There’s been a lot of talk among sociologists lately about the status of ethnographic research and knowledge, and writing has been at the center of it. Does well-written, powerfully argued fieldwork enhance our sociological understanding of others and the world around us, or is a powerful narrative something ethnographers use to draw readers in and convince them of the veracity of claims that may lack strong supporting data or careful engagement with existing literature and social theory?
I think this larger debate is important context for Matthew Desmond’s argument–offered in the conclusion of Evicted, and highlighted recently at the Sociological Imagination blog–against first person narrative in the presentation of ethnographically driven social science. In Desmond’s view, this approach fails to “capture the essence of a social world” because “the ‘I’ filters all.” He explains: I wanted my readers to know and thus be able to assess my research and its various findings, interpretations, and claims.
“With first-person narration, the subjects and the author are each always held in view, resulting in every observation being trailed by a reaction to the observer. No matter how much care the author takes, the first-person ethnography becomes just as much about the fieldworker as about anything she or he saw.”
“At a time of rampant inequality and widespread hardship, when hunger and homelessness are found throughout America, I am interested in a different, more urgent conversation. ‘I’ don’t matter.”
I really respect Desmond and his book (not to mention his writing chops, of which I am embarrassingly jealous–I mean, I really love that “I filters all” line). And I completely agree that sociological research should not be about the researcher, if only because we sociologists tend to insist that no one is really that special or unique in the modern world. (For years I’ve joked about writing a memoir entitled “It’s Not About Me.”)
However–there it is, you knew it was coming–I am not entirely comfortable with eliminating first-person perspective from all sociological writing, ethnographic or otherwise. In fact, sometimes I believe it is appropriate and even necessary for social scientists to write this way. At least, that’s what I argued in the conclusion of my new book on Midnight Basketball–a book that has a good bit of fieldwork in it and that I decided, against many of my other impulses and principles, to write in the first person. Given the complexity of the social worlds we live in, as well as the wide array of sociological approaches to analyzing and understanding these worlds, I think having a diversity of narrative devices is something worth preserving.
I did this partly to construct something of a narrative thread–the thread of my discoveries and idiosyncratic insights–for a potentially dry historical narrative/case study. More importantly, though, I took this approach because I wanted to “openly acknowledge, if not highlight, the constructed nature of the narrative and research process.” I wanted my readers to know and thus be able to assess my research and its various findings, interpretations, and claims. In other words, as I put it in the end,
“I think the more we know about the research process–what data is collected and how it is collected, the manner in which it is analyzed and interpreted–the more I am able to understand and assess the relative strength and power of the claims and findings that are offered.”
That doesn’t mean Desmond is completely wrong, or that I would write every book or article the way I did my midnight basketball book. But it is to say that there are many different reasons for writing in the voices and rhetorical styles that we social scientists do, and that, given the complexity of the social worlds we live in, as well as the wide array of sociological approaches to analyzing and understanding these worlds, I think having a diversity of narrative devices in our tool kit is something worth preserving.
Hello and happy Friday everyone! The TSP grad board is back in full force this week with an array of interesting and timely posts, from welfare in Oregon, to mourning on social media, to getting in trouble at school. Also, Contexts is rolling out their latest issue, which covers Hamilton, the Oscars, street dancing in Compton, and bonfires in Belfast, so be sure to keep checking in with them as they make different pieces from the latest issue available online over the next few weeks.
“When ‘Nice Guys’ Rape,” by Amber Joy Powell. Feminist scholarship highlights the pervasiveness of rape culture and helps us pinpoint how it reproduces notions that only “bad guys” commit “real rape.”
“Why Oregon is So Generous,” by Ryan Larson . Oregon has one of the most robust welfare systems in the U.S., but social scientists shed light on some of the racist and classist reasons why that might be.
Contexts is rolling out its latest issue, and new individual pieces will be made available online each week. See below for the table of contents, a letter from the editors, and one of their new feature articles.
Border security, breadwinners, and Botox – we covered all that and more this week on our site, so stop by or see below for the latest in sociological research and writing!
