We thank Dr. Shamus Khan for participating in SJMR’s AMA series. Dr. Khan is a prominent sociologist of culture and stratification. In his work, he has focused on elites, the reproduction of class, and research methodology. We are grateful to Shamus for accepting our invitation. Below are his responses. You can learn more about his research by visiting his website.
Questions.
Pre-amble: Thanks to “Mr. Beakman” for setting this up, and to the folks for writing in such serious (and occasionally fun) questions. I’ve tried to mirror that in my responses. Sorry it took me a while; I was away visiting family. I hope my replies are interesting for you all, and perhaps even helpful. I’m sure there are typos. But this took me far longer than expected and I can’t bring myself to carefully read through it all. Sorry about that.
1. You study, among other things, class inequality. In spite of the traditional centrality of this topic to sociology, sociologists were very slow to catch on to rising inequality, in particular, the fortunes of the 1% pulling away from everybody else. (I also remember Jeremy Freese speculating that student interests were replacing Class/Race/Gender with Gender/Race/Sexuality as a "holy trinity" of sociology.) We were also slow to start working on the other big pattern of the same era, mass incarceration. Why do you think these patterns had to be playing out for decades before they became a big sociological focus? Is there a general lesson there, some way we could have done better that we might apply today? What major upheavals do you think we're paying too little attention to right now?
I try to avoid prediction; social scientists are really bad at predicting the future. I don’t agree with Jeremy that sexuality has replaced class as an object of interest; looking at the mainstream journals today you still find a lot more published on c
...See full postlass/inequality than you do on sexuality. I also think there’s nothing new about scholars being unprepared for what become major issues. Even when sociology was in a comparatively strong position in the overall matrix of the social sciences, it wasn’t because the empirical findings or theoretical frameworks were more current. Parsonian theories of reproduction were dominant as the more revolutionary movements of civil and women’s rights grew and were underway. I’m curious about the counterfactual: what if sociology had been way ahead of the curve in knowing about the rising fortunes of the 1%. What would be different? Would we suddenly be dominating the national conversation on the issue? Doubtful. Rather that worry about having our finger on the pulse and attempting the predict the trends of the future, I’d say we should worry about developing robust methods (and even innovative ones), developing new and interesting data sources, having decent theories about the world, and be quicker than our current journal structure to get those ideas out there (I’m thinking here of our own version of NBER and new journals like Sociological Science).
2. Ethnographies seem to be either huge blockbusters (yours, Jerolmack's, Alice Goffman's, C. J. Pascoe's, etc), or mostly unknown by the wider field. What recent under-appreciated ethnographies have really impressed you? Which less-read ethnographies have you just really enjoyed reading?
First, I don’t primarily read ethnography. I find ethnographers curious in that they read a lot more within their method than other scholars do. It would be rarer to ask someone, “what recent regression discontinuity designs have you read that are really interesting?” My reading is mostly driven by topic area, not method, and I am driven to read things that have interesting findings/approaches. The focus of ethnographers on method is particularly curious because it’s not like there are constantly major innovations within the method that require practitioners to keep on the newest aspects of the method. I tend to read a lot within my topic area, and pretty much as broadly as a can. I’m in a writing/working group with, among others, the economist Suresh Naidu, the economist/political scientist Chris Blattman, and sociologist Chris Muller. They have me reading a lot of economics, political science, and criminology. But to answer the question more directly: books I’ve liked that are probably less read are: Michele de la Pradelle, Market Day in Provence; Harel Shapira, Waiting for Jose (I worked with Harel, so perhaps too cute to mention, but I really like the book), Karen Ho’s Liquidated, Claire Alexander’s The Asian Gang, Lil Abu-Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments, Michael Bell’s Childerly, Caitlin Zaloom’s Out of the Pits, Diane Vaughan’s Uncoupling, Kimberly Hoang’s Dealing in Desire, Teresa Gowan’s Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, Celeste Watkins-Hayes’ The New Welfare Bureaucrats and an OLD school classic that I was just made aware of and read Fredrick Barth’s Political Leadership Among Swat Pathans… to name a few.
3. Do you think there are schools of ethnography? That there are different styles or assumptions that go into different, identifiable types of ethnography? If so, where do you situate yourself?
