “blames the victims” for their problems. Both positions are quite old, dating at least to 1960s.

Few social scientists use the term “culture of poverty” in a scientific sense. Those who study poverty rarely think about cultural questions in this way, instead tending to focus on basic structural factors, such as the quality of schools or the availability of jobs, as explanations for poverty. Those who study culture—and these are largely a different group of scholars altogether—tend to think of culture in far more sophisticated and diverse ways than as the “norms and values” of a group. Few social scientists have attempted to understand poverty through these alternative conceptions. Many of those who do focus on questions such as the impact of poverty on culture or cultural practices, rather than the impact of culture on poverty.

Kaaryn Gustafson: Early writings on the culture of poverty, for example those by Oscar Lewis and Michael Harrington, suggested that the culture of poverty was an effect, namely an effect of economic and social exclusion. Those writings suggested that people who faced few economic opportunities in society grew hopeless. In many ways, the early discussions of the culture of poverty were a call for action, a demand that the United States, a country that prides itself in economic opportunity, take notice of the many who could not realize those opportunities.

In the mid-1960s, the culture of poverty became associated with African Americans living in concentrated pockets of poverty in urban areas. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965), noted high rates of divorce, non-marital childbearing, and welfare use among black families in urban centers and described these families as exhibiting a “tangle of pathology.” During a radio address in 1986, then-President Ronald Reagan quipped that while a War on Poverty had been famously declared in 1964, “you could say that poverty won the war.” His reason for reaching this conclusion? He noted that a lot of families were using federal anti-poverty programs, or, in his terms, were “dependent” upon federal programs–a not-so-subtle reference to the culture of poverty.

Since then, the idea that social and economic well-being ought to be measured by how few people are using government programs and not by the well-being of American families themselves has come to guide government programs. For example, the success of the federal welfare reforms passed under President Bill Clinton has been measured by the dramatic decline in the number of families receiving cash benefits. What is forgotten is that the number of American families living in poverty has risen since the welfare reforms.

Why have culture of poverty arguments been so persistent?

Small: The notion of a “culture of poverty” remains part of the conversation for a number of reasons. Some are political. For some people, the idea that people’s poverty results from their own choices and values seems to explain a lot, regardless of whether that particular idea is actually consistent with the available evidence. The term itself, “culture of poverty,” is also broad enough that it can be taken by different people to mean different things. The term is easy to reinvent from year to year.

Mark Gould: Since the Civil Rights Movement, almost everyone in the USA has come to believe that all citizens deserve equal opportunity and most have come to believe that all have equal opportunity. Most of us believe that our values are actually implemented.

If most Americans believe that African Americans should be treated as if they are the same as whites, given equal opportunities, and if most Americans believe that poor African Americans have equal opportunities, the disproportionate failure of African Americans to “succeed” can only be attributed to traits internal to them and their communities. Logically, it does not matter on what traits we focus, but often it is a “culture of poverty” that is seen as inhibiting success, as inhibiting the inability of poor blacks to take advantage of the opportunities open to them. (I limit myself here to a discussion of African Americans.)

“Culture of poverty” arguments persist given our dominant values and our dominant social science, when they are coupled with the conviction that those values are implemented effectively—that equal opportunity exists. In consequence, it is no surprise that “culture of poverty” arguments recur over and over again; nor is it a surprise that they tend to be manifest in multiple variations, focusing on one or another “cultural” attributes.

In addition, there is apparently empirical support for “culture of poverty” arguments. African Americans do less well than otherwise comparable whites on many measures of performance; poor people do less well, by definition, economically, but they also do less well educationally and are incarcerated at higher rates (whatever their actual criminal activity). Recognizing this and thinking within the dominant values in our society, many Americans think that they are “facing facts” when invoking “culture of poverty” arguments. [T]he same thing is true of many social scientists who study poverty. Social scientists are, however, less likely to believe that equal opportunity is in place, which immunizes many of them from falling into this trap.

Gustafson: The appeal of the “culture of poverty” is that it offers a clear explanation for poverty, an explanation that removes both individual agency and collective responsibility from the equation. This simplistic account of poverty—one that suggests that certain populations have developed settled social and economic sub-cultures outside the mainstream—blinds us from the historical contingencies and the political decisions that have led to a high rate of poverty relative to most wealthy nations. The current understanding of the culture of poverty suggests that poverty is intractable and dismisses that idea that policy changes can lower the rate of poverty in the United States or address the concentration of poverty in certain populations such as African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and recent Asian immigrants; the disabled; and the parents of young children.

How has the idea of a culture of poverty affected politics and society?

Such arguments miss the nature and consequences of contemporary discrimination. While there is plenty of overt discrimination, disparate treatment, the more important form of discrimination in the USA today, is disparate impact. This is where ostensibly neutral structures and organizations, organizations that treat blacks and whites as if they were the same, generate adverse consequences for blacks.The consequences of “culture of poverty” arguments have been disastrous. They result in policies that seek to change blacks rather than change organizational constraints and persistent discrimination.

Think about the discussions of “acting white.” If African Americans who act black are expected to perform poorly, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and (almost) only those blacks who “act white” perform well. When blacks and whites perform different cultures, act out different cultural identities, there is no reason to think that the differences are intrinsically relevant to educational performance; however, they may well affect performance when taken in conjunction with how students who perform these cultural differences are regarded and dealt with in organizations. African Americans may have a different subculture than whites, but if they perform less well than whites, it is not because of that subculture, but because of how they are processed in organizations because of it.

This discussion is, of course, too simple. It ignores the structurally-different positions blacks and whites occupy in American society, but perhaps it suggests that just because black culture correlates with “deficient performance” does not mean that black culture is deficient. We have learned to see black culture as deficient, as something we ought not to value, because of “culture of poverty” arguments, because our commonsense understanding precludes our comprehending that the problem is not intrinsic to the culture, but to the way bearers of that culture are constrained organizationally.

Gustafson: The pathologizing of the poor, the popular belief that poverty is a result of individuals’ failings to exercise personal responsibility, and the belief that government programs are by nature wasteful and breed dependency remain widespread and influential today. This perpetuates the illusion that those people—the poor people who lack a real work ethic—are poor for a reason, but that others, particularly hardworking members of the middle class, are invulnerable to economic risk so long as they are working hard enough. The persistence of the culture of poverty theory also distracts the public and lawmakers from celebrating the policy decisions that have been successful in ameliorating poverty. As a result, popular and governmental commitments to fighting poverty are slight.

Does talk about the US as a post-racial society influence the rhetoric around the culture of poverty?

Gould: Before the Civil Rights Movement, when discrimination against African-Americans was overt, liberal-minded people could explain differential performance between blacks and whites as due to overt discrimination.

In post-Civil Rights Movement America, which some erroneously see as a post-racial society, the logic of this argument changes fundamentally. In the absence of overt discrimination… liberals either have to think social structurally about the nature of discrimination, or they fall into “culture of poverty” arguments. Likewise, social scientists, even when claiming to eschew “culture of poverty” arguments, fall into them.

There is a paradox here. Participants in the Civil Rights Movement fought for the inclusion of African Americans, and derivatively others (within the American Creed), for their inclusion as full citizens. The success of the Movement, the inclusion of African Americans, including the poor, within the egalitarian values dominant in American society, and given the reality of African Americans performing less well than whites in many areas, has resulted in the construction of a New Racism. This New Racism does not result primarily in invidious biological distinctions between African Americans and whites as explanations for the “facts,” but instead in the characterization of African Americans as performing less well than whites (including in their concentrated poverty) because of their “cultural attributes.”

What is missing from the current public discourse about the culture of poverty? What can sociologists contribute to the discussion of poverty policies?

We tend to focus on failures and ignore successes. Sociologists keen on historical and comparative work might promote awareness that the United States is an outlier and that policies common in other countries—universal health care, paid family leave for workers with young children, and universal child allowances—are effective in reducing poverty there.We tend to focus on failures and ignore successes. Sociologists might promote awareness that the United States is an outlier, that policies common in other countries—universal health care, paid family leave for workers with young children, and universal child allowances—are effective in reducing poverty.

Finally, qualitative sociologists can serve an important function in carefully and critically documenting the experiences of the poor, particularly because there is little in the popular media about the experiences of the poor and poor people have little political access in a country where money is speech. While most Americans are overexposed to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, we rarely hear about how poverty affects daily lives and how it limits choices and life chances.

First, a broader understanding of the many ways that anthropologists and others who study culture (but not poverty) have conceptualized culture, its impact on behavior, its response to intervention, and its limitations as an explanatory factor.

Second, better data.

Third, more dispassionate analysis.

