Donald T. Campbell was a psychologist in the 1970s. During this time, the belief emerged that society was a social engineering project that could be planned and evaluated. The general idea was that if you collected enough data, you could plan and control social change in a way that led to desired results. Economists from USAID believed this about economic development, military planners in Vietnam believed it, and Sociologists in the War on Poverty believed it. …
Month: April 2015
Social Class and Food from Around the Web
I grew up eating what the educated like to call “junk” food and “trash” food, mostly it was “poor food,” that came from boxes and cans. It wasn’t always like this in my family, we had short periods of feast and long periods of famine, and when times were good (my mom “marrying up’) we ate fresh, home cooked food. When times were bad however (going broke after losing the family business), it was hamburger in a five-pound tube and no label, mac and cheese in a box.…
Monetizing Mindfulness
Maybe the word “mindfulness” is like the Prius emblem, a badge of enlightened and self-satisfied consumerism, and of success and achievement. If so, not deploying mindfulness — taking pills or naps for anxiety, say, or going out to church or cocktails — makes you look sort of backward or classless. Like driving a Hummer.
I came across a good critique of how the Buddhist concept of mindfulness has been co-opted by the PMC (professional middle class) and other groovy types looking to sell stuff to the MBA’s.…
Expressing Outrage and Lynching: Vigilantism in a Tanzanian Village, 1997
(Adapted from Tony Waters, When Killing is a Crime, Lynne Rienner Publishers 2007).
By Essau Magugudi in Kigoma
NOVEMBER 27, 1997, is deeply etched in the memories of Shunga villagers. It was on this day that they took law into their own hands and hacked to death three bandits who they suspected of carrying out acts of robbery in villages surrounding refugee settlements of Mutabira and Muyovozi.
Such retribution was unprecedented…”
I found the above article story while cruising the internet in1999, after typing in the keyword “Shunga” on a lark.…
Hatfield and McCoy Feud–The Real Thing
(Extract from When Killing is a Crime by Tony Waters (2007). Lynne Rienner Publisher).
The Hatfield and McCoy feud is legendary in the United States, having become the subject of film and television drama. However, the events do have a root in a real feud, which took place across the Tug River, which forms the boundary between West Virginia and Kentucky in the latter half of the 19th century. The origins of the feud are vague.…
Something is Wrong with You. You’re Broken. You’re a burden.
By Guest Writer: Eric Chisler
I just got the most profound sense of grief upon reading this. I’m tearful and shaken. I think I just realized the moment that I stopped living in my body, the moment I became convinced that I was defined by what goes on in my head.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 7 or 8 years old. The same year I went to Chuck-E-Cheese’s for my birthday party and then my first trip to Disneyland the following summer, I was taking 20mg of Ritalin.…
Carlos
Late December 2006
This morning, while sitting at one of the tables by the pool visiting with a resident of the complex, I noticed Palm fronds falling from the canopy of green above me. I followed the thwup, thwup, thwup? of a heavy tool beating in the air to the cascade of fronds falling to the sandy soil below and finally, looked up into the tree from which they fell.
A ladder, probably 20-feet tall, rested against the narrow trunk of a tall Palm and atop it, a thin, grizzled man in cowboy boots, blue jeans, a colorful long sleeved shirt, and baseball cap, stood.…
Albanian Blood Revenge
(Extract from When Killing is a Crime (2007) by Tony Waters. Lynne Rienner Publishers)
During the early 20th century, the small Balkan country of Albania was a remote corner of the Ottoman Empire, a principality ruled by a warlord king after World War I, and occupied by Italy during World War II. For most of the century it was a reclusive Stalinist state sealed off from the rest of the world, and ruled by one of the most severe, controlling, and totalitarian governments.…
The Rochambo of Paradox, Conundrums, Dilemmas, and School Bureaucracies
The below is pp. 185-186 (Chapter 9) of my book Schooling, Childhood, and Bureaucracy: Bureaucratizing the Child. Other extracts can be read here at Ethnography.com
here, (Leaky First Graders, etc.)
here, (How the Rich Educate their Children: A Swiss Hogwarts)
and here. (Children as Raw Material on the Bureaucratic Assembly Line)
Or better yet, you can ask your library to get you a copy, hopefully by getting them to buy a hardcover copy from my publisher, or a used copy from Amazon.com…
Why isn’t ethnography.com more focused on ethnography? Um, ‘cause I don’t feel like it.
I like to use the categories on our homepage to surf through old posts, looking for oldies but goodies to re-post on slow days. I also like to read and think about anthropology and sociology and I can count on finding something here to get my mental juices flowing. And like Mark describes below, I like to think about social science in terms of strategy and innovation. I think that if you want to make it as an anthropologist or sociologist outside of academia, you have to adopt a “broader and more holistic approach” to ethnographic work.…
Classism in Academia
This was originally published at Class Action in September 2012.
Classism in Academia
A little over two years ago, a student called me a ‘cunt’ in front of 38 other students. My academic employer did little to protect me and allowed a local, “progressive” paper to attack me in a newspaper/Internet article. I believe this had everything to do with my being a popular but adjunct, community college teacher (earning about $18,000 per year).…
How Class Differences Shape Love and Marriage
I just ordered and am very excited to soon be reading, The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages by Jessi Streib. Books about marriage are plentiful but an ethnographic account of cross-class marriages is something new. If you click this link, it will direct you to a Washington Post article written by Streib that gives you a taste of what the book is about.
Couples argue about money, sex, and housework most frequently but class differences are sure to affect those variables.…