I haven’t thought much about this before. I find that professionally/socially/status-wise there is definitely the urban ethnography crew, and then there are the rest of us. I can on occasion smugly and unfairly dismiss of the urban folks because I sometimes find that they’ve been writing the same book since 1943 (The Street Corner Society). We think urban people live in broken anomic communities. But we find they don’t. I’m a little sick of that trope, and I wish Loic hadn’t been so sloppy and misleading/dishonest in his AJS piece about it – because I agree with a lot of that critique and it could have done some good. When I’m less smug I think that there are ethnographies that insist on “showing the people;” I would say this is one of Mitch Duneier’s major contributions to the method. By contrast, there are those that are interested in focusing far more on interaction. I would point to Jack Katz as the standard-bearer of this approach (somewhat in his work, particularly the early work, but more so in his series with Chicago). Then there are those who are really interested in situations. I think of Gary Fine here. There is feminist and institutional ethnography, which tends not to get a lot of respect but I find interesting because it makes interesting empirical claims and takes seriously methodological development (even if I don’t always agree, it’s great to see people working on this kind of innovation). There’s organizational ethnography; I think of Diane Vaughan, Nicole Marwell, Katherine Chen, and Gidean Kunda here. If I’m in a school, it’s about providing micro-foundations for macro-processes. So we know about the rise of the 1%, but what does it look like on the ground. I’m also distinctly cultural in my approach. But I don’t really fit in a school.
4. How should the Alice Goffman imbroglio change how faculty advisors oversee their students' research, especially for ethnographers? Also, what do you think Goffman could have done differently to avoid raising concerns about her work? Do you think these concerns are justified?
To be clear: I don’t think Alice made up any data. I think there are questions about reporting things she heard as if they were things she saw (which she is hardly unique in doing – most people do this, but they definitely should not). I also think there are some other questions about how she framed things; again, this isn’t unique. I was enormously frustrated with the recent Slate and NY Mag pieces because they suggested that sloppiness with data is acceptable in ethnography, and I would passionately argue against that.
Are there things faculty advisors could do? I have two students in the field right now. I require that they post their field notes every week so I can read through them. This helps me better advise them as they’re in the data-gathering phase. It doesn’t protect much against some of these things. But it helps me demand that my students are super clear about the differences between impressions they have and observations they’ve made, and that if they hear something, they go check it out. If they can’t find evidence, they can still report what they’ve heard, but they have to be responsible in making that clear to the reader.
In the Goffman case I think the anonymous reviewer could have done something differently. They could have published a much clearer more succinct note in ASR (which would have been great for their career), and this would have resulted in an interesting debate, instead of a soap-opera like drama. There are important issues here we haven’t addressed because it’s turned into sport/entertainment. I think Alice made a major mistake in her response to the claims that she’d committed a felony. She changed her story considerably. Some will interpret this as her willingness to change stories to suit the moment, this is damning for her work; others will give her the benefit of the doubt and think how stressful this situation must be – that such stress generates unwise decisions. I wish she’d written something like, “Yes, I drove the car. Do I regret it now? Of course. But my critics miss the bigger point. If a young white woman who grew up in an well-off family, who went to all the right schools and was well on her way to a promising career could find herself by the wheel of a car, out for blood or at least performing the ritual, then are we surprised that we find others with far less advantaged backgrounds doing the same?” Or something like that. Instead, the story changed and that’s deeply troubling. Worse still, we can’t know what was in her head at the time because she destroyed her notes; she can’t know either. Recollections are terribly unreliable, that’s why we take notes. I would also say that it’s totally unnecessary to destroy your notes. One way around this: ask a few health questions and provide subjects with a certificate of confidentiality. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coc/index.htm
That would help protect subjects.
There are no simple solutions to many of these problems. I am not a fan of anonymity, but there are conditions where it may well be required. I’m starting a project on rape and sexual assault, and as Ken Kolb has recently noted about his own similar work, would he really be expected to reveal the names of rape victims so scholars can verify their stories? I will face a similar concern. I would like it if this discussion could move further away from Alice, and closer to the problems of method. Ethnographers face a major hurdle in the upcoming decade. As most social scientist are pushing toward available data, the standards of availability and replicability are shifting, though not terribly fast – a recent study found that less than half of field experiment scholars were willing to make their data available (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22686633). Still ethnography risks irrelevance if it does not consider the management and availability of some parts of its data. Instead of spending its time writing political statements, this is where the ASA could help: by commissioning a group of ethnographers to write a report on data standards. This could help clarify and push the method forward. It would also help with IRB concerns (which I’ll deal with below).