“A Quick, Little Defense of Sociological Labor and Learning,” by Doug Hartmann. Co-editor Doug Hartmann responds to a growing number of commentators who think sociology degrees are a waste of time. He writes, “If we understand it properly, such talk can provide a powerful incentive and inspiration for doing the best work we all can do in the coming year to promote a broader understanding of what sociology is and why our teaching, research, and writing is so necessary and essential in the worlds in which we live.”
“Women, Work, and Well-being,” by Neeraj Rajasekar. More women are becoming the primary earners in their families, and new research finds that this shift might make actually increase well-being for the whole family.
“We simply do not need more poetry, gender studies or sociology majors. Starbucks is fully stocked with baristas for the foreseeable future.” (StarTribune, Monday, September 5, 2016).
This is the pull quote from this morning’s local paper that I was confronted with as I prepared to head to campus to finalize my syllabus on this Labor Day holiday. It actually comes from an editorial written by an economics professor and academic administrator that originally appeared in thePhiladelphia Inquirer. The piece argued that if more of higher education is to be publicly funded–as per the calls of the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party–then taxpayers should have more of a say in what academic programs are offered by colleges and universities for students to study.
Troubling though it is, the sentiment is far from new. Attacks on the liberal arts and publicly funded higher education more generally have not only proliferated, they have begun to be institutionalized in states ranging from Wisconsin to North Carolina to Louisiana. But what jumps out at me, for obvious reasons given my position and this website, is the inclusion of sociology on the list of supposedly unproductive and unemployable college majors. If this were just this one instance, I might write it off. But over the past few weeks, I’ve seen and heard sociology pop up in several such conversations and contexts. Perhaps most notably, there’s a radio spot running currently on my favorite sports talk station in the Twin Cities in which some for-profit college identifies sociology as a major that will leave its graduates channel surfing on the couch without meaningful work or income.
Obviously, I couldn’t disagree more. I feel like sociology is an extremely valuable area of study, not only in terms of the general value of a liberal arts education, but in terms of cultivating useful, marketable skills in the workplace. Indeed, with its emphasis on research, communication, critical thinking, and the realities of our social conditions, I see sociology as great preparation for a job market that values soft skills, creative thinking, flexibility and the ability to think, learn, and re-invent one’s self over time.
What’s more, the kinds of graduates we produce and the research we put into the world are of tremendous societal value as well–indispensable, I think, to making a good society as well making money. One of the points in the editorial that is the most objectionable to me is the assertion that we need fewer criminal justice majors, social workers, and elementary school teachers than we do computer engineers and statisticians–which seems to be based mainly on the fact that the starting salaries of the latter seem to be about double those of the former rather than any actual consideration of the societal value and necessity of these occupations. (Oh and by the way: statistics, methods, and data analysis are a key component of any self-respecting sociology curriculum as well.)
I don’t want to dwell on this little cloud of negativity much further at the start of an exciting new academic year and on what, for me at least, will be a day full of sociological labor, except to say two things. First, such talk should serve as a useful reminder of how misunderstood and marginalized our discipline can be. And second, if we understand it properly, such talk can also provide a powerful incentive and inspiration for doing the best work we all can do in the coming year to promote a broader understanding of what sociology is and why our teaching, research, and writing is so necessary and essential in the worlds in which we live.
Happy Friday everyone! We here at TSP are gearing up for the start of a new semester and are excited about welcoming some new grad board members, starting some new projects, and continuing to report on the best in sociological research. To kick off the school year, in addition to linking to our most recent posts, this week we highlight some of the blogs at TSP that are great resources for teachers and students alike.
Hello hello! We are slowly recovering from a great ASA in Seattle and bringing you some new pieces as well as highlighting some older, but still timely, posts and podcasts along the way.
Our podcast is coming back in full force this fall with producers Matt Gunther and Matthew Aguilar-Champeau. If you are looking for a 30-minute dose of sociology, come check out some of our past episodes and stay tuned for new ones throughout the semester. A few great recent episodes include:
The Olympics, Broadway, and genomic biology, oh my! Sociology is everywhere these days, and we are here to report on it. We’ve got some great stuff for you this week, including a brand new Office Hours podcast with Dalton Conley, so be sure to stop by and stay up to date on all things sociological.
In other news, the TSP crew is heading to Seattle for the ASA meetings this weekend. Grad editor Evan Stewart will be live tweeting the panels and plenarys from the TSP Twitter, so for those who can’t make it and even those who can, you can follow us for updates and highlights.
