Institutionalization and the wire

HBO broadcast the season 4 finale of The Wire last night. You can't come away from watching this series without a profound appreciation for the power of institutions and institutionalization. Without going into too much detail (inorder to avoid spoilers), the Wire develops several intertwined plot-lines. Beginning with the West Baltimore Maryland drug trade, we meet several players (ranging from school kids who are just starting to sort themselves into the corner-boy network, to soldiers who are active in the trade, the middle managers who run a crew and are responsible for a package, to the upper managers who battle for marketshare and turf.

We also see agents embedded in the agencies and institutions that interact with these people. The foil to the drug enterprise is the Baltimore Police department generally, and the Homicide, Narcotics, and Major Crimes units within it particularly, as well as several characters who are line agents in the Western District. The show introduces characters at every level of the bureaucracy. One of the most effective things about this show is that the respective bureaucracies also function as characters. For instance, the major crimes unit is up on a wire tap on a drug crew, but are forced to end their investigation because of an administratively defined deadline and changing priorities from the top. We see homicide detectives knowingly accept a questionable confession because they need the clearance for their monthly stats.

This season the show also introduced the Baltimore Public School system as an institutional actor, where two former police officers have become teachers. This dimension of the plot development shows us how one institution is really embedded in a network of others. The teachers are forced to adjust their lesson plans to teach a standardized test that appears to bear little relevance in their students' lives. But without the test scores, the district loses state funding.

The finale powerfully illustrated the limitations of human agency in an institutional world by focusing on 4 kids from the school. We see a detective frantically trying to prevent a 13 year-old boy, who is labeled a snitch by his peers, from being placed in a group home (where he likely to be beaten or worse); three others are drawn to the streets (for different reasons) despite aptitude and the best efforts of adults seeking to make a difference in their lives. Perhaps the most heartbreaking of the three is a boy who was socially promoted to the 9th grade and decides to work on a corner crew than leave his friends (and protectors) in the 8th.

Mary Douglas wrote some twenty years ago about "how institutions think." The Wire may be one of the clearest examples of this principle on display in contemporary entertainment. The writers finished this season with a clear open plotline to the next and I look forward to seeing where they go with this in a year's time.

Hidden blessings in the academic labor market

3 years ago I eagerly waited by the phone to hear from potential employers. I had just returned from my 3rd campus interview and the working conditions at my current job were rapidly deteriorating. A good friend (who reads the blog) called me into her office one morning to tell me that I wouldn't be offered the job I was expecting. A friend of hers had already been hired. [This department never extended the common courtesy of a letter indicating that the position had been filled].

Well, it now appears that I am quite lucky not to be at that institution. As I sit in a spacious office and interact with friendly colleagues whose company I genuinely enjoy, I offer a word of thanks to the job-market gods. I didn't interview at WVU until April (after losing out on four jobs, and turning down two other offers). Had an offer come from that first institution, I would have accepted it only to later find myself at in institution that's imploding. Though I was disappointed and worried through that long period, things have worked out for the best.

Timidity and the text message

On the first day of the semester, I notify students that I'm generally tolerant of classroom behavior. I don't take it personally when someone falls asleep (I teach at 8:30 a.m., and 4:00 p.m.; often in inadequately lit rooms), when someone needs to leave early, or even if they need to whisper to a neighbor to catch something they just missed. I will publicly embarrass students for two classroom behaviors:

(1) Reading the newspaper during my class

(2) Sending Text Messages¹

The WVU student newspaper is distributed across campus before the first class. At the end of the day, you can find these papers strewn all over campus (which also is an irritant to me). I'd like to believe that what I have to say in a lecture, of what the class has to do in an activity, is more valuable (at least for the student's grade in my class) than what the entertainment editor thinks of Borat.

Generally, my pet peeves are well known. I tell the students on the first day of class that this is an ego thing for me [might as well be upfront about it]. I don't require attendance. If you're reading the paper, symbolically you are telling me that I'm wasting your time. This leads me into a cycle of self-loathing and despair. Frankly, I'd rather you just not come to class. By and large my students are fairly respectful of me. I rarely see paper reading.

Last year, I noticed several students (always students in the back) fiddling with their phone through an entire class. I realized that they're text-messaging. This pushes all the same buttons for me.

Today, I embarrassed a student for texting. But I did so timidly. Looking at the board, I said: "I hope people aren't writing text-messages in my class." In hindsight, I wish I would have walked back to where this scholar was sitting and asked him to stop directly. Oh well, it its not texting, I'm sure it will be something else.


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1. I would add "talking on the phone" to this list but as yet nobody has had the audacity to try that. I'm sure that will change sometime soon. Last month at the Criminology meetings, during a plenary session, two prominent criminologists answered their phones during the talk. One guy talked for a few minutes leading the guy next to him to start swearing... The crim meetings are a freaking hoot.

Could blogs replace the primary function of journals?

Yeah a naive question... but that's what I do.

Brad Wright is writing a series of posts on statistics and Christianity. He's currently focusing on variation in divorce rates across types of religious adherents. In the first data post (linked above) he uses General Social Survey data to show that folks who are actively religious are less likely to have ever been divorced than those whom have never been religious, or have stopped. His data are below:

Divorce rates by religious affiliation & attendance. General Social Survey, 2000, 2002, 2004 (N= 5,963)

58% Non-active Black Protestants
54% Non-active Evangelicals
51% No religious beliefs (e.g., atheists, agnostics)
48% Non-active other religions
47% Active Black Protestants
43% Average for all sample members
42% Non-active Mainline Protestants
41% Non-active Catholics
39% Jewish
38% Active other religions
34% Active Evangelicals
32% Active Mainline Protestants
23% Active Catholics

There's a causal time-order nit to pick with this analysis in that the GSS does not allow us to determine when a divorce occurred in the respondent's life course (e.g., before or after a religious conversion)... but the results are compelling none-the-less. These percentages diverge from the received wisdom that Evangelical Christians divorce at the same rate as everyone else (a received wisdom that I've cited in a Soc of Religion paper that was rejected 6 years ago and still sits in my file drawer begging for revision).

Now obviously this analysis is preliminary and tentative. But by posting this on his blog along with references to how he coded the data, Brad has invited folks to examine and comment. I believe that this is essentially what journals were designed to do before the days of publish or perish. They provided a forum for a scholar to work out an idea and let others comment (as they are). This is the way science should operate.

