Category Archives: University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Current Events, History and Society, Political Sociology, Power, Race and Ethnicity, Sociological Theory, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Reflections: On “Disciplinary Histories and Racialized Epistemologies”

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SociologyT_300
Canon – a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works.

by Anima Adjepong

Ask any student of Sociology to name the foremost sociological theorists and you’re likely to get the same response: Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Scholars such as W.E.B Dubois, who conducted and wrote the first urban sociological study The Philadelphia Negro (1899), and Charles S. Johnson, whose book The Negro in Chicago (1922) provided an elevated analysis of the institutional structures of anti-black racism that led to the Chicago race riots in 1919, are rarely taught in introductory sociological theory classes, whether at the graduate or undergraduate level. Instead these scholars are read as prominent African-American scholars whose knowledge production is marginal to the sociological project.

The marginalization of scholars of color within the discipline is indicative of how the sociological canon is constructed through what philosopher Charles Mills (1997, 18) calls an epistemology of ignorance, which involves learning to “see the world wrongly, but with the assurance that this set of mistaken perceptions will be validated by white epistemic authority.” Sociologist Stephen Steinberg (2007) offers an excellent explication of how the epistemology of ignorance shapes sociological thought. Steinberg’s core argument is that sociology operates under epistemologies of ignorance and wishful thinking, which obfuscate the problems of oppression and racism. Instead these epistemologies ensure that as a discipline, we ask the wrong questions and insist on maintaining a cool distance from choosing a side on political issues.

In an invited lecture organized by the Race and Ethnicity Group and sponsored by the Warfield Center and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, Professor Gurminder Bhambra offered an analysis of how the racialized character of sociological thought, which absents certain theorists from the construction of the discipline, hinders an understanding of race and ethnicity beyond questions of distributional inequality or identity. As scholars, our best work is the kind of work that produces insights into the normal operation of racial structures. As Vilna Bashi Treitler (2015) wrote, “[Social scientists’] work may be used either in the service of shoring up or dismantling racial systems (and there is no third option)” (160). When we fail to challenge the racialized epistemological frameworks of our discipline, we contribute to sustaining racial inequality and other forms of social justice effected through racism.

Bhambra is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick in the UK and currently a visiting fellow in the sociology department at Princeton University. She has written widely on historical sociology, contemporary theory and postcolonial and decolonial studies. Her first book, Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (2007) examines how the sociological task of making sense of modernity fails to engage critically with how, through colonialism, the histories of Europe, Asia, and Africa were connected in the construction of modernity. Instead, she argues, sociological renderings of modernity are constructed through what J.M. Blaut (1993) calls telescopic history, which takes the present conditions in Europe and the West and uses these conditions to make claims about the past. Within this framework, European success has nothing to do with its exploitative economic relationships of other parts of the world.

Bhambra’s most recent book, Connected Sociologies (2014) extended this line of thought by arguing that a reliance on Europe as the epicenter of modernity fails to incorporate the ways in which colonial and postcolonial relations shape modernity. She argues for a historical sociology that incorporates a postcolonial critique, which allows us to deconstruct the ideologies and cultural frameworks that shape understandings of modern cultural, political, and social formations.

Professor Bhambra’s lecture, entitled “Disciplinary Histories and Racialized Epistemologies” further animated her arguments through a discussion of the current limitations of conventional sociology and a look towards what a departure from the dominant racialized epistemological frame might bring. Bhambra argued that by critically examining the connectedness of the sociological world through an acknowledgment of how, for example, European ideas spread through the world as a result of colonialism, imperialism, oppression, and enslavement, a different and more accurate narrative emerges. Connectedness urges us to reconsider historical connections and open up examinations from and of different perspectives. It is not simply a question about inclusion, but rather a push to critically examine and redress the sociological consequences of the erasure of certain perspectives that challenge dominant myths that surround the rise of the West and the way we understand the world today.

To return to the composition of the U.S. sociological canon and its silences regarding challenges to the racialized epistemology, I want to note a few things that Bhambra’s talk highlighted for me and that I hope our intellectual community will reflect on and practice. Firstly, it is important that our theory classes challenge the socially constructed sociological canon that relies on epistemologies of ignorance. Failing to do so is a great disservice to our students who are working hard to make sense of a world in which historical and contemporary connectedness are more explicit everyday.