“Work-Family Policies Foiled by Masculinity Norms,” by Allison Nobles. New research finds that men who learn about supportive work-family policies are more likely to prefer progressive work-family arrangements, but only if they think other men share those preferences.
Happy Friday everyone! We have some great stuff for you this week, including thoughts on Trump’s latest “joke,” how to better promote diversity on college campuses, and the success (or lack thereof) of social media campaigns. See below or stop by the site to catch up on the latest.
“The Feminization of Bank Robberies,” by Kat Albrecht. Sociologists reflect on the causes of a recent uptick in the number of females committing bank robberies.
“Combating CyberCreeps,” by Allison Nobles. Women are starting to speak out about their experiences of harassment on online dating sites and coming up with strategies to curb harassment in the future.
Hello again everyone! The TSP crew is gearing up for another year and looking forward to bringing you all the best in sociological writing and research during what it sure to be a roller coaster ride of an election year. Starting this week, we are resuming our weekly roundups to keep you up to date on what is going on around the site. We have a lot to share with you this week, including some pieces from a new issue of Contexts, thoughts from editor Doug Hartmann on the new era of athlete advocacy, and numerous angles on all things election.
“Promiscuous Papas,” by Caty Taborda-Whitt. A study of 37 countries reveals that the gender of a father’s firstborn child has a significant influence on that father’s likelihood of being sexually promiscuous later in life.
“Whitewashed Affirmative Action,” by Neeraj Rajasekar. Despite increased litigation by white women against affirmative action, white women are among affirmative action’s primary beneficiaries.
As Joel Best points out in his new Contexts piece, “Sociologists don’t just view the glass as half-empty, we mutter that it is probably leaking, too.” So, the new issue of Contexts asks sociologists to tell them some good news for a change. See below for a first look at what they came up with.
When even Michael Jordan—that erstwhile poster child of the transcendent, apolitical, super-star athlete—jumps into the fray, you know something is up. I am referring, of course, to the public announcement Jordan made Monday. Saying he could “no longer stay silent,” legendary #23 pledged to donate $1 million each to a charity for community-police relations and to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. Jordan said, “We need to find solutions that ensure people of color receive fair and equal treatment AND that police officers—who put their lives on the line every day to protect us all—are respected and supported.”Athletic advocacy can play an important role in bringing issues of social injustice to broader public visibility and debate.
Serena Williams after her 2016 Wimbledon win, via bustle.com.
As a scholar who’s done a good bit of work on sport and race and social unrest and social protest over the years—including a book on the 1968 African American athletic protest movement, the activism associated most famously with Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s iconic victory stand demonstration in Mexico City—I’ve been asked a lot of questions and invited to make a lot of presentations on athlete activism over the past year. So, as all of this has been unfolding, I’ve begun work on a paper situating the most recent activism and advocacy in the context of the protests of the Civil Rights era. Below, a few of the points I’m building the paper around:
AthleteAwareness. While public advocacy may be new, social awareness among athletes is not. Athletes, especially elite professional and Olympic athletes, have long been far more educated, intelligent, and aware than prevailing if outdated “dumb-jock” stereotypes allow. The problem, in my view, has not been lack of social awareness and understanding, but barriers to public expression. Anthony has referenced highly lucrative endorsement deals (sometimes offering more renumeration to players than their actual sporting endeavors do), but formal and informal league rules, organizational pressures, and norms about the public roles of athletes all also apply. If there is a new consciousness, in my view, it involves a revitalized understanding of the powerful platform that sports provides athletes who are so inclined to voice their opinions.
Larger
Context and Connections. Those athletes who have chosen to use their status as public figures to speak out on social issues are not just speaking off the cuff, nor are they isolated malcontents. These public expressions are deliberate and reflective, responding to social issues such as police brutality and profiling or hateful gender or sexuality policies outside of the world of sport, in concert with other public leaders, and more often than not in close communication with other activists and organizers. Perhaps the best and clearest example of this was at the University of Missouri last fall: football players launched their boycott after working with campus leaders on ways to show their support for student on a hunger strike in protest of racial conditions and treatment on campus.Those athletes who have chosen to use their status as public figures to speak out on social issues are not just speaking off the cuff, nor are they isolated malcontents. These public expressions are deliberate and reflective, made in concert with public leaders, activists, and organizers.