I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of my heros

This is my public apology for a momentary lapse of judgment leading to my unwitting support of an evil empire.

All is back to normal now... as you were.

that is all.

The utility of the ASR

The small sociological blogosophere has been stirred up lately over the Journal impact factors.¹ [I can hear the collective yawn of those readers who are not sociologists; I'm afraid to say this will not get any more interesting to you]. Within Sociology, three journals have historically been considered the big three.

1. The American Sociological Review.
2. The American Journal of Sociology.
3. Social Forces.

Jeremy kicked off a bruhaha by calling attention to the relatively low factor assigned to Social Forces. Now I could care less about these impact factors; generally these journals don't publish the kinds of work that I do. But in the the long thread of comments to these posts several people put forth assertions concerning what constitutes "good sociology" that has me thinking. The ideas to follow are provisional and incomplete, but I think there is something important to be said about methodological discourse within Sociology. I'm starting to write a working-paper on this, so I welcome constructive comments.²

In this post, I wish to focus on one key question:
Does ASR truly reflect the cutting edge of sociology?

Several comments in Jeremy's thread got me thinking about the value of ASR. First, the infamous assertion made by anonymous at 2:37 a.m.

they like to publish boring articles that only other sociologists care about ...public has no use for most of the rubbish printed in "the big three", but every once in a while a study relevant to public will be printed.... Minimal publication of qualitative findings and impression management that sociology is a "hard science" by printing numerous formulas that researcher got from the latest (spss, stata, sas) manual.

This commenter (correctly in my view) was taken to task for sweeping generalizations. However nestled inside the invective is a point worth considering... is the ASR relevant? A subsequent comment on thread suggests it is ignorant to even ask such a question. Well, in my view, the best way to pierce ignorance is through empirical investigation... so let the examination begin.

I have to admit, my knee jerk reaction to that question is no, the ASR has not been relevant (to general public OR general sociology) for a long time. I polled my colleagues and found only one reads the ASR with any regularity and that person said that s/he doesn't find much of practical use for his/her own work.³ A senior colleague told me that s/he toys with the idea of running a call for papers on "When did the ASR become unreadable and what should we do about it".

However, I had to acknowledge that my knee-jerk reaction is also anchored in ignorance. As a tenure-track person, my reading time is spent on stuff directly related to my research program. And though I work in a mainstream area of Sociology (Criminology and Social Control) this area of work is not proportionally represented in ASR (or so I assumed).⁴ I started going through this calendar year's issues of ASR. I brought two with me (the top two on my stack): (vol 71, Number 5, October 2006 & vol 71, Number 1, February 2006).
Here are the titles from Feburary's issue {71(1)}

1. Comparative Perspectives and Competing Explanations: Taking on the Newly Configured Reductionist Challenge to Society, by Troy Duster, NYU (2005 Presidential Address)
   
2. Widowhood and Race by Felix Elwert & Nicholas A. Christakis, Harvard
   
3. Networks, Race, and Hiring by Roberto M. Fernandez (MIT Sloan School of Management) & Isabel Fernandez-Mateo (London Business School)
   
4. Wealth, Race, and Inter-Neighborhod Migration by Kyle Crowder (Western Washington University), Scott J. South (SUNY Albany), & Erick Chavez (SUNY Albany).
   
5. Deterring Delinquents: A Rational Choice Model of Theft and Violence By Ross L. Matsueda (University of Washington), Derek A. Kreager (University of Washington) and David Huizinga (University of Colorado)
   
6. liBlack and White Control of Numbers Gambling: A Cultural Assets-Social Capital View, by Darrell Steffensmeir & Jeffery T. Ulmer, Penn State. ** Followed by a comment and reply which I don't address here.

So among the empirical papers in the first issue of 2006 (not counting Duster) we see two papers addressing demographic concerns (Elwert & Christakis; Crowder et al), two papers on networks and opportunity structures (Fernandez & Fernandez-Mateo; Steffensmeier & Ulmter) and a paper addressing rational-choice behavior (Matsueda et al).

Are these papers important and relevant?

Having only read the papers superficially, I answer in the affirmative.

Elwert & Christakis explore the widowhood effect (that one's probability of death increases significantly upon the death of one's spouse). Using an enormous dataset (n=410,272) they demonstrate that the bereavement effect varies by race.

"Whites married to whites suffer a large and enduring widowhood effect. By Contrast, blacks married to blacks do not suffer a detectable widowhood effect, possibly because they manage to extend the survival advantage of marriage into widowhood (pg 16)."

This on its face strikes me as incredibly useful and relevant. Unfortunately, as I read the article, I'm lost on the take-home point. (e.g., what would make this paper relevant for non-sociologists). The bulk of the article focuses on measurement and modeling. They offer a useful conjectures in the discussion that the lack of a bereavement effect among b/b couples:

On one hand, blacks may not experience a widowhood effect because, unlike whites, they never gained survival advantages from marriage in the first place. On the other hand, blacks may have gained survival advantages from marriage, but unlike whites, manage to extend this marital survival advantage into widowhood (pg 36)."

They lack the data to directly determine which alternative is correct, but deduce the latter. In this regard, the paper is limited by logico-deductive model. That is, while they make a compelling argument through reason and deduction, at the end of the day their conclusion is essentially an educated guess (conjecture) which requires further refutation and testing (falsification). [Which is not to say its wrong... but the problem could be approached inductively, to paraphrase Mitch Dunier...to use shoe leather... to go and talk to people who have lost their spouses and see what the common (or uncommon) coping mechanisms are (not that I want to get into the Dunier can of worms right now, I'll post on that squabble later)].

Crowder et al analyze Panel Study of Income Dynamics data merged with census track data to estimate "modest effects of wealth on these patterns of inter-neighborhood migration (pg 72)." The topic in and of itself is interesting and relevant (what factors perpetuate segregation or facilitate migration). But unlike the previous article, I don't find this paper terribly interesting or useful.... Whereas Elwert & Christakis got me thinking about their conclusions, after skimming this paper, my reaction was... that's it? I'm not sure what's really new here. [The authors would say that they've uncovered some nuances in the effects of wealth by race....great, I'm just not convinced that this is something that I should encourage my students to read. Having just criticized it, I do think this paper is refreshing for an ASR empirical piece in that its methods are generally comprehendable to anyone with a basic grasp of regression analysis (OLS and Logistic models). In contrast Elwert & Christakis develop a statistical argument that is much harder to follow.