Secondly, we can be more open to applying a postcolonial critique to sociological studies. This perspective opens up space to think more critically about the connectedness of contemporary and historical formations and the ways in which particular historical narratives undergird ideal type comparative models. For example, the dominant assimilation paradigm that frames immigration scholarship relies on the historical experiences of white immigrants to the United States. However, this model ignores the ways in which this paradigm excludes people of color. A postcolonial perspective considers how the historical narratives that proffer assimilation as the teleological endpoint for immigrants relies on an incomplete understanding of the social world in which the framework is constructed (for more see Spickard 2007; Pierre 2004). By taking seriously how the racialized epistemologies of our discipline hinder our understanding of key sociological tenets, and working to redress these conceptual issues (which also frame our methodologies) we can, as a discipline, produce knowledge that dismantles racial systems.

Works cited

Bashi Treitler, Vilna. (2015). Social Agency and White Supremacy in Immigration Studies. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1): 153-165.

Bhambra, GK. (2014). Connected sociologies. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic Press

Bhambra, GK. (2007) Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination London, UK: Palgrave.

Blaut, JM. (1993) The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Du Bois, WEB. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro: a social study (No. 14). Published for the University of Pennsylvania.

Feagin, JR. (2013). Racist America: Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations. New York, NY: Routledge

Johnson, CS. (1922). The Negro in Chicago: A study of race relations and a race riot. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Mills, CW. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Pierre, J. (2004). Black immigrants in the United States and the” cultural narratives” of ethnicity. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11(2), 141-170.

Spickard, P. (2007) Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. London, UK: Routledge

 

Current Events, Demography, Ethnography, History and Society, Political Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

What is the Most Interesting Thing You Hope to do: A Workshop with Dr. Randall Collins

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Randall Collins

What is the Most Interesting Thing you Hope to do?

by Julie Beicken

Power, History, and Society (PHS) has for years provided an invaluable forum for faculty and graduate students interested in political sociology and comparative and historical sociology. Recently, the organization has offered graduate students and faculty the very unique opportunity of participating in workshops with esteemed members of the field, Dr. Theda Skocpol in the spring of 2014 and this past week (February 6, 2015), Dr. Randall Collins. Both Skocpol and Collins are giants in Sociology—not only in their specialty areas but the discipline on the whole. Both have straddled many divisions within sociology—from historical sociology to human behavior, from macro to micro, etc.—and utilized multiple methods in their work. The opportunity for graduate students to spend even just a couple of hours in their presence is a truly wonderful gift that PHS has given to the department and the UT community on the whole.

Collins began the workshop on Friday morning with a challenging question to the students. Rather than having us state our names and areas of study, as is often the case in these settings, Collins had us explain the most interesting thing we would like to do. While a small degree of discomfort was immediately visible on many students’ faces, the exercise prompted us to think outside of our immediate sociological worlds of comprehensive exams and dissertations and think big—what would we really like to look at/wrestle with/study/explore? The answers—from gaining greater access to elites to establishing methods to study social media—were exciting and helped us to think about our existing work within our field of study and pushing it to new depths.

Collins, like Skocpol, has been a part of sociology for a long time. Both have seen the discipline go through many changes. As graduate students, for whom the ‘now’ of sociology is very pressing, it is exciting to have the opportunity to engage with scholars who understand the constraints of the disciplinary moment but also see the possibility for innovation. For example, Collins spoke with ease about transitioning from his micro work to his macro, something that seems like a huge challenge to many of us. Similarly, Skocpol talked about matching method to her research question, and being open to multiple methodologies. Both workshops have given students at UT the chance to speak openly and frankly with experts of sociology, and we have all walked away the wiser for it.

Doing Quality Sociology: Moving Beyond the Quantitative-Qualitative Debate.

by Amina Zarrugh

Dr. Randall Collins posed a seemingly simple, but exceedingly thought-provoking, question to commence the graduate student workshop  – what is the most interesting thing you hope to do in your work? The question in isolation appeared simple, but as student brows wrinkled in perplexity and eyes averted upward in contemplation, it was clear that the question hadn’t been asked of us in a long time, if ever. Everyone in the room ultimately had an opportunity to share their aspirations. These intellectual ambitions ranged from learning about populations difficult to access—such as interviewing prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp or understanding the dynamics of why individuals return to their country of origin after migrating elsewhere—to making memorable interventions and contributions in our respective fields.

