Sociology and Spirituality

From Jay MacLeod Ain’t No Makin’ It, third edition, p 504 (the last paragraph of the methodological appendix):

When I visited Chris in prison and he asked me about my faith, I suggested that spirituality can arrest our inertial drift into self-deception.  My faith in a forgiving god allows me to face up to the truth about myself and to deal constructively with my sin.  The United States is even more prone to self-deception than I am.  We are in the grip of denial and resistance to the reality of our social sin, and sociology can help the world work through its ignorance of itself.  Spirituality and sociology have parallel vocations. Spirituality reveals the truth about ourselves. Sociology reveals the truth about our society. Both spur us to struggle for justice, for in the end my redemption is linked to yours.

This resonates for me.

Bibliographic note: MacLeod wrote what became the first edition of Ain’t No Makin’ It as an undergraduate thesis; he went on to be a community organizer and then an Anglican priest.  In case you don’t know the book, the first edition was based on observation and interviews with poor White and Black boys in 1983, the second edition caught up with how they were doing in 1991, and the third edition finds them in 2007.    The popular hook in the first edition was that the “Hallway Hangers” whose lives centered on substance abuse and crime were mostly White, while the “Brothers” who avoided misbehavior and tried hard in school were mostly Black, so the discussion of the impact of class and structural constraints ran against some of the usual grains. The “where are they now” follow ups pull this book apart from most in the genre.  It would be a good book to teach from. Probably the most useful policy implication is MacLeod’s argument that poor youths — and adults — should know the structural constraints they are up against if they are to avoid self-blame, despair, and self-destructive behavior.

Update:  Here is the publisher’s page for the book.  Most of the “hits” for this title in Google are to term paper vendors. Watch out.

blog commenting, blinding articles

I’m in California helping my mother, who is much better than she was in March, but still mostly housebound, on oxygen, and weak. She’s easily frustrated and demanding, which is both understandable and tiring. One upshot is that I’ve been blog commenting all day. I do get periods of free time, but as I never know when I’m going to be interrupted, it is hard to crawl into the writing I’m way-overdue on. So far I’m 0 for 0 in my goal of working at least two hours a day, although I have gotten some reviews done.

Apropos of bits of work, here’s a question about articles for review. Say there is a pretty well-known data set that is identified with exactly one research team, such that anybody who has read the literature will recognize the authors, or at least the PI, from the data. It does not matter whether you use “identifying reference withheld” or third person references, the author, or at least the author’s research team, will be identified. How much trouble should the author go to in attempting to present the appearance of conforming to the norm of not identifying the author, i.e. in using the third person in describing the research procedures? (Identifying reference withheld would seem absurd in this situation, especially as the withheld citations would be central to any literature review.)

My view as a reviewer: if the author of an article in my area is a senior person, I know who it is. But under the cloak of the anonymous reviewer, I am willing to say critical things about my friends. And good things about people whose work I don’t recognize (and thus know must be junior). I have been told by editors that this is common; people will not say bad work is good just because their friends wrote it. It is the anonymity of the reviewer that is central to the integrity of the process. So I don’t think trying to pretend anonymity is worth the trouble. In fact, I loathe “identifying reference withheld”!! If you are going to anonymize, do it with third person references.

What do you think about an author who does not even go through the motions of third person references to disguise authorship, in a case where disguise would be futile anyway. Is that bad form? Or understandable, let it go? Should editors police this kind of thing? Do they?

tenure and public sociology

There have been several posts lately about public sociology and the tenure process, including newsocprof and thepublicandtheprivate and, most recently RadioFreeNewport. All are written by young scholars. The general tone of these remarks is either to worry about the impact of public sociology on getting tenure, or to decry older sociologists who tell younger sociologists to focus on getting tenure before getting heavily involved in public sociology. So another view seems helpful. I say this as someone who did not do public sociology until later in my career, well after I had tenure. These younger writers are ignoring the central point that tenure protects you when you do public sociology.

one last asa gripe

I’ve just learned that I messed up.  I was supposed to choose WHICH roundtable session to forward those incoming papers to .  According to Kendra at ASA, I should have known this because last October I received an email that says “second priority organizers are responsible for forwarding unused acceptable papers to the appropriate roundtable organizer.”  Apparently just clicking reject did not automatically forward the paper (unlike the first round process), and apparently submitters don’t get to choose their roundtable back up, their second choice session organizer is supposed to make this choice for them.  Bad word bad word bad word.  I sent a complaint pointing out that this system makes no sense, as it is the paper submitter who ought to choose which roundtable session to go to, and that important instructions should be posted on the organizer web site, not hidden in old email messages four months removed from when and where they would be needed.  I also alerted Kendra at ASA to this problem so she can hopefully find the lost papers and put them in the right place.  Warning to everyone whose paper got “rejected” rather than forwarded to a roundtable: this is probably what happened.   It appears that Kendra at ASA is watching for orphan papers that need to be forwarded to roundtables, so I think she is the person to talk to if you got messed with in this way.  If you are mad, please curse your session organizer for inability to decipher a cryptic and counter-intuitive system, not an indifference to your career.

how to be a good advisee

As I suggested in response to the thread about picking an advisor, it is a mistake to view an advisor as a commodity for which you comparison shop, as you might select a new dress.  Rather, it is a two-sided process of building a long-term relationship.  Your own behavior and characteristics are just as important as the advisor’s, and it isn’t just a matter of finding the right person, it is a matter of acting in ways that make both of you feel good about your interactions.  So it is important to consider what makes the experience good for the advisor, not just what makes it good for the student.  In the long run, former advisees are friends and junior colleagues and part of your professional network.  Having former students who do well in the profession make you look good.  But there can be plenty of immediate rewards in the advising experience itself.  This varies somewhat depending on personalities, of course, and others may have other opinions.  But here are the things I think about when I reflect on advisees I have appreciated and advisees who have been less satisfactory.

asa session organizer site

Quick question.  ASA’s session organizer site appears non-functional.  First no response, then administrator’s login where it has never heard of me.  Anybody know what is going on?  ASA isn’t answering email; I did not try calling.  (I’m almost done, just need to forward 1 paper to round tables if it gets released by its first choice.  I can see why people don’t remember to do this.)