Hannah Arendt

November 1, 2013 admin Leave a comment

By Kevin Hsu

In May 1960, a high-ranking Nazi SS officer who had escaped from US custody after the war and been in hiding with his family in Buenos Aires for ten years was found and captured by agents of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. In April the next year he was brought to trial in Jerusalem for his involvement from 1942-44 in the overseeing of the deportation of close to 500,000 Jews to ghettos and extermination camps. He was indicted on a number of charges, one of them being crimes against humanity.

At the time, a prominent professor in the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (as it was called then), and a Jewish refugee from Germany herself, offered to travel to Jerusalem, to the very ‘Beth Hamishpath’—House of Justice (though some people say it should be more accurately translated as ‘House of Judgment’)—to cover the trial for The New Yorker, claiming it would be her last opportunity to see a major Nazi ‘in the flesh.’ Her report, published in 1963 and later as a book, engendered a great deal of controversy that led to a string of personal and professional falling-outs.

This is the subject of the movie Hannah Arendt.

I remember when I was in graduate school I went to a seminar by Margarethe von Trotta, the director of the movie. I hadn’t heard of her before. The students had just seen a new movie by Volker Schlöndorff the previous night. I didn’t think too much of it, so when I learned von Trotta had been married to him, I can’t well say I didn’t harbor some prejudices already before attending the seminar.

Actually I don’t remember much from the seminar, except von Trotta herself. Even though it was August, the weather in the Swiss Alps was cold and wet. She wore a red fringed shawl over a black linen blazer, a black turtleneck sweater, black suit pants, and flats, also black. About sixty years old, she had on dangling, gold and red coral earrings, a fountain of platinum-tinted silver hair splashing onto her shoulders, framing a squarish, lined, somewhat coarse face—razor lips, scythe nose, blue-gray eyes shining, as if with the gleam of a sword just drawn. There were a red coral bangle and thin gold bracelet on her left wrist. She had a habit of pushing the sleeves of her blazer up with her hands as she talked, like she was getting ready to dig deeply into something, and every time she did so the bangle and bracelet on her wrist clanged and clacked, stringing together a beaded curtain through which her low hoary voice would pace back and forth.

In the next three days we watched The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, Marianne and Juliane, Rosa Luxemburg (the actress who played Hannah Arendt, Barbara Sukowa, was also the lead in those two movies), and Rosenstrasse, another film about the Holocaust. It was practically a crash course in New German Cinema.

Honestly I can’t say I like her movies, including Hannah Arendt. By ‘art house’ standards, they don’t stand out in terms of aesthetics or style. By Hollywood standards, there aren’t enough, if any, explosions, car chases, special effects, beautiful actors, beautiful actresses, plot twists, or product, or ‘lifestyle,’ placements. Von Trotta’s movies tend to be ‘just enough’ movies—just enough historical backdrop, just enough close-up moments, just enough plotting and intrigue, just enough presenting of different perspectives, just profound enough dialogue, just memorable enough actors, just enough music, just enough ambiguity. They cover all the bases. It’s as if she were merely ticking off a list. They are very ‘efficient’ movies. If they had a temperature, it would be 70°F—standard room temperature. In person, however, she is very likeable—affable and generous, yet straightforward and sharp. Just very genuine, real. Very 98.6°F. It’s as if her works took her warmth and coolness, poured them into the same pot and made them simply lukewarm. I like her more than her movies. Often you like somebody’s work only to be disappointed, even disgusted, when you finally see the man or woman ‘behind the candelabra’ (like Heidegger); more rarely, it seems, does who they are actually surprise you by being better, and more interesting, than what they do. If I had a choice I would definitely choose to meet and be the latter.

Hannah Arendt in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil,’ about how people can depersonalize and dehumanize other people when they simply follow the rules, or ‘follow orders.’ Then all sorts of acts and atrocities can be justified and committed against a number, a statistic, an abstract entity, or something ‘unworthy,’ in the name of whatever the rules and orders serve—often ‘the Good,’ with everything ‘the Good’ is against then coming to be seen as ‘bad,’ or even ‘evil.’ Arendt attributed Eichmann’s actions and these kinds of actions in general to the perpetrators’ ‘inability to think.’ However, a lot of people, for some reason, seem to leave off what she said immediately after that—‘namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else.’

Frankly put, what Arendt is talking about is really selfishness.

Osamu Dazai in 1948 wrote a story about a woman in dire financial straits and at the end of her rope who was desperately trying to plead with a banker for help, but the banker, a model husband and father who arrived home from work punctually every day, simply told her he had to get off of work at 5 pm and to come back the next day during normal business hours. The woman, having nowhere to go, committed suicide that evening. Osamu Dazai’s conclusion was: ‘Home is the root of all evil.’

Arendt herself observed that Eichmann was an irreproachable husband, father, brother, son, and friend. But it was exactly for those closest to him and for himself that he carried out those actions. When we put our welfare, career, ‘pursuit of happiness,’ or what we think is good, and that of the people ‘inside our circle,’ above and to the exclusion of everything and everyone ‘outside our circle,’ we shut them out. Our pound of iron becomes heavier than their pound of feathers. It’s easy then to justify actions against anything in our way, and accept, even advocate, rules and ideas that support those actions, using them as shields. And no one can blame us, because we’re ‘in the right,’ or, simply, we’re just ‘playing by the rules.’

Thinking from the standpoint of somebody else doesn’t mean agreeing with them, or even trying to find agreements with them. It doesn’t mean understanding or identifying, or even empathizing with them. It means something much simpler. It just means ‘listening.’

There is a scene in the movie, where we see Arendt’s face, pensive, with brows furled, eyes squinting; a few seconds later, sounds rush in, and we realize she is listening to a news broadcast on the trial. The expression of thinking is the expression of listening.

Only when we listen, can we allow ourselves to open up. And only when we allow ourselves to open up, can we begin to think.