This introductory query, and the collective responses that followed, set the tone for the workshop, which concerned the state of sociology today and the spaces open for innovative work. A central tenant of the discussion was that the overuse of the qualitative-quantitative semantic among sociologists and erected institutionally in departments emerged a false dichotomy. Regardless of overtures to the contrary, qualitative and quantitative work is mutually constitutive.

Qualitative work, including historical sociology and ethnography, informs and delineates the very categories with which quantitative sociology deals so squarely. Despite the primacy and privilege accorded to quantitative sociology, both financially by way of funding structures and socially by way of policy relevance, some of the most dramatic and influential work in the field of sociology has been qualitative. Collins invoked Emile Durkheim, who stated that “history should be sociology’s microscope,” to emphasize how deep historical perspective can offer new variables and contexts of understanding that are mutually beneficial to advancing both qualitative and quantitative work and, ultimately, our understanding of pressing societal issues.

These discussions brought to the fore the importance of thinking creatively about methodologies, the forms of data we collect, and the assumptions we make in the process. Collins (who was trained within the school of symbolic interaction) believes in expanding data used to understand social life to include videos, social media posts, and photographs. His attention to incorporating new methodologies and materials into the fold of sociology echoes calls for innovations that have been taking place across the social sciences. It also resonates with conversations in our department over the past several years, such as the Race and Ethnicity Group’s discussion about “live methods” with Goldsmiths University of London Professor Les Back in May 2013, or the talk by University of Warwick Professor Gurminder K. Bhambra in the week that followed Collins’ visit.

The thread that binds the ongoing discussions in our departmental community is the transition from what I’ve come to call a “bigger, better, faster, stronger sociology” (i.e., more interviews, bigger data sets, exclusive networking opportunities) to a  more reflexive, thoughtful, sincere, and conscientious approach to sociology. Then, perhaps most significantly, to our own interactions with one another as colleagues. This change must start with us individually, as exemplified by the question Collins posed at the start of the workshop. However, any “statistically significant” change is made possible through genuine solidarity, and robust support for one another that simultaneously transcends and is strengthened by our methodologies, our areas, and our geographies of study.

Current Events, Ethnography, Globalization and Development, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Power, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

The Peddlers and the World Cup: A Brown Bag with Jacinto Cuvi and Calla Hummel

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by Eric Enrique Borja

jacinto-finalOn Friday the 20th at 1pm, the UT-Austin Ethnography Lab will host a Brown Bag series with Jacinto Cuvi. Jacinto will discuss his paper entitled, “The Peddlers and the World Cup: Mega Events’ Unequal Impacts on Informal Markets,” which he co-authored with Calla Hummel, who will join the Brown Bag via Skype.

Paper Abstract:

Mega sporting events inject millions of dollars in the local economy. Yet few studies assess how gains and losses are distributed among local actors, especially marginal groups. Under what conditions do informal market actors benefit from mega events? Hummel

This paper analyzes original survey, interview and ethnographic data on street vendors in São Paulo, Brazil during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. We find that most vendors lost money and many went into debt, while a minority of vendors made record profits, worked less, and generally benefited from the event. We argue that informal groups like street vendors are both heterogeneous and unequal. We show that World Cup “winners” were high up in preexisting hierarchies or possessed specific assets unequally distributed across gender and age groups. Status differences also skewed the distribution of payoffs from an official program to incorporate peddlers. We conclude that mega event and informal market policies must actively counter these hierarchies in order to benefit all.

Austin, Ethnography, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

“Show me the people” : Process, Analysis, and Narrative in Ethnography

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By: Pamela Neumann

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This past weekend, Dr. Harel Shapira and the Department of Sociology’s Ethnography Lab hosted the 5th Annual Craft of Ethnography Workshop—an informal workshop that gathers a small group of graduate students and faculty ethnographers from around the country to share their work, exchange ideas, and promote the development of a community of scholars. One of the highlights of the workshop this year was a special “Master Class” with Dr. Jack Katz (UCLA). Reflecting on his distinguished career as an ethnographer–and a keen observer of social life–, Katz offered a number of valuable insights for those of us, like me, who are just beginning to learn and practice this craft.