The one advantage of the new generation of scholars working on these questions is that they were not part of the highly acrimonious debate over culture during the 1960s and 1970s. The debate was so contentious and the rhetoric so heated that it has been difficult to address even basic empirical questions from a scientific perspective. [Now] there is space for a new round of clear, disinterested research that can illuminate much more than the old models have found.A lot of people assume that social scientists who examine the relationship between culture and poverty must have a particular political agenda. This shows how far we need to go.

For example, a lot of people assume that social scientists who examine the relationship between culture and poverty must have a particular political agenda. Some even believe that studying culture necessarily implies a particular political posture. Yet notice that entire academic disciplines—most notably, anthropology—are fundamentally devoted to the study of culture. The fact that anyone believes that studying culture means rehashing that old idea shows how far we need to go.

Implicit in many “culture of poverty” discussions is a notion of social values. Social values regulate what is desirable; they constitute obligations. If folks do not find a good job desirable, if they do not feel the obligation to work, they will not seek out jobs when the opportunity to do so arises. If students do not value education, do not feel an obligation to do well in school, they will not orient themselves to educational opportunities. In contrast to these contentions, there is a lot of evidence that inner-city blacks share the dominant values of USA society, including the positive evaluation of hard work and a commitment to education. If this is correct, we would expect them, for example, to seek work when it is available, and they do so.Implicit in many “culture of poverty” discussions is a notion of social values. Social values regulate what is desirable; they constitute obligations. There is a lot of evidence that inner-city blacks share the dominant values of hard work and a commitment to education.

The notion of an “oppositional culture” is important here. Often, an oppositional culture is understood to inhibit intrinsically educational or occupational success; it may be seen, for example, as devaluing educational success. It is treated as a “culture of poverty.” If, instead, black culture inhibits success not because of its inherent traits (it is not the case that poor blacks devalue educational success), but because of the way a black man wearing baggy jeans is treated, the question becomes why many African-Americans, unlike some immigrant groups, are unwilling to give up their culture and their cultural performances, unwilling to “act white.” The answer, I think, is because for African-Americans, this cultural identity and the performances that actualize it (in dress, music, language, speech act and style) are crucial; they represent, if in a form more fractured than previously, the collective solidarity that has enabled African-Americans to endure and to excel culturally. This is an oppositional culture, but only in the sense that African-Americans do not want to sacrifice it. As an oppositional culture, it is fully compatible with the values dominant in United States society.

Thus, while the black subculture is not a “culture of poverty”—it does not inhibit success due to its inherent attributes—it may inhibit success, due to how people who share it are considered in the larger society. This distinction, between a “culture” that inhibits success because of qualities inherent to it (e.g., for example, not valuing hard work), and a culture that inhibits success, not because of its inherent qualities, but because of the (racist) orientation of a dominant (and sometimes others in the subordinate) group towards people within that culture, is crucial, but too often missing from discussions of culture and poverty.

If this analysis makes sense, our concern should be to construct opportunities for the inner-city poor to succeed, ladders of achievement that facilitate their success in school, that make it possible for them to find jobs that will support their families in dignity, and to reconstruct organizations in a way that makes it possible for African-Americans to share in organizational governance so that African-American cultural identities might be actualized to the benefit of all Americans.

Here, sociologists who have used a biological approach in their research discuss, without brushing aside very real fears of genetic determinism and biological reductionism, how each field can benefit from work in the other. 

Why do you think many sociologists are hesitant to incorporate biological approaches into their work?

Rosemary Hopcroft: The many reasons include that biological approaches are associated in many sociologists’ minds with old racist ideologies such as Social Darwinism; a misunderstanding of what incorporating biological approaches entails (e.g., genetic determinism); a generally non-scientific approach to the study of social groups and an emphasis on activism and ideological correctness; worries about getting jobs, grants, promotions from anti-biological colleagues; and last, plain old ignorance. Still I often find sociologists’ sometimes aggressive antipathy to incorporating biological approaches unfathomable.

Jonathan Turner: Part of the answer is the fear of reductionism that would erode sociologist’s tenuous hold on respectability, [that] subsuming sociological phenomena under biology would make sociology less important… [T]here is merit to this concern, which means that sociologists’ adoption of Darwinian ideas from biology must be selective and tailored to the nature of the phenomena studied by sociologists.

There is, however, a generational divide on this question. Younger scholars are much more open to what senior scholars, with a few exceptions, reject. There is some hope that, in the future, sociologists will be more willing to consider biological forces in sociological analysis.

How would sociology be strengthened by incorporating more biology in its theory and coursework?

Turner: The social universe operates at many levels—micro, meso, macro, cultural, structural, behavioral, biological, ecological, etc.—and to ignore the fact that humans are animals of a special kind (evolved apes, in essence), …that our evolved biology has large effects on behavior and… the building up of social structure and culture, to ignore this biology is to leave a large gap in our ability to understand the social universe…

Hopcroft: Sociologists don’t have to be biologists or even learn a lot of biology, but they should understand the evolved nature of humans, including the fact that, if we didn’t evolve to be social, sociologists would be largely out of a job. What sociologists write must be consistent with what has been learned in the life sciences. So, for example, the role of biology in predisposing individuals to sex-typical behaviors should be acknowledged, rather than denying its part in the creation of sex roles and associated sex typical behaviors.

Machalek: Sociology has been dominated by the “Standard Social Science Mode” (SSSM), and a key element of this model is that the human brain (and mind) is an equipotential, general, all-purpose learning machine. (This is commonly called the tabula rasa [blank slate] assumption.) Accordingly, those who subscribe to the SSSM assume that the architecture and functional properties of the brain are basically irrelevant to explaining human social behavior except by processing culture and individual experience.

In addition, scientists who study non-human social behavior have already begun to incorporate some concepts, theoretical principles, and research findings from the social sciences into their analyses of non-human societies and social behavior. For example, the “prisoner’s dilemma” model from game theory and exchange theory has had a very significant influence on behavioral biology over the past two or three decades. Similarly, network theory has been used fruitfully by biologists who study interactions among individuals across a range of species.

By becoming more knowledgeable about biology, especially evolutionary biology, sociologists might very well be able to recommend other social scientific ideas that could be used by biologists who study non-human social behavior. A case in point pertains to behavioral biologists’ efforts to understand how emergent properties develop in all social systems, both human and non-human. Put in terms that will be familiar to sociologists, sociobiologists and behavioral ecologists may have much to learn from sociologists about how to explain and understand “social facts” that are found in non-human societies, especially among species such as, but not limited to, the eusocial insects (ants, bees, wasps and termites). In short, I think that integrating more biology into the education and training of sociologists could, in the long run, benefit both sociology and behavioral biology.

Sociologists are largely concerned with analyzing culture and cultural change, so critics of biological approaches argue biology is useful for studying non-human species, but not humans. Does culture make biology irrelevant?

Machalek: Consider a quotation by the famous sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson: “We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture.” Wilson goes on to claim that understanding how culture and biology interact is the “central problem of the social sciences and the humanities, and simultaneously one of the great remaining problems of the natural sciences.” Culture, the production and use of symbols, and spoken (and written) language are signature traits of the human species. To try to understand humans absent a consideration of culture would be like trying to understand ant behavior without attending to pheromones, or trying to understand most bat species without considering their capacity for echolocation.

One of the major misconceptions about sociobiology (fortunately, a misconception that is less prevalent today than three or four decades ago) is that evolutionary thinkers seek to replace “culture” with “biology” in explanations of human social behavior. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, the extraordinarily complex nature of human culture and its role in shaping human social behavior is a central concern of evolutionary-minded students of human society and social behavior.

Bringing biological thinking to bear on explanations of human social behavior does not displace the explanatory centrality of culture as a key concept for studying social behavior. Rather, it expands both the breadth and depth of cultural inquiries social and behavioral scientists can pursue.

Turner: [Sociologists] study structural changes, as well as psychological changes in humans as they adapt to new types of sociocultural formations. The assumption that humans are somehow unique because we produce culture is based upon religious doctrine more than scientific fact. We are animals; we have an evolutionary history; our capacities are not as unique as we like to think…. Moreover, our capacity for culture is only possible with an evolved biology. Culture does not obviate biology, it depends upon it.

[O]nly by knowing human biology and why, as well as how, it evolved can we fully understand many of the emergent properties of the complex sociocutural systems that have been built up over the last ten thousand years. For example, why are humans so emotional and prone to conflict? Why is interaction a constant process of trying to avoid breaches? Why does stratification produce such tensions? Why are sexual and family relations so fragile? [S]o many questions of this nature require some understanding of the human brain and the selection pressures that rewired this brain during hominid evolution. Sure, we can talk about these processes and many more without bringing in biology, but these explanations are [incomplete]…

This roundtable examines the importance of racial and economic inequality in the impact of the Great Recession. Today’s racial wealth gap, our panelists say, has resulted from a combination of factors including housing and homeownership, access to credit, predatory lending practices, and historically entrenched inequalities.