History and Society, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Power, Uncategorized, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Violencia en Los Margenes: Javier Auyero and Concatenations of Violence

October 30, 2013 amias Leave a comment

By Pamela Neumann

It wasn’t supposed to be a book about violence at all. When Prof. Javier Auyero and his co-author Maria Fernanda Berti (a local school teacher) began conducting research in a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires called Arquitecto Tucho they thought they’d be writing about environmental contamination, a topic Auyero has written about extensively in the past. But, after two and a half years of fieldwork, they had a completely different story to tell, one that revolves around the many forms of interpersonal violence that are part and parcel of residents’ everyday lives. Last week Auyero spoke about the book, entitled “Violencia en Los Margenes,” at a presentation organized by the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies.

According to Auyero, one of the book’s principal arguments is that interpersonal violence is not merely dyadic, or retaliatory, but rather connected in “chains” or concatenations. In other words, what may begin as an incident between two drug dealers on the street is connected to the violent disciplinary action taken by a mother against her son, or the abuse a man later inflicts on his female partner. In this conceptualization, not only are there many “uses” of violence, these uses are also connected to one another in ways that transcend the typical public/private divide in how violence has been studied by many other scholars.

Hearing Auyero describe these connections between so-called “public” and “private” violence, I was reminded of the fundamental feminist insight that the division between the public and private spheres is an artificial one, a historical construction used to justify and maintain gender hierarchies. This division between public and private has not only been used repeatedly to confine women to the home (where their “proper” roles are supposedly located), but it has also been used to construct hierarchies of violence. For example, “public” forms of violence such as murder, robbery, or gang activity has historically attracted the iron fist of the state, while “private” forms of violence, particularly that which is perpetuated against women and children in the home were, up until the last 30 years or so (Tierney 1982), almost entirely ignored—a classic case of what anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1993) has called the state’s “averted gaze”.

A second argument that Auyero described as central to the book is precisely the role of the state in encouraging the very violence it ostensibly ought to be preventing–or at least punishing. For example, the same state that provides welfare assistance to families is also represented by local police officers who participate in the local drug trade. This suggests a state whose presence is highly contradictory—and through its selective responses to violence in the community may in fact be contributing to the normalization and legitimacy of violence. Thinking “like a state” (Scott 1999) for a moment, what purpose could such a seemingly contradictory stance serve? What is the logic that might explain the state’s action and inaction in this context?

Some recent scholarship on the neoliberal state in the United States argues that the rollback of welfare and the mass incarceration of poor (mostly minority) men are two sides of the same coin: a broader project to “punish the poor” (Wacquant 2009). Is there a similar state project underway in Argentina? Or is the massive increase in violence simply one inevitable result of long term social and economic changes, such as the decreasing access to formal employment and in-migration to the neighborhood? How do these structural conditions relate not only to the increase in violence, but also its interconnected manifestations? These are some of the questions that Auyero hopes to answer—in his next book.

Globalization and Development, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Power, Uncategorized, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

DREAMs of Social Activism in Texas: NIYA and the Provocation of Protest

October 24, 2013 amias Leave a comment

D30 — Participants in the Dream 30 crossing look across the border fence to the United States. Courtesy of NIYA.

By Michael Young and Eric Borja

Under the Obama administration, nearly two million people have been deported, with no end in sight. NIYA – the National Immigrant Youth Association – is tired of seeing families ripped apart by these deportations. And on Monday September 30^th, the same day the government shutdown occurred, 30 undocumented migrants – the Dream 30 – crossed the US-Mexico border at the Laredo, Texas port of entry. This is the second time the organization has successfully organized such an act of civil disobedience – with the first occurring on Monday July 22, 2013 when 9 undocumented migrants (the Dream 9) crossed the US-Mexico border near the Nogales border patrol station. Since the Dream 9, NIYA has successfully crossed 15 undocumented migrants, but 24 of the Dream 30 remain detained.

Our very own Dr. Michael Young has worked closely with NIYA, and was present during the Dream 30 crossing. Below, we present his op-ed piece on the Dream 30 originally published in the Houston Chronicle on October 3rd:

In the middle of last week, they started to arrive in Nuevo Laredo, across the Texas-Mexico border from Laredo.

By the weekend, there were 34 of them gathered in a Catholic shelter for migrants.

Each had a different story of how they had gotten to this point, but they all shared a dream – actually, more of a desperation – to come home.

From the roof of the shelter, they could see the Rio Grande. On the other side of the river: Home.

For three days, they sat in workshops led by Benito, an organizer for the National Immigrant Youth Alliance. They role-played what would happen on Monday. They told their stories to each other. They cried, they laughed, they bonded.

On Monday morning, they embraced in “a burning ring of fire” and took turns jumping into the center telling the group what they meant to each other. They used the word “love” freely. Standing next to them, I believed they meant and felt those words as intensely as a human can.

faces — *The Dream 30. Courtesy of NIYA*

Who are these people?

In the way they spoke English, in the way they dressed, in their mannerisms, they were just like the kids at my children’s public school in South Austin. They were mostly 20-somethings, but also a few minors. They were gay, straight, jocks, nerds, junior ROTC, evangelical, Catholic, atheist – all raised in the U.S., all undocumented, brought here as young children by their parents, and all unafraid.

Around noon, they gathered at the central plaza in Nuevo Laredo.

“Was this the place that they (the Zetas) shot the mayor, or was it the sheriff?” “Is this the place where they brought the decapitated heads?” The kids put graduation caps and gowns on – the DREAMer uniform. Benito assembled them in a line. He interspersed the innate leaders with the anxious. He put the strongest one in the middle of the line, building a column that would not break.

One last check: Benito touched each one on their shoulders and looked them in their eyes for a long moment, saying not a word. They were ready.

With four pesos in hand, they walked one block north from the plaza to the pedestrian “Bridge No. 1” linking the two Laredos. They paid their toll on the Mexican side. Mexican soldiers stood by letting them cross without a word, barely a glance.

When they got halfway across, the chants began in a call and response. DREAMers who had gathered on the U.S. side of the bridge chanted, “Undocumented!” The crossers responded, “Unafraid!” They got louder.

