Sociologists and anthropologists sometimes seem to live in a parallel universe. This to me is incredible – relating what are claimed to be “racist” attitudes to flying the Australian flag on your car. Please read the link.
Are they serious and therefore just simple-minded ratbags? Or is this a joke and they have got me? Hopefully the latter.
I don’t see the problem (although I’m not at all thrilled by it). It’s just creating a taxonmy of behavior that is associated with racist/nationlist attitudes, and obviously flying a flag on your car is one of those behaviors — big deal. It’s no worse than most clinical health research except that the taxonomy is for racism and not some health complaint. They’d probably find out that obesity and heart disease are correlated too given the poor quality of standard Aussie food. “Racists are fatter”. I should do the study!
Now let me guess. Did these sandstone seekers of truth test for racist attitudes of aboriginals flying their particular favourite European heraldic symbol?
The flag connection with racism is not unique to Australia. Bagehot in The Economist last week:
http://www.economist.com/node/21543150
The Australian flag was a prominent Skippie adornment in the race riots attacking Lebanese in Cronulla in 2005: http://www.wissenslogs.de/wblogs/gallery/39/previews-med/Cronulla_riots_2_-_no_lebs.jpg
The results of the survey about Australian flags on cars come as no surprise at all.
Perhaps they could use the Southern Cross too. Once a nice star constellation, now a symbol dickheads put on their cars and tatoo on themselves.
harry – most people live in a parallel universe to economists.
Just look at economists breathless findings in any field in which one is working or has knowledge – economists ignore decades of established research and also ignore the actual workings of fields and pronounce “new” “exciting” “radical” findings that everyone either knows or has disproved.
Some examples please FXH? You have lost me.
Identifying a commitment to the Australian flag with racism is nonsense.
“Some examples please FXH? You have lost me.”
Most of the work economists have done on racism and implicit beliefs. This stuff has been done death in psychology in the past 30 years. More recently, economists have come along, picked up tasks that are well known to be next to worthless (e.g., the implicit activation) and it’s suddenly all new!
“Identifying a commitment to the Australian flag with racism is nonsense.”
It’s a correlate of racists beliefs, just like the Southern Cross is now. So a once reasonable symbol has now been abused and taken on another meaning. C’est la vie. The Swastika is the best example of this incedentally. It started life as symbol not associated with Germany.
One imagines some earnest sociological researcher in Germany in 1935 finding a correlation between displays of the swastika and anti-Semitic attitudes. Harry, would you criticise him for being: wrong; right but not interesting; nonsense?
Thanks Conrad fr that small list.
A larger list would take a whole blog to record.
And
Ever noticed the utes with the oz flag flying high. And the accompanying stickers. “fuck off we are full” ” Australia love it or leave it” and ” show us your tits”
With the odd Southen Cross sticker chucked in
Btw Harry its not your fault , it’s the whole bloody mindset of the field.
In fact your are one of the better ones. I think your stuff on smoking and also aboriginal smoking was as good as it gets from economists. I’d mark you down slightly on some health knowledge but overall a bloody impressive effort. Will be remembered. And what bigger compliment than that.
Also I’ve lost about three comments on this thread. Are they in moderation? Or is it the blog or this stupid iPad?
I’ve made some comments over on Stephen kings blog about his health stuff a lot of which he, and he’s not alone, seems to misunderstand. Why don’t Economists spend time understanding a field before wading in?
Maybe they just mis speak and seem to not understand. If so they also miss they audience
No you wer not censored FXH – it was your use of the word “fuck”. I’ve never seen the sticker you refer to. They also say “show us your tits” do they? Would sociologists conclude that racists are bottle fed babies?
Has anyone other than hc read the linked report of the “research”?
Do you accept it as a robust piece of work?
If any of you are university teachers, would you accept this as well executed research by one of your students?
“It’s a correlate of racists beliefs, just like the Southern Cross is now. ”
Conrad, do you have any evidence for that, other than the piece of very sloppy research that is reported in the article hc linked to?
Is the original work available anywhere?
Not peer reviewed I suppose…
Ken,
I don’t have the report. However, my point is that it isn’t an unreasonable thing to look at (I wouldn’t vouch for the design etc. — these may all have problems or they may be perfect for all I know), and the fact that it is getting flogged in the media is unfortunately how a lot of science works these days. The media want trendy stuff, which may or may not be good science.
That being said, some people go around finding taxonomies of things correlated with other things we are interested in. Finding out that people with racist beliefs also exhibit behaviors X, Y, and Z, is a reasonable thing to do (of course, finding out why they exhibit these behaviors is much more interesting, but this is a deeper questino). This sort of stuff is standard practice in many areas — a lot of clinical medicine works like this, and things that would (or should, for all I know) be of interest to HC here do also. For example, what are the correlates of behavior that lead people to gamble? Do gamblers exhibit X, Y, and Z? With this sort of data, hopefully you can construct a model that helps you undestand the behaviour better.
conrad – read the newspaper report.
Does it look to you like a good piece of research?
There is enough information to give an answer, I have no doubt.
The questions of correlation might be interesting – though always dangerous to draw conclusion from – but the whole thing collapses if the work was not well done.
I have commissioned a fair bit of opinion and attitude research and stuff like this would have been rejected before the button was pressed.
What better symbol for a resentful abo/xeno phobe than an anglo colonialist relic with a union jack in its corner? Of course they were going to find a correlation. What a waste of time to conduct a study to confirm the obvious.
Not that mindless unracist patriots wouldn’t also join in the flag waving. As the survey also confirmed, not every flag waver exhibited racist attitudes.
Back in the day flag waving used to be considered more crassly American than laid back Australian. The influx of cheap asian-manufactured flags coupled with the influx of asian immigrants may have a bit to do with it.
“Sociologists and anthropologists sometimes seem to live in a parallel universe.”
http://www.news.com.au/national/academic-toilet-paper-opens-doors-on-dunny-business/story-e6frfkvr-1226266176545#ixzz1lqOn29aT
“As academics, part of our role is to do research and to pick research topics that interest us.”
You’re not hanging around gender spaces waving the flag are you Harry?
Sweet Jesus Harry, even Age journos would have trouble keeping a their trousers dry when they’re sticking the mike under the stupid gobs of these loons when they’re winding them up.