Since the end of the Great Recession, a number of reports have documented a growing racial wealth gap, including one from Pew Research asserting that the white to black wealth ratio is 20 to 1. What are some current dynamics or trends that we are seeing in race, wealth, and debt in this supposedly “post-recession” era?

Dalton Conley: Over time, the racial wealth gap has hovered around 10 to 1, meaning that the median African American family has ten percent of the wealth, or the net worth, of the median white family. “Net worth” is the value in the marketplace of all your belongings and assets that you can sell. If you sell everything you own and pay off all your debts, the amount of money left over is your net worth, and that’s what we mean by wealth. 

With legacies of slavery and the Civil Rights era, African Americans are kind of latecomers to the wealth accumulation game for a variety of historical and institutional reasons associated with the history of race and discrimination in the United States. As blacks typically are overrepresented among the unemployed and low-wealth households, the more that wealth becomes unequally distributed in general across society, the more unequal the racial wealth gap.

Wealth inequality has ebbed and flowed over the course of the century, peaking at about 40% in both 1929 before the financial crash that led to the Great Depression and 2007, with a period in the middle of the century that was more equal. While the security markets have bounced back since the financial crises of 2008, housing markets have not rebounded as much, particularly low-income areas. If anything, the racial wealth gap has been accentuated by the Great Recession.

Rachel Dwyer: The current dynamics in the racial wealth gap are a mix of entrenched inequalities with deeply concerning new developments. The racial wealth gap has long been driven by housing inequality undergirded by continued high levels of residential segregation. New political economic dynamics have changed the nature of black-white housing inequality, however. Whereas once blocked access to mortgages was the principal obstacle to homeownership, loosened financial regulation means that inequalities in mortgage terms and conditions like interest rates, payment terms, and loan servicing increasingly drive housing inequality. Douglas Massey has described these changes as the “moving target” in housing discrimination.

Karyn Lacy: The most important trend impacting the black-white wealth gap in the current period is the fallout from the foreclosure crisis, which began in 2006. Two and a half million people lost their homes between 2007 and 2009. Because a home is the most valuable (often only) asset that the average American owns, it is their primary means of accumulating wealth. Rates of homeownership are significantly higher among whites than blacks, in part because financing a dream home has involved different processes for white home seekers than for blacks. The financing options of both groups have been shaped historically by the discriminatory practices of realtors, lenders, and the federal government—groups that have helped to construct and perpetuate a dual housing market, providing a clear path to homeownership for whites while obstructing the homeownership aspirations of upwardly-mobile blacks.

A different problem emerged in the mid-1990s; a new class of lenders, motivated by the potential for quick profits, was eager to grant mortgages to blacks. The problem is that the terms of these subprime loans triggered a new form of inequitable lending characterized by deceptive loan terms. There are many different types of subprime loans, but the most common type is the adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM), loans that start off at a low interest rate and corresponding monthly payment, but are designed to rise sharply at an established future date. In 2006, 55% of black borrowers held subprime loans, and when these loans reset at higher interest rates, the outrageous terms tipped many borrowers toward default.

Dwyer: Discussions of the racial wealth gap must start with housing, but they should not end there. Racial dynamics related to savings for retirement and indebtedness from student loans and credit cards that have only begun to be understood. The fraying of the social safety net combined with increasing uncertainty in the American economy has resulted in what Jacob Hacker has called the “great risk shift,” making racial wealth inequalities potentially even more consequential for life chances than they have been in the past. Broad shifts like the decline of pensions and rising expectations that individuals will prepare for their own retirement hit Black Americans particularly hard because of the preexisting wealth disadvantage. Declining public support for education means those seeking social mobility must rely more on student loans. Access to consumer debt has undergone the same kind of diversification and complexity as mortgages, creating new forms of racial inequality in debt-holding, perhaps most notably in the area of short-term and payday loans.

In your opinion, what are the most pressing current issues around race, wealth, and debt? Are there policy initiatives that are, or should be, addressing these issues?

Lacy: Even in the post-recession era, when federal policy has scaled back subprime lending, we are still observing the long-term effects of predatory lending on homeownership and wealth accumulation. A growing problem is that predatory lenders have come up with novel ways to circumvent new legislation designed to protect unsuspecting homeowners. For example, once a loan is sold on the secondary market, the new lender may not change the terms of the loan, but new lenders avoid this constraint by simply tacking on a long list of exorbitant fees, from late fees to so-called “processing fees” assessed against borrowers who pay by check or money order rather than online. These practices impose a significant financial burden on borrowers who are barely managing to make their scheduled payments and borrowers who do not have checking accounts or a personal computer.

Conley: If we define net worth as assets minus debts, for some people that ends up being a negative. Quite a lot of people nowadays are underwater on their mortgages, meaning that the amount they owe exceeds the equity in the home because the value has crashed. So, another way to think about the relationship between race and wealth is to ask what is the proportion, that is, overall underwater or in the red. Of the people with negative net worth, we see a huge racial disparity there too. Blacks are way overrepresented in the group that is in the red, that has negative net worth. So, debt of course, is as important as savings and asset accumulation – it’s just the other side of the coin.

The political reality is that it’s going to take a million little issues, a million little policies to try to nudge things in the right direction and that’s probably the best we can hope for. Right now we have a lot of policies that help the rich get richer, we don’t have a lot that helps the poor get a leg up. We could do to address this through things like capping the amount of home mortgage deduction that people can take and promoting wealth production among those who are at the bottom end of the distribution. Even if we did all those things, I’m not sure it would fix the problem entirely.

Dwyer: Rebuilding the social safety net is particularly important for racial minority populations who have less individual and family wealth than the average white family to fall back on as a personal safety net. If we had a better safety net, then fewer Americans would need to turn to usurious and predatory lending. A broad approach that addressed the rising economic precarity of many Americans from all racial and ethnic groups could build coalitions across racial dividing lines and develop the social solidarity that is needed to support ambitious social insurance initiatives. Scholars frequently highlight racial antagonisms as one key factor in explaining why social welfare in the US has been so anemic compared to other developed countries. Paradoxically, rising inequality and precarity in American life could bring a greater awareness that economic vulnerability is an issue for all racial groups, and greater support for policies that lower the costs of losing out for all.

In what ways do specific types of debt (such as, say, credit card debt in contrast to a mortgage) privilege different racial and socioeconomic groups while disadvantaging others?

Conley: Debt itself is not necessarily an evil thing, especially if it allows us to make an investment we wouldn’t otherwise be able to make. If you borrow money for college, at least in theory, we like to think that educational debt is worth it because you’re going to get a better job afterwards. You’re investing in human capital and you’re going to be able to pay that back easily with the additional wages that you’ll get from going to college.

However, not all debt is treated equally. For example, the interest you pay on a home mortgage, because of U.S policy to promote home ownership, is tax deductible, but that tax deduction is not even capped. If you take out a 2 or 3 million dollar mortgage, you are able to deduct the interest from your taxes at the same rate for each individual dollar of interest you pay as someone who has a $20,000 mortgage on a home. I agree that we need policy to be encouraging, but, I don’t think that we need to incentivize luxury homeownership.

Compared to mortgages, educational loans operate very differently. For instance, if you file for bankruptcy, student loan debt is not forgiven. Because of pressure and lobbying from the loan companies, student debt follows you to the grave no matter what. 

Lacy: One of the most pressing concerns is the misrepresentation of the causes and scope of the foreclosure crisis in the public sphere. Speaking from the floor of the House, Representative Bachmann argued that unwise decisions on the part of black borrowers caused the housing crisis. The media play a role too, as one headline after another asks whether the foreclosure crisis has decimated the black middle class. The focus on black borrowers to the exclusion of other troubled borrowers has made blacks the public face of the foreclosure crisis. But studies of the crisis reveal that high-income Hispanic and Asian homeowners foreclose at higher rates than any other group. These borrowers are concentrated in “boom markets,” states where the steep housing prices exceeded the national average prior to the economic crisis and plummeted during the crisis, making these high-income, minority borrowers vulnerable to foreclosure.

How does inequality in wealth and debt influence other forms of inequality?

Lacy: Wealth inequality depresses a family’s opportunities to provide the good life for their children. Persistent residential segregation contributes to this problem. Property values rise less rapidly in predominately black neighborhoods than they do in majority white neighborhoods, depriving many black homeowners of the kind of equity accumulation that could be parlayed into financing a child’s college education or helping an adult child to start a business or purchase a home of their own.