5. What are you thoughts on addressing both more transparency in research alongside ethical and IRB concerns of protecting research participants? How might this be particularly important to graduate students who are more vulnerable to institutional regulations?
IRBs respond to the data standards within the discipline. You can work with IRBs, even if they reject your proposals at first. In every instance I have found that if you go to the IRB office, meet with the administrators, talk through your issues, make clear your constraints, they will work with you to find solutions. So I think the IRB concerns are often imagined or defeatist. Yes, I’ve had my problems. But in the end IRBs want people to do research while protecting the University’s ass. Medical researchers literally kill people from time to time and IRBs find ways to continue to work with them. My thoughts on this are simple: we need to worry less about the IRB and worry more about deciding what we collectively think is acceptable and what is necessary for our field. We can then collectively work with IRBs to make it happen. Our ethical responsibilities to our subjects are to be honest with them about what we’re doing, and to remind them that they’re subjects. Saying nice things about our subjects is not an ethical responsibility. Protecting them (their jobs, livelihoods, etc.) may be an ethical responsibility, but it might not be. If you knew someone was constantly stealing from others in a neighborhood do you have an ethical responsibility to that person or to the neighborhood? I think sociologists sometimes worry a lot about ethical responsibilities without thinking very seriously about ethics.
6. I just saw you give a lecture using network analysis and historical data. You're known as an ethnographer, but you seem to use a lot of methods. You've done experiments, ethnography, are writing a history book, and have this new project that uses spatial and network analysis. How do you learn these methods and feel expert enough to use them?
The experiment was my masters thesis. Experimental design is rather simple; I read a lot of experimental work and had Shelley Correll give me advice. I had no ethnographic training. I never took an ethnography course or qualitative methods class in graduate school; there was no ethnographer on my committee (Emirbayer, Wright, Marx-Ferree, Hauser). But I read a lot of ethnography and did several pilot studies to develop my skills. I don’t have any historical training. The Philharmonic project (spatial analysis) is done with Fabien Accominotti, a former student here at Columbia, now at LSE, who knows his stuff. He’s done the analysis (though I’ve done the qualitative portion of the project – by far the smaller part). I generally approach data in the following way: try to prove yourself wrong by gathering as varied data as possible. If you can’t prove yourself wrong, you can be reasonably secure in your claims. If there’s a unifying aspect of my work, at this point, it’s that I tend to gather my own data. I wouldn’t advise this for most people. It’s time consuming, and the chances that you do a less than good job aren’t trivial. So I’ve had plenty of projects that died because the data simply weren’t good enough to make a reasonable argument. To more directly answer the question, I think my basic approach in learning a method is to read. I read a lot. This fall I’m undertaking a project that will deploy the focus group interview. So I just read about 100 papers that used the method. Most aren’t that great, but you can learn something from that. I’ll try out the method on some friends/grad students this summer. Then I’ll go into the field using it. Most importantly, I’ll talk to people who use this method almost exclusively to make sure I’m not making any big errors. I use a lot of methods because I’m most interested in questions. And different questions require different methods. Provided I can get up to speed on that method quickly, I’m happy to deploy it. My peers can decide if I’m expert enough; that’s what the review process is for.
7. On a related note, is it realistic to expect scholars to regularly use mixed-methods in their work, e.g. ethnography + regressions, case comparisons + network analysis? If so, can you discuss some good examples and how they became viable?; if not, could you suggest how barriers to the rigorous use of mixed-method work might be overcome?
I don’t think there’s any reason to demand that scholars regularly use mixed methods, nor is it even necessary to promote it. Most of my favorite papers and books use a single method. The demand should be that work is done well. I think we would do well to think of ourselves as part of a community (which uses many methods). Every piece of work will have bits that could be filled in by other methods that are better at context, causality, external validity, etc. But that’s why we’re part of a scholarly community. Do your part the best you can and rely upon the competence/expertise of those in our community to fill out details different methods are good at filling out. Some people can do this in a single piece, but I think the standards should be on thoroughness given your question, not doing it all. FWIW, I like Mario Small’s Annual Review piece on mixed methodology; I would point interested people there.
