A review of my 2012 book Schooling, Childhood, and Bureaucracy: Bureaucratizing the Child was just published in Contemporary Sociology. The book review was generally pretty nice—so I recommend people read it (sorry to non-university people, it’s mostly behind a paywall). The reviewer highlighted Chapter 4 which is about child development in the context of standardized school grades as being particularly noteworthy. Here is a brief extract from that chapter. You can read a pre-publication version of Chapter 1 here.…
Author: Tony Waters
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania. In the past, his main interests have been international development and refugees in Thailand, Tanzania, and California. This reflects a former career in the Peace Corps (Thailand), and refugee camps (Thailand and Tanzania). His books include: Crime and Immigrant Youth (1999), Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan (2001), The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath of the Marketplace (2007), When Killing is a Crime (2007), and Schooling, Bureaucracy, and Childhood: Bureaucratizing the Child (2012). His hobby is trying to learn strange languages–and the mistakes that that implies. Tony is a prolific academic, you can read more of his work at academia.edu.or purchase one (or more!) of his books from Amazon.com.
Mission Statements: Elite Harvard, Middle-Class Chico, and Working-Class Butte College
Education is an inherent paradox. At its most explicit, it assumes that students are trained for a fair, meritocratic, and competitive labor market in which learning is valued without reference to who they are or their social connections. This is why fair markets are “anonymous”….
But schools do not operate in anonymous markets. Schools emphasizing the visible honors of academic achievement, teacher-student relationships, are often the opposite. The tensions between the utility of skills in an anonymous labor market while monopolizing the distribution of visible status honors in the broader community is at the heart of the educational enterprise (see Weber 1920/2010).…
Gallows Tale V: Did Tanganyika’s Hangmen Go on Strike in 1924-1926?
Gallows File I The Extra “Whack”
Gallows File II Escape?
Gallows File III Are We Hanging the Right Man?
Gallows File IV The Advantages of Executing Locally!
Gallows File V: Did Tanganyika’s Hangmen Go on Strike?
…It must be remembered that quite apart from the question of gallows, the difficulty of persons to carry out the executions is exceedingly acute. A great number of people have the greatest abhorrence of the job, and no compulsion can be used where there is any conscientious objection.
The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 4
The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 4
A Ghostly Play in Five Acts
Featuring
Karl Marx, of London, England
Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany
Emile Durkheim of Paris, France
W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA
Special Guest Appearance
Charles Dickens of London
As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA
Act 4
Funerals
or
…Strictly in a business point of view… (A Christmas Carol)
This perhaps the most haunting part of our tale when Scrooge, who by now we have come to sympathize with, learns what a mess he has made of his life and what his impact on others has been.…
The PhD as an Existential Question???
Originally published here at e.com in August 2012.
To PhD or not to PhD, that is that a question for you? Well, at Ethnography.com we have years of unsolicited advice to those of wondering if all the uncertainties of grad school are for you or not.
For example those of you have lousy grades for any number of reasons, and question not your own capacity, but that of your chosen profession to give your application a second look, check out “Can Bad Grades and Graduate School Go Together?…
Of the Passing of the First-Born by W. E. B. DuBois
Editor’s Note: W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963) published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. It is a classic with respect to both general social theory, and race relations. Here is reposted one of the most important of the stories in that book “Of the Passing of the First-Born” about the death of DuBois infant son Burghardt. We of course recommend you read the whole book–it is in the public domain, and readily available on-line. …
Ethnography, Stigma, and Protecting a Potentially Spoiled Identity
Originally published here at e.com in April 2007. It’s one of my favorites and still makes me laugh out loud, I hope you enjoy it too. -Julie
This blog is about why ethnographer Erving Goffman’s observation of stigma are important not just to ex-cons, but also to professors like me on foreign exchange programs. Goffman, as many sociologists and anthropologists know, observed the maneuvers of the marginalized and stigmatized in society, and then wrote about how they thought about their disability.…
The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 3
The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 3
A Ghostly Play in Five Acts
Featuring
Karl Marx, of London, England
Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany
Emile Durkheim of Paris, France
W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA
Special Guest Appearance
Charles Dickens of London
As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA
Act 3
Fatherly Reminisces
or
If These Shadows Persist… (The Ghost of Christmas Present)
“Before we begin again, Charles, Mr.…
With or Without Scorn or Partiality? Why Politicians and Bureaucrats Don’t Get Along
There is always a tension between our political leaders, and the bureaucrats who implement the political policies. Civil servants are habituated to do a task “without scorn or partiality.” It does not matter who they punish, reward, or the task they undertake. They are to do it without passion, and without scorn or partiality.
But politicians are different: Their job is to seek control over the levers of power, by generating a passion in the people who will follow them.…
Gallows Tale IV: The Hanging File of Tanganyika, the Financial and Psychological Advantage of Executing Locally!
Bukoba and Mwanza are on the shore of Lake Victoria—and Mwanza was town nearest to the British colonial office and at the time probably the larger of the two cities. As a result in 1922, the police in Bukoba were required to hang the condemned prisoners in Mwanza, which involved having three prison officers transport the prisoner to his execution by the ferries that operated between the cities. In other words, four third class tickets from Bukoba to Mwanza, and three tickets back to Bukoba.…
The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 2
The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 2
A Ghostly Play in Five Acts
Featuring
Karl Marx, of London, England
Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany
Emile Durkheim of Paris, France
W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA
Special Guest Appearance
Charles Dickens of London
As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA
Act 2
This Matter of Love, Money, and Class
or
“These are but shadows of things that have been.”…
Children as Raw Material on the Bureaucratic Assembly Line
…
Children are the peculiar raw material which schools put on their production line. When they arrive at five years old, they are typically illiterate, innumerate, cannot locate themselves in the national order, and believe in the tooth fairy. As one teacher also noted, they are “leaky” in the sense that they excrete various bodily fluids unexpectedly during the day (Kozol 2007, 84). Thirteen years later, virtually all are literate, some can do calculus, and others volunteer to preserve an abstract national order in the military.