10-15-niya-thumb-640xauto-9368 — *Dream 30 group crosses into Laredo, Texas with Bring Them Home banner Photo: Steve Pavey/NIYA*

The U.S. Border Patrol agents in boats under the bridge gunned their engines, drowning out the chants for a moment.

A flash of fear spread through the column, but only for a moment. The chants from the U.S. steeled their nerves.

The crowd on the U.S. side called returnees’ names, one by one: “When Javier comes under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back! When Alberto comes under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

They arrived at the U.S. point of entry, where Border Patrol agents stopped them.

The DREAMers’ lawyer presented boxes of documents – petitions for asylum for each young person. The chants continued.

They stood for a half-hour, maybe more, in the Texas heat and then they were taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.

I had never seen such a protest – a brilliant, beautiful and heartbreaking protest. In all my years of studying protests, I know of little to compare it to.

Of course, most Americans know nothing of the day’s event. The news cycle has room for only one big story.

That was Monday.

By the next day, the minors had been released on humanitarian parole along with their parents. But 25 remain in ICE detention, now housed in an El Paso facility.

American kids, back in America, but behind guarded walls dressed in prison jump suits.

Their crime? They went back to Mexico to bury loved ones, to care for sick family members, to finish an education they couldn’t finish here, to follow a parent who couldn’t find work.

What they found there is something we all already know, even if some of us won’t admit it: Mexico is not the home of these kids raised in America.

Now they are home and now they must be set free.

The government may be shut down, but its prisons are still at work jailing kids who just want to come home.

Bring them home.

09-30-dream-2-thumb-640xauto-9250 — Some of the Dream 30, as they prepared to cross the border Monday morning. Photo: Steve Pavey/NIYA

For further information, NIYA’s website can be found at http://theniya.org/ and please visit http://action.dreamactivist.org/bringthemhome/educators/ to sign a petition supporting the DREAMers.

History and Society, Political Sociology

PHS presents Ori Swed: “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Case Study in Historical Contingency”

October 18, 2013 porterem Leave a comment

by Luis Romero

To kick off the 2013-2014 academic year, the Power, History and Society Network (PHS) hosted a workshop for Ori Swed. This served as a practice talk for Ori before his anticipated presentation at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) at Syracuse University. The event attracted members from the first-year cohort, faculty, undergraduates and the PRC. Ori Swed at Syracuse University.

In this talk, Ori asks sociologists to think more carefully about how they engage and understand history in their work. Through an analysis of Israeli political narratives regarding the resolution of future Israeli-Palestinian statehood, Ori offers an interesting illustration of the symbiotic quality of discourses. Discourse studies show how narratives create and conjure potential conclusions or resolutions to a social problem. However, Ori seeks to look at the other side of this relationship and has developed a theoretical tool which he terms “historical contingency.” By this, Ori means that sociologists should look at how anticipated conclusions influence the narratives produced in the midst of an unresolved problem.

Ori’s project is as much about matters of methodology and theory as it is about discourse. He contends that oftentimes when analyzing social events, assessments are clouded by the outcome or conclusion, which is used as the lens to retroactively understand a course of events. There is a major problem with interpreting events from their culmination, particularly for historians and historical sociologists. This problem occurs because our perspective (or narrative) often changes when we learn the event’s conclusions. A simple example that addresses the psychological aspect of Ori’s point is the tale the “fox and the grapes” (known as “amor fati” or “love of destiny”). The story partly illustrates for us how, upon learning the conclusion of an event, we reinterpret the course of events. For the fox, who is eager to steal some grapes from a nearby vine, the grapes proved inaccessible in the end. Retrospectively, the fox reflects and reassesses the worth of the grapes (“Oh, you weren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes”) and that the branches were beyond reach. So, when we learn of an event’s conclusion, we often try to make sense of it in a way that is linear and not arbitrary.

Throughout his talk, Ori used the events of a basketball game to describe this problem. When we look at the final scoreboard of a game, it is easy to ascribe certain narratives to match the results, which ultimately negate the narratives that once existed. While this may streamline the description or theory presented, it does not account for all of the events that occurred but rather, only those that help sustain the narrative. For those readers who follow the NBA, the case of Michael Jordan presents a perfect example. Before winning his first championship in 1991, Jordan was known as a player who could score many points but also as someone who would never win an NBA championship. Year after year, Jordan would be eliminated from the playoffs, despite his high-scoring performances, reinforcing the narrative of the scoring champion who would never become an NBA champion. However, this changed after he won his first championship. The Jordan narrative was now that he was able to win championships while the previous narrative had been dropped. In this case, Ori would argue that in order to understand the complexities of Jordan’s career, it is important to understand that the narrative surrounding Jordan was not always that of champion, but also that of a good player who could not win a championship.

However, Ori offers advice to the rest of sociology. He states that because the social sciences frequently study historical events as they unfold (events such as the Arab uprisings for example), we must recognize them as contingent and variable. Ori describes in brief how many analytical frameworks, such as rational choice theory, are conclusion-driven. He cites the preeminent debate of “structure versus agency” in sociology to highlight the contingent quality of social life and the trouble scholars have in accounting for it. In short, by keeping in mind that the moments we are interested in are fluid and contingent, sociology can add a layer of nuance that is not readily found in many works. In the end, Ori is implicitly advocating for more rigorous sociology and believes that using historical contingency as a tool can help sociology accomplish this goal.

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

Cati Connell – “Queer, Qualitative, and on the Market”

October 17, 2013 porterem Leave a comment

by Brandon Robinson

Cati Connell, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, gave a talk this Monday, October 14, 2013, about her experiences as a queer, qualitative researcher on the academic job market. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, sharing her job market experiences from three years ago with current graduate students. Her job market tips, tricks, and terrors were personal accounts that many can learn from.