8. The story about preppies being served (terrible) steak before parents visited on page 79 of your book is almost identical to a story in chapter 5 of Catcher in the Rye. What do you make of this strangely recurrent incident?
I’m traveling now and don’t have a copy of my book, but if I claimed that students had steak on Fridays during my ethnographic time at the school, then that’s wrong. The only way all students would eat the same thing would be if it were served at “Seated Meals” which were on Tuesdays and Thursdays (other days, there are lots of options, from different entrees to a pasta bar, etc.). However, I suspect that in this passage of the book I am recalling my time as a student at St. Paul’s. I’d ask the questioner to check that (and I will upon my return). If the claim is from my own time, then I stand by it and think it’s right. When I was a student “seated meals” where Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. We had classes on Saturdays, but they were also sports days, and parents typically visited if they were close. It could be that I’ve conflated my own memory with Catcher in the Rye (which I last read in 7th grade). To check I called two classmates from my time and asked them both, “Do you remember what we typically ate for dinner on Fridays at St. Paul’s?” One immediately said, “steak.” Another had no idea and thought it amazing I’d imagine he’d remember. When I brought up why I asked the question, he didn’t recall our having steak on Fridays, but did remind me of something else that happened when I was a student there: shortly before a long holiday weekend the school would serve a special dinner – basically all you can eat lobster. It was astonishing and disgusting (people ate a lot of lobster). That special meal doesn’t happen anymore, just as the steaks don’t. I’d make two points here – first, that this shift fits largely within the argument of the book, of one from entitlement to privilege. Eating steak and lobster isn’t a big distinction embraced by the elite to show how different they are (similar to the clothing point I make in the book). Second (and the more important point that I make in the book), recollections aren’t great data. When I draw upon a recollection, I make that clear to a reader, so they are aware that this is the source of the claim, rather than field notes taken in the moment. I hope that I’ve done that in this case; I’m pretty sure I would have. In most instances I try and confirm my recollections. So, when making claims about how minority students all lived together, I went back through yearbooks – which have pictures of dorms – and confirmed that this was accurate; it was. But I couldn’t do that in every instance. I’ll go back to the school within the year. There are some food service people who have worked there throughout the entire period. I’ll ask them as well.
9. If you ran a gang, which sociologists would you make "Gang Leader for a Day"? And, who is your favorite old school rapper?
If I ran a gang then by definition I’d be its leader. Were I to elevate someone else to be the leader for a day it would be someone who would hate it and happily give power back to me within 24 hours. That would be Adam Reich. But if I had to be in a gang run by a sociologist, I think pick the kingpins Mustafa Emirbayer, Shelley Correll, or Alondra Nelson. Mustafa because we really get along and I’d know where I stand at all times (he also has a fantastic name… something you’d like in a gang leader). Shelley would be West Coast gang leader; Alondra my East Coast. Why? Because if you’re going to be in a gang you better be in a good one. And they get s**t done and would put us all in line. You have to have gang discipline.
Old school rappers? I’d pick EPMD's "Strictly Business", Eric B & Rakim “I know I got Soul”; but really, it has to be Tribe (Q-Tip). How can you beat this? “do dat’ do dat’ doo dat’ dat dat dat”.
10. Why the focus on New York's elite? How does "the elite" of the Northeast compare to "the elite" of the south, or the west? And what implications do these differences have for our understanding of American inequality?
I focus on the New York elite because they tend to be the most dominant American elite (they’re the richest, have disproportionate control over industries like banking), and because I’m near them and can get data about them. If I worked at Berkeley or Stanford or UC-SF, I’d study Silicon Valley elites, and I’d probably write on how they were different from the story I’ve been telling to this point. If I lived in Miami I’d probably study Latin American elites (Miami is often thought of as a “capital of Latin American elites”). If I had moved to London I’d probably focus more on global elites. But as I indicate, I study the New York elite because I can get information about them easily. I’d be happy if other people studied other elites. They’d likely show how some of my arguments are wrong or don’t really apply beyond my case selection. That would be welcome; we’d know more about the elite. I can’t say how the New York elite compare to these other elites, because I haven’t studied it and others haven’t as much either. So I’d just be making it up. But I’d love to know the answer to these questions if others wanted to do the research.