I'm going to close out this post for now without really answering my own question. The short answer is that yes, the ASR has utility. But the new question is: utility for what? Provisionally, I think the ASR is useful in that it brings together papers from across the discipline that (are supposed to) say something we all (sociologists) need to think about. In the two paper that I reviewed in this post (not that I read either really carefully... apologies in advance if one of the authors stumbles by) one got me thinking while the other didn't. Thus, I need to revise my kneejerk reaction to the ASR. But these thoughts are still forming.

Perhaps I'll start a series of posts on ASR articles, if nothing else to think about the arguments and evidence more carefully.

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1. The impact factor is a proprietary measure from ISI web of science. It is designed to measure how much influence (through citation networks) a particular journal has. For the interested, see Dan Myers' comment on a long (and somewhat contentious) on Jeremy's initial thread.

2. Not that I get the kind of traffic that Jeremy gets, but to anyone who finds me through his sidebar, I'd really like to keep the commentary constructive on this topic. If you think my argument is off, tell me so! But please explain why and share an alternative.

3. Sorry for the clunky his/her anonymity. Since I publicly identify who I am and where I work and haven't asked these people if they want their views known, I am covering their identities.

4. I believe this claim can be empirically validated. However, given that two papers in the first ASR I canvass below are related to Criminology, I will reserve the right to correct myself at a later date.

Jock Young on the State of Criminology

I just returned from a 3 day visit to Los Angeles for the American Society of Criminology meeting. I enjoy the ASC (much more than the American Sociological Association meetings). The highlight of this year's meeting for me was listening to Jock Young deliver a stinging criticism of the discipline's abstracted empiricism (taken from C. Wright Mills, "where precision is mistaken for truth").

The real irony of the ASC is that so few of these people know any criminology!

He correctly (imho) criticizes mainstream U.S. style criminology as a all method and no substance. One takes data that he or she didn't collect and builds mathematical models to test theories that he or she did not develop. This leads to reificiation of existing theory, uncritical reliance on linear model methods, and uninteresting questions.

He also took swipes at Travis Hirschi, Criminology the journal, and Albert Blumstein. While some of it was more mean-spirited than I generally like, it was refreshing and different.

Jon Trott on Jesus Camp

I plan to work up a post on Jesus Camp as soon as the movie finds its way here to Morgantown. In the interim, for anyone interested, I suggest you check out Jon Trott's commentary.

I consider Mr. Trot to be one of the few evangelicals visible in the public sphere who is still worthy of my trust. Jon was part of a team of journalists from JPUSA (Jesus People USA) a common-purse christian community who published Cornerstone Magazine. In 1992, Trott and Mike Hertenstein wrote a long expose piece on Christian commedian Mike Warnke. This material was eventually compiled into a book. I grew up listening to Mike Warnke's testimony and accepting hook, line, and sinker. Trott and Hertenstein called shenanigans on Warnke's largely mythical back-story and called him to accountability.

The Cornerstone expose was published at a time when my cynicism about evangelical Christianity was at an all time high. It was a relief to me to find self-proclaimed Christians who took their faith seriously, while refusing to check their intellect at the church door.

Anyway, I found Trott's blog while doing some google-stalking of Mike Warnke. Mr. Warnke is back... he did a show here in Morgantown a few weeks ago (at a church with about 20 people present... a far cry from the arenas of thousands he used to perform in front of).

Toothless in Miami

By now most people have seen the ugly incident between the University of Miami and Florida Atlantic's football squads. If you haven't seen it, the youtube stream is available below. (Warning it is violent).



Others have already pontificated on the lack of an appropriate response by the NCAA, the Atlantic Coast Conference, or the respective (using that term loosely) universities. While the violence on the field is disturbing (criminal actually; at least two of the players on that field should have been charged with aggravated assualt) equally troublesome is the way in which Miami President (and fellow Maxwell School alum) Donna Shalala spun and soft-pedaled the incident.

The University of Miami simply will not tolerate or condone this type of behavior. Period. We expect the best from our students. Indeed we hold all of them to a high standard of personal conduct.

The one bright light is that the thousands of students from both institutions who attended the game behaved in exemplary fashion and kept their seats and their heads.

Of course, "not tolerating or condoning this type of behavior" does not go so far as to take away scholarships, or fire coaches and althletic directors. And hey, there were a few people there who did not commit aggravated assault; we should celebrate their conformity with acceptable comportment and committment to civil decency.

Of course Shalala is not going to be too critical. The Univerity of Miami (as is also the case for my employer) generates massive revenue from intercollegiate athletics. And in Miami's case (which is not true for my employer) the Huricane Mystic and Swagger is part of the marketing jugernaught. This behavior brings them coverage, revenue, and recruits.

We have a problem with elite college athletics. I acknowledge this with no small degree of cognitive dissonance as I love sports generally and college football in particular. But something is way out of wack.

Brent Musburger's pie hole (a rant for noone in particular)

I watch a lot of college football (some might say too much). Typically, I tune out the banter of the commentators. While some of them draw my attention to interesting strategic aspects of the game (such as Bob Davie and Mike Gottfried) most just fill air with the obvious (Brent Musburger & John Maddden {in the NFL}) .

But last night as I watched an obviously overmatched Penn State team struggle against Michigan, I caught a couple of comments by Musburger that flabergasted me. This man has been doing football play-by-play for more than 30 years. I have to think that in that time-span he'd pick-up some of the canonical rules of game management.

For instance, Penn State scored a touchdown with 3:30 left in the game, drawing them within 7. Musburger, ratchets up the drama: "folks, get ready for an onside kick..." What? There is 3:30 left in the game and Penn State has all its time-outs. If wikipedia is to believed, onside kicks only work about 23% of the time. That means that with that much time left on the clock, trying an onside kick will likely give Michigan the ball at the 50 yardline. Even if Penn State were to stop the Wolverines, a punt would give them the ball back inside their 20. Given how poorly Penn State's offense was faring against Michigan, the onside kick gives them little chance to win as they would have to cover 80 yards or more.