In the first part of her talk “On Being Qualitative,” Cati realized that one of her main strategies in being a great qualitative researcher was to publish. She set a goal to publish just as much as the quantitative members in her cohort, which meant early and often. Cati advised co-authoring with faculty or other graduate student colleagues in order build one’s publication record, even before obtaining a Master’s degree. She also emphasized the importance of finding good mentors who have strong social capital (for her, Christine Williams). These mentors can be very beneficial in helping you become a productive graduate student and in navigating the market more successfully. Qualitative researchers should aim high early, so they can set themselves up for success on the job market later in their careers. Once on the market, Cati recommended applying broadly and reading job advertisements very closely, to see how one could be a fit for a certain job. Do not waste time applying for jobs that are not a good fit. A common example would be if a job specifically seeks a quantitative scholar, do not apply if all you do is qualitative work. Being oneself in the job application process is as important to hiring committees as the type of scholar you are based on your CV.

One thing all should remember is that the job market is not a meritocracy. There is real discrimination on the job market, and search committees can be racist, sexist, homophobic, and trans phobic. However, Cati told us that we should focus on the success stories of people who study marginalized sub-disciplines (like sexuality and gender) in order to not be discouraged. Scholars like Cati, who is at Boston University, Kristen Schilt at the University of Chicago, and Tey Meadow, who was a fellow at Princeton and will now be a faculty member at Harvard, are leading by example. While the academic job market is still hard for people who study marginalized subfields, the field on the whole is also changing, so focusing on success stories can help in making the market less daunting.

Cati also talked about “Being Queer” on the job market. She recognized that her own embodiment as white and gender conforming probably helped sooth the fears of hiring committees. It is also important to take into account one’s family and community needs while looking for a job. If having a vibrant LGBTQ community is important or having a pool of potential queer dating prospects is important, one should take these factors into account when applying for jobs. Be careful about applying for jobs in cities where you are not willing to move, though you should remain open-minded about non-urban opportunities, not assuming they have no LGBTQ people/communities. Navigating conversations about one’s personal life during the job interviews and dinner outings can be stressful, but you can generally choose to be as open as is comfortable. Nonetheless, Cati left us with great advice that anyone can use for their job talk, “Be confident in who you are and what you bring, and don’t apologize for it.”

Job Market Resources

Blogs:
Conditionally Accepted: A Space for Scholars on the Margins of Academia
http://conditionallyaccepted.com/

The Professor Is In: Getting You Through Graduate School, The Job Market, and Tenure
http://theprofessorisin.com/

Get a Life, PhD: Succeed in Academia and Have a Life, Too
http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/

Social Inqueery: A Publicly Accessible Queer Social Science Blog
http://socialinqueery.com/

Sociology on the Margins
http://sociologyonthemargins.com/

ASA Section on Race and Ethnic Minorities Mentoring Blog
http://srem-mentoring.blogspot.com/

Queer Black Feminist (Andreana Clay)
http://queerblackfeminist.blogspot.com/

Crip Confessions: Rants of a Crip Sexologist
http://cripconfessions.com/

How To Leave Academia: Peer to Peer Post academic Support
http://howtoleaveacademia.com/

Books:

The Black Academics Guide to Winning Tenure – Without Losing Your Soul, Kerry Ann Rockquemore
Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing, Robert Boice
Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia Paperback, edited by Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs and Yolanda Flores Niemann
The Academic Job Search Handbook, Julia Miller Vick

Health and Well-Being

Gloria González-López Identities in Transition

October 5, 2013 porterem Leave a comment

Dr. Gloria González-López met with graduate students, some who are in their first year, others in their second, fourth, fifth and one graduating student who is on the job market this year, to engage in a dialogue about two interconnected human dimensions of academic life: transitions and identities.

All participants gave a word to describe how we felt in relation to:

Transition        Identity
meaningful       awkward
stressful             ambiguous
uncertainty       uncertainty
difficult              fluid
perpetual           messy
involving           generalizing
awkward         conflict
uneasy             dynamic
departure          adaptive
overwhelmed    involving
evolving             becoming
disruptive          collaborative

Clearly, this was a conversation worth having.

Gloria, as she wants us to call her, enrolled in a Ph.D. program 20 yrs. ago, and is in her 12th year, now as an associate professor of sociology at UT Austin. She shares her life lessons and insights below to help future professors handle their evolving professional lives.

(1) Change seems to be the only consistent, permanent thing in life, and reminding myself of it makes change and transitions more “normal” – transitions are a vital part of life.

Academic life is about transitioning and we need to be aware of this. Maybe this profession –more than others—requires a special skill to deal with it. This profession also goes hand in hand with personal transitions, so it is quite a challenge when we combine professional and personal transitions.

Life is not always nice, neat, clean, well organized – grad school and life as an academic have a dimension of messiness. We can become very miserable if we are not aware of it and if we don’t have a tool kit to take care of it.

(2) Keep a consistent routine as much as you can, taking care of yourself should be part of this. Always take care of the basics: eat, sleep well, and secure the financial dimension of your life. Stay healthy. So keep some kind of routine to have at least a minimal structure to organize your day.

(3) Transitions are not experiences to be fixed. They are life journeys to be lived. Transitions are about change, not about something not working right, or being dysfunctional. Sometimes you do not have to do anything about it. At times we want to fix something that does not need to be fixed, because transitioning does not mean that something is broken.

(4) Professional transitions have their own flow. Do not panic, do your best to be relaxed as you go through this ride.

(5) Do not rush the process. Always take one step at a time.

(6) Don’t deny change, denial does not work. One of the reasons going through transitions may become so challenging to graduate students is precisely because we are over-achievers and successful people: wow, I am in the Ph.D. program and my GPA is 4.0, and my GRE scores are so high, so how come I can’t deal with these feelings? It may become a good opportunity to practice humility. This can be very, very useful.

(7) Always remind yourself of the larger purpose, the larger picture.

(8) Think of other life transitions in the past – what did you do that worked effectively as you went through it?

(9) Change may facilitate other changes you may want to take advantage of it. Some people say that changes are opportunities for growth. Even simple things like cleaning up the office and getting rid of clutter.

(10) Transitions cause confusion but once you know that you are confused and anxious you know what you are experiencing. Hey, I am confused and anxious and that is OK!

