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There's a difference between sociology (as taught in American universities) and cultural anthropology, and this article is a nice demonstration of that differen

There's a difference between sociology (as taught in American universities) and cultural anthropology, and this article is a nice demonstration of that difference. Note that everything in this article only applies to a relatively small socio-economic grouping - i.e. relatively well-off college-educated Americans. This is explicitly stated, more or less, in the article: > "The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”" There are many different cultures and economic groupings, globally speaking, and they don't all devolve into isolated 'nuclear family' groupings over time, as this article implies. The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community? If you attempt to take an outside perspective, it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain.

nerdponx 4y ago
Where do you get this impression? The article was clearly written for American audiences, and the sociologist Rawlins clearly focuses on American society. You make it sound like they are just talking out of their rear end, making things up based on their own privileged and unrepresentative personal experience, but my impression is that their opinion is formed by their own research, which might be a couple decades old, but is probably still relevant. If there's anything to complain about here, is that Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. Even on HN, where we have a large contingent of Europeans participating, we don't hear too much about Europe. It's almost always about the US.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    There are plenty of articles about EU regulations or Amsterdam roads on here. But the US has the biggest single audience. Most websites have like 60% Americans but only 10% British or Germans, so anything about the US has it about six times easier to relate than something about Germany
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Which makes sense, because the UK has the population of California + Texas, and Germany has the population of California + Texas + Illinois. Of course this is a US-focused site to some extent, but the US just has a big contiguous language community. It's comparable to all of Europe, not individual countries.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
    > Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. I'm from Europe and sure, one of the main reasons why I come to this US-based site with a majority of US readership is to find American viewpoints on issues, and engage in discussions about the USA. This doesn't mean that I spend my life wanting to talk about the USA, though. I talk much more about my own country but it's on sites with readership from that country (and in real life, of course) so you're not aware of it. And many of my compatriots don't talk about the USA at all, you just don't see them because they don't hang out in sites like this at all. (Maybe this is already what you meant, that when an American interacts with someone from outside, they often want to talk about the USA -which is not the same as saying that people from outside often talk about the USA in general-. But it's not clear from your wording).
    - Porkins67 4y ago
      If I want to get perspectives from Europeans and from other parts of the world, what are the best sites to go to in order to see them?
  - programmer_dude 4y ago
    Talking and hearing about the US is fun but I mainly come here for the tech news.
- hattmall 4y ago
  Americans also tend to forget there is a world inside of the USA that isn't upper middle class, college educated, work all day, annual vacation people posting on social media. The sense of community and day to day lives are very different and much more enjoyable. The only problem is that due to exploitation by distant corporate actors that community is played with violence, obesity and drug addiction.
  - Terretta 4y ago
    > much more enjoyable ? > played with obesity plagued maybe. but also, no, corpos don't make people fat, and crime rates per pop are not as us/them as one might expect: https://i.redd.it/zzbhmc3gd4u31.png https://i.redd.it/zzbhmc3gd4u31.png
- Izkata 4y ago
  > Where do you get this impression? The article itself talks of life stages in terms of how things change, with college life being a case study as a small aside in the middle of the article. It's written as though these insights apply to everyone, even mentioning the "International Association of Relationship Researchers" at the beginning. It's a very common problem in sociology-type sciences, where they study college students because they're easy access, then extrapolate to the entire population.
User23 4y ago
Stratification of American society is largely due to people fleeing violent and property crime, especially once they have children. There is considerable hysteresis so it’s not as simple as lining up cost of living and crime stats, but a “nice neighborhood with good schools” will be considerably more expensive all else being equal.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > Stratification of American society is largely due to people fleeing violent and property crime, especially once they have children. Claim made without evidence, and there is plenty of evidence that there are other larger factors at play.
  - fidesomnes 4y ago
