The Berkeley Blog » Claude Fischer

Suicide boom?

Claude Fischer — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:04:14 +0000

Charles Fischer [no relation to your blogger] arrived in New York City in 1890. A well-educated clerk from Stuttgart, Germany, he struggled in America, failing in real estate, in the saloon business, and finally in china plate decorating. He divorced and lost touch with his only child. Fischer wrote his mother, “I cannot stand this much longer. If I don’t get work within two weeks I will have to go out on the street and work as a laborer.” At 10:00 pm on a Saturday evening in 1896, he entered his small rented room on East 3rd Street, sealed up ... More >

Sexual license, sexual limits

Claude Fischer — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:14:26 +0000

One clear social change of the last half-century is Americans’ increasing support of sexual freedom. It is all around us: magazines at the check-out counter blaring advice about orgasms, easy-access pornography on the web and soft-core pornography on cable, hooking-up culture on tv programs, and nonchalance about couples “living together” before (or after) marriage (see this earlier post).

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Sexual restraints loosened over much of the twentieth century, but the great release, so to speak, occurred in the late 1960s. As I noted in a post three years ago, the hinge of change seemed to between the time that Diana Ross ... More >

Markets, prices and justice

Claude Fischer — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:06:11 +0000

In February, 1917, thousands of women stormed the streets in the poorer parts of Brooklyn, New York, overturning pushcarts and setting them on fire. It took police hours to restore order. [1] The women were protesting rapid increases in the prices of food staples and decried the injustice of hungry children. Congress was soon in debate. One senator warned that the disorders showed that “the country is dividing into two great classes – the very poor and the very rich.” [2] In fact, the U.S. had had many earlier commodity riots, going back to the founding of the nation; it ... More >

Immigration and political clout

Claude Fischer — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:39:56 +0000

Two hot-button social issues seem to be moving to some sort of political resolution rather quickly. Their stories tell us something about the nature of attitudes Americans hold on such topics and also about the nature of American politics.

One issue is gay marriage. It appears that, whether de jure or de facto, most gays will be able to marry or to “marry” relatively soon. This outcome seems to be driven in great measure by strong shifts in public opinion. According to the General Social Survey, the percentage of American adults agreeing that “homosexual couples should have the right to marry” ... More >

Writerly baseball – opening day 2013

Claude Fischer — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:21:58 +0000

Writers – academic, commercial, and intellectual – have for generations indulged themselves writing about baseball. (This post, of course, becomes a further meta-indulgence.) There is nothing close in either American fiction or literary nonfiction about football or basketball, however much those other sports dominate the TV screen these days.[1]

Much of the baseball genre now tends to be nostalgic, elegies to a past of country pastures, sandlots, and pickup games. I was reminded of this trope when reading a recent essay in The (new) New Republic by Kent Russell about Amish boys playing ball. Russell’s essay combines two forms of nostalgia ... More >

Back home

Claude Fischer — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:20:55 +0000

One of the major lifestyle changes of the twentieth century was the dramatic increase in the proportion of Americans who lived alone. [1] Virtually outlawed in Early America, rarely done in the early twentieth century, it became a stage of life for many Americans, especially for elderly women, by the end of the century. (In 2000, about one-third of American women 65 and older were living alone.)

Studio (source)

The question of whether this trend is a good or bad thing has been a matter of concern. Eric Klinenberg’s recent best-seller, Going Solo, conveys the positive side of the discussion (see ... More >

Catholic schism

Claude Fischer — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:34:52 +0000

With the resignation of Pope Benedict and election of a new pope, amidst what seems an unending turmoil over sex abuse by priests, pollsters have understandably thought this a good moment to inquire about American Catholics’ attitudes on religious matters. The results describe a major disconnection between the Roman Catholic Church and its American adherents.

St. Peter’s, NYC (source)

A New York Times survey conducted in February found, for example, that by roughly two to one or more, self-identified Catholics favored gay marriage, women priests, priests marrying, artificial means of birth control, access to abortion, and the death penalty – all ... More >

The ’60s turn 50

Claude Fischer — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:35:01 +0000

We have a commemoration going on about the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the great social changes, such as the Emancipation Proclamation, which accompanied it.

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There’s another anniversary coming up over the next 12 months or so: the 50th anniversary of “The ’60s,” by which I mean the 1960s as a distinct social, cultural era. It did not really begin in 1960 nor end in 1970. It began, culturally speaking, roughly in 1963-64 and petered out in the early-to-mid 1970s. If one is looking for a start date, perhaps the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, is a ... More >

We’re # last!

Claude Fischer — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:21:40 +0000

If you ask young Americans how good their health is, they’ll tell you it’s great. The U.S. ranks #1 among 17 affluent, western countries in that regard, in the percentage of people aged 5 to 34 who rate their health as good. Unfortunately, when doctors look at people’s actual health, at indicators such as obesity, diabetes, and simply the chance that someone will die before his or her next birthday, the U.S. ranks last: young Americans are #17 out of 17 in real health.

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The National Research Council and the National Institute of Medicine – the nation’s go-to sources for ... More >

Guns

Claude Fischer — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:50:29 +0000

Everyone has been talking, sensibly or not, about guns since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. I had not waded in for a few reasons. Many experts are writing about the topic in the press; I have no particular expertise on the question of whether guns cost or save more lives; and the research literature on the subject is a morass. Moreover, studies of gun violence have been limited by federal legislation explicitly restricting health researchers from addressing the question.[1] But I’ll take this post to make a few partly-informed observations.

The morass

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Opinions over the proper role ... More >