But Penn State's defense was playing fairly well. Kicking it deep, stopping the run, and using time-outs is the smartest strategy. In the best case scenario, Penn State gets the ball back close to the 50. There they have a chance to work some corner routes and possibly get into the end-zone. [Though we all knew that the odds were against them].

In the end Penn State did the right thing and kicked it deep. Unfortunately, Michigan's rushing attack was too strong and they worked the ball up to the 40 before having to punt with about a minute left. Penn State's last ditch effort came up short.

Now, what I just described makes sense to someone who pays attention to football strategy. Why in the world would Musburger make such a comment? Can he really be that clueless to basic principles of strategy? Bob Davie (the color commentator who usually focuses on strategy) tried to point this out, but Musberger said: "Yeah, but Bob, they need to give themselves a chance."

Musberger had another idiotic comment about a hit on the Penn State quarterback being unnecessary. Even Kirk Herbstreit told him it was a good hit....

Oy, I'm not sure why I'm even commenting on this. Maybe I should quit my job and go into commentating.

Jericho ... I want my money back

So its the new TV season. And though I shouldn't watch TV until I get tenure, thanks to TIVO I have hours of entertainment waiting for me when I return home each night. I started watching a new series on CBS called Jericho. The premise is engaging enough: how does a small town pull together in the face of nuclear fall out. The pilot episode, despite some crappy writing, held me with the plot development. There are several mysterious characters who appear to possess interesting back stories (Ala Lost); the premise of survival in a post apocalyptic heartland also has promise.

However, in watching the second episode last night, I've concluded the show's liabilities outweigh its advantages. The same characters with mysterious and intriguing back stories are superhuman. One lead character, apparently on the outs with his family for not growing up, performed a tracheotomy on an 8 year-old in anaphlaxis (after sustaining a head injury and deep flesh wound to his thigh); then he fixed a school bus and drove it back to town (fighting to stay conscious the whole way) returning a group of stranded elementary school children to their parents. Then he climbed on top of a hospital to see the waves of oncoming nuclear rain; then he helped evacuate the hospital to a salt-mine, where he wired dynamite to seal the mine closed to protect the citizens from radiation. But before he sealed himself in with them (making arrangements with his brother to get them dug out later, of course) he heard a distress call from a former love interest who was abducted by escaped felons posing as sheriff's deputies...... puke....

The writing is terrible, the characters are cliched, and the show (only in episode 2) is already stumbling towards cancellation.

Wondering if I was the only one to feel this way, I checked the Internet for reviews. Apparently, I am smoking crack. TV critic Rachel Thomas writes answers the burning question: Is it worth your precious viewing time?

Absolutely! Jericho delivers that "what if" factor in a very real and poignant way. The pilot episode beautifully sets up the foundational history of the main characters. As the events unfolded, I couldn't help but feel the emotions of each of the characters and often wondered how I and those around me would react if a nuclear mushroom was spotted off in the distance. After one episode, I was hooked and am anxiously awaiting to see how this little town survives the unthinkable.

I can almost give Ms. Thomas a pass because her review stops with the pilot. But Brian Tallerico of the UnderGroundOnline review writes:

the second episode ("Fallout") is actually stronger than the premiere, feeling more confident and settled in its tone. Both episodes occasionally fall into a bit too much melodrama...

Stronger???, oy.

This is why I don't listen to TV critics. Anyway, I'm going to give the show one more episode before I delete my DVR pass to it. Maybe they can surprise me; but I suspect that this show will only last one season.

Stay tuned for reviews of Kidnapped, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and the latest installment of the best show on TV, HBO's the Wire.

More jesus camp...

I'm going to work up a substantive post about the new Documentary on Jesus Camp. However, I think this documentary and the discourse that's swirling around it is ultimately counter-productive. Yes, there is an evangelical subculture; but this jesus camp is not in any way, shape, or form, representative of it.

The ABC News clip provided below references the massive "evangelical subculture" and its growing collection of institutions, cultural objects, and celebrity figures, as if this were a new thing. That just shows that the news media is beginning another discovery cycle of the evangelical subculture. In reality, this subculture has been part of the mainstream society for at least 30 years. At one point in time this was my dissertation focus; why that crashed and burned is subject of another post.

Incidently, one of the more irritating things in the news clip is the interview with the author Lauren Sandler (described as a secular liberal feminist who says:

Voice Over: She says the evangelical youth movement will have a negative impact on this country's future because even the most moderate young evangelicals are inflexible on issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

Sandler: It's an absolute, straight up, us-against-them. You're with us, or you're against us.

Uh.. you mean like the [ fill in your group here ] rights movement? The thing that frustrates me to no end about any social movement is this artifically sustained us-against-them mentality. If you strip out the substance and just look at the rhetorical style, there's very little difference between an abortion rights activist and an anti-abortion activist. And to call attention to this pisses people off. You can't reason with true-believers. That's the true shame here.

Anyway, check out the ABC news story for yourself.

Welcome to my childhood

This movie makes me cringe:



updated: I changed the embedded film to a youtube stream, so it will stop running automatically.

One of the reasons I like reading Radley Balko

We share good taste in television entertainment. He likes the Wire.

Proof that there is no hope

I just spent the last hour clicking through random blogrolls (I still don't know how to do that myself; if a visitor knows how to setup blogrolling please feel free to enlighten me via the comments, or an email: cjcolyer gmail com ). I started with a post at Althouse, which is yet another continuation of breast-gate. I started reading the comments and became increasingly disappointed in the quality of discourse.

For instance, from Ms. Althouse herself:

What vicious people, eh? I love the way to go out of their way to exclude, eject, and distance people who they might persuade, but this is absolutely standard treatment by the left side of the blogosphere. I have to try to resist opposing their positions because I find them so distasteful. It's anti-persuasion going on over there.

From where I see the world, neither side of the blogosphere is particularly well behaved. Althouse and (more so) her commenters learn hard to the right. But vicious, exclusive, divisive characterizations of the otherside are certainly not restricted to the left.