One key point that Katz repeatedly emphasized is that in any ethnographic analysis of social life, it is critical to consider at least three main dimensions: (1) interaction, (2) sequence, and (3) embodiment. Much of what goes on in the world around us, Katz emphasized, is driven by the kinds of interactions that occur between individuals or groups. However, it is not enough to note the interaction itself, but the myriad situational characteristics that provide context for whatever verbal or non-verbal exchange is occurring. The task of the ethnographer is not merely to note these interactions, but also take into account their sequence, and the ways in which the order of interactions influences how subsequent events unfold. At the same time, the meanings of situations are not solely to be found in language, or discourse, but are also embodied in various ways, such as through emotions. image3

Katz, who is the author of How Emotions Work (2001), argued that while emotions sometimes get short shrift, they are in fact a key way to better understand social ontology—that is, why people act the way they do in particular situations. In our quest to understand “why people do what they do,” Katz encouraged participants to consider how actions can be seen as people’s attempts to solve or resolve existential or moral questions.   From this point of view, seeming “inconsistencies” or variation in the same individual’s strategies for dealing with similar situations (or their narratives about those actions) might no longer be seen as necessarily contradictory but rather an evolving set of responses based on affective or experiential knowledge acquired in prior situations.

In addition to these theoretical insights into the process of data analysis, Katz also offered some helpful practical tips for the writing process, which can be summarized by a particularly pithy remark: “show me the people.” In other words, don’t spend too much time at the abstract level before presenting a concrete illustration, or a real person’s story, to substantiate your claims. Good writing moves back and forth between the theoretical to the empirical to build a coherent narrative.

All in all, the workshop was a wonderful opportunity to learn from and build new relationships with a diverse array of junior and senior scholars. Although ethnography is often thought of as a solitary craft, this past weekend provided a much needed dose of inspiration, collective effervescence and solidarity. I am glad to be on this journey.

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Globalization and Development, Immigration, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Power, Race and Ethnicity, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

A Marxist Analysis of Immigration as a “Spatial Fix”

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There are some industries, such the agricultural sector among others, that rely heavily on the work of immigrants (Fussell, 2011).
There are some industries, such as the agricultural sector, which rely heavily on the work of migrants (Fussell, 2011).

by Maricarmen Hernandez

Introduction

Marx warned us about the abysmal consequences of capitalism and the insurmountable greed of its ruling class. He maintained that capitalism, as an economic system, is unsustainable and self-destructive due to its inherent contradictions, which would bring about recurrent crises and, eventually, its own demise (Marx, 1848). With the modern exploitation of global markets, and the international movement of people from the (semi) periphery to the core (Wallerstein 1974), vulnerable populations are facing injustices that are the product of capitalist globalization and its crises.

Drawing from David Harvey’s (1982) argument that these are crises the system itself would attempt to resolve using what he calls a “spatial fix,” I frame the decision-making of migrant populations to leave their home countries as embedded in and responsive to the capitalist system. Specifically exploring whether these migratory flows empower migrants or merely reflect their marginality. I claim that migrant currents from the (semi) periphery to the core, and from the rural to the urban, serve as a sort of “grassroots spatial fix” to the widespread crisis of rural social reproduction migrant laborers face in their home countries. And while many find work that is economically empowering to them and their families (through the sending of remittances) they typically find themselves in polluted areas – raising the question of environmental justice for these migrant communities, which I will touch upon in my conclusion.

Marxist Theory and the “Grassroots Spatial Fix”

According to Harvey, capitalism is addicted to technological change and endless geographical expansion through economic growth, and it has found in globalization a spatial fix for its crisis tendencies. A “spatial fix” refers to a variety of strategies pursued by capitalists to overcome the inevitable crises generated through their routine activities (Harvey, 1985). He states that globalization today is nothing more than yet another round in the capitalist production and reconstruction of space, which is of course, not without consequences. Marx referred to the annihilation of space through time as a fundamental law of capitalist development (Marx, 1853), which is achieved through the conquering of new markets and innovations in the technologies of transport and communications (Harvey, 1985).

There are different ways in which capitalists make use of spatial fixes to overcome crisis, but the most common is expansion and the exploitation of new markets. When a crisis of localized over-accumulation and over-production occurs within a particular region, the solution is to export capital and labor surpluses to new territories. In other words, surpluses of capital and shortages of labor are fixed by the movement of capital to areas of labor surpluses and weak labor organization, or by importing cheap labor into centers of capitalist development.

Cash flow: This graphic shows how much money is being sent by migrants to their families back home and where it is being transferred from in a transient economy that topped $530bn last year, according to new figures by the World Bank. More than $120bn was sent from the U.S.
Cash flow: This graphic shows how much money is being sent by migrants to their families back home and where it is being transferred from in a transient economy that topped $530bn last year, according to new figures by the World Bank. More than $120bn was sent from the U.S.