11. You're active on both twitter and on scatterplot, though you post on scatterplot much less frequently than you did a few years ago. What do you find the advantages of being on social media are at your stage in your career, and what advice would you give graduate students, post-docs, or assistant professors about their social media presence?
I wish I could say that I have thought seriously and deliberately about my online presence. But I just haven’t. I do it because I’ve enjoyed it. I stopped writing on scatterplot because I wasn’t enjoying it as much anymore. No doubt I have said some things on scatterplot and twitter that could likely get me into trouble, and I’m probably just lucky that it hasn’t. If you spend a lot of time on social media but aren’t productive it will likely hurt you. If you spend a lot of time on social media and are productive it will may make you more well-known. If you are never on social media I think it will have no impact (positive or negative) on your career. So my advice would be: make sure to actually produce scholastic work. We’re not personalities or pundits. We’re scholars. And remember that anything your post is fodder for your worst enemy to use against you.
12. Do you have any advice that you give to graduate students who seek a job in academia? Any advice for junior professors who mentor graduate students?
You should know that you will have very little choice in where you live, which is weird for a high-skill job, but true. Be okay with that (and make sure your loved ones are too). If you aren’t, don’t go into academia, and develop skills and expertise that employers will want. Successful academics at R1s are people who can spend long stretches of time alone in a room, and not need anyone to tell them what to do or when to get things done. If you can’t do this, or don’t like doing it, don’t try and become an academic sociologist at an R1. R1 academics also have to research and write. If you hate either of these tasks, don’t aim for this job. You shouldn’t sign up for a job where you hate doing the main task of that job. However, there are other kinds of academics than R1 academics. And while R1 people will read non-R1 people as not being as smart, hard working, or good, that’s not necessarily the case. Some people don’t want my job. That’s fine. I absolutely love my job. But it’s not for everyone (and indeed, the vast majority of sociologists don’t do the kind of job that I do). It’s pretty stressful at times, I work long hours, there are silly status games, etc. So, first piece of advice: figure out what kind of work life you want. If that life includes writing, sitting alone in a room, not being about to choose where you live, then being an R1 academic sociologist might be right for you. Second piece of advice: if you’re a grad student at an R1 don’t tell people if you’ve decided you don’t want an R1 job. Faculty will invest less time in you. Finally, research and write about what you’re interested in. It doesn’t have to be your life’s passion (I don’t love elites); it may be even better if it isn’t. But it should be something you like thinking about. Third: find a community, because it’s pretty unlikely there will be one where you work. One of the best things that happened to me as a grad student was that Mitch Duneier had a bunch of grad students to a dinner at ASA. We were all “young ethnographers.” It’s where I met Colin, and lots of other people. We’ve continued the group; it throws a party at ASA each year, though we’re not involved anymore because we’re not “young.” Having that community really helped me. Finally, for junior people who advise grad students: don’t take on too many. Work really closely with a few, rather that casually with a lot. Develop your style of advising through these early relationships.
13. Among political scientists there is the widespread view (re-affirmed by the exposure of Michael Lacour's fraudulent work) that persuasion is HARD and we don't even know if it is even possible to dislodge entrenched, mistaken views with facts. Yet you have done experimental work showing that deliberation (Schneiderhan and Khan 2008, Sociological Theory) can result in people changing their conclusions. Is there a way to reconcile your conclusions with the pessimism of political scientists? Does sociology have anything to offer (in terms of theory or methods) to weigh in on this debate?