You can find plenty of anti-persuasion going on in the comments of right-leaning political blogs such as Althouse, the Volkh Conspiracy, or Professor Bainbridge. If you strip out the direction of the contempt, its structure is indistinguishable from what you might read at Daily Kos, or Crooked Timber. [Note, I say comments. I find Bainbridge and the primary contributors at Crooked Timber to be be intelligent contributors to discourse (but hold a lesser opinion of the Volkh contributors or KOS).]

As I read through these posts, I was reminded how empty this echo-chambers is. Most of the commentary was snarky in-group bully behavior. Certainly we can do better than this? Perhaps I'm just sensitive to (and frightened by) the rhetoric of true believers. I lost my enthusiasm for leftist activism in graduate school but am not willing to cross over to the overly-simplistic conception of the world we tend to see on the right. (Yeah, that was probably an overly-simplistic criticism; I'm tired sue me.... I'll write a post sometime about my thoughts on conservatism).

I'm stopping now and am going to go read a book or something.

Note: in the unlikely event that Althouse wanders over to my little corner of the internet, I am not calling attention to her for the purpose of character assassination. Her blog is one of 10 that I check daily and though I don't often agree (in fact, I find her style of argumentation frustrating), I typically learn something.

A short post on breastgate

Too much of my yesterday was devoted to reading the fascinating if goofy discourse around some feminist blogger, who posed for a picture in front of Bill Clinton, apparently so that we can see that she has *gasp* breasts (note, start with the link from Bitch PhD above and then follow the click-throughs).

I won't comment on any of substance (not that there's much of that in any of these posts). But today I stumbled across Jonathan Swift, a blogger who is hysterical!

My favorite part of his commentary on breastgate focuses on Ann Althouse's argument that feminists should have nothing to do with Bill Clinton:

Conservatives were justifiably outraged when it was revealed that Clinton was only the second President in history known to have sex while in office (John Kennedy being the first) and that he got away with it. Everyone knows that our best Presidents have been those who successfully repress their sex drive into more constructive things like tax cuts and military action.

Read the whole thing for a treat in wit and sarcasm. [Especially you, Felicia.]

Why is this woman smiling?

This morning's Corning Leader,

the paper's leadstory is concerned with a man-hunt for a prisoner who escaped from the Erie County Correctional Center several weeks ago. He is armed and extremely dangerous (having shot three State Troopers earlier in the week).

The paper included the picture on the right. I'm not sure I would be smiling if the police were ransacking my trunk with a shotgun.

Alaina G. Levine and the academic etiquette of butter

I subscribe to the RSS feed for Inside Higher Ed (sort of a freebie Chronicle knockoff). This morning, they published an essay by Alaina G. Levine, a director of special projects of the University of Arizona's College of Science, concerning manners.

She begins her tale by describing an anomaly...

A gorgeous, well-dressed man had claimed the chair to my right at the table. There are plenty of good-looking academics, but few of them show up to a scholarly conference impeccably dressed in a three-piece pin-stripped suit, matching tie tack and cuff links, and shoes as shiny as mirrors. My reaction upon observing this unusual creature outside his native habitat? This is going to be a mighty fine lunch.

However, her Prince Charming quickly revealed himself to be Lurch. This ogre reached across the table, stuck his (hairy) hand in the bread basket, and then "spread mountains of butter on its entire spherical surface, until the roll ceased to be no longer." Holy [ fill in a noun of your choice]! Apparently at this banquet, they served a chemically enhanced butter that leads to the chemical decomposition of wheat and glutten. This twit should have known better... than to put butter on a roll at a professional banquet. The clod!

And she goes on

Dr. Suit’s fingers were smeared with butter and when he appeared satisfied that his masterpiece, the Ball o’ Butter, was complete, he then commenced gorging on it, one huge buttery bite at a time. He shifted said Ball o’ Butter between hands, licking his once perfectly manicured fingers as he went. I quickly lost my appetite (for the food and the man).

The truth begins to emerge. It appears that she was planning on doing some intensive networking with this fellow after the event. But his hideous table manners (eating butter on a roll) broadcast his inadequacies for all to see. Levine wonders if this is the way this dude acts on job interviews, or having lunch with his dean. She uses this set-up to instruct the rest of us on how we should behave at all times.

1. Smile and remember other actions to take during the first interaction. (I presume this includes not telling our interactant that her breath stinks, or that her superority complex is unbecoming a colleague).
2. Keep your handshake quick, firm and dry. ["The shake should employ two pumps up and down, and then get the heck out of there."]
   
3. Place that napkin on your lap ["The napkin will stay on your lap the entire time you are sitting there, even after the mal is complete." -- apparently, you are not to eat anything that might require dabbing; if you are soiled, discretely use the table linen].
4. Harness the silverware [Just like at the Wedding, outside in... I guess]
5. Utilize the b-d rule for triumph over the bread plate [this is too convoluted to comment on]
6. Don't reach or grab, just pass [ok]
7. Consume your bread in no less than an eon. ["The courteous way to dine on bread is to tear off a bite-size piece, butter on that morsel, and pop it in your mouth. Chew swallow, and repeat." - To which I saw.... give me a freaking break.
   

Levine is convinced that conformity with these arbitrary rules of high culture and etiqute will lead to professional success.

The reality is that scholarly strength can get you in the door, but proper etiquette and manners will seal the deal, and ultimately, elevate your academic credentials. So the next time you have an important function, wear a great suit, shine your shoes, and make sure you hone your business etiquette skills before you go.

What a load of horsecrap. Look, I would never dispute that manners matter. But what are they really used for? I believe that Levine's style of etiqute is a classist bourguois code of conduct used to sort the upper-crust from us common folk. Pierre Bourdieu wrote about this in Distinction. This is an elaborate power game which when boiled down to its source, is empty of meaning.

I avoid these stuffy, pretentious, events like the plague. I don't think you can learn much about other people in these stifflingly formal envirnoments. I went on 7 job interviews last year. I never learned much about the job at the stuffy dinners (except that some of my would-be colleagues like to drink); I spent most of them terrified that everything I did was going to be critiqued later. I learned much more (and presumably my hosts learned more about me) at the informal get togethers. On one trip, I stayed an extra day to save the school some money on airfare. The department chair invited me to her home for dinner and conversation with some other faculty. This was wonderful... all the pretention was dropped and learned what it would be like to live and work with these people.

But then again, it must work for Alaina G. Levine.