Dwyer: There are a great many ways that wealth inequalities impinge on life chances, because wealth levels affect whether a family can invest in education, or a home, how a person or family survives shocks like a job loss, divorce, or medical crisis, and the amount and type of intergenerational transfers. There are also important interactions between debt-holding and asset accrual that have implications for wealth inequality itself. Some take on debt to accelerate asset accrual (this is the hope for many homeowners). For others debt-holding is a net drain that weakens wealth accrual or even draws down savings. Some forms of wealth provide new types of credit access, like home equity loans and some forms of retirement savings, but taking out that credit can sometimes end up destroying the collateral asset. The financialization of the US economy and the increasing diversity of financial instruments available to average Americans make these issues of financial well-being increasingly important for life chances, and particularly important for racial minorities struggling to achieve wealth mobility. 

Our respondents offer four viewpoints. Kate West explores theoretical perspectives of how viewing mug shots functions as a check on our own morality, while Travis Linnemann discusses the role of state power in how those in mug shots are policed and detained. Danielle Dirks draws upon her empirical work interviewing those who have been featured on these websites, and Naomi Sugie describes the tangible effects of having one’s arrest photo posted online. Taken together, these social scientists offer a nuanced view on a complicated issue of crime, safety, free speech, and personal privacy.

What do mug shot websites tell us about how criminal punishment works in today’s context?

Naomi Sugie (NS): At their basic level, mug shot websites operate by exploiting society’s long-standing fascination with crime and criminals. In today’s context, stigmatizing information is enduring and easily accessible to any person with an Internet connection. More importantly, search engines bring that information to the online user, without the user necessarily intending to seek out criminal justice evidence. Mug shot websites therefore publicize arrest information… [even to] acquaintances, potential clients, neighbors, or friends who searched for the person’s name, perhaps for some unrelated, innocuous reason. Because arrests are not reflections of criminal offending and are consequences of police decisions, individuals whose mug shots are publicized online are punished based on police officer discretion. For all of these reasons, the scope and nature of criminal punishment in today’s context has changed.

Travis Linnemann (TL): …First, these websites would likely not exist if not for the punitive urge to view, consume, judge, and mock the misfortune of others. This reveals the ways in which punishment escapes the courtroom and prison to saturate everyday life. Much like passing the scene of an accident, mug shots capture and represent crime’s horrific energies and aftermaths. This is particularly evident in Mugshots.com’s featured page “the world’s hottest mug shot” that encourages spectators to rate the “hotness” of arrested women. Its related site muggn.com purports to focus upon “interesting and funny mug shots.” While clear to point out “getting arrested isn’t fun,” muggn.com seems to prefer faces bloodied by arrest or accident, those who appear in awe and others who are simply in tears over those presumably less “fun” mug shots. Clearly, these images allow some to profit from the body, pain, and vulnerability of others.

Kate West (KW): Critics have argued these websites are punitive because they have the effect of incriminating an accused person before a court finds her guilty. However, the legitimacy of these arguments does not depend on the websites themselves, but on the premise that a person’s mug shot is in the public domain before a legal judgment is passed.

Danielle Dirks (DD): The digital mug shot industry has commercialized the “criminal image” and profited from American penal policies that favor arrest and mass incarceration as frontline “solutions” to social ills such as poverty and drug abuse. As such, the mug shot industry can be viewed as a cottage industry assisting the criminal justice system in reaching its tentacles into other areas of society, creating a new so-called “criminal class.” Whereas we typically think of the mark of a criminal record (see Devah Pager’s work) as a felony conviction, today the “digital mark” of a criminal record created by the mug shot industry begins at the point of arrest. As such, arrestees can be treated as criminals (and discriminated against as such) even in the absence of guilt or a criminal conviction. The digital age has also ushered in a new era of “dataveillance” where the collection, use, and publication of public records is mysterious and unknown. The mug shot industry has capitalized on this, rendering new forms of punishment that are public, permanent, and potentially neverending.

What are the consequences for people whose mug shots make it online, in the long and short term?

DD: In my interviews with over 60 individuals across the U.S. who have had their mug shots posted online by third party websites, I have found that the large majority has been devastated—personally, socially, fiscally—by this information being posted. In the short term, they are mortified by what they perceive as a major privacy violation, they are angry that individuals are capitalizing on their mistakes, and they live in fear that their loved ones or employers will happen upon the information. In the long term, many of the individuals I interviewed were effectively removed from the labor market or marginalized from their jobs and careers, given the sheer number of employers who routinely scour the Internet when hiring.

TL: Websites like Mugshots.com reveal how the costs of arrest, imprisonment, and even banal police contacts are in many ways boundless. Today, a criminal record quite literally acts as a ghost that returns again and again, haunting the arrested at the cost of personal relationships, employment opportunities, and peace of mind. However, we should also resist fetishizing the image itself. The circulation and prevalence of mug shots for public consumption and private profit is clearly political, problematic, and dehumanizing—but critique must extend beyond the image. We must start from the political problem of state power and with the understanding that the mug shot is foremost a record of the actual capture of a human being. From this view, we need to link the actual coercive force produced by police capture and subsequent incarceration with the visual capture of the “criminal.”

KW: An arrestee who has her mug shot published online experiences humiliation, tied not to the function of identifying an arrestee, but to an invitation for a viewer to participate in symbiotic ritual of humiliation. The viewer encounters the image in what Alison Young calls an affective encounter. This encounter raises questions, like “Who is this?” “Why is she here?” and, “How does she make me feel?” The answers to these questions are often, “She is dangerous” and ‘”he is inherently bad,” and they constitute judgments of the arrestee, and affect humiliation. But most importantly, they are reflections of our own selves—our values, acquired through our own individual experiences. As a mirror, thus, the arrestee mug shot makes us learn something about our self—yet little about the image’s subject. The result? Individual humiliation comes as the expense for voyeurism.

NS: Online mug shots stigmatize individuals as criminal offenders, even if they are ultimately not charged or convicted of a crime. Mug shots are evidence of arrests, which are typically considered by researchers as minor forms of criminal justice contact. Several studies have found that arrests have few negative consequences …However, websites like Mugshots.com potentially alter the equation. The publicity of arrests through these online venues is stigmatizing and likely results in penalties across a variety of domains, such as finding work, applying for an apartment, and interacting with peers. Even though mug shots are not evidence of convictions, it is unlikely that potential employers, landlords, and peers will make the distinction.

What about right to access and publish public data? How do we balance privacy and the right to information?

TL: I understand the argument that restriction on free access of booking photographs may impinge upon the freedom of the press and the right of journalists to inform the public. However, I doubt that photographic evidence is necessary for the watchdog function of the press to function. Regardless, as it stands the vast majority of public use of these photos is for entertainment purposes.

KW: The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that mug shots constitute public records and The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argues that the First Amendment protects a free-press right to publish public information. At present, their argument has won favor with the Supreme Court, trumping any claim to an individual right of privacy…

DD: The question about open access to public data is certainly a question that journalists and media companies are pushing back on, fighting restrictions on access to public records such as mug shots. Yet, we must question their motives in light of the dirty secret that so many American newspapers—desperate for page views and ad dollars in a new media landscape—use digital mug shots to drive traffic to their sites.

NS: The question about open access and privacy is complicated. On the one hand, access to public information is important for government transparency and in this case, public safety. At an individual level, it may benefit a person to know whether his or her neighbor was arrested for a crime. On a societal level, the shared experience of condemning violators and potential violators reaffirms the moral and legal legitimacy of rules and regulations. In this particular situation, however, websites like Mugshots.com hide behind false arguments of open access and government transparency. They are profit-driven enterprises that decide which records are publicly accessible based on who can and cannot pay to take down their information. Ultimately, these websites exacerbate already-troubling inequalities in punishment along the lines of race and class, where stigmatizing information persists for only the poor and least-advantaged individuals.

Should there be a policy or action taken against these websites? If so, what?

NS: There are several approaches that individuals, legislatures, and companies are taking against websites that make profits from mug shots removal. First, individuals have filed lawsuits, such as the Ohio case mentioned in the Times article. It appears that that case has been settled out of court and that the websites have agreed to pay settlements to the plaintiffs and to stop charging for mug shots removal.

Second, some states have passed legislation that specifies regulations around mug shots removal. If states go this route, I suggest that they follow Utah’s bill, which disallows websites to publish any mug shots of individuals if they demand payment for removal. Other states have introduced or passed bills that enable individuals to remove mug shots for free if the arrest did not result in a criminal conviction. However, by allowing mug shot websites to make a profit off of individuals, even if they have been convicted, we condone financial gain at the expense of individuals who have already paid their debts to society as determined in a court of law.

Third, the Times article suggests that the moral repugnancy of charging high fees for mug shots removal has spurred informal policing of these websites, where Google and credit card companies have modified their roles in facilitating profits. All of these approaches may put pressure on the current business model of mug shots websites; however, as long as these websites remain interesting to the public, they will likely find other ways to make profits without fee removal.