I don’t agree that persuasion is hard. Our result is consistent with the political science and psychology literature. You can change people’s positions pretty easily through experimental manipulations. What was surprising in the LaCour finding was that the change in position was enduring after a one-off interaction (I’m ignoring other surprising things like that he made up his data). In a one-time interaction it’s not that surprising that you could influence a subject’s position. What would be surprising is if that one-time contact produces effects several, tens, and even hundreds of days later (which is what the LaCour and Green paper reported). Our design is only interested in the immediate result of a kind of interaction (as we’re trying to simulate voting behavior on a school board, or something like that). In that instance, political scientists and psychologists would not be terribly surprised that a position could change. However, for enduring change I think sociology can offer the basic idea of influence. Information, pressure, different situations, and networks of association will influence individual-level positions. But in the absence of these (information is not further supported, pressure subsides, situations return to normal, associations dissolve), it’s unlikely that the effects will endure. Here the sociological idea would be that individuals don’t so much hold positions, as their positions are a result of a position within a network or situation. Change the situation or network of associations, change the position. In this instance, you’d expect the contact hypothesis to be correct, but only under conditions of sustained interactions. This is what makes the hypothesis so hard to establish. The challenge with in real-world scenarios is that it might not be that contact with LGBT people is driving effects at all, instead people who are likely to choose to have sustained contact with LGBT people are more likely to also change their minds on the issue of gay marriage. It’s not contact, it’s the characteristic of being someone who is likely to have contact. This is why the experimental design is so important. What sociologists can offer here is a theory of social influence that will help political scientist model the effects of contact on political attitudes.
14. You obviously got the sort of job that most of the graduate students on the board salivate over. I've heard two things: 1) that you went on the job market before your advisers recommended, and 2) that your job market talk in particular (after you were qualified enough to get invited for job talks in the first place) were particularly good. As a qualitative researcher, what do you think you did particularly well that got you multiple interviews at top schools? What about your job talk do you think made it particularly well received (having seen now many job talks at both Wisconsin and Columbia)? Now that you're on the other side of things, when would you tell your student not to go on the job market?
I went on the market in 2006. I started at Columbia in 2007; I had one chapter of my dissertation written, and wrote the entire document my first year at Columbia (so I technically started as an assistant professor in 2008, after I got my PhD). That’s unheard of now, and really not possible. For personal reasons I wanted to get out of Madison and move to a big city. I realized I was taking a risk. But I didn’t care. At the time the market was strong – Columbia interviewed three people (me, Shedd, Fox), and gave offers to all of us. I had an offer from another school I interviewed at; I’d only applied to about 10 schools, since I was on the market selectively. You can’t use my experience as a model, because it’s so lucky and exceptional and conditioned on a moment that doesn’t exist anymore. But I can give some advice on talks. Twelve points of advice:
First, teach. Teaching helps you figure out your style of conveying information to others. I taught an enormous amount at Wisconsin. I TAed two separate classes where I had 20 students in 5 different sections; each section met once a week and I had to present material in it. I taught my own intro class twice, and in my last two years I taught two methods classes each semester. No one is good at giving talks. We all have to practice. Teaching is that practice. Take it seriously and develop comfort and a style. Second, stop with the lit review. Talks are not mini papers. 20% of the time should not be spent in the beginning reviewing the literature. Give us a puzzle. Tell us what’s relevant to what you’re going to say (literature), then get to the data. If you haven’t gotten to the data within 10 minutes, it’s a bad talk. Third: you don’t have to cover everything. Sometimes you can hold things back that you know people will ask about that you can address in Q&A and look really smart. You can’t completely convey a 10,000 paper in 45 minutes. Don’t try. Fourth: if you can, start with a story. Chuck Tilly’s writings were great at doing this. But if you can encapsulate your overall idea with a single story, do it. It will hook people in. Make sure that as you frame your talk you do so as an issue in the world rather than an issue in the literature. No one cares that much about an issue in the literature. Everyone should care about an issue in the world. Fifth: don’t limit yourself to the journal article format. You can discuss literature during your data presentation. Sometimes it’s easier and more natural that way. Sixth: don’t put too much text on power point. I don’t use power point in my teaching, and I only use it for pictures or data output for my lectures. If people start reading your slides they stop listening to you. Seventh: you don’t have to memorize your talk, or pretend like you’re giving a TED talk. If you’re most comfortable reading your talk, do that. Some of the best talks I’ve seen have been read. Present the talk in the way that you’re most comfortable. The point is to convey information, not to adhere to a silly form or impress people with a multimedia extravaganza. Eighth: don’t just prepare a talk. Prepare a Q&A (spend at least 1/3 of your prep time on this). You can predict 85% of the questions you’ll get. So write out answers to them. If you give practice talks, keep notes on the questions asked; you’ll quickly see trends. For the 15% of questions that are just way out of left field, respond to major nouns and provide an answer that you’ve prepped. You can, in your answer, re-articulate the question in a way that maybe the person didn’t ask, but in a way that makes sense to you and that you have an answer to. Ninth: Control the room. Don’t ask someone, “did I answer your question?” if you’re worried you didn’t. Especially if you know you don’t have a great answer. Instead, as soon as you finish the answer, move immediately to the next question, calling on someone who had their hand up. Tenth: Take your time. It’s fine to consider an answer to a question. Use things as a prop here to help you. Take a long sip of water. Walk around, and then back to the podium to write something down. Eleventh: Make sure you have moments that satisfy the listener who knows nothing about your topic, as well as the expert. Everyone likes learning something; give them information that’s new and interesting and make it clear why. For the expert, nod to the specifically unique thing you’re doing within your field. This is hard, and takes practice – make sure to give your talk to the uninitiated and expert for this reason. Finally: don’t pretend to be something you’re not. My work is not a definitive description of the cultural transformation tied to the shifting character of the 1%. Overly grandiose framing can kill you. Be honest and clear about the kind of work you do, and scholar you are.