Sondheim for students

Although I think all four people who read this blog also read Chris Uggen, I'm passing along a rather funny video link he provided today.

In the annals of bad marketing

I recieved an email this evening from United Airlines

We'd like to remind you that time is running out on the invitation to join Ameniti^®, United's exclusive travel club that was designed especially for you – the frequent traveler who expects world-class service and appreciates excellent value.

It appears for the small sum of $300 a year, I can:

1. Bring a companion for free (everytime I purchase an unrestricted full fare ticket).
2. Get double miles
3. Get 25,000 miles just for signing up.

Of course this does nothing for someone like me who:

1. Never purchases unrestricted full fare tickets.
   
2. Has thus far been unable to fruitfully redeem the miles already accumulated (I have something like 75,000 miles banked at Northwest and have been denied every time I've wanted to upgrade to first class, or tried to use the miles for a round-trip domestic ticket.
3. Have little reason to fly United Airlines.

Other than that, I suppose this is an appropriate marketing ploy.

...everybody is for it, except maybe the students

So says James Renfield in a short essay on the Discussion Class (hat tip to Rex at Savage Minds). Renfield writes that while he is in favor of discussion-oriented teaching methods, he finds himself using them less.

one of my students said that he found the previous two classes very helpful. When he said, "You took control," I replied, "You mean I was lecturing." The student who happened to be standing next to him said, "Oh, that's what that's called."

I have a similar reaction to the lecture / discussion continuum. In graduate school, I was convinced that lecture is an evil tool of indoctrination and domination. I became convinced (somewhat self-righteously, which was the currency of my grad program) that learning should be discursive, multivocal, and nuanced. We were into giving everyone voice. However, now that I'm doing this stuff for a full time gig, I'm starting to recognize that a discussion, in order to be productive, needs to be anchored to some kind of authoritative structure.

Renfield references this fear of authority (or in his words, hierarchy) in pedagogy. This distrust of hierarchy is something to be celebrated:

One of the great discoveries of postclassical civilization is that every soul is valuable; everyone has something to say; everyone deserves to be heard. We talk about this when we talk about learning from our students. This is one of the things we teachers say, always with a tone of self-satisfaction.

But free-wheeling ungrounded discussions seem to fail the learning objective. I recall sitting in a discussion-oriented course taught by a colleague where students were offering opinions left and right. Many of these opinions reflected a fundamental ignorance of broader context and specific social dynamics. Sure, as the instructor, I tried to raise these issues discursively; but when all opinions have equal weight, few took my points for what they were: explicit corrections, not suggestions.

Renfield contrasts the free-wheeling, let a thousand flowers bloom discussions with the hole in the board method (characterized by Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off). This is discussion in name only... the instructor knows what the right answer is and asks the class to fill in the blank. I used this format today...

me: does anyone know what form of crime is the most costly in terms of property loss?

student1: Burglary?

me: nope, not Burglary

student 2: Arson?

me: nope, something much more benign

student 3: White Collar Crime?

me: we're getting warmer, but that form of crime typically is restricted to elites...

And so it went on for a few minutes before someone finally hit upon occupational theft. This can be an effective way to keep a class engaged; but I find it often backfires as I ask vague, poorly worded questions and students tire of the "guess what Colyer is thinking" game.

We typically see lecture contrasted with discussion. Some argue that there is a disconnect between the learner and the instructor... that lecture is mechanical. Renfeild counters this argument by pointing to one of his favorite teachers, who made exclusive use of the lecture method.

He had extraordinary classes in which he improvised his lectures and was so interactive with the students that they felt part of the process the whole time. At the end of ninety minutes, I'd be astonished to realize that nobody had said a word except Henry. He was learning from his students what it was he could get them to understand, or what he could get away with.

This is the kind of lecturer I aspire to be. I mostly teach large (80 to 100 student) sections of Criminology and Criminal Justice. In the past, particularly in Criminology, I lectured mechanically. I outlined lists and the students copied them down. There was very little dynamic going on. This semester, I'm making a real effort to lecture by pursuing a question. Undoubtedly, I'm going to keep using the Ben Stein hole in the board method... but I will try to be flexible in letting the question emerge as the class moves forward.

I'm glad I found Renfield's essay. His website also includes several other short essays about pedagogy in the University. I'm going to do some more browsing before preparing my next class.

Albany, Airlines, Amtrak, and Annoyances

I'm planning on traveling to Albany this fall for a symposium on the future of death penalty research. My friend Janet has graciously offered to let me crash at her house (big scarry dog not withstanding).

According to Mapquest, the drive from Morgantown to Albany is roughly 8 hours. While not a horrible drive, that's more time than I want to spend in the car for a work-related thing. So, I started pricing out alternative options.

Flying

I was pleasantly surprised. I can buy a plane ticket for less than $300. Though this will involve driving to Pittsburgh (70 minutes), hopping a puddle-jumper to Dulles, and then flying a big plane to Albany. The last time I checked into airfare for this trip, a ticket couldn't be had for less than $400. I'll have to strongly consider it.

However, with the new airport security hassles... one must be at the airport ungodly early. With the connection and layover, the flight will take nearly 4 hours. Getting to the airport 2 hours early bumps us up to 6 hours and then the 70 mile drive to Pittsburgh during rush hour bumps us up to more than 7 hours. Alternatives are looking attractive.

Amtrak

Well if its going to take me several hours regardless of my transportation, I figured I'd check out the train. For $180, I can board a train in Pittsburgh at 7:00 a.m. and arrive in New York City at 5:00 p.m., then wait 2 hours for a northbound train to Albany. I think I'll drive.

Rock your socks off

I just discovered that the greatest rock-n-roll band in the world is making a movie.

Hail the D.

How far we've come

I was reading old newspapers yesterday in the Archives and came across the following announcement in the January 9, 1947 edition of the Logan (WV) Banner.

The P.T.A. is screening an entertaining and informative film this Saturday: How to get the most out of your refridgerator.

I wish that film were available in the archives.

Music for procrastination

I'm in a singer-songwriter groove right now. One of the best places to purchase this genre of music is Paste Music. Paste publishes a magazine that includes a free CD sampler in every issue. It was through that magazine that I discovered Ric Hordinski's amazing ambient guitar work. The Paste Music store makes available a handful of free Mp3s from its catalog. Over the weekend I discovered a new artist (well, new to me): Jonathan Rundman.