But thinking more deeply, can the process of migrating from the (semi) periphery to the core serve as a type of spatial fix that immigrants themselves use to overcome a crisis of social reproduction at home? If so, it begs the question of who does this spatial fix truly benefit? The agency that immigrants practice in their own decision to migrate is important as a point of departure.

Overcoming a crisis at home by migrating from the (semi) periphery to the core in search of jobs can be interpreted as a sort of “grassroots spatial fix.” These migratory trends are common in rural areas after farmers either lose their farms or are pushed out of the agricultural market (Fitzgerald, 2011). In the case of Mexico, there are entire rural towns where the majority of working-age adults have migrated to the United States in search of wage labor. Through the process of migration to the United States, these people are economically empowered and are able to send remittances home, which in turn serves as a spatial fix for the immediate crisis at hand. Therefore, this begs the question: Who benefits the most from immigration as a “spatial fix?”

Conclusion

factory
The polluting industry, or sources of environmental threats are typically sited in poor, politically weak communities. Therefore, largely affecting minority communities.

Using a Marxist lens, it becomes clear who benefits the most from migration as a spatial fix: the capitalist. As the most vulnerable population, migrants must deal with the tradeoff of exchanging clean living spaces for work and financial opportunities. It does not make sense to argue that migrant populations, like other communities that have been successful in protecting themselves from noxious environments, should be able to do the same when there are added layers of marginality (e.g. restricted mobility due to legal/language barriers and financial constraints) that they must negotiate every day. Therefore, using migrant labor as a technique to surmount capitalist crisis has proven more effective than the grassroots spatial fix used by migrants in attempting to solve their problems of social reproduction at home.

Recommended Reading:

Be sure to read Dr. Néstor P. Rodríguez‘s new book entitled Guatemala-U.S. Migration: Transforming Regions, which touches on a number of themes introduced in this piece.

Political Sociology, Sociology of Gender, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

Kristine Kilanski featured in the London School of Economics and Political Science blog

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The corporate embrace of “diversity” rarely translates into more opportunities for women.

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Kristine Kilanski 80x108While efforts in the corporate world to promote gender diversity have been ongoing since the 1990s, the representation of women at higher corporate levels is still relatively poor – more than 83 percent of board directors are still male. In new research on women scientists in the oil and gas industry, Kristine Kilanski examines the effectiveness of corporate diversity programs. She finds that despite the good intentions of these programs, they can work to shift an organization’s focus away from the sources of gender inequality, and often do little to help women advance through the corporate ranks.

Title linked to full Article

Austin, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Happy Holidays from UT Austin SOC

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Celebrating the end of the old and the coming of the new year here in balmy Austin, TX.  Happy and peaceful holidays to everyone celebrating here and elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hvkKgeYQls

Globalization and Development, History and Society, Political Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Longitudinal ethnography and the changing face of ethnographic research

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by Katherine Sobering

DennisRodgersAt a well-attended talk sponsored by the Urban Ethnography Lab, Dennis Rodgers, a professor of Urban Social and Political Research at the University of Glasgow discussed his paper, “From ‘broder’ to ‘don’: Methodological reflections on longitudinal gang research in Nicaragua, 1996-2014.”

Over lunch, Professor Rodgers reflected on the academic career that began with his dissertation research in Nicaragua in the 1990s. Since this initial period of research, Professor Rodgers has returned to the specific barrio of his dissertation fieldwork seven times. And he plans to continue going back.

As his dissertation evolved into a long-term research project, Professor Rodgers conceived of it as longitudinal ethnography. By this, he refers to immersive ethnographic fieldwork conducted diachronically over an extended period of time, or through appropriately timed revisits (Burawoy 2003; Firth 1959).

But what are the implications of such on-going ethnographic research? How can we make sense of ethnographic “revisits”? And what are some of the pitfalls that may result?

Certainly one of the greatest benefits of ethnographic research is to observe dynamic social processes as they occur over time. As Professor Rodgers pointed out, he has more or less witnessed a cycle of cultural transformation through the institutional evolution of a gang in Nicaragua.

Yet the specific challenges that arise from such an endeavor are many. First, the notion of “the field” as a spatially and temporally bounded location is increasingly misleading. Professor Rodgers (and many of the event’s attendees) stay in regular contact with individuals in “the field”. Social media further complicates this artificial division.