15. Is it true that Columbia faculty members don't get along and that there are factions? If so, how have you navigated them? What can be generalized in terms of "office politics" to other similar departments?
I like all my colleagues and for the most part my colleagues really get along. There has been an obvious very public contentious event in my department, but it’s rather old news now and I think relatively isolated. I don’t get the rep the department has. We don’t all have dinner with one another all the time; we’re not a family and there aren’t big pressures to socialize with one another. But I like that. I love my job. But it’s also my job, and I like having a life outside it. Overall, I think we’re a really great department to be in. I’m really happy at Columbia. And I think most of my colleagues are too. This is going to sound silly, but my strategy has been simple: be competent, helpful, and nice. So when I’m asked to be on a committee, I do my job. If there’s an issue in the department that I can help address by making a small adjustment that doesn’t really bother me, I do it. And I say hi to people, ask them how they are, remember basic things about their lives and families, and periodically ask about those things. If I notice that someone published something, I congratulate them. I read my colleagues’ work and mention that. People like to know that their colleagues actually engage with their ideas. It’s worth doing on its own, but also it helps create community. Especially as a young scholar, try not to gossip about your colleagues. And don’t constantly bring up how your grad program did things differently and maybe your new department should emulate them (that will piss people off). It’s a good idea to find someone you can trust to get back-stories from. And to have someone outside the department both in your university and not there who you can talk to about department politics. Finally, your department will like you if you are productive. It’s a silly thing to say, but here’s my advice: be productive. But if I had a choice between chit-chatting with my colleagues and getting my work done, I’d pick my work 9 times out of 10. Because in the end, your colleagues will like to be at a place where people are professionally successful. It reflects well on them. Don’t think that professional success and departmental culture are completely unrelated. Indeed, some of the most contentious places are places where sub-sections of the department are frustrated that others aren’t pulling their scholarly/service weight. Pull yours with a smile, and you’ll be fine.
16. You wrote a pretty pointed critique of some pretty big names in sociology with Colin Jerolmack, and you both published it as junior scholars. How did you navigate this, were there any repercussions, and what advice would you give to junior scholars who are considering doing something like this (there have been questions about whether and how to do this with grace on this board)?
Well, there were definitely repercussions. If you read Chris Winship’s editorial letter you’ll get a sense of it: http://smr.sagepub.com/content/43/2.toc But basically some demanded the paper be retracted even though it went into peer review, lobbied others not to respond, and held up the publication for over a year. I made my department aware of this because I was concerned about the impartiality of a tenure review. It was stressful. That said, it also helped me more than hurt me. The paper was never a “secret” paper. The person the paper is probably the most critical of, Al Young, was in fact the most gracious and generous with us. He responded in a way that made me deeply admire him; I told him that his response was a model of what I’d like to see in scholars… one I aspire to but am not sure I’d achieve. In “handling” writing a paper like this we sent a copy of the paper to people who we were critical of (both during the writing process and after it was accepted). Some complained of how we portrayed their work. In one instance we actually re-wrote bits of the paper after it acceptance to be more precise because we thought the complaints had some justification. Others asked that we remove references/citations to their work because it was unnecessary for the argument. This seemed silly and we refused to do so. Steve Vaisey disagrees with the paper, we sent him several versions along the way. I don’t think he’s any happier with the final result (and you can read his response, and our response to him as well in the link above). But the exchange with Steve was productive, I think. My advice to junior scholars would be: make an argument you believe in. We should never publish something that’s wrong because we think we might get it by reviewers, or something we don’t want to stand firmly behind (at least at the time of publication – we can change our minds). I believe strongly in that paper (still do). It made some people mad. But as my advisor once told me, “If you’re not making a few enemies in this business, you’re doing something wrong.”