(11) Transitions are tricky and at times they might seem or appear to be an “existential” problem. We may approach life transitions as if they were existential problems, this is not always the case – we might get in trouble if we do. While this might be at times, it is not always the case. Be aware if a transition coincides with an existential concern.

(12) Try to keep your same, nice support system. Talk to someone you trust about these issues, at times that is all it takes to normalize it.

(13) Develop some comfort level with uncertainty and ambiguity – not easy in a culture that is so obsessed with certainty, efficiency, efficacy, precision, being in control.

(14) Be patient with the process. Don’t overwork yourself about it. Don’t be obsessed about it.

(15) Live in the present. Life has not given you all of the information yet. Do not anticipate. The future does not exist yet. Be present – that is all we have in the end.

(16) Making important decisions while transitioning might not be a good idea: e.g. I am lonely and confused as part of a transition and may get romantically involved with the person I might not have chosen under more stable circumstances. In retrospect you may go, “Wow, shocking! What was I thinking?!”

(17) You may go through transitions and some of your unresolved, past issues in life may surface. Watch out.

(18) Journaling may help you so how you are evolving. You can keep track of how you are experiencing the transition. People who like to keep a journal may benefit from this.

(19) Transitions in identity: there is some kind of grief always when it comes to the person you used to be and the one you are becoming. Be open to that. The one you used to be will always be with you. You could not be who you are without it.

(20) You may go through a transition and then in retrospect think about it and be clueless about what happened while transitioning (Eh, what happened?!). Not knowing more about what you went through is so human – accept that. I have gone through important professional transitions and in retrospect I don’t even know exactly what happened to me. At times it’s better not put your heart under the microscope, just simply let it be.

(21) Transitions pass, you will have a new life lesson, they will make you a more sophisticated human being, and now you have something to offer to the people you work with (e.g., a student will come to you freaking out because he/she is transitioning, very common when students finish college), family and friends.

(22) Some of us are always in transition because of who we are (gender, race, class, sexuality, citizenship, religion, etc). So we go from one context to another to another and have to transition into other ways of being. Some of us are always in the process of transitioning, in the process of becoming.

These tips for staying fluid in times of transition, finding support in community and in self-supporting regimens can make the difference between imbalance and stability. We thank Dr. González-López for keeping the humanity in academia.

Latin American Studies, Political Sociology

Upcoming PRC Brown Bag Highlight: Javier Auyero – “Disconnected (and Ethnographic) Thoughts on Violence and its Concatenations”

September 27, 2013 admin Leave a comment

Fri, Nov 1, 2013 • 12:00 PM • CLA 1.302B

Based on 30 months of collaborative fieldwork in a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires, and emphasizing more the ethnographic showing than the telling, this presentation scrutinizes the multiple uses of violence in the area and the concatenations between private and public forms of physical aggression. Much of the violence reported here resembles that which has been dissected by students of street violence in the United States, i.e. it is the product of interpersonal retaliation and remains encapsulated in dyadic exchanges. However, upon casting a wider net to include other forms of aggression (not only public but also sexual, domestic, and intimate) that take place inside and outside the home, and that intensely shape the course of residents’ daily lives, Auyero argues that diverse forms of violence among the urban poor: a) serve more than just retaliatory purposes, b) link with one another beyond only dyadic relationships, and c) become a repertoire of action.

Javier Auyero – auyero@austin.utexas.edu
Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin

Sponsored by the Population Research Center (PRC).

Sociology of Health

Upcoming PRC Brown Bag Highlight: Jacqueline Angel – “The Policy Implications of the Extension of Morbidity”

September 24, 2013 admin Leave a comment

Fri, Oct 4, 2013 • 12 PM • CLA 1.302B

This lecture examines the policy consequences of increased longevity and extended disability among Mexican-American elders. The work is informed by a study that employs growth mixture models and life table techniques to analyze patterns of decline in functional capacity measured by objective Performance Oriented Mobility Assessments (POMAs) in a cohort of 3,050 Mexican-origin elders who were initially interviewed in 1993-1994 and followed up at six points over the subsequent seventeen years. The main objectives of the study were: (1) to characterize the functional capacity trajectories and mortality experiences of the original cohort, (2) to identify those factors accounting for differences in trajectories, and (3) to determine the proportion of life after age sixty-five in which an individual suffers from serious functional impairment. Results reveal three general patterns of decline (1) high initial functioning followed by decline (48% of the sample); (3) moderate initial functioning followed by decline (37.5% of the sample) and (3) poor initial functioning followed by continuing poor functioning or slight improvement (14.5% of the sample). On average, members of this cohort spent more than half of the period after sixty-five and before death or censoring with significant limitations in physical functioning. Significant gender and nativity differences emerge. In general, the data show that although Mexican-origin individuals live long lives much of the period after age sixty-five is characterized by serious functional impairment. Implications of the lack of substantial compression of morbidity for the health and economic well-being of older Mexican Americans and their families, as well as for health and long-term care policy, are considered.

Jacqueline Angel – jangel@austin.utexas.edu
Population Research Center, Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs and Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin

Sponsored by the Population Research Center (PRC).

Austin, Political Sociology, Uncategorized, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Better Know a Sociologist : 10 Questions with Harel Shapira

September 16, 2013 amias Leave a comment

Here at the UT Sociology Blog, we strive to find new and interesting ways to highlight the people and research in our department. To that end, we present to you “Better Know A Sociologist,” where we ask 10 general questions to one of our illustrious faculty members. Today we spoke to one of our newest faculty members, Dr. Harel Shapira.

What first attracted you to sociology?

