I liked how the title of this article refers to Robert Frost's poem and draws a direct connection to personal injury suits. The response to the perception of disintegration and decay parallels between the deep poem and subject of Engel's paper. It was hard for me to understand exactly how it connected, but I felt this article tried to keep the reader involved.
I found this article connected to the other one I read about why people sue. Engel examines a small rural community of Sander County in Illinios and their experiences with personal injury. In May and Stengel's article they do exactly the same thing for a diiferent community in Wisconsin. I just don't understand how those subjects would be a good group to prove anything. The subjects need to be varied, diverse and then the study would be a lot more relevant to Law and Society and the nation for that matter. Wisconsin and Illinois are not in my eyes a good representation.
That being said, this article was still interesting. The people of Sander County are described as sue happy and everyone goes to court all the time. Personal injury plaintiffs were viewed as trouble makers int he country, because wherever you looked someone was suing for something. They continued to try to make a quick buck and take advantage of the legal system. That's why I didn't disregard this article. Their goal may have been to take a look at this specific county where everyone sues, so the absence of variety can be overlooked.
I really don't agree with Engel's argument that the social change of Sander County made them more likely to sue. He says that the uncomfortable that the county felt as it started changing in the 1970s attributes to their sue happy nature and actions. I think there might have been some influence, but I also see someone trying to force a pattern and common theme. The community's reaction to "outsiders" coming into the county can't be connected to the notion of everyone going to court excessively.
This farm town once viewed personal injury as something that just happened...fate. That was in the 70s and 80s. Engel says that the ideas behind money and hard work were strict as well in that time. People were known to be "level headed" and "realistic" in these times, but then it just changed due to community pressures? I don't buy that.
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ReplyDeleteReading your post made me ask myself something: On what geographic level should we look at sociology? It's not a question that I necessarily have an answer to. It seems that the majority of the time we look at sociology as something that is isolated to a country. However, as often as these generalizations do tend to be true, I've never really considered why that would be. Why is it that so much of an individual's way of thinking is shaped by the government they are brought up under? Obviously, this makes more sense in the field of Law and Society, but for something like gender, something that shouldn't really be bound by imaginary political lines drawn on a map? Shouldn't gender and race be things that cut across country lines? I guess this idea further validates the study of law and society, because based on this idea more of our way of thinking than we realize is shaped by the laws under which we grow up.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I don't know if my small series of epiphanies came across in that rambling, but I feel better.
Well you guys certainly dished out some food for thought. So many ideas to address. Well, first of all, I think a lot of the studies we tend to see focus on small towns because it is easier to see evaluate the social situations ocurring in these settings. And while obviously these findings do not always apply to areas outside the community, the idea that it's a microcosm of the overall community largely comes into play. Microcosms, while not being the entity itself we're trying to understand, resemble and reflect ideas from the overall parent culture. In other words, sometimes it's easier to understand the whole by looking at it in pieces.
ReplyDeleteAnd Stephen, you brought up some interesting thoughts as well. But I feel like i have disagree with you on something. You say in terms of sociology we study things by country, and specifically tie country as a synonym of government. Is a country just representative of the force that controls it? Maybe.
But I think countries are more than that. Yes there's government, yes there's social control. But there's culture. There are beliefs that may or may not be related to those of the governing body in power. There's language, ideas. Society is more than government, as is a country. It's just one of the ways in which we are able to differentiate between communities. Even countries are microcosms of the whole, a piece of the world, and sometimes it's easier to study each of those countries individually, rather than look at the breakdown of the entire world at once from a sociological perspective.
Hey guys,
ReplyDeleteStephen - I agree with you. I don't think we need to draw these boundary lines based on countries. I actually think a study about geographical culture would be extremely interesting. I think it would be assumed that proximity of land would make people more similar, but arguably the United States culture is more similar to a European mentality than say, South America or Mexico. I wonder how the sociological imagination spreads itself. Good food for thought is right, Caveman.
And I agree with you too, Kevin. Culture is the issue here, not just government. Because after all, laws are only a small facet of legality. The cultural base of lawyers and judges affects things just as much, especially in smaller counties and areas.
Whoa! I'm from Illinois...No problem, but I like your point. And Stephens, and really everyone else's. This article seems a little flawed. I didn't read it but from your take it seems very limited, but the study is still valid in theme it seems to me. As maybe a case-study, but certainly not a stand-alone piece of evidence or what-not. I think it is important to look at culture and this might go well with some companion pieces from around the country. Nice discussion topic though, and you know us Soc. folks love to talk about things like this.
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