One of the free Mp3 titled My Apology was from Rundman's concept album Sound Theology. (Mp3 should be available through that link). Rundman oddly reminds me of chaste, male, Liz Phair. There are imperfections in his voice that work with the music and he takes chances lyrically. In this song, he is making his confession.

i'm sorry for being so cynical
but i'm surrounded by bigots and fools
who say your love is a heavenly paycheck
and faith is all about rules
but i'm guilty of going the opposite way
in the things i do and i say
when i carelessly discount my freedom
and i sit here cheapening grace

Check it out.

Boy I wish this were true.

Bill Mallonee sings:

why is joy something i must steal
starving skeletons looking for a meal
out in the graveyard the church bells peal
earth has no sorrow heaven can't heal

I didn't do nothing illegal or anything like that,

So says former Auburn University tailback and alleged sociology student Carnell Williams. Last week the New York Times published a story suggesting that professor Thomas Petee provided independent study instruction to 18 football players in the 2004-2005 academic year. Collectively, these athletes earned a 3.31 GPA in Petee's classes but only a 2.14 in their other classes.

I first learned about the story from Jeremy who wrote:

the open secret that I didn't appreciate when I got into this business is that, at many (most? Virtually all?) places, sociology counts on lazy, lost, last-resort-looking and otherwise low-achieving students as an important source of revenue--which isn't to say we don't strive hard to lure bright students as well, as long as they aren't too politically conservative--and that's a kind of systematic bargain that in the aggregate makes abuse and publicized incidents like this every once in awhile inevitable.

As for Cadillac not doing "nothing" wrong... well, er, Mr. Williams, I can only presume that Petee did not grade your grammar. As for grade manipulation and football eligibility, I can only sigh. When I was at Syracuse, I remember a fellow graduate student complaining about athletic department pressure (I have no way of verifying that she was pressured; but I also have no reason to disbelieve her story). I can honestly say that I've never been pressured by an athletic department to boost an athlete's grade; and I believe I give every student the grade their work deserves.

I'm becoming convinced that big-time athletics should not commingle with academics. I say this as a football fanatic. As my wife will testify, from September until January, I spend every Saturday glued to my television watching college football. I played college football (NAIA, Division II). In fact, I wouldn't have gotten into college without football. I was admitted to college on academic probation thanks to the football team's lobbying. I was a poor student in High School with a lackluster SAT. It was in football that I first realized that I wasn't dumb. It's an incredibly complex game involving coordination of 11 people running full speed and reacting to 11 other people also moving at full speed. You can't be an idiot and play college football. In short, football has been very, very, good to me (that is, if we discount the 5 knee operations).

Yet, from where I sit now, college football seems to be a distraction. Not just for the athletes but for non-athletes too. ESPN is coming to town on Thursday September 14th for a 7:30 p.m. game vs. Maryland. I teach a Criminology class from 4:00 to 5:15 on Thursday evenings. Starting at around noon on that day the University will begin closing parking lots and preparing for the 60,000 people coming to campus. The traffic gridlock will start right around the time my class begins. At least one student will plead with me to cancel class on "gameday". I'll refuse and teach the 20 or so students (my enrollment is 100) who consider their classes more important than getting a good seat at the ball game. Last winter, a student actually criticized me on my evaluations for having class on the day of the Backyard Brawl basketball matchup between WVU and Pitt. I was criticized for doing my job!

I wish there was a way out of this cognitive dissonance. I will continue to watch college football and basketball. I will continue to hold class on the night of big nationally televised athletic contests. [Indeed, I'll probably go home after teaching the empty room and watch the game on ESPN]. But I do wish that we could figure out our priorities.

ASA Registration Fees

Is it just me, or did ASA significantly raise their registration fees for the annual meeting? The last time I went to ASA (as a registrant) the fee's were less than $50 for students. This year, students pay $65 and "Regular" members pay $165. I hope we get a decent tote bag this year for 135 clams.

Tragedy at Taylor

Taylor University, my alma mater (class of 1994) is in the news. Five students were killed in an accident on April 6th. A tractor trailer crossed the median of I-69 just miles from the Upland, Indiana campus. Earlier this week, we learned that two of these students were misidentified. I can't begin to imagine how awful this must be for both families. In one case, a family's hopes have been crushed; not only must they go through the grieving process, but they also have invested an incredible amount of emotional energy and worry wishing for the recovery of their loved one. In the other case, a family who thought they had burred their loved one, is told their daughter has been alive all this time.

I don't typically comment on these things. My heart goes out to all the families involved as well as the broader Taylor community. I also feel for the Marion County coroner, an elected official who lacks a medical background. He's become the scapegoat in this tragedy; with some asking why there was no forensic identification efforts. It appears to me that this misidentification is the product of multiple factors, which can not be reduced to one person or one official. This case illustrates how institutional linkages (public safety, medical, university public relations, and media among others) can function like a child's game of telephone.

Don't feed the men

I'm accompanying a collegue who teaches an inside out course at a State prison nearby. The course involves several inside students (who are incarcerated) and several outside students who are entrolled in this senior level seminar. I'll probably have more to post about this at a later date.

On the first night of class, the outside students were taken on a tour of the facility. For many of us (myself included) this was a first experience inside the walls of a prison. The most uncomfortable dimension of the tour for me was the recognition that these men have no privacy. We walked through housing units where these men live their lives without asking them if they minded. They were gawked at (some gawked right back) and scrutinized.

As we left one of the housing units, I heard one man shout out: "Don't feed the men".

Stata vs. SPSS, act 1

My colleagues here often ask me why I don't like to use SPSS*. I have a hard time explaining to them why I use Stata**, a package not widely used at this institution and not supported by our statistical support people. Fortunately for me, sociologist and short-fiction blogger Jeremy Freese concisely articulates what I've been unable to explain:

At first I worked with SPSS, which I found bewildering because it seemed designed to encourage users to do things in cumbersome and self-defeating way. Then, one bright day, I discovered Stata 5, and after like a forty-some-hour manuals-and-keyboarding-binge, all was bliss.