I remember being in high school and reading this book by Randall Collins. I believe it was called Sociological Insight or Thinking about Sociology, it’s one of those basic introductory books. Not a textbook so much as a collection of essays, each one dealing with a topic and showing how sociologists think about it. For example, one was on love, one was on religion, another was the economy. I think I was always drawn towards the historical, political science world of thinking. And I remember reading this and it was just…it was incredibly counter-intuitive, but there’s also this sort of obviousness about it, right? And I think that’s so wonderful about sociology. On the one hand, it’s obvious: you read it and you say, “OK, that sort of makes sense.” But at the same time, you have this reaction of “Oh, I didn’t think about it that way,” you know? And I just remember reading this book and each one of these essays made me have that reaction towards the topic, like “Oh, so religion is actually about that? That’s what we’re doing when we’re sitting around the table during Thanksgiving, that’s its significance?” And the same for love, for the economy, and all those things. So I think that that book just got me very excited about this thing called sociology that I’d never heard of and it also helped that Randall Collins is a beautiful writer and that the book was wonderfully written, and that it was short. I just thought, “Wow, there are these people that do these things , this is what they do” and I was really drawn to it and took a few more sociology classes. I should say that I was lucky enough that in my high school, there were actual sociology classes.

Yeah, that’s surprising.

Yeah, it was very cool. We had these set of classes – this was in upstate New York – where the classes were actually connected to Syracuse University, so you took half of the class in high school and then half of the class at the actual university. So it was really amazing and fortunate that they did actually have a proper sociology class.

So you got your Bachelor’s degree in sociology then?

I got my Bachelor’s in sociology from the University of Chicago. I should say that over there, as much as my “concentration,” as they call it there, was sociology, there is a very serious core curriculum and many classes are cross listed, so I took a number of classes in very different fields. As much of my education was in philosophy and history and even biology as it was in proper sociology.

But that’s another great thing about sociology, it’s that all of those different backgrounds contribute to the strength of your own sociological perspective.

Absolutely. Yeah, that’s definitely another wonderful thing about sociology.

What did you do your dissertation on?

I wrote my dissertation about the border militia group called the Minutemen, who I assume you’ve heard of. They’re this volunteer group that patrols the border between the US and Mexico trying to stop immigrants from coming across. I was drawn to it for a couple of reasons. One is a purely biographical reason: immigration and borders have played a really prominent role in my own life. My grandparents immigrated to Israel from Europe and my parents immigrated to the United States. And of course in Israel, borders and security and militarization are incredibly prominent. So in a sense, borders have been what my life has been about and I wanted to write and learn about it. But there’s this other dimension, which is that we – and by we, I mean the social sciences, sociology – we don’t put enough energy into writing about and researching the right wing. There was a movement in the 1950s with folks like Daniel Bell who wrote about conservative, right wing politics and then there was this amazing pause for almost 50 years. There’s Kathleen Blee now at the University of Pittsburgh who has done some great work. But over all we know very little, and what we do know comes from the archives. So there was also this motivation to just try and fill in this gap that exists. So I was drawn to it for those two reasons and really, I guess there’s a third one that’s very basic, and that’s that a lot of stuff I’m interested in has to do with how people tick in ways that I find very different than myself. How people go about and do something that I don’t do and that I would never do and trying to figure out how it is that they do this and I don’t do it, what’s different about us. But at the same time, also trying figure out what is actually similar about us yet leads us in different pathways and different directions.

At the same time, I’ve heard you speak about Waiting for Jose, the book that came out of your dissertation, and one of the most interesting things you discussed was the how a loss of community and the sense of anomie that comes out of it is partly why these men band together along the border, which links to some of what people like Robert Putnam have said about contemporary society. But it sounds like that wasn’t really what you thought you were going to find or what you were originally interested in when you went to the field.

Yeah, I know! I think I had the good fortune of having a few professors around me at Columbia where I did my dissertation who for the most part let me just go out and get my hands dirty without very much pregiven analytical or even theoretical frames. Just to sort of go there and see what I find, see what’s interesting, see what strikes me, and it was in the process of going down there and then coming back and looking through field notes, talking with friends and professors that I came to figure out what the sort of story I want to tell about them is, what kind of story is the one that captures who these folks are. And what came out is that they have this diagnosis about America that is very far away from what we think about when we think about right wing, conservative extremist politics. I mean, there’s certainly things that they say that fit that mold, the mold people like Bell and Hofstadter talk about, but they also say so many things that don’t fit that mold that in fact fit – and here’s where Putnam comes up – that fit things that Robert Putnam says and talks about. Not just Putnam, but Putnam is a great example because so many of us embrace Putnam in terms of giving a diagnosis of what is happening in America, what is wrong with America, what we might need to do to make it better. So that was sort of this moment where I needed to pause, and really think, “wait a minute, what is going on here? This is not what I expected. How do I make sense of it?” And from there it became about actually trying to figure out not just these people’s beliefs, their diagnosis of America, but trying to comprehend how even though they think things that are not so different from “the rest of us”, how come they arrive at such a different place. It’s very easy to say “Oh, people believe these things that are very different from me and that’s why they do different things,” but it becomes much more difficult and I think actually much more accurate to say “Oh, they think things that are not that different but yet they get to a different place.“ And from there, not just thinking about their beliefs about immigration or America but thinking about their life experiences, their pasts, and seeing how much their experience of being soldiers – these are almost all military veterans and people who served for 25, 30, 35 years, essentially their whole lives as soldiers and are now aging veterans – seeing how these past experiences make this activity of patrolling the Border a really meaningful in a way that can not be reduced to simply an expression of ideology.

Why did you decide to work here at the University of Texas?

Well, it helped that they offered me a job. [laughs] Well, OK, first, it’s a serious research institution. People are doing serious work here, I got that feeling from the beginning. People are dedicated to doing really serious research. Not just in the sociology department, I felt that was true across campus. So it was great to feel like you’re coming to a place where it’s not just your department where you can find people doing interesting things. You know, the history department here is extremely strong, American Studies, the law school, the business school, the economics department. There’s so many powerful, important institutions here, the Harry Ransom Center, the LBJ and Benson Libraries. It’s just very exciting to be at a place where there are so many resources and so many interesting things happening. It was also important for me to come to a place where I like the city and so the fact that it was in Austin was very important to me.

What’s been your overall experience of Austin? Do you have any likes or dislikes?