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > largely due to people fleeing violent and property crime, especially once they have children. If I have to guess, what I think you're actually talking about is 1) after middle-class suburban kids leave home to go to college, then 2) graduate and move into gentrifying areas to take internships/jobs in big cities, then 3) get married during that period in their 20s while their income is rising into six figures, and 4) they purchase their starter house in the latest gentrifying neighborhood, then 5) get pregnant and get a dog at the same time, so 6) muggings and property crimes in their new neighborhood turn them extremely reactionary, then 7) they move to a massive palace in the suburbs either shortly before or shortly after the kid pops out. i.e. the universal American experience.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >i.e. the universal American experience. How is this consistent with #3? $100k incomes are 80th percentile. https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
Barrin92 4y ago
Was about to write the exact same thing. Having grown up around multigenerational immigrant families in a working class environment in a Western country that is, the article already sounds foreign to me, and I'm not even that far off the target demographic compared to some other places in the world. And still now as an adult in my early thirties who moved to Tokyo a few years ago, socially my environment is dominanted by friendships, which is true for many people my age. The article points to friendships being voluntary as one key distinction between say marriage and friends, but statistics will tell everyone that many of those marriages nowadays aren't that permanent. Article sounds a little bit like it was written by someone who lives in American Beauty still.
jshaqaw 4y ago
This is true. Also true that because something isn’t of universal applicability that doesn’t mean it isn’t of merit for a specific group. I don’t think the Atlantic pretends it’s readership isn’t overwhelming upper middle class+ highly educated center-left Americans. There is a balance isn’t there between acknowledging differences exist and only writing things of universal relevance which is mostly to say nothing at all.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
The issue I have with posts like these is that when you compare and contrast anglo/american culture with "other" cultures, you handwave away specific examples of "others". "The majority of people" is a pretty broad group here, from Portugal to the Russian far east, Namibia to Papua New Guinea, Chile to Mexico. So when you say: The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community? Does that really apply to all non-anglo/american cultures? You would have to be extraordinarily knowledgeable of near thousands of human cultures to know this. it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain. It'd be a challenge to claim that the "prole/posh divide" in Imperial Britain was anywhere near as strong as some of its contemporaries - say the Qing Dynasty or Ottoman Empire.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Does that really apply to all non-anglo/american cultures? You would have to be extraordinarily knowledgeable of near thousands of human cultures to know this. Or you could find out how many users facebook has, and subtract it from the world population. If you're left with "the majority of people," you've easily proved it.
  - jjfoooo6 4y ago
    The ironic thing is that, as discussed in this thread, the article is really focused on upwardly mobile college graduates who have transitioned into marriage / kids. This fits me and my friend group to a T, but the bits about Facebook don't land because me and all of my friends have abandoned that platform.
  - incone123 4y ago
    Even simpler proof: majority of people in the world are under 35.
sbf501 4y ago
I've been subscribing to The Atlantic for years. It is entirely targeted at upperclass, liberal, college-educated whites. Which is exactly why I read it. Why would I read a magazine targeted at a culture I don't understand or am not a part of? I do expect The Atlantic to explain these culture groups to me in a language I understand, but any periodical simply targets its own audience for profitability reasons.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  This sounds like a nice way to keep yourself trapped in an information bubble. I live thousands of miles away from the nearest English-speaking country in a society pretty different to what you'd see in England or the US, yet spend most of my time in the English-speaking section of the internet precisely because of that (reading pretty much anything that comes by, targeted at as diverse groups as possible).
  - OJFord 4y ago
    > This sounds like a nice way to keep yourself trapped in an information bubble. Not from a good source. As GP put it: > I do expect The Atlantic to explain these culture groups to me in a language I understand
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Because it’s valuable to try to understand groups other than your own? Maybe even learn from them? Honestly I’m baffled that you hold this opinion with some pride. I ascended to that class from a working class family (and no college) and y’all have just as many problems as any other social group.
  - sbf501 4y ago
    I don't think you understand my opinion very well. At no point did I say I do not wish to understand other people's opinions. But I don't speak in their culture, so I need it explained to me. That's literally what liberal humanities are all about, from the Renaissance on: trying to understand the world around you. Are you somehow assuming, for example, that to truly understand Russia I should only read Russian newspapers and talk to Russians and speak Russian? I shouldn't have say how absurd that is, but here we are. > y’all have just as many problems as any other social group I never said we didn't. Don't put your shit on me.

