SAVE THE DATE
Fourth Annual UCSD Culture Conference
Friday, May 9, 2008
The Great Hall
University of California, San Diego
Craig Calhoun (President of SSRC and University Professor at NYU) and Ann Swidler (Professor at Berkeley) will be this year’s keynote speakers.
***
An old press release from allhiphop.com: “For the first time in Hip-Hop history, a college fraternity is dedicating itself to the four elements of Hip-Hop, and in the process they are becoming the first Hip-Hop fraternity in existence. Eta Iota Rho, also known as HIP, was founded by Quinnton Parker, Justin Wolverton, and Keane Rowley, three young break-dancers who weren’t quite excited about the current state of Hip-Hop. “We’re not here with [false] intentions, this isn’t a publicity stunt,” Quinnton Parker, one of the founders of Eta Iota Rho told AllHipHop.com. “All the people involved generally want a change in the Hip-Hop community. They don’t want this negative image that comes from the media. They just want everybody to know what [Hip-Hop] is about.”"
Also from there:
“With the fate of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue hanging in the balance, Hip-Hop co-founder DJ Kool Herc is issuing a call for supporters of the genre to help save the culture’s official birthplace. AllHipHop.com has learned that Kool Herc’s clothing company Sedgwick & Cedar Corp will launch Save 1520, a charitable collection of tees, hats and jackets. One hundred percent of net proceeds from the sale of Save 1520 clothing will go toward helping the 1520 Sedgwick Tenant Association obtain governmental and philanthropic assistance to purchase the building, in addition to preserving the project and maintain affordable housing. “This is Hip-Hop’s original house and home to the people, ” said the Hip-Hop legend, who plans to appeal to major artists to make philanthropic donations to assist the tenants in purchasing the building. “We need to save it.”" Save 1520.
***
Gang Leader for a Day stuff.
The Nation : describes Sudhir as: Boswell, ponytailed, gormless, suggests stories are embellished or outright manufactured, claims V performed the most “massive, clueless betrayal of a source since Denis Johnson’s amazing, conflicted piece about the war in Liberia.”
There’s a Wall Street Journal, but it is all psswdy.
The Economist : Actually, more about Levitt and the work on sex workers. “Prostitutes are more likely to have sex with a police officer than to be arrested by one.”
The Times : callow, “ridicules his own naivete but just as often fails to rise above it”, writes “tabloid sociology”.
It seems to me that folks love to hate this.
Filed under: Academia, Music, Sociology | 11 Comments
-
Recent Comments
Jenn Lena on Naughties List Leor on Naughties List C on Naughties List urdead2me on Chestnutt Jenn Lena on Holiday card
But what do you think of the book?
“It seems to me that folks love to hate this.”
Do you think there’s a degree of envy in this hate, or perhaps it’s that an ethnographer beat one of his supposed research participants, and put numerous other participants at risk by ratting them out to his “friend?” Maybe it’s that he wrote a NY Times article that smugly concludes by making fun of the “thugs” for not being as educated as him. In any case, if Venkatesh becomes this generations Laud Humphreys, I don’t think anyone could pretend to be too surprised. Was he one of your advisers at Columbia? What’s your take on the book?
Mimi: I haven’t read it yet.
Popeye: I am envious. Sudhir is an incredibly skilled ethnographer and writes very compelling prose. But it is probably helpful to draw a distinction between the author, the ethicist, and the man. He was on my dissertation committee, and his comments at my defense ultimately proved extremely helpful. But he did not supervise the project in any way. And…I haven’t read the book, yet. I’m reading a load of “scholarly works” for an award committee and will soon review a bunch of pieces for our disciplinary conference…it’ll take me a while before I get to it. What do you think?
I certainly think it’s a cause for concern, and certainly one hell of a methodological crap storm. While I don’t know Venkatesh personally, I think it would be unfair to argue that his work has been anything but highly compelling and engaging up to this point. In this case, however, I’m not too sure what to think. On the one hand, the huge breaches of trust and role that he’s fessed up to (in a way that’s not particularly cute, either, IMO) pose one sort of problem, but I think the graver problem might be that the occurrences of these things went unmentioned in previous academic works that cover the same terrain (to the best of my knowledge, at least about the kicking incident – am I wrong about that?). The lack of disclosure and reflexivity about these cases in an academic context should probably be of greater concern (to academics) than any vulture swirling around what’s clearly intended to be a popular, non-academic text. As for that text, I have a hard time believing that Wilson would send him out into the field with a questionnaire like that (as mentioned by The Nation), and I think that first releasing information that’s highly relevant to a critical ethnographic work in a book intended for the mainstream market is also a little problematic. As for the NYT piece, only the most naive college freshman are romanced enough by the halo of professorial aura to believe that there soc professors aren’t sometimes smug and condescending. Doing that in a setting as public as the Times, about a population that you purport to have expertise in understanding the lived experience of, well, yeah. Agreed that you have to judge people as individuals and scholars with a different rubric (and in particular as they interact in different roles, such as your experience as a graduate student, and my experience as somebody waxing philosophical across the country with little to no social cost), but as is the blessing and the curse of ethnographic work, I do think those judgements (by design AND necessity) are forced to intermingle a little bit more in ethnographic study. If Venkatesh was sequestering himself behind a screen cross-tabbing GSS variables for his whole life (a practice that unfortunately doesn’t professionally demand an understanding of standpoint, positionalityy, and the like) I think it wold be one thing, but for an ethnographer it’s kind of a different beast.