Um, it’s incredibly hot. I still don’t get what they mean by “dry heat.” I’ve spent a lot of time in Tel Aviv, and it’s funny because there are ways in which Austin reminds me of Tel Aviv, by which I mean it’s very hot and it’s kind of a utilitarian, plain looking city in terms of architecture and the highways with all these big concrete buildings. But you know, you see these ramshackle little bungalows but then you go inside them and the houses are beautiful. You see these restaurants that look dilapidated and then you go inside and it’s amazing inside: the architecture, the food, the people, everything. So it reminds me of Tel Aviv in the sense that externally, it’s kind of ugly but internally, there’s a lot of character and quality and beauty. I’ve also been struck by how young this city is. I find myself every now and then driving and trying to see if I can spot anyone who is 60 or over and I swear, I don’t think I’ve found one old person in this city yet. And that’s – no offense to old people – kind of exciting to always be around young people who bring all this energy. For example, people are always biking around everywhere, which I really like. It’s just got this sort of flavor to it and I don’t think there’s that many cities in America that have flavor, you know? It’s got character. You come to Austin and you go, “Ah, OK, this place is different than most places, it’s got something going on” and I think that is just a really, really exciting thing to be around.

If you could teach one sociological concept to the world, what would it be?

I don’t know if this is a sociological concept; more like a way of thinking about the world. But I would just say…I’m teaching Introductory Sociology this semester and if I can get one thing across to the students – and this applies not just to the students but to anyone – it’s just to recognize how powerful society is. To recognize as social these things in the world that are social. Let’s take the example of the institution of the University. The University is something that we’ve created, right? People got together and they said “we need education, let’s have these criteria for education, let’s produce this thing called the University,” which sort of came from religious training and so forth, “let’s have these criteria for admission, what are the criteria for admission, etc.” There’s so much that gets rolled up in these things. And you know, you can go all the way down. Then you get the sports team, the paraphernalia around the sports team, you get burnt orange, which comes to signify so much. And that flows into all these sorts of political questions. Affirmative action was a big issue here recently, for example. These are all profoundly social things that we have created. They weren’t always there and I think it’s so important to step back and recognize the existence of these things and how powerful they are in shaping our lives. Obviously, we could go on and on down the list: gender, race, etc. Just to recognize that these are social things. We’ve produced them, they change over time, and look how they influence our lives. And I think so often – and this kind of goes back to my experiences with the Randall Collins book and its counter-intuitiveness – we go through our everyday lives living with these things without recognizing that we’ve created them or that these things have a history and that these things are impacting us in ways that we kind of take for granted and don’t even reflect on.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?

Getting paid to think. I mean that honestly. I think getting paid to think and do research is such an amazing luxury. Our conversation right now, I’m getting a paycheck for this conversation. That is just amazing. And it’s an incredible luxury and I think we are so fortunate to be in this position. So many people would love to be doing this, but they don’t have the luxury to do it. Getting paid to do this wonderful thing is remarkable. I think about my parents and how much they paid for my education, or how much anyone or anyone’s parents pays to go to school. But right now, we’re getting paid to go to school, right? It’s actually mind blowing and I think it’s such an amazing thing. And related to that I guess is being around all these remarkable people who are smart, interesting, and you like too. Certainly there are some jerks in academia, but at least they’re interesting jerks. [laughs] I think being surrounded by people who are so interesting and smart and have committed their lives to thinking and doing research is incredibly rewarding in itself.

Who is one person in the department besides yourself that is doing really interesting work and what is it?

Actually, I want to give two people, and these are my fellow members of the “new faculty cohort,” as we like to refer to ourselves. I think both Ken and Dani are doing really amazing work. In a way, I think their work is kind of connected to each other. Dani does this beautiful ethnographic work where, you know, we tend to think of the economy as a thing that naturally exists, right? There’s this economy, it’s out there in the world and we’re economic actors. Everyone is born trying to maximize their profits and to minimize their costs and we, by our so called nature, know how to be economic people. It’s in our blood, it’s who we are. You know that you’re supposed to get more money and lose less money. And Dani does this amazing things where he says “actually, no, this is something we’re socialized into doing. One becomes an economic actor. One learns how to act economically in an economic society.” And he has this great ethnographic project which looks at how people participated in these “Get Rich” clubs where they’re taught about how to invest their money. I think it’s wonderful because again, it’s counter-intuitive: we take for granted the idea that everybody knows how to be an economic actor but actually we don’t. And I love his research because when I first read it, it made me recall how my grandfather’s brother in Israel would always keep his money in his mattress. He was afraid to give money to the bank. What do you do with your money? You put it under your mattress. And I remember my father having this conversation and saying “Look, if you put the money in the bank you can get interest.” But he didn’t trust the bank and he didn’t understand the concept of interest. However, as a result of these conversations he finally put the money in the bank. So in a sense, he’s kind of became this new economic actor. But for the last twenty years of his life, the guy would wake up every morning at 6am, take a hour-long bus ride to the head office of the bank, ask to see the manager, and ask for a detailed receipt showing that his money was there. He wanted to “see” the money. It was hard for him to grasp this ethereal thing of his money being stored in the bank. So that’s just a long way of saying I also like Dani’s work because I can make connections between it and some of the things I’ve thought about in my own life, which I think is a hallmark of all good sociology. And then with Ken, I think he does something in a way that’s similar which is to talk about how the new economy today is so driven by finance. First of all, finance is this thing where no one even knows what it is. My friend says he’s an investment banker: I have no idea what that is. So I think part of what Ken does is give some substance to it, and he does that by talking about the consequences of finance to the way our society is organized. For example, one of the interesting things that he shows is how the increased emphasis on finance, the way the economy is driven by finance has consequences for say, labor unions, for people’s sense of themselves as workers and for what kind of work we value. That “traditional” work, in a sense, has been really devalued as a consequence of this new finance-driven economy.

What are you current research interests? What are you looking at these days?