nerdponx 4y ago

Where do you get this impression? The article was clearly written for American audiences, and the sociologist Rawlins clearly focuses on American society. You make it sound like they are just talking out of their rear end, making things up based on their own privileged and unrepresentative personal experience, but my impression is that their opinion is formed by their own research, which might be a couple decades old, but is probably still relevant. If there's anything to complain about here, is that Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. Even on HN, where we have a large contingent of Europeans participating, we don't hear too much about Europe. It's almost always about the US.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  There are plenty of articles about EU regulations or Amsterdam roads on here. But the US has the biggest single audience. Most websites have like 60% Americans but only 10% British or Germans, so anything about the US has it about six times easier to relate than something about Germany
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Which makes sense, because the UK has the population of California + Texas, and Germany has the population of California + Texas + Illinois. Of course this is a US-focused site to some extent, but the US just has a big contiguous language community. It's comparable to all of Europe, not individual countries.
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
  > Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. I'm from Europe and sure, one of the main reasons why I come to this US-based site with a majority of US readership is to find American viewpoints on issues, and engage in discussions about the USA. This doesn't mean that I spend my life wanting to talk about the USA, though. I talk much more about my own country but it's on sites with readership from that country (and in real life, of course) so you're not aware of it. And many of my compatriots don't talk about the USA at all, you just don't see them because they don't hang out in sites like this at all. (Maybe this is already what you meant, that when an American interacts with someone from outside, they often want to talk about the USA -which is not the same as saying that people from outside often talk about the USA in general-. But it's not clear from your wording).
  - Porkins67 4y ago
    If I want to get perspectives from Europeans and from other parts of the world, what are the best sites to go to in order to see them?
- programmer_dude 4y ago
  Talking and hearing about the US is fun but I mainly come here for the tech news.
hattmall 4y ago
Americans also tend to forget there is a world inside of the USA that isn't upper middle class, college educated, work all day, annual vacation people posting on social media. The sense of community and day to day lives are very different and much more enjoyable. The only problem is that due to exploitation by distant corporate actors that community is played with violence, obesity and drug addiction.
- Terretta 4y ago
  > much more enjoyable ? > played with obesity plagued maybe. but also, no, corpos don't make people fat, and crime rates per pop are not as us/them as one might expect: https://i.redd.it/zzbhmc3gd4u31.png https://i.redd.it/zzbhmc3gd4u31.png
Izkata 4y ago
> Where do you get this impression? The article itself talks of life stages in terms of how things change, with college life being a case study as a small aside in the middle of the article. It's written as though these insights apply to everyone, even mentioning the "International Association of Relationship Researchers" at the beginning. It's a very common problem in sociology-type sciences, where they study college students because they're easy access, then extrapolate to the entire population.

User23 4y ago

Stratification of American society is largely due to people fleeing violent and property crime, especially once they have children. There is considerable hysteresis so it’s not as simple as lining up cost of living and crime stats, but a “nice neighborhood with good schools” will be considerably more expensive all else being equal.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> Stratification of American society is largely due to people fleeing violent and property crime, especially once they have children. Claim made without evidence, and there is plenty of evidence that there are other larger factors at play.
- fidesomnes 4y ago
pessimizer 4y ago
> largely due to people fleeing violent and property crime, especially once they have children. If I have to guess, what I think you're actually talking about is 1) after middle-class suburban kids leave home to go to college, then 2) graduate and move into gentrifying areas to take internships/jobs in big cities, then 3) get married during that period in their 20s while their income is rising into six figures, and 4) they purchase their starter house in the latest gentrifying neighborhood, then 5) get pregnant and get a dog at the same time, so 6) muggings and property crimes in their new neighborhood turn them extremely reactionary, then 7) they move to a massive palace in the suburbs either shortly before or shortly after the kid pops out. i.e. the universal American experience.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >i.e. the universal American experience. How is this consistent with #3? $100k incomes are 80th percentile. https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