My experience is similar. I learned a number of neat SPSS programming tricks at ICPSR where I worked with one of the smartest people I've ever met. However, the more SPSS code that I wrote, the more frustrated I got with the packages limitation. As Jeremy writes, it forces you to do things in a cumbersome, repetitive way. SPSS doesn't do arrays well; it's loops are clunky; and the processing is slow. My mentor at ICPSR showed me how to use a powerful text-editor to eliminate some of the tedium in writing tedious code. But, I was convinced there must be more! I found SAS to be a better tool for these sorts of tasks. However, the learning curve on SAS was way too steep. I invested about the same amount of time trying to pick up SAS and Stata. The difference: at the end of these couple of days, I could use Stata to accomplish necessary tasks. As for SAS, I had to keep asking people for help.

* Leaving alone for a moment the fact that technically I'm an ethnographer and mutter my way through most regression tables.

** We also will leave aside the incredible price differential between these programs. Stata has an affordable price-point for student's or others with an academic affiliation. SAS and Stata seem to be pricing themselves to outfits with deep pockets.

The unbearable likeness of facebook

A student that I taught at my previous institution encouraged me to get a facebook account. To humor her I did. But after a colleague complained that her students were getting other students to sign them in* via facebook, I decided to troll through the WVU facebook stuff.

I come away from this experience with one word of advice:

If you seek a career in law enforcement, you probably should not post a picture of yourself hitting a bong on a public website.

Call me old fashioned... But jeez.


* It's tough to take attendance when you have 140 students in a classroom. Those who decide to take attendance often use a sign-in sheet. Given the ease by which unscrupulous students can have others forge their name, I've given up on that practice.

Wild and wonderful

Wild and wonderful
Originally uploaded by samhdaman.

In 1977, Kai Erikson published Everything in its path, a study of how a man made flood destroyed several communities along Buffalo Creek in Logan County, West Virginia. I am starting a small follow-up study and went to Logan County last weekend. I checked into my hotel on Thursday and found this towel waiting for me. There are some parts of West Virginia which are a bit different, I guess.

Evidence that I'm not well traveled

Several bloggers have been posting their Visited States maps. Here's mine:



create your own visited states map

You can also do a world map; but in my case it would just show North America, so why bother?

Peter Berger on the state of Sociology

I just returned from an enjoyable 3 days at the Eastern Sociological Society's annual meeting. One session, a conversation with Peter Berger, gave me a lot too chew on. Berger's style of sociology attracted me to the discipline. Two books in particular sparked my imagination in a way that nothing else did: Invitation to Sociology & The Sacred Canopy.

Robert Wuthnow, another sociologist for whom I have great respect led the discussion. The first question pertained to Berger's most famous book (written with Thomas Luckmann), The Social Construction of Reality. There, Berger & Luckmann demonstrated that what we take for reality is filtered through socially situated interpretations. Wuthnow asked Berger if he is attracted to the contemporary constructivist branch of social theory, which if taken to the extreme, allows for equality of all competing interpretations. Berger responded that he's uncomfortable with such a free ranging relativism. The original body of theory never embraced relativism; it simply tried to show how human beings construct meaning within relatively confined social spaces. These meanings do not negate the objective realities which trigger them. [During the Q & A period, a debate about objectivity developed].

Wuthnow asked Berger if he thought there were any points where our discipline took a wrong turn. Berger replied that two come to mind:

1. The 1950s brought on the Lazarsfeldian style of quantitative analysis which emphasizes variables and measurement. As these methods gained hegemony, they limited knowledge to that which is produced statistically.
   
2. In the late 1960s, the cultural revolution led to an infusion of ideology into sociology. The social scientist came to be an agent of movements; rather than a scholar who comments on them.

He continued to pursue this theme of objectivity.

Be wary of any initiatives in sociology where the answer is pre-set by the way the question was raised.

I think Berger's assessment is quite accurate. When asked what we should be doing about this, he suggested sociologists should select the big complex problems for study (inequality, latent effects of pluralism, etc), but they should also stick to being sociologists (rather than movement coordinators or activists). His view is not that we shouldn't study politically contested issues, but only that we allow our positionality to dictate our findings.

Night classess

... are miserable.

There must be someone who is good at managing a 3-hour, one-shot class. If you (dear reader) know of strategies for making a 3-hour course work, feel free to let me know what it is.

Shhhhh, don't tell Michelle

In an article titled Sex and the Single Scientist members of the U.S. House of Representatives pontificated on the difficulty of promoting science:

Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, a Michigan Republican, noted that “pretty girls don’t date nerds.”

I must be an outlier. I'm people tell me I'm a nerd and my wife (who is very pretty) dated me.

*shrug*

Google, Phil Donahue, and the Born Criminal

University of Minnesota Sociologist & Criminologist Christopher Uggen recently blogged about using short video clips to augment lectures. One resource mentioned in that post is Google Video. This is the new service offered by Google serving up video streams of varying lengths on all sorts of things.

Since I'm teaching today about the foundations of positivist criminology and its linkages to Eugenics, I thought I'd see what a search for "Born Criminal" would turn up in the google search engine.

I think either the Google folks need to tweak their algorithm, or there's more to Phil Donahue than meets the eye! .

In the "speaking too soon" department....

I've been reading some of Ceasare Lombroso's translated writings in preparation for my Criminology course this semester. Lombroso is considered the founder of the Italian school of Criminal Anthropology, a program emphasizing crime's biological and hereditary sources.

Though early in his career, he advanced a theory of atavism, he moderated on this view later in his life. In 1899, he published Crime, It's Causes and Remedies, which was translated by H.P. Horton and reprinted in English by Little, Brown, and Company in 1918. In this book, Lombroso tried to synthesize everything he knew about crime. The first chapter is devoted to climatology effects on crime (e.g., extreme heat or cold).

Lombroso argued that extreme cold temperatures mitigate against violence and aggression. I found the following passage some what amusing (having the benefit of more than a century of hindsight.

This explains why, not only despotic Russia, but also the liberal Scandinavian countries, have rarely experienced revolutions (Lombroso 1899 [1918], pg 3).

Well, one out of two ain't bad.

Proposal: A Talking Stick for the Faculty Meeting

So I just got out of a faculty meeting. I never thought I'd be willing to suggest this, but.... Roberts Rules of Order might actually be a good thing.

oy.