KW: David Segal describes how different states have variously legislated to regulate constitutionally protected sites like Mugshots.com in his New York Times article. However, legal remedies are futile as a counter to and only regulate a constitutionally protected free press. We could turn away from the law to achieve what no legislator can. Segal describes how, for example, Google reduced the number of “hits” on websites like Mugshots.com almost instantly by simply changing its algorithm, thus reducing, if not potentially eliminating, the mug shot’s power to humiliate an individual.

What do people mean when they say “crimmigration”?

Ryan King: …The connection between crime and immigrants has a lengthy history. Peruse the pages of the American Journal of Sociology in the first quarter of the 20^th century and you find a lot on this topic. The commentary …was sometimes pretty nasty (for example, Edwin Grant’s “Scum of the Melting Pot” in 1925). But “crimmigration” seems to capture the contemporary zeitgeist; the more recent wave of laws and opinions—both scholarly and public—on immigration and crime.

Tanya Golash-Boza: Crimmigration is the merging of criminal and immigration law enforcement—two different regimes of law. Criminal law enforcement is related to violations of the criminal code and requires a series of protections including the prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure, the right to appointed counsel, and the right to a trial by jury. Immigration law enforcement is related to violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act and does not include these same protections.

The merging of criminal and immigration law enforcement has not led to the provision of due process protections to immigration law enforcement. Instead, it means that the distinction between the two law enforcement regimes has been blurred. There are three primary ways we have seen this convergence: 1) Non-citizens convicted of crimes can be subject to deportation; 2) Police officers can be deputized to enforce immigration laws; and 3) Jails and prisons hold non-citizens until immigration law enforcement agents arrive to determine their immigration status.

Yolanda Vázquez: “Crimmigration” should not be defined as simply the “criminalization of immigration law.” In fact, incorporating the role that immigration law and its enforcement play in the criminal justice system still fails to truly describe “crimmigration”…[it]must be defined as a portmanteau, an institutional structure in which criminal and immigration law have merged in various ways to create a singular and distinct concept with its own structure of laws, procedures, and practices.

What are some key turning points in crimmigration in terms of punishment including deportation?

RK: 1986. The Immigration Reform and Control Act …was a game changer for two reasons. First, it enabled the Alien Criminal Apprehension Program that had a direct effect on deportations. Second, this law, in tandem with the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, represented a turning point in how we deal with problems related to crime. …American penal philosophy fully embraced incapacitation, deportation, and limited judicial discretion. These would be hallmark features of American criminal justice for the next two or three decades. It’s no coincidence that the number of criminal deportations increased dramatically after 1986.

YV: While many attribute the various Congressional Acts which began in 1986 to be the beginning of “crimmigration,” the foundational blocks of “crimmigration” actually began much earlier. …The 1960s and 1970s were monumental in shaping the structure of “crimmigration” as we currently see it.

By the 1980s. …[m]ore immigrants were coming from non-European countries. [Those] entering illegally were no longer from Southern Europe, but from Mexico and poor. …seen as the cause of social ills…

Looking at it through this history, it [is] easy to see why the Congressional Acts of the 1980s and 1990s focused on the punishment and removal of immigrants, either specifically or through other Legislative Acts directed at combating crime. 

While Vázquez and King emphasize the institutionalization of “crimmigration” from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, Golash-Boza reflects on changes since the 1996 immigration reform.

TGB: There are two key turning points in crimmigration: the passage of the 1996 laws and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

…The 1996 laws took away most of the judge’s discretionary power in aggravated felony cases. [Those convicted now] face mandatory and automatic deportation, no matter the extenuating circumstances. …[Even] legal permanent residents who have lived in the United States for decades, have contributed greatly to society, and have extensive family ties in the country, are subject to deportation for relatively minor crimes they may have committed years ago.

In 2003, in the aftermath of the September 11^th terrorist attacks, the DHS was created and immigration law enforcement became one of its central missions. [This] meant a massive infusion of funds …[and] facilitated more aggressive enforcement of the 1996 laws.

Golash-Boza explains how the laws didn’t necessarily change, but their funding and enforcement ramped up considerably under the DHS.

TGB: …Congress has appropriated increasing amounts of money for immigration law enforcement, in line with DHS’s annual budget requests. The FY 2011 budget for DHS was $56 billion, 30% of which was directed at immigration law enforcement through Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Patrol. Another 18% …went to the U.S. Coast Guard and 5% to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services. [O]ver half of the DHS budget was directed at border security and immigration law enforcement.

To put [DHS’s] $56 billion in perspective, [in 2011] the Department of Education budget was $77.8 billion and the Department of Justice’s was $29.2 billion.

The rise in deportations over the past decade primarily stems from Executive Branch decisions to expand immigration law enforcement, as part of the broader project of the War on Terror.

Who is most likely to be the target of crimmigration practices?

RK: Race, sex, and class matter [for non-citizens] in much the same way that they matter for the punishment of citizens. For instance, research shows that being Hispanic and a non-citizen [separately and together] increases your chance of incarceration in the federal courts. In addition… it seems pretty clear that the current discourse on crime and immigrants is very much about those from Central and South America. When Representative Steve King states “for every… valedictorian there is another hundred out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they are hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” he doesn’t exactly conjure up an image of a European immigrant. The face of the debate has a dark complexion and a Spanish accent.

What’s really unfortunate is how far apart the public debate and the scholarly research are. [Research] suggests immigrants are not more crime prone, but I have my doubts about whether even the best of research will change many opinions on this topic.

TGB: The disparities in deportations by race and gender are staggering. More than 97% of people deported last year were Caribbean or Latin American immigrants, even though they only account for 60% of non-citizens. And over 90% were men… Deportation is happening at unprecedented rates, with almost no due process, and it is primarily targeted at black and Latino men.

I have not seen representative data on the class status of deportees. However, I interviewed 150 deportees in four countries and the overwhelming majority …seemed to be working-class or poor. Middle-class people are less likely …to be arrested for [the] minor offenses [that] make up the vast majority of crimmigration arrests.

…So long as police cooperate with immigration law enforcement agents, we can expect for the race and gender profiling common in criminal law enforcement to have spillover effects into immigration law enforcement.

Vázquez agrees:

YV:The “criminal alien” is the poor, young, male, Latino. …As I discussed above, the immigration laws put into place during the 1960s and 1970s greatly affected the legal migration of Mexicans and Central Americans …as well as the race and ethnicity of future immigrants into the United States. In addition, the enforcement of immigration law …is mostly seen in states and localities with increasing numbers of Latinos. …The War on Crime, the War on Drugs, racial profiling, and federal prosecution …have all disproportionately impacted who is labeled a “criminal alien.”

While the implications are overwhelming, our participants shared their thoughts on the most profound social effects of “crimmigration” law and enforcement. Golash-Boza sees a reasonable distrust of the police.

TGB: Unfortunately, Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows local law enforcement officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions, is being adopted in communities across the country. …In theory, inter-agency collaboration could enhance national security. In practice, the adoption of 287 (g) decreases local-level security.

Although the 287 (g) program deports few women, [it has other] pernicious effects on women… [when] men get arrested, women and children get left behind. …A recent study [also] found that only about half of all battered women report perpetrators to authorities. Immigrant women with stable status report at a rate of 43%, [but] undocumented women at a rate of [just] 19%…. women have good reason to fear deportation [their own or their partner’s] when the police cooperate with ICE.

Nearly one-quarter of those deported in 2013 were also parents of U.S. citizens. King and Vázquez worry about the effects of crimmigration enforcement on those children and families, as well as the communities in which they live.

RK: …Human Rights Watch reports that 1.6 million U.S. residents are now separated from a spouse or child because of criminal deportation. I don’t have great confidence in that precise number, but even if that estimate overshoots by a million, we are still left with a very large number. I’m curious to see if this issue… receives much political attention, because it could put many politicians in a bind, namely those who preach about the importance of family…. When it comes to deportation you can’t always have it both ways.

YV: Families are torn apart …left without a means of financial, physical, and emotional support. Children are left with one or neither parent …Communities across the United States are destabilized and fractured.

[Other] nations are [also] feeling the weight of returning individuals from the United States and the drying up of remittances that supported their economic growth and the personal livelihoods of their citizens. As a result, they remain unable to prosper or compete politically [and economically]…

[Third], these actions create, maintain, and promote conditions that influence the social, cultural, economic and political structures in the United States. …[I]mmigration’s “management” of non-citizens is absorbed into the structures of the criminal system and subjected to its consequences: the labeling as a “criminal,” the stigma of “other,” the justification for “punishment,” and the bars to employment, housing, education, and voting. “Crimmigration” reifies marginalization….

In the face of these stark realities, our contributors shared some practical, if large-scale, solutions for addressing the harmful effects of “crimmigration.”