Barrin92 4y ago

Was about to write the exact same thing. Having grown up around multigenerational immigrant families in a working class environment in a Western country that is, the article already sounds foreign to me, and I'm not even that far off the target demographic compared to some other places in the world. And still now as an adult in my early thirties who moved to Tokyo a few years ago, socially my environment is dominanted by friendships, which is true for many people my age. The article points to friendships being voluntary as one key distinction between say marriage and friends, but statistics will tell everyone that many of those marriages nowadays aren't that permanent. Article sounds a little bit like it was written by someone who lives in American Beauty still.

jshaqaw 4y ago

This is true. Also true that because something isn’t of universal applicability that doesn’t mean it isn’t of merit for a specific group. I don’t think the Atlantic pretends it’s readership isn’t overwhelming upper middle class+ highly educated center-left Americans. There is a balance isn’t there between acknowledging differences exist and only writing things of universal relevance which is mostly to say nothing at all.

LAC-Tech 4y ago

The issue I have with posts like these is that when you compare and contrast anglo/american culture with "other" cultures, you handwave away specific examples of "others". "The majority of people" is a pretty broad group here, from Portugal to the Russian far east, Namibia to Papua New Guinea, Chile to Mexico. So when you say: The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community? Does that really apply to all non-anglo/american cultures? You would have to be extraordinarily knowledgeable of near thousands of human cultures to know this. it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain. It'd be a challenge to claim that the "prole/posh divide" in Imperial Britain was anywhere near as strong as some of its contemporaries - say the Qing Dynasty or Ottoman Empire.

pessimizer 4y ago
> Does that really apply to all non-anglo/american cultures? You would have to be extraordinarily knowledgeable of near thousands of human cultures to know this. Or you could find out how many users facebook has, and subtract it from the world population. If you're left with "the majority of people," you've easily proved it.
- jjfoooo6 4y ago
  The ironic thing is that, as discussed in this thread, the article is really focused on upwardly mobile college graduates who have transitioned into marriage / kids. This fits me and my friend group to a T, but the bits about Facebook don't land because me and all of my friends have abandoned that platform.
- incone123 4y ago
  Even simpler proof: majority of people in the world are under 35.

sbf501 4y ago

I've been subscribing to The Atlantic for years. It is entirely targeted at upperclass, liberal, college-educated whites. Which is exactly why I read it. Why would I read a magazine targeted at a culture I don't understand or am not a part of? I do expect The Atlantic to explain these culture groups to me in a language I understand, but any periodical simply targets its own audience for profitability reasons.

5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
This sounds like a nice way to keep yourself trapped in an information bubble. I live thousands of miles away from the nearest English-speaking country in a society pretty different to what you'd see in England or the US, yet spend most of my time in the English-speaking section of the internet precisely because of that (reading pretty much anything that comes by, targeted at as diverse groups as possible).
- OJFord 4y ago
  > This sounds like a nice way to keep yourself trapped in an information bubble. Not from a good source. As GP put it: > I do expect The Atlantic to explain these culture groups to me in a language I understand
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
coffeebeqn 4y ago
Because it’s valuable to try to understand groups other than your own? Maybe even learn from them? Honestly I’m baffled that you hold this opinion with some pride. I ascended to that class from a working class family (and no college) and y’all have just as many problems as any other social group.
- sbf501 4y ago
  I don't think you understand my opinion very well. At no point did I say I do not wish to understand other people's opinions. But I don't speak in their culture, so I need it explained to me. That's literally what liberal humanities are all about, from the Renaissance on: trying to understand the world around you. Are you somehow assuming, for example, that to truly understand Russia I should only read Russian newspapers and talk to Russians and speak Russian? I shouldn't have say how absurd that is, but here we are. > y’all have just as many problems as any other social group I never said we didn't. Don't put your shit on me.