Over the course of a lively discussion informed by many different experiences conducting ethnographic research, we critically examined the idea of a “revisit.” If “the field” is no longer a bounded place, where do you go? To the original site of study? Or do you trace the network of people you once knew? Or follow a particular trend or social phenomena?

Moreover, “the field”—may it be sites, people, or networks—changes over time. But this is not unidirectional. As ethnographers, we also change. We age. We read more. We go through life changes that may provide different perspectives on the same event. And all of this affects how we do ethnography.

Professor Rodgers clearly describes such changes in his own career. Almost ten years ago, he conducted mostly participant observation in the barrio, and was even inducted into the gang he studied (Rodgers 2007).

Today, he is treated as a respected elder (a “don”). His methodological tools increasingly rely on interviews and informal conversations with long-term informants.

The form and function of ethnographic research is changing. In his paper, Professor Rodgers understands his return visits as “serendipitous time lapse(s).” Yet it seems to me that these ethnographic revisits are institutionally structured by his academic career trajectory as well as access to funding.

Structural changes in both funding and time-to-degree requirements affect the way ethnographic research is produced. For many graduate students, multiple periods of “pre-dissertation” fieldwork pave the way for a prolonged period of dissertation-worthy immersion

Examples abound in our department alone. Marcos Pérez conducted three summers of ethnographic research with piquetero groups in Argentina before returning for a year of dissertation fieldwork. Katie Jensen has studied asylum seekers in Brazil for three summers, and is now preparing for an extended period of dissertation research. And I conducted my first period of fieldwork in Argentine worker-recovered businesses as an undergraduate in 2008, having since spent a total of nine months in the field prior to my dissertation research.

Professor Rodgers did well to remind us: “Research is by its very nature imperfect and limited, and this not only in terms of ‘’the data’, but also ‘the method’, ‘the researcher’, and ‘the context’”. Indeed, grappling with the notion of longitudinal ethnography spurred many of us to think critically about how the pattern of our fieldwork shapes what data we collect, the topics we analyze and ultimately how we interpret our findings.

References:

Burawoy, M., (2003), “Revisits: An outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography”, American Sociological Review, 68(5): 645-79.

Firth, R., (1959), Social Change in Tikopia: Re-study of a Polynesian Community after a Generation, London: George Allen & Unwin.

Rodgers, D., (2007), “Joining the gang and becoming a broder: The violence of ethnography in contemporary Nicaragua”, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 27(4): 444-61.

Rodgers, D., (Forthcoming), “From ‘broder’ to ‘don’: Methodological reflections on longitudinal gang research in Nicaragua, 1996-2014.”

Austin, Current Events, Ethnography, History and Society, Political Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

PHS Panel: Michael Young, Néstor Rodríguez, and Sheldon Ekland-Olson on Transitioning Methods

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by Luis Romero

One of the most important things graduate students can do while in grad school is to take as many methodology courses as possible. This advice is given to us by our mentors, faculty and older graduate students. Yet no matter how many methods classes you take, it is impossible to master every method – getting one down is difficult enough. While mastering one method lasts some researchers their entire academic lives’, others venture into different types of questions and units of analyses that warrant the use of new methods. What happens, though, when you are out of graduate school and want to change methods? How do you go about this change? Navigating the different assumptions, techniques of data collection and analysis of a new method can be overwhelming. However, it is something that can and has been done. Professors Michael Young, Néstor Rodríguez and Sheldon Ekland-Olson joined the Power, History, and Society Network (PHS) to describe how they transitioned into new methods. Each provides a piece of the puzzle to better understand how sociologists can change methods, even without prior graduate training.

Dr. Michael Young: Keeping Books on the Nightstand

MYoungOf the three panelists, Michael is the most recent to transition to a new method for a project he is currently working on. His training in graduate school was oriented toward the study of old social movements using historical sociology. Specifically, he was trained to map the trajectories of different movements to get at the causal sequence of events (e.g. how the morality and religious schemas of the evangelicals helped to mobilize them during the antebellum era). Michael has recently shifted to studying the DREAMers – a group of immigrant rights’ activists who are concerned with helping undocumented immigrants that were brought to the U.S. as children and attended school in the U.S. However, because the DREAMers and their activities are an ongoing phenomenon, Michael understood that he could not rely solely on his training in historical methods to study this group. Instead, he decided to learn about ethnographic and interviewing methods. This posed a problem for Michael, since studying an active movement followed a different logic than studying something that already had an outcome (and analyzing how and why that outcome came to be). To resolve this dilemma, Michael turned to Professors Javier Auyero and Harel Shapira and asked them both to give him a list of their favorite ethnographies. Once he obtained these lists, Michael read and studied the exemplars of ethnography, keeping these books on his nightstand for easy access so he could read them nightly. Reading these exemplary works, coupled with his interactions with the DREAMers has helped Michael transition from historical sociology to ethnography and given him new insights into the complexity of this new social movement.