In regards to some of this response stemming from envy or jealousy, I think it’s fair to say some degree of that is happening, but I don’t think that really explains what’s going on. There were grumblings when Duneier signed on with an agent which I think were much more clearly envious in nature and tone. The difference was that Duneier did this without blatantly pandering to the trappings of the market in the same manner, without portraying himself as different than, more “rogue,’ or an EXTRA-ordinary sociologist. Or, to put it another way, Duneier to the “we might blow up but we won’t go pop” approach to flirting outside the feedback loop of the ASA.
Okay, back to work
I think whatever one may think about its pop nature (read faster than Da Vinci code!) and ethics underlying the author’s project (I agree with Popeye that lack of disclosure and reflexivity are problematic), the book could be compelling enough to assign to students as long as it doesn’t turn into “…and this is how sociologists do research!”
Are there more rigorous, more careful examples of urban ethnography? Yes, undoubtedly. Still, to riff on Popeye’s “naive college freshmen” thread, I think the book could be incredibly useful as a quick read to launch a discussion about research methods in an intro soc class where students haven’t been exposed to ideas such as human subjects protection or IRBs. One could have useful discussions on informal/formal organization, legitimacy, authenticity, interview approaches, negotiating access to your research population, etc.
I have to admit: I’m fascinated that the conversation quickly turns to the question of “utility.” I also note the concern about defending the discipline, it’s ethics, methods, etc. Truthfully, I are more pissed by bookstores that put Dr. Phil and the other self-help claptrap into the Sociology or Social Science sections, than I am by GLFAD’s disciplinary pretentions.
Now where are all those folks who care so much about “public sociology”? How do they/you feel about this text?
Mark,
I absolutely agree that this book could be incredibly useful in a classroom setting (both for possibly intended and unintended reasons). This is kind of what I had in mind with the Laud Humphreys quip (which yeah, was kind of smug).
Jennifer,
I think to some degree the question of “utility” is easier, right? The question is smaller, it’s less potentially condemnatory, and to some degree, it circumvents the difficulty by reframing everything back into questions about the potentiality of positive outcomes. Agreed that no matter the problems with this work are, the fact that it at least preserves a little space in the vastly diminishing “sociology” section at Borders is a good thing. I’ll leave it up to Burawoy to let me know if this is a devil’s deal.
Am I *deeply, deeply, deeply* bothered by the author administering a beating to one of his extended “research population”? Without a doubt. Is it comparable to Milgram/Humphreys/Tuskegee/etc.? Certainly in some sense, yes. (and yes, Popeye, shame shame on me for overlooking your “tearoom” comment…)
Am I wary that the intention of writing the book could have been a way of putting personal moral/ethical demons to rest? Sure. Have people written books for less forthright reasons? Sure.
Am I uneasy that this serves as a too-late pseudo-methodological appendix to complement prior work? Somewhat.
But I had to ask myself ‘if I boycotted this book, what purpose would it serve?’; or “even if I just passively ignored it, would that be better?” And neither answer satisfied me. I’ll take responsibility for being so eager to touch on utility:
a) the book’s out there?
b) better to engage at some level and try to have some good of it?
I do applaud the author’s attempt to write for a broader audience. If there is to be more public engagement, and this mission is undertaken through more public-friendly narrative, it does demand something extra of the reader to remember this isn’t just based on a true story, it’s a field-note-reconstructed-narrative grounded in the context of loose academic research (loose in the sense of academic research without human subjects approval or that the advisor had a good idea of what student was doing). The style in which it’s written (flowing narrative, lack of citations) lends itself to easily forgetting it’s not another genre. And that needs to be reinforced if having students try to parse intentional/accidental lessons from it… risks running into caricature too easily otherwise.
Mark,
I absolutely agree with everything you’ve written, and most of all, that the text should absolutely not be ignored. I think the book definitely has some positive values such as widening the reach of sociological work, and enlivening the genre (although this book is somewhere in between two genres, as opposed to a steadfast representation of one) in a way that’s more digestible for mass audiences. As for concerns about the work (as well as the work within the context of Venkatesh’s career) that we both seem to hold, I think this is an even more salient reason not to ignore it, particularly if Venkatesh continues on the trajectory of being a “public face” for sociology, which seems to include a fair deal of lathering on of Levitt’s patina of being a rogue outsider of his field (despite the massive in-group recognition, despite the awards, despite being firmly entrenched at institutions deep within the structural cores of their respective fields). I do have a little bit of concern that using this form of “edgy” image management for personal remuneration could hurt more than it helps (not that Venkatesh has a desire to help, or an obligation) instead of pushing the discipline forward (holding for a push into simple market logic). Essentially, I’m not too sure if this recasting of the outsider/outlaw persona will have positive effects on how how we do things, or even if there’s a nobility of intention there. While Venkatesh has proven to be a competent and exciting scholar, he’s certainly a far cry from C. Wright Mills and his motorcycle (or at least how that’s remembered – which may be a little unfair in itself). Needless to say, while I’m not naive enough to think my opinion should take moral precedent over the individual decisions of other sociologists (thankfully, sociology does not have a Pope), I do think I’d be remiss in not being clear that the actions Venkatesh has taken, the style in which he chose to explain them, the frame in which he’s marketed himself (or let himself be marketed), and the way in which he represents his participants (and by extension, the discipline) in very public settings gives me a serious degree of pause (one however, that isn’t fixed, or couldn’t be overcome). As an individual, I absolutely applaud his individual accomplishments. As a sociologist, and as a sociologist who is both protective over what has been accomplished in the field and disappointed in what has not, I’m not too sure.