…I’d aim for reinstating judicial discretion, specifically the JRAD (judicial recommendation against deportation). This power …was curtailed in 1990. ….Now I’m not naïve; with discretion comes the potential for discrimination. But my guess is that many judges would allow for sanctions other than deportation in many cases, especially when it means breaking up a family.Immigration law is messy and difficult. It forces choices between competing principles.

TGB: The rights to due process and a fair trial are fundamental …in the United States, yet these procedural protections are denied to non-citizens in deportation proceedings. At a minimum, people facing deportation should have the same protections as those facing incarceration. People facing deportation should have the right to appointed counsel, immigration judges should [have discretion], immigrants awaiting their hearings or deportations should have bond hearings….

Further, the police should not be involved in enforcing immigration laws. [That function] places [officers] at odds with their mission to enforce the criminal code and enhance public safety.

YV: First, there needs to be a complete severing of the relationship between the civil immigration and criminal justice system. …[T]he Acts [from] the ‘80s and ‘90s should be abolished …[so] the immigration system [can] focus on the removal of those truly a danger to the community and nation. Judicial discretion would be reinstated…. Operation Streamline could be dismantled. Immigration violations could be taken out of the criminal system and heard in immigration court …[but with appointed] counsel …since their liberty, property, etc. are at risk; the law is complicated, and the opposing side is represented by counsel. Immigration [shifted to] purely outside of the criminal justice system would allow law enforcement and its limited resources to focus on the investigation, detention, and arrest of dangerous and violent individuals [rather than on checking documentation statuses]. It would also lower the rate of racial profiling and [strengthen] the relationship between immigrants and law enforcement….

Finally, we need to restructure immigration law in a manner that acknowledges the structural inequalities that cause unauthorized migration and disparate treatment of immigrants from certain nations. …By severing the ties between immigration and criminal law and changing the rhetoric to focus on the contributions immigrants, including unskilled workers, make, we can begin to work toward true comprehensive immigration reform.

This roundtable aims to explore and deconstruct the narrative frames media outlets use to talk about and circumscribe violent events. More often than not, our panelists say, coverage oversimplifies these incidents and neglects their social and environmental circumstances. Such rhetoric is well-suited to the evening news, but it will not prevent further violence.

What are the most prominent media narratives about mass shootings and other terrorist acts?

Victor Rios: I look at the media as if it were like a snack vending machine… [the] explanations of mass shootings are:
• If it’s a white person, they point to severe mental issues. So they search for what could have went wrong with this otherwise decent person.
• Terrorism. Even if they appear white, as in the case of the Boston bomber, is the person then tied to another nation or another religious order that then brainwashed them?
• Domestic inner-city poverty types of issues, such as kids who are in gangs or involved with drugs or students who are involved with the inner city in some way.

Melissa Thompson: [I see] a distinction between mass shootings and acts of terrorism, with terrorists portrayed as having an agenda (to instill fear, to create political change, to get out some type of message). In these events, the media narratives typically focus on how terrorism can be prevented through better security, seeking out warning signs of radical beliefs among the individuals involved, and how terrorists recruit new members to their cause. Mass shootings, however, are more often framed around the mental and emotional state of a (typically) solitary individual, who often seeks to inflict his (these are almost always men) anger and pain on others in a dramatic manner that garners the most attention possible. In these instances, the dominant media narrative is typically… whether there was mental illness involved, if it was being treated, and were there warning signs that were missed. Other common narratives focus on access to guns…

Michael Kimmel: The media tends to disaggregate [crimes and criminals] into individual psychopathology. So each person was crazy, each person was pathological, each person was psychotic. And each person flew just under the radar. And you have to wonder, how high is this radar if each person is able to fly just underneath it?

How does the social context of the violence influence who or what gets blamed?

MK: Here’s a way to think about it: When it’s revealed that your next door neighbor is actually a serial killer and ends up on Criminal Minds… most neighbors will say that they had no idea, he was really quiet and kept to himself. When someone walks into their workplace and opens fire, that’s not how their [coworkers] respond. In these cases, they typically say, “Oh, we knew that this was going to happen. We didn’t know that it was going to be him particularly, but in the past several months, they’ve cut all of our overtime, they’ve cancelled our pensions, they’ve eradicated our health benefits, they’ve cut our wages. It was only a matter of time before somebody snapped.” So there’s a framing that’s continually missing in between the psychopathology of the crazed lone gunman opening fire and the changes in the workplace that have eroded people’s sense of dignity and… efficacy to such a degree that someone is going to “break”.

MT: A very common theme with respect to blame is the weapon… If a gun (or supplies used in an explosive incident, such as for Boston Marathon bombing) were obtained legally, blame is often focused on whether the law should be changed. For instance, should the “gun show loophole” be eliminated? Or should there be stricter controls on the purchase of guns for those with a history of mental illness?

[That’s another] common theme: blaming the mental health system. This seems especially common when the perpetrator worked alone—absent any sort of terrorist organization. Given the lack of any obvious political motive present in a terrorist act, the media are often forced to frame these scenarios as acts of “crazy” people who just “lost it.” Thus, the blame is attributed to internal psychological and emotional issues that the media would expect to be addressed by the mental health system. Recent news stories (for example, a November 8, 2013 New York Times article by Calmes and Pear) on the Affordable Care Act have touted its requirement of equal insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses as progress toward curbing gun violence and mass shootings. These stories suggest that …more mental health treatment… will [reduce] mass murder events. Thus, the ultimate blame [is reduced to] mentally ill individuals and [failures of] the mental health system.

What are some unintended consequences of reductionist framing? That is, what problems have you seen in picking a single reason for a sensationalist crime’s coverage in the media?

VR: For example… the media will cover mass shootings (now I’m referring to schools and the high-profile shootings that have occurred in schools for the past 20 years, such as Columbine) …as a potential threat to all schools across America. …The consequence now is you have schools with surveillance cameras, with drug sniffing dogs, and you also have kids being disciplined by police officers. …What my research finds is that when you have more police officers in schools, you tend to get more criminal justice interactions… kids who otherwise wouldn’t have been caught up in the juvenile detention system end up having records because now it’s really easy for a school to throw its discipline problem at a cop… So instead of being a school issue with a school solution, it becomes a court issue with a law enforcement solution.

How does media framing shape public perceptions of mass shootings and acts of terrorism?

MT: …There tends to be so much emphasis on mental illness as the cause of these events that the public perceives these events as due to actors who are irrational and out of control. This is likely to cause even more fear of mass shootings… unpredictability means always having to be afraid…

VR: The media packages its product in order to sell… quick and simple explanations. For the media to sit there and explain masculinity, it’s a complicated story. But if you explain mental instability and you show examples of a neighbor saying, “Yeah that guy was crazy,” it really boils it down [and] taps into the very fundamental moral values of Americans, much of which hinges on the fear of the unknown, the fear of terrorism. …[R]eporters are also regular people, so they’re… going to tend to lean toward the explanation that they have the best capacity to understand. So that’s an easy way for the media to wrap people up in… this [existing] fear of the other committing acts of destruction on the country.

MK: What we frequently do is use the framing of similarities and differences to [keep an issue at a distance]. If we focus on the similarities, …you can say, “Well, it’s all this and it’ll never change,” “Boys will be boys,” or something like that. That way we can pathologize the individuals… but of course what me miss are the connections among them.

When it comes to media coverage, what gets left unsaid and why?

MK: Whether it’s a single person dying in LAX or dozens like in Columbine, I think the framing is always “What’s wrong with [the criminal]?” And for me, the pathologizing is half right. I’m sure he has some problems. But the other side of it is that he’s not simply a non-conformist. He’s also an over-conformist. He has ideas about masculinity: …you always win, you have to take “them” all out, if you’re dissed you have to fight back. So I think in some respects the shooters are over-conformists to very outmoded ideas about masculinity. [Further] …whether it’s a mall shooting in New Jersey or Nairobi or mass workplace shootings like the Navy Yard, LAX, or in schools, what [do the perpetrators have in common]? Well it’s pretty easy to say: they’re all men!

But the fact that they’re virtually all middle class white boys, no one is going to talk about that. So in the sociological imagination, playing the game of substituting the “other” and seeing how it would play out is an instructive exercise to see what the media is glossing over. …[T]he missing [story] is easily illustrated if you imagine that all of these mass shootings were committed by poor black girls. If you would imagine that, everyone would be talking about race and class and gender.

MT: With the media emphasizing mental illness as being so strongly linked to these events… the public has an unrealistic fear of mental illness and tends to equate violence with all forms of mental illness and all mentally ill individuals. What is not reported is that only a very small portion of mentally ill individuals are violent; most mentally ill individuals are more dangerous to themselves than they are to others. [That story] does not motivate viewers/readers to engage with the media.