Black Athletes as Leaders. It almost goes without saying that African American athletes have been the most prominent and powerful figures in this emerging movement (I think all but one of the athletes profiled by the Star Tribune were persons of color)—except that in our perverse “colorblind” culture, we often dodge the opportunity to name race explicitly and talk about it openly. This conversation is important for far more reasons than I can discuss here; it speaks to the unique racial composition of the American sports world, the prominent role of African American athletes in our culture, the centrality of race and racism in American society, and the larger role of sport in the construction, reproduction, and contestation of existing racial hierarchies. At the most basic levels, though, we can consider how sport is both impacted by and a driving force in the larger racial unrest in contemporary America—including the recognition of persistent patterns of racial injustice, emergent movements of resistance and opposition (such as Black Lives Matter), and the countervailing, reactionary movements of containment, denial, and resentment. The role of white athletes will be interesting as today’s movements unfold. At the University of Missouri, white players and coaches supported black activists, and, in the WNBA, star Minnesota Lynx point guard Lindsay Whalen and head coach Cheryl Reeves, both white, lent their support to protesting players. Whether white athletics and athletic leaders continue to step up and assume responsibility remains to be seen. For what it is worth, I’m impressed though not at all surprised the female athletes–including a huge swath of the WBNA–have been such powerful public voices in recent weeks.
Will this advocacy and activism change anything?
Via Time Magazine, the 1968 Olympics victory stand salute.
The initial answer is not always encouraging. If my study of the 1968 Olympic protests taught me anything, it is that sport protests usually do not change anyone’s mind or political position. Though we tend to heroize Smith and Carlos these days (as we did with the recently deceased Muhammad Ali), the truth is that these athlete advocates were seen as villains and traitors by mainstream Americans in the 1960s. If anything, their actions inspired a good deal of backlash and resentment, probably hardening some lines of conflict and division. Some of that reaction is already unfolding now.
But this doesn’t mean that nothing at all came of athlete activism in the past or today. One of the things that athletic protests and demonstrations can accomplish is forcing Americans who are or were not otherwise interested in such issues to look up from their otherwise comfortable, apolitical lives and pay attention to the social issues around them. So athletic advocacy can, in fact, play an important role in bringing issues of social injustice—police bias and brutality, policies toward LGBTQ Americans—to broader public visibility and debate. I believe it’s already happening.
And all of the money and attention we lavish on athletes and athletics in this country does put athletes in a unique and, on occasion, powerful material position. Witness the events at the University of Missouri: here, we saw athlete activists and their allies using the power afforded to them by virtue of how the institution and the public rely upon them for their athletic performances to force concrete, organizational change. This was amazing, revealing, and essentially unprecedented.
One final point on social and cultural change. When harkening back to 1968, I constantly find myself remembering and trying to remind others that Smith and Carlos not only didn’t change many people’s minds about race problems and civil rights, they didn’t change American norms about the relationships between sport and social change. If fact, they and their allies (as well as their opponents) were caught within prevailing conceptions of sport as a somewhat special, sacred, or apolitical cultural space. To wit: while some saw athlete activists in the 1960s as heroes or villains, public opinion polls showed that most everybody agreed that sport wasn’t a place for politics or, by extension, protest. The two sides simply disagreed on what counted as protest and politics. Those who sided with Smith and Carlos saw them as standing up for what was good, right, and morally just—in the idealistic way that high-minded sport supporters have long celebrated sport; the majority who were against them saw them and their actions as disruptions outside the social status quo.While some saw athlete activists in the 1960s as heroes or villains, public opinion polls conducted showed that most everybody agreed that sport wasn’t a place for politics.
What is at stake here is not just whether we agree with the particular causes of athlete activists. What is also at stake is how we understand sport and athletes in society, especially when it comes to issues of racial justice and social change. Will the cultural stereotypes about athletes change? Can we begin to see sport as something more than an arena for entertainment and release, or some kind of apolitical sacred space? If social change is hard, sometimes cultural change is even harder—so on those questions, I remain cautious and curious.
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