Sociology 3701: Outline--Week Fourteen
I. Difference, identity, and social movements.
Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois
"To the real question, how does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom
a word. And yet, being a problem is a strange experience--peculiar even for
one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe."
" It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of
always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul
by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels
ever his twoness: an American, a Negro..."
Forty years after "Emancipation," the Nation has not yet found peace
from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land."
"...and he saw himself--darkly as through a veil.... the facing of so
vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement,
and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmostphere
of contempt and hate.... Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts:
we cannot write; our voting is in vain; what need of education, since we must
always cook and serve?"
III. Social movements, change, and identity
William Gamson: "Social psychology bashing among students of social movements
is over."
A. Social Movement: group of people organizing for change using at least partly
unconventional (and sometimes illegal) methods
B. What are the implications from a symbolic interactionist perspective?
1. The social reconstruction of reality... purposive, intentional, explicit
(compared to the usual processes of social construction)... examples: civil
rights, feminism, the gay and lesbian movement... "cultural revolution"
2. In attempting to build a new world, we also build new selves, and that
releases enormous energies... identities (and perhaps selves) that have been
limited, stigmatized, damaged are transformed and reclaimed in the light of
new reality claims.
3. Part of the new energy is destructive--the breaking down of old realities,
which social movement participants now claim are arbitrary and unjust... t
4. Part of the new energy is creative and often passionate and carries an
intensity that is unusual in the ordinary life of school, job, family, etc.
Cynthia Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution:
"...everyone just knew where everyone else was going... when we
came together we were able to work together in a way that I miss. I don't
have that in my life anymore. We brought out the best in everyone... There
was an incredible tension. We would meet until ten, then go out dancing
or drinking. We had to do it. We became best personal friends. When we
started out we hardly knew each other. By the end, we were all each other's
best friends--and worst enemies." Joyce, commenting on her experiences
with the Abalone Alliance
"The sense of community was a side benefit. We were all
working in unison, we were all motivated... People said: 'I just want
to lay my body on the line.'"
"There are some very rare times when you feel there's a real movement,
you have the sense of people being out at the limits of the creativity
and cooperation."
Epstein's experience of going to jail
5. Because social movements are seeking change, they invariably engender
conflict... opposition (often very powerful) inevitably emerges, carrying
both dangers and the potential for group solidarity through opposition to a shared enemy.
Notice: social movements need not be something we admire; the Nazis were a social movement in Germany before they came to power...
C. High risk strategy
1. In the personal sense. Apt to be labeled deviant, stigmatized (of course, maybe you were stigmatized in the first place). Criminal justice system may reflect the power system.
2. High failure rate. How many times did groups of black Americans try to get a movement for their rights going between Reconstruction and the 1950s? Related to social control and lack of resources.
3. In the face of risk, what are the factors that make social movements possible?
a. Alexis de Tocqueville: The Old Regime and the French Revolution. "It oftener happens that when a people which has put up with an oppressive rule over a long period of time without protest suddenly finds the government relaxing its pressure, it takes up arms against it.... Patiently endured as long as it seems beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men's minds."
"revolution of rising expectations"
b. Max Weber: Charisma and social movements ... charismatic leaders call on people to move beyond self-interest and live for something larger... a precarious relationship between leaders and followers because the movement must have successes
c. Demonstration effect of other social movements and a borrowing of strategies and tactics
d. political process theory (Doug McAdam). People are often recruited to social movements through existing networks of attachments... in the civil rights movement, the black churches and black colleges were crucial
e. Role of the arts: posters, drama, music... we'll see this when we look at the gay and lesbian movement next week
IV. Rampage shootings...attacks on multiple parties, selected almost at random, because they represent whole institutions--schools, teenage pecking orders, communities... have taken place mostly in schools, rural and suburban settings, predominantly by white boys... a basic question will be to what extent the shooting at Virginia Tech fall into this mold, despite some obvious differences
Newman, Fox, Harding, Mehta, and Roth: Rampage: the Social Roots of School Shootings, 2004
A. Background and research methods
B. Their theory "combines elements at the individual, community, and national levels"... five key causal factors.. (we will focus on 1 and 3 as the esentially social psychological factors)
1. Shooter's perception of himself as extremely marginal in the social worlds that matter to him
a. Nearly 80% marginal kids at school; only 5% of school shooters described as popular, preppies, jocks
b. Very few meet the physical and social ideals of masculinity
c. Large majority had been bullied, often severely... often called gay or faggot, mercilessly teased and humiliated, physically abused
d. Often socially awkward and self-conscious
"Overall there is evidence of social marginality in all but one case."
e. "Where targets are identified at all--and in some cases they are not--high on the list we find preps, athletes, teachers, and principals."
2. Shooter(s) suffer pyschosocial problems that magnify the impact of marginality (mental illness, depression, abuse)
3. Cultural scripts provide models for problem solving... in particular, scripts that link manhood and public respect with violence...
a. Not impulsive or erratic... shooters have ruminated on their troubles over long periods of time, considered options, tried a few, and decide on shootings as a last resort.
"Toby Sincino, who shot two math teachers before killing himself, took on the clown role... but found it hard to maintain while fellow students were stuffing him into garbage cans or slamming him against lockers."
b. "Real men" don't ask for help, and even when kids do ask for help, adults are reluctant to intervene in adolescent hazing.
c. In need of a "manly" exit. Luke Woodham: "I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society push us and we will push back. Murder is not weak and slow-witted; murder is gutsy and daring..."
d. Fame. "If fame and glory are the goal, school shooters know that celbrity status will be granted only if they can outdo the last rampage."
"They advertise their crimes in advance for a variety of reasons. Some no doubt hope that the threat alone will serve to alter their social status. Threats can serve to redfine the self in a way that playing the class clown cannot.... shooters are deeply ambivalent.... What pushes them past the point of anxious indecision. They are convinced that failure to act will publicly confirm their weak character."
e. Cultural scripts do more than provide the range of possible solutions... they shape the design ofthe rampage. "Barry Loukaitis spent the morning of his attack carefully preparing his clothes--a black cowboy hat and boots, an oversized black trench coat--and his weapons. Sporting a cartridge belt with seventy rounds of ammunition, two pistols in holsters slung across his hips, and a hunting rifle..."
f. Source of these scripts... video games, books, tv, movies, song lyrics
g. Not exactly revenge. "Random firing has been the most distinctive aspect of rampage school shootings and the most frightening. As former principal Bill Bond pointed out, if Michael had wanted to shoot the preps, he would have gone upstairs to where the preps hang out. But when Michael shot randomly into the prayer circle, and when Mitchell and Andrew fired at their fellow students from across the field, they were demonstrating their anger with an entire social system that had rejected them rather than trying to take out particular shooters."
4. Failure of surveillance systems rooted in the nature of schools and peer relationships
5. Easy access to guns
Necessary but not sufficient conditions.... factors we can expect to find in rampage shootings, but will not allow us to predict them
C. Three data bases that allowed a testing of their theory
1. CDC's national data-base of school-associated student deaths
2. Safe School Initiative Report by U.S. secret-service and U.S. Department of Education
3. Their own data set of 25 school rampage shootings, based on media accounts and case studies
"Our five-factor theory works best to explain cases in which shooters are targeting the adolescent social hierarchy, which accounts for four fifths of our cases.
D. "Tough Guise"