VR: In the real world, people [and situations] are more complicated than media explanations. …[W]e fail as a society to flag mental illness, to flag unstable conditions… [T]o account for the issues that the media is not taking into consideration, we need to think about masculinity and the ways in which gun culture is taught to boys to become a fundamental part of who they are as men, and the larger public issue of not taking care of our population who is in need of mental health services.

We’re raising a generation of young men with a certain kind of ethic. I feel that this masculine, Second Amendment, “use guns to take your wrath out on the world” kind of ethic is a new way of looking at Max Weber’s “Protestant Ethic”. Weber saw American culture as [driving] individuals to push against all odds… to acquire wealth, primarily as a way of showing salvation. Just the same, we have to analyze why it is that this culture of gun violence and mass shooting is exceptional to American society. We have to interrogate it and try to understand why our culture is feeding into creating this new “ethic,” which is then feeding into creating mass shooters. Yeah, they may appear isolated, but they’re really just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many damaging things that are happening to our young men and that they’re doing to other people that are related to this culture of hypermasculinity… The problem with a very pragmatic solution is that we’re teaching boys to be too tough and rough, and not empathetic, and that leads some of them—granted, a really small population—to literally blow up.

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Everywhere, there is art—performance art, installation art, body art, experiential and immersive art—scaled from the microscopic to the size of tractor-trailers. Participants are encouraged to embrace, imbibe, and abide by the ten principles of the event. These include, among other things, the ideals of radical inclusion, self-expression, and self-reliance, as well as an ethos of gift-giving, immediacy, and leaving-no-trace. Some of the ten principles (like decommodification, defined as resisting “the substitution of consumption for participatory experience”) stand in sharp contrast to mainstream American values. Others, like radical self-reliance, lay at the core of the American dream.

Burning Man brings to mind a lot of preconceptions, but it also raises a lot of questions, from the sociological to the plain old curious. What is this event about? What purposes does it serve? Who is involved and why? And what does this festival say about art and expression in America? I brought together three of my fellow social scientists—all of whom have attended the event, think of themselves as “Burners,” and have done research on Burning Man—to talk a bit about what these days in the desert mean to us and what larger social significance Burning Man might hold.

Many Burners have adopted a “playa name,” something like a public persona. Why is your playa name, if you have one, meaningful to you? How are alter-egos socially significant?

Katherine Chen: I don’t have a playa name, but most Burners do. Asking about how someone has acquired a nickname can reveal insights into a person’s biography, past and future. For example, “Chicken John” told me that he got his nickname as a youngster because when he got angry, his friends thought he looked like a chicken. Others pick names that they aspire to.

In general, playa names help people explore and develop new identities and roles—ones that may not be assigned by characteristics that people are born with (like race/ethnicity or gender, for instance). People may also change their playa names to reflect their growth. I think the phenomena of playa names speaks partly to the constraints of society (not everyone wants to be known just as an employee of such-and-such organization or the relative of so-and-so) and partly to people’s capacity for creativity and re-invention. Jon Stern has been working on this phenomenon at Burning Man and in the virtual reality game-world Second Life.

Jon Stern: I didn’t have a playa name until my third year. That year I worked with Census and got gifted the names “Gadget” and “Gadget Fairy” by Black Rock City Census [a data collection project undertaken at each year’s festival]. However, the playa name I use mostly is “Wee Heavy.” It’s the name I use with the Black Rock Rangers (the volunteer safety and security team) and it has also become my handle in PG&E (the perimeter, gate, and exodus) Department of the festival as well. Wee Heavy comes from the name of a particular beer from Alesmith Brewing in San Diego.

Even as my personal identity and appearance has shifted, my playa name has remained constant. For me, it’s an important part of my identity, but I know that playa names often have various levels of meaning to the individual. Some long-time staff have playa names, but still choose to use their given names (like Seth, the Exodus Manager who has been nicknamed “Blue Cross”), while departments that use radios require playa names or handles, and those handles become important signifiers of that person’s particular identity.

Matt Wray: While I agree with Katherine and Wee Heavy about how playa names are used to help Burners create new identities—or remake old ones—I think that there are some other things going on as well. Like Jon’s first playa names, I didn’t really choose my playa name. Mine, “Burping Man,” was given to me by my theme camp because I have the ability to belch loudly and to talk—whole paragraphs—at the same time. In most contexts, this questionable talent is met with disgust or, at best, mild amusement. On the playa, it has become central to my identity in a way I never anticipated or even asked for. Off playa, I’m a nice guy—I try to be civil to everyone I meet. But Burping Man is a bit of a rude asshole, a bit surly and always trying to provoke disgust. I’ve tried various times to retire this persona, but there is always protest. It’s a role I’m practically required to play while I’m there. Rather than fight that war, I burp.

So you see, even in my alter ego, I’m somewhat constrained by community standards, habits, and expectations. It sound ridiculous to say it, but being Burping Man has made me wonder how free any of us really are as individuals.

The Countess is a female version of the Count from Sesame Street. As the Countess, I count Burners: “One Burner, two Burners, three Burners, four… MUAH HA HA HA HA!” I have encouraged other members of the Census team to assume mathematical names. “Equator,” “Variance,” and “Random” have followed the tradition.

As the Countess, I have assumed a great deal of responsibility (on and off the playa) for a very large, collaborative data collection project called the Black Rock City Census. The experience has given me an opportunity to grow into that leadership role and learn new skills, including how to collaborate with researchers and volunteers from many parts of the globe and the Burning Man organization. Simultaneously, I express my femininity through this persona, using creative costuming and adopting a fiercely protective, motherly attitude toward my team. The Countess has given me a platform for learning and growth, as well as a recognizable position in the community.

Why might the demographics of the Burning Man population be of interest to researchers? For instance, there is a cultural trope that people who go to Burning Man are often marginalized individuals—outsiders in some way. Could the festival’s annual Census be used to measure this rather subjective characteristic of the population? Is there a single “modal demographic” (that is, a specific Burner “type”) or are there many? What else does the Census Lab measure (or not measure)?

Chen: People often have an idea of what they think the typical Burner is in terms of age or interests, but the Census’s convenience survey has revealed greater diversity than people might expect. One Burner compared Burning Man to the Internet—if you can think it, you can find someone else who is into it at Burning Man. As media images show, Burning Man does attract subcultures of persons who might be marginalized in their hometowns because of their appearance, interests, or ways of thinking. At the same time, people who do not appear marginal also attend Burning Man, perhaps because they are seeking a connection of some sort.

Given this, maybe the question should be more about how alienation (rather than marginalization) pushes people towards Burning Man. When I interviewed people about why they volunteered, putting in long hours of work, sometimes back-breaking labor, they cited reasons such as: they got more meaning out of their work for Burning Man than their paid work, they wanted to meet more people who were similar-thinking, they wanted a new experience besides what they have gotten from work and family, etc. Maybe the Census could measure how Burning Man alleviates (or fosters) alienation.

Burping Man (Wray): I’ll leave the question about what types of people frequently show up at Burning Man to the Countess (Heller), who has a better handle on the Census data than I do, but I’ve always been struck at how little the demographics of Burning Man reflect the diversity of the Bay Area or California more generally. While it is true that there is a wide array of subcultures represented at the event, there is much less racial diversity than you might expect. I attended for 14 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2006, and perhaps it has changed in more recent years, but the whiteness of Burning Man was striking. So I never thought of Burners as marginalized members of society. Quite the opposite: the event seemed to be pulling from the most privileged racial group.

I like Katherine’s reframing of the question, because I’ve always thought that perhaps Burners were drawn to the event as a way of dealing with unwanted privilege—a kind of potlatch ceremony where whites give up the excess they have accumulated over the year and try to re-distribute that to a larger community, as a way of unburdening themselves of both the excess and the guilt that comes with having been given too much. This is a very tribal dynamic at work: if you don’t periodically burn off the abundant excess, tribal solidarity fails. I think this may be part of the symbolic significance of the event, whether or not most participants are aware it. Does this interpretation make any sense to anyone else? Where is an anthropologist when you need one? Countess?

Wee Heavy (Stern): The demographics are difficult to pinpoint, but there are some patterns that are easy to discern. This is a diverse event, but the majority of participants remain white, and if I had to make a guess on the average age, I’d say late 30s. While it is indeed a very white event, the class tiers that exist within this white group of people are many. The class diversity stems in some part due to the differences that exists between the rich participant groups from the Silicon Valley and the less well-off groups that staff event services.

Countess (Heller): As an anthropologist, I appreciate Matt’s analysis of the potlatch and Katherine’s point about alienation. Perhaps there might be a way to measure alienation—or, the term I prefer: dislocation. Any ideas from readers about how to measure this would be appreciated.