Dr. Néstor Rodríguez: An Important Key Lies in Co-authorship

pix_RodriguezNéstor Rodriguez’s transition between methods took a slightly different trajectory than Michael Young’s. Michael’s was a constant transition between historical work, interviews and surveys. Nestor’s graduate work was focused on tracing the trajectory of migration in relation to capitalist growth, combining historical methods with theory building. In his post doctoral research, Néstor began studying Mayans from the Guatemalan Highlands who were migrating to Houston, Texas. It was during this project that Nestor began to incorporate fieldwork into his research. Later on, Néstor also began to use more quantitative methods – surveys and data sets- in order to study deportations. In the past year alone, he has published two articles on El Salvador using surveys, a book (coming in January 2015) that incorporates fieldwork from Guatemala and is a return to his first love of historical sociology.  When asked how he was able to incorporate so many different methods, Néstor stated that an important key could be found in co-authorship. Co-authoring with other researchers that are more adept at various methods allows for the successful incorporation of those methods.  Similar to Michael’s approach, Néstor also recommended that students considering a transition to new methods should read widely in sociology.  That will allow them to become familiar with different sociological methods and their implicit logic.

Dr. Sheldon Ekland-Olson: Delve into Different Projects

Sheldon Ekland-OlsonSheldon Ekland-Olson has done research using various methods throughout his career. His earliest work was heavily quantitative and was among the first to incorporate dummy variables into the research. This was largely influenced by his math background and because he came into graduate school as a student of methods. Sheldon’s first shift occurred during his time in law school, as he finished his dissertation. During his research, he became involved in learning about the rights of those who were institutionalized, which led him to spending time in prisons. It was through this experience that Sheldon began studying Texas Prison Reform, using quantitative methods along with qualitative methods to learn about the lived experiences of the prison inmates. His most recent work on life and death decisions uses historical methods to study the boundaries of social worth when people are faced with different issues such as: abortion, neonatal care, assisted dying and capital punishment. For Sheldon, switching methods was something that was necessitated because he believes that you should let your problem determine the method that you use.  Sheldon’s advice is derived from his own experience: you should delve into different projects and learn new methods by striving to answer different questions.

A Few Warnings about Transitioning Methods from the Panelists

  • While everyone on the panel transitioned after graduate school, picking up a new method is more difficult – “the brain gets old and slow.”
  • Your old training in a method can sometimes be “like a straight jacket” to your new method – it could hinder you since you may be imposing the assumptions of your old training into your new method.
  • Because learning a new method can be difficult and there is a demand on publishing, transitioning methods could undermine your rate of productivity.
  • There may be pressure to stick to the method that has made you known in a field – your colleagues in a field can get caught up in their own methods and may be resistant to your change.
  • On a related point, while multiple methods are seen as a positive, there may be a high cost if you switch methods at any point of your career.
  • However, some subfields are methodologically eclectic, which means there could be opportunities to switch. If you are thinking of switching at any point, be sure to weigh the consequences.
Current Events, Sociology of Education, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

Advancing Meaningful Practices in Higher Education

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by Shantel Buggs and Brandon Robinson
DDFirstBiennialLast Friday, we had the opportunity to attend the inaugural biennial conference for the Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center (DDNRC) entitled “Advancing Meaningful Difficult Dialogues Practices in Higher Education: A New Imperative of Democracy?” The mission of the DDNRC is to advance innovative practices in higher education that promote respectful, transformative dialogue on controversial topics and complex social issues, thereby reflecting a commitment to pluralism, academic freedom, and strengthening a democratically engaged society. A central goal of this year’s conference was to propel academic communities to have productive engagements with difficult dialogues.