17. You write a lot. But not a lot in journals. Looking at your CV you have 11 journal articles, but 42 other kinds of writings, like op-eds, review essays, book reviews, book chapters. This doesn't count your book, or your edited book, or your two forthcoming books. I'm curious what your strategy is for your career. I've always been told to focus on journal articles. You've obviously written a lot. 55 things since PhD in 2008 by my count, which is about 8 things a year. But a lot of it is what people are usually told is "wasted" work. Like book chapters or review essays. Why do you choose to write these kinds of things? Do you have career strategy? Did you have one to get tenure? What was it?
My aim is to publish about 1 article a year. I always gather my own data (which I wouldn’t advise), and that makes publishing a lot slower. But to be honest, I don’t think I’m under-productive. 11 articles in 7 years isn’t so bad; it’s a little more than 1.5 articles a year. If I keep that pace I’ll probably write 60 some articles in my career. I’m totally happy with that. I figure I’ll write a book every 7 years or so (not including edited books); so that will be about 6 “real” books. But you’re right, I write a lot elsewhere. 8 published pieces a year might be too much writing outside of journals, if only 1.5 are in journals. I don’t really have a strategy. Writing outside of journals has one big advantage: you are writing. I think our job is to write, write, write. I am not a naturally gifted writer; almost no one is. You have to practice. Writing a lot means you get better and better at your craft. I also like working in different mediums. Shorter, medium, and longer formats. Each require you to develop a different skill. Finally, my editors at the New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time Magazine have all enraged me with their meddling with my texts. But in the end, they’ve made me better at writing. Having different kinds of eyes on the substance and style of your arguments is helpful for developing your voice. And these places allow me to reach millions of people – something my scholarly work will never do. I like that. So why do I do it? It’s a chance to write more, to work out ideas in less scholastically demanding contexts, and to reach a broad audience. And contrary to what the question implies, I don’t think it has crushed my productivity!
18. Most of your study population for Privilege was minors. Given that consent in the field is considered an ongoing process, how did you manage consent with a minor population who were living apart from their parents? That is, did you have to contact parents more than once via letter or otherwise to ascertain consent, or were the students given a certain level of autonomy over their decision to be included? Were there significant IRB roadblocks for this or other elements of the study site?
The school functions in loco parentis. So I got permission from the school. I went through Wisconsin’s social science IRB initially and was rejected. So I then went to talk to them. They advised me to go through the Education School IRB, since they’d be more experienced with that kind of stuff. I did. Since I was observe “standard educational practice” I was able to have a pretty easy time of the IRB. Students were given complete autonomy in their decision to be part of the study. The problem was that pretty much every student didn’t know the implications of what I was doing. They were 14-18 and had no real sense of research. So I worked a lot with the school. Initially I met with the director of health services, the dean of students, dean of faculty, and the second in command at the school. I gave them a copy of my dissertation proposal, were I outlined my theories and methods. I tried to explain it to them as clearly as possible, and outline the risks. I was in constant contact with the administration about what I was doing. They never expressed any concerns. The responsibility really fell to them to protect the interests of the students. Few students avoided me. However, some faculty did. I don’t know if that’s because they didn’t want to be included or what. For those interested, I had the school sign a letter indicating they knew what I was up to. You can see it here. I would suggest that if you work with institutions you do something like this. Although were I to do it again, I would have a lawyer review the letter (I wrote this one myself).
19 .Three sociologists walk into a bar. How does this joke end?
I showed this to PB. We basically had the same answer.
Mine: The sociologists walk into a bar… they ignore all the activity around them and focus on each other.
Peter’s: Three sociologists walk into a bar... the first says, "we don't belong here, these people are having fun, deep thoughts, emotional storms, etc". The second says, right. The third says, right. They leave and read smjr.
The best comedy is also tragedy.
You can pick your favorite.