For example, the majority of burners identify as heterosexual, but this does not negate the fact that other sexual orientations are quite acceptable and visible at Burning Man. Many find that Black Rock City is a very safe place to come out of the closet and experiment with their sexuality. Some minorities and subcultural groups may find Burning Man to be a tolerant place; others may not. The main point of the Census, in my mind, is to explore this diversity and share our findings with the Burning Man community and the press.

The Census is no longer using just a convenience sample. In 2012, we successfully instituted a random sample, which we conducted at the main entrance gate. See the results here.

We are now using that representative data to adjust the results of last year’s paper form and the online survey we conducted after the event. In 2013, we will focus our efforts on the random sample and the online survey only. We will no longer be using the paper form.

Burning Man sometimes gets portrayed as little more than a giant rave—a psychedelic party on the playa. It is like a party in many ways, but those of us who go know that the label doesn’t begin to capture the full experience. What larger phenomena does Burning Man represent in your research? In other words, how do you categorize the event and why should we take it seriously?

Chen: People often forget that Burning Man arises from larger society. Although people may see Burning Man as an escape from society, the festival is still informed by society—people bring their habits, customs, and ideas with them. In these ways, Burning Man reflects society.

At the same time, the festival’s internal principles, some of which run counter to societal norms, encourage creative transformations of seemingly mundane, everyday actions. Burning Man principles that urge participation, self-expression, and community can help transform the meaning of picking up litter under “Leave No Trace,” for instance. Burning Man also enables people to develop rituals, such as grieving for a departed loved one (see Lee Gilmore and Sarah Pike’s respective work, for instance) or biking en masse alongside one’s compatriots (see Wendy Clupper’s analysis of Critical Tits, the female bike parade), that aren’t readily available in society at large.

For me, the most fascinating aspect of Burning Man is how it regularly organizes creative, large-scale output. On the one hand, you don’t want to under-organize or provide too little support and coordination for people’s efforts, such that the event falls apart. On the other hand, you don’t want to over-organize, or have excessive organization that relies on coercion to “encourage” people to carry out actions. Most people are familiar with the latter via their experiences with bureaucracies at work, for instance, and they don’t want to repeat those experiences. Nor do they want a routinized output like what Disney produces. My book Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event and other publications address how to avoid these excesses and explore other issues, like how do you inspire people to take unfamiliar action? (You can view several of my publications on storytelling and organizing here.)

Burping Man (Wray): I really like Katherine’s questions about the spreading influence of Burning Man. It would make an interesting case study in the process of global cultural diffusion, especially since it has a clear start date.

In terms of how I label the event, I have always found it useful and instructive to view it through the historical lens of American experiments with utopian, intentional communities. These have a long, fascinating, and mostly unknown history, since you’re not likely to see it in most high school textbooks. Utopian communitarianism involves a group of people choosing to set themselves apart in a new place in order to make a better world, according to visions and principles they share. This has most often arisen from religious impulses—the Puritans are an early example of Americans doing this, as are the Mormons—but there have also been secular versions, a large number of which ended up in California (see Robert Hine’s California’s Utopian Colonies), which is where Burning Man originated in 1986.

What’s distinctive about Burning Man is that it is a temporary intentional community. It’s more like a family reunion or a bluegrass festival than it is like a settlement of true believers. And I’m very interested in this temporary aspect of the event, because I think that is a key ingredient in its special sauce. It’s part of what has made the event so enormously successful—far more successful, in many ways, than any of its historical forbears, most of which failed spectacularly within a few years. I think future researchers might explore this element of the event’s organization—its temporal dimension—quite fruitfully. Is ephemerality part of its success? Is impermanence what makes it sustainable?

Wee Heavy (Stern): I like to think of Burning Man as a social experiment, an artistic gathering, and an event that seems simple on the surface but belies a complex machine underneath. My research focuses on identity, and Burning Man is a fertile ground for exploration of identity. In the process of doing my own research, I found myself comfortable enough to come out of the closet, which I did in June 2011. I came out Gender Queer (meaning I’m both a man and a woman and either at the same time) because I found a group of people who supported me for who I am, and I knew even if I lost everyone else in my life, I’d still have them.

Countess (Heller): I describe Burning Man as a playground. The focus of my research is adult play and transformation. In the United States, children’s play is considered important and valuable, if not essential, to a child’s healthy development. But at Burning Man, adult play is considered important; it is the central point of the event. The question posed here shows a cultural prejudice against adult play and adult play spaces, such as raves and parties, where adults are allowed to experience the transformative potential of play. In my research, I see opportunities to play freely, without ordinary social constraints, as potentially benefitting an adult as they develop over time. On the playa, just as on a playground, a person may discover or invent possibilities that might seem impossible in ordinary cultural contexts. I take the Burning Man event seriously as a playground to explore human potentials and to develop cultural practices that promote individual well being and strengthen ties of interpersonal relatedness.

Burning Man is many different things to many different people. But at the center of the experience is a commitment to free expression and creativity. This puts the event squarely in the arena of “culture,” as most people understand the word. Yet this conventional view of culture is pretty narrow. Social scientists use the word more broadly, encompassing how people in groups organize their worlds. What broad aspects of culture do you see operating at Burning Man?

Chen: Experiences at Burning Man can enlarge people’s ways of seeing, being, interacting, and thinking. A big one for me is the expansion of the organizing toolkit. Once people figure out that they don’t have to wait for institutions to organize things for them, they can take action and produce projects that can meet or even exceed people’s expectations. Of course, we’re talking about people who have the resources and inclination to undertake projects. (In other words, I don’t think that this can necessarily substitute for the state or other societal arrangements—they can be complementary.)

Another aspect is that Burning Man can help people examine taken-for-granted beliefs. In everyday life, people often accept phenomena such as poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, environmental degradation, and other social issues as “the way that the world works.” At Burning Man, these issues don’t go away, but people can start to imagine other possibilities and actions that they can take to address these. Although these actions may initially be small-scale, they may add up to something larger. In other words, Burning Man can cultivate what social scientists call reflexivity. For example, Burners will ask what does it mean to be inclusive? What if someone does something harmful or distasteful to the community? Are we still obligated to include that person? How can we encourage people to reduce waste and recycle? Can we do this in a fun way? How do we prod transgressors to alter their ways? These are all dilemmas that people will have to contend with no matter where they are, from a small village to the worldwide web.

I like this DIY/steampunk/anarchic spirit hovering over the event. It’s a fierce, guardian spirit that resists turning a cultural innovation into just another commodity. It insists that these innovations be given as gifts. That really feeds me, because so much of what American culture offers up for consumption is so bland and conformist, even as it revels in its own brand of cool iconoclasm (see Frank’s The Conquest of Cool). I don’t dislike commodified American culture because I’m a snob. I dislike it because it makes me feel dead inside. And whenever I’m on the playa, I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. And that makes me feel connected to others, which is pretty much what everyone needs to feel in order to be happy. So this aspect of the culture of Burning Man, which feels inclusive to those of us who feel excluded—or to use Katherine’s term, alienated—by American culture, this aspect needs to be better understood by social scientists.

Wee Heavy (Stern): Culture is indeed a multifaceted concept… Some cultural aspects of Burning Man include ritual, micro-level interaction, the pervasiveness of the ten principles, the transmission of information, and the art we don’t see as art. The event itself is a ritual, but it is also made up of many smaller rituals which have varying levels of importance for a given participant or the city as a whole. For many, even the journey to the event is a major part of their ritual…

Micro-level interactions are very important to the overall atmosphere and culture of TTITD—That Thing In The Desert, as Burning Man is sometimes called. As a person who lives out—openly queer—my interactions with strangers in the default world can range from nice and cordial to people staring at me, taking pictures without my permission, and making rude comments. Interactions on playa tend to be uniformly cordial, polite, and respectful, even if they only last a few seconds. This plays off of Katherine’s points about what people normally take for granted. While the event is only a week long, I’ve been extending my time on playa both for my own enjoyment and to conduct more fieldwork with staff pre- and post-event. Acclimating to playa isn’t simply something that takes place physically. It also involves acculturating and becoming part of the social atmosphere that exists around us.

Countess (Heller): I see the Burning Man event as an antidote to the widespread experience of dislocation, the condition in which most of us find ourselves, shorn of culture and individual identity in a globalized world in which people’s needs are subordinate to the market. Burning Man is an opportunity to be relocated, to experience a potential home where people’s needs are valued… and people are encouraged to bring creative cultural practices and identities to share with others. To experience a real sense of home, even for only one week…, and to set one’s roots deep in that ground, is to be given a sense of pride and belonging that can be… taken with you wherever you roam.

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Matt Wray (Burping Man) is in the sociology department at Temple University and is the editor of Cultural Sociology: An Introductory Reader. He has been writing about Burning Man since 1995.