Dr. Silvia Hurtado, the opening keynote speaker, focused on the following central concern: if we are not the society that we aspire to be, how do we get there? She suggested that while “problems” are complex, we have the capacity to be change agents. However, there are prevailing norms that we must face as educators and members of academic communities: 1) people’s mindsets that they come into college with, 2) traditional notions of teaching and learning, and 3) first-years in college ask fewer questions in the classroom than they did in high school. HurtadoSlide

Hurtado emphasized that we need engaging forms of pedagogy in order to challenge these academic norms and to move students from their own embedded worldviews. One interesting pedagogical approach mentioned by Dr. Silvia Hurtado is for educators to learn that they are not the only authority in the classroom. Students are teachers as well, and peers can be an authority on a topic for one another. However, as educators, we must be good facilitators, which does not mean being neutral. It does mean that we must develop skills of active listening and embrace conflict and different voices in order to make progress. It should be noted, however, that choosing which educators get to de-center themselves as the authority in the classroom is fraught with various forms of privilege. Certain marginalized bodies are often already questioned as having authority, so this pedagogical approach may be difficult or not conducive for certain people’s classrooms. Despite this, new forms of teaching and learning outside of traditional forms of lecturing are needed in order to truly engage in difficult dialogues and to transform the mindsets of students in order to make them better global citizens.

SylviaHurtado
Following the keynote, we broke out into smaller workshop groups in order to have conversations about what distinguishes a “difficult dialogue” program from a one that promotes and/or encourages “respect for difference(s).” Much of the conversation focused on the fact that difficult dialogues are not value-neutral and that it is imperative to push students and educators beyond a notion of “respect as tolerance”, instead aiming toward “real” action and social change. In thinking about what goals should be set for a difficult dialogue and how these goals could be identified or measured, some of the more interesting suggestions involved some directly observable goals (such as the ability to facilitate a dialogue in class or to identify strategies of facilitiation and demonstrate active listening). Others were more business-minded (such as measuring the numbers of department heads, faculty, and campus leadership groups that participate in difficult dialogue training) or philosophical (such as seeing a student develop a better understanding of structural oppression and inequality and/or an awareness of their positionality in the world). These workshops were a great opportunity to learn about the kinds of courses/programs going on at other schools and how they prioritized social justice within them.

DifficultDialogues2The workshop groups prepared us for the interactive theater session that led to an interesting discussion about which classrooms and which professors can actually engage in difficult dialogues. The interactive skit was about four undergraduate students who had witnessed a religious demonstration and saw people praying on campus. They entered a classroom discussing religion, protests, praying, the First Amendment, and other issues that undergraduates are likely to encounter and discuss. However, the classroom was an English course, so when it was time for class to start, the professor tried to shut down the lively debate. The skit ended with the professor telling students that it was his job to teach them about dangling modifiers, and that he did not feel like religious controversies should be discussed in his classroom. This performance raised several important questions: When should professors engage in difficult dialogues with their students? Should these issues only be discussed in certain classroom settings? For example, should religion only be discussed in a religion course, but not in an English course?

During the Q&A following the theater performance, many people felt that the professor had valid concerns about addressing these issues in his classroom. Many professors worry about tenure; engaging in these difficult dialogues could create barriers to their ability to get promoted. Likewise, students may give professors bad evaluations if they begin engaging in difficult dialogues that students perceive to have nothing to do with the topic of the class. As the conversation continued, it became evident that there are structural constraints in place that make it hard for some professors to engage in difficult dialogues in the classroom or in the larger academic community. Based on the reactions of some of those present at the session, these constraints must be addressed before institutions put greater pressure on professors to do the work of trying to “change mindsets.”
Overall, we walked away from Friday’s experience with important questions to consider, some awesome books, and new theoretical lenses through which to assess our roles in the classroom and in the academy. As stated in the keynote, the key to changing mindsets is disequilibrium. Disequilibirium relies upon new and unfamiliar experiences that cause us to abandon routine and encourage active thinking; if we – as sociologists – are committed to learning as a “social act”, we must be committed to creating opportunities for disequilibrium and to developing an “empowered, informed, and responsible learner.”

To learn more about the DDNRC, you can visit http://www.difficultdialoguesuaa.org/ or check out their Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DifficultDialogues.org. Also see Indigenous Solutions to Intellectual Violence – Stop Talking and Listen.

Shantel Gabrieal Buggs is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, studying race, gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Her dissertation will explore the online-dating experiences of mixed-race women in Central Texas. Follow her on Twitter at @Future_Dr_Buggs.
Brandon Andrew Robinson is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology. His research interests include sexualities, queer spatialities, and intersectionality. His dissertation will be exploring the lives of LGBTQ homeless youth.

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