I’m doing an ethnographic project right now on gun owners, focusing primarily in Texas. At a basic level, I want to know why folks own guns. I’m not a gun owner myself, but there’s an incredibly large population in America and especially in Texas that are gun owners. I want to try and make sense of that. When I was doing my dissertation, I had the chance to experience being around people who were all gun owners, and I remember sleeping in this tent at one point. There were four people in the tent, and there were a whole bunch of guns around us. We slept around guns and I couldn’t sleep the entire night. I was terrified. There were these guns around me and I was terrified. And I remember thinking “for these folks, having the gun gives them a good night’s sleep.” And again, I find that really amazing: how is it that for me, if I had a gun in my house today, I would be completely ill at ease, but for other people, it’s the precise opposite? Trying to make sense of that is part of what I’m interested in and also I’m sort of interested in that following George Zimmerman, we have this discourse of self-defense in America. We talk about self-defense so much and of course, in the trial what the jury was asked to decide was whether he was acting in self-defense or not, and I wonder the extent to which, when we talk about self-defense, we’re missing out on the fact that it’s not just about the individual. When we think of self-defense, we often think of the individual who is defending themselves but actually a lot of times, when people act out of “self-defense,” they’re thinking about a larger group, right? Often a group that has historical and collective memories, in other words, it’s not just about some crime or encounter happening at the moment, but something that happened a long time ago. So they’re not owning the gun just to protect themselves but to protect something much bigger.

What’s one book you’ve read over the past year that you’ve really enjoyed and why?

Katherine Boo has this book called “Beyond the Beautiful Forevers” and it’s about slum dwellers in Bombay, India near the airport which is a relatively new slum as far as slums go. I think it’s about 10-15 years old. It emerged because of the fact that Bombay built this new airport and all these slum dwellers from other slums moved there because they do a lot of scavenging and could find a lot of construction materials from the builders and things that they could take and then sell. Lo and behold, fast forward 10-15 years and now 3,000 are living in this slum. And Katherine Boo – a journalist that’s written a lot for the New Yorker – goes and lives for a few years in the slum. And she tells this story about the people living in the slum. First of all, the book is beautifully written. But also, even though she’s a journalist, it’s some of the best sociology that I’ve read in the past year. The thing that I think she does really well beyond the amazing writing is it’s a book that on the one hand, is a story about suffering. Incredible, incredible suffering. But you can’t help but see at the same time this amazing resiliency. And you leave with both those feelings, right? You feel “this is awful, I can’t believe this exists” and without a doubt you leave thinking “wow, this is such an awful situation for these people and their lives within this slum” but you also leave with this – and I don’t want to sound too Oprah Winfrey – this renewed sense of hope or renewed sense of the power of humans to exist and love.

And that kind of overlaps with your own work, too. For the Minutemen, they had these feeling of profound disaffection, alienation, and loss of structure and therefore were fashioning meaning and connection in the ways that they could. And there’s a certain heroism in that as well.

Definitely, good point!

What do you like to do in your free time?

Netflix and fly fishing.

Netflix and fly fishing?

Yeah. I’m still looking for places to go fly fishing in Texas. In the northeast, I would go to upstate New York, the Catskills, or Pennsylvania. I’ve heard rumors that there are some places in Texas to go fly fishing…

What exactly is required for fly fishing? Do you need a fast moving river? A deep river? Just a river period?

There are different things, but yeah, you need a steam that is relatively fast moving and most importantly you need fish in it…..

Yeah, I imagine that’s important.

Mostly I went trout fishing, and yeah, I just love it because it’s….first of all, it’s an activity that I prefer doing by myself as opposed to other people, and that might be the only activity where that’s the case for me. Also, it’s incredibly calming and frustrating at the same time. And just sitting in the amazing scenery it’s a great way to see things. I love just driving around with your fly rod in the car and you see a stream and you just stop and go in there for an hour or so and then you keep going to the next spot. And I also just like it because Hemingway liked it, and he’s my favorite writer.

Austin, Gender and Sexuality, Health and Well-Being, Sociology of Gender, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

UT’s Gender and Sexuality Center, and Tips for LGBTQ Allies in the Classroom

September 11, 2013 admin Leave a comment

By Shane Michael Gordon

The Gender and Sexuality Center (GSC) on the UT campus provides opportunities for any UT student and any member of the Austin community to explore, organize and promote the learning of gender and sexuality issues. The GSC has in the ten years of its existence made strong efforts to provide resources for anyone willing to learn and become informed of LGBTQ and women’s issues while offering outreach, education and advocacy throughout campus.

History of the GSC is rooted primarily in two organizations, the Women’s Research Center and the GLBTA Agency, formed in 1997 and 2001 respectively through the student government and headed by student directors. As the organizations’ services overlapped an agreement was formed to establish a joint center with a permanent office and full-time director. With help from the student government the Gender and Sexuality Center officially opened its doors in August 2004.

As one of its missions is to promote the understanding of the LGBTQ community, the GSC hopes to help instructors improve the classroom setting for LGBTQ students. Here are some tips for promoting a diverse, inclusive and respectful learning environment:

Do not immediately assume everyone in the classroom is heterosexual or traditionally gendered, as this assumption can segue into students making anti-LGBTQ remarks just because of an alleged “absence” of LBGTQ students.
Do use inclusive language in your syllabi, presentations and whenever possible, such as discussing civil unions as well as marriage and using the term “parent” in lieu of mother and father.
Do not make negative remarks or jokes aimed toward LGBTQ people.
Do work to set an example of proper conduct for students, especially if you encounter a biased remark, as this can be an important opportunity to set the facts straight about the LGBTQ community, along with promoting understanding while actively dialoguing with students to create an accepting and non-judgmental classroom environment.

The GSC is currently headed by its director Ixchel Rosal (rosal@austin.utexas.edu) with education coordinator Shane Whalley (swhalley@austin.utexas.edu) and program coordinator Liz Elsen (liz.elsen@austin.utexas.edu). As the Center prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary it plans to continue the work it has been doing while expanding its programs throughout both the campus and the community.

UT Austin SOC