Ch. 28: The Epistemological Challenge of the Early Attack on “Rate Construction”

1. Ch. 28: The Epistemological Challenge of the Early Attack on “Rate Construction” Troy Duster

2. epistemological crisis • epistemology: the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, addressing questions such as: • What is knowledge? • How is knowledge acquired? • How do we know what we know? • epistemological crisis occurs when an event forces us to question the foundations of knowledge, what we accept as true

3. 2 major perspectives on deviance at midcentury shared basic assumptions, or epistemological framework • Columbia tradition, shaped by functionalism and represented by Merton, studied deviance at macro- and mid-level, relying on official statistics • Chicago school focused on micro-level, and studied deviance/deviants in natural settings to see what deviance was “really like” • Both shared accepted existing system of classification of deviance

4. In the 60s, researchers began raising a different set of questions • What are the social processes that explain why some get classified and others don’t – even though both are engaged in the same or similar behavior? • They studied the social construction of crime rates, i.e., rate construction • observed and recorded how official statistics are compiled • the site of rate construction, where actors make decisions about what to sort and classify, became the focal point of investigation

5. Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets Sudhir Venkatesh, Penguin Books, 2008

6. “Chicago School” of Sociology • Emerged in 1920s – 1930s • Specialized in urban sociology • Used ethnographic techniques, immersed selves in local settings • Focused on micro-level interaction • Emphasized individual’s relation to immediate social environment, small units like family, workplace, neighborhood, local community groups • Saw sociology leading to social reform

7. African Americans in Chicago • “Great Migrations” from 1910-1960 brought hundreds of thousands of blacks from the American South to Chicago • White hostility and population growth combined to create a black ghetto on the “South Side” of Chicago • The “Black Belt” of Chicago was the chain of neighborhoods on the South Side where 3/4s of the city's African American population lived by the mid-20th century

8. William Julius Wilson • African American Professor of Sociology at U of Chicago (1972 -1996), then Harvard • The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1978) • argues that significance of race is waning, and an African-American's socioeconomic class is comparatively more important in determining his/her life chances • The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1987) • When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (1996)

9. The “culture of poverty” • Tried to explain why generations of poor people reproduce same circumstances • 1965 “Report on the Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (aka “Moynihan report,” after Sen. Moynihan, D, NY) investigated why African Americans were not participating in the “affluent society” and highlighted the following factors: • Weak family structure: "the fundamental problem is that of family structure, that the negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling“ • Rejection of values around self-reliance and work

10. “Culture of poverty” critique • Critics charged thesis “blames the victim” rather than “the system” or institutionalized racism • i.e., deeply embedded, historical racial discrimination • Critics say problem is not black culture (i.e., values & norms) but socioeconomic structures • prefer structuralist theories of poverty • Today, researchers have re-conceptualized culture and look at interaction between “culture” & “structure” to explain persistent poverty (see NYT, 10/17/10)

11. The crack epidemic • Crack epidemic decimated urban neighborhoods, in 1980s, peaking early in the 1990s • First “crack babies” born in 1984 • Most children from the new generation stayed away from crack and never tried it themselves. Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist from Carnegie Mellon University, claims 4 factors account for the end of the epidemic: 1) getting guns out of the hands of kids 2) shrinking of the crack markets and their institutionalization 3) robustness of the economy – “There are jobs for kids now who might otherwise be attracted to dealing" 4) criminal justice response, or as he puts it, "incapacitation related to the growth of incarceration"

12. Crime and mass incarceration • 1 in 31 adults in US is now in prison or jail or on probation or parole • Correctional control rates are concentrated by gender, race & geography: • 1 in 18 men (5.5%) vs 1 in 89 women (1.1%) • 1 in 11 black adults (9.2%); 1 in 27 Hispanic adults (3.7%);1 in 45 white adults (2.2 %) • Rates even higher in some neighborhoods: in one block-group of Detroit’s East Side, for example, 1 in 7 adult men (14.3%) is under correctional control • Georgia, where it’s 1 in 13 adults, leads the top 5 states that also include Idaho, Texas, Massachusetts, Ohio and the District of Columbia (Pew Center on the States, “1 in 31,” 2008) • Recent books by Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow, 2010) and Douglas Blackmon (Slavery by Another Name, 2008) argue mass incarceration of blacks is parallel to enslavement and peonage laws

13. What about blocked access to the “American Dream”? • Or is the problem that Robert Taylor residents shared American values – the American dream – yet did not have the means to realize them? • According to Merton’s “anomie theory” (aka opportunity theory), when there's a mismatch between culturally accepted goals and the legitimate means to achieve them, anomie (or strain) will result • One response to anomie is "innovation," where people strive toward culturally prescribed goals, but by illegitimate (often criminal) means • Gangs are a typical example

14. Is Black America now “splintering”? • In Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), EugeneRobinson, carves modern American blacks into 4 categories: • Transcendants: wealthy blacks, composed chiefly of athletes, singers and media darlings • Abandoned: a "large minority" of African Americans that sociologists used to call the “underclass” in the 1980s • Emergents: people who are biracial, children of parents from Africa or the African diaspora, or, like Obama, both • Black mainstream: a "middle-class majority with a full ownership stake in American society"

15. WHAT IS FIELD RESEARCH? • Field researchers directly observe and participate in natural social settings • Examine social world “up close” • Field researchers work w/ qualitative data • There are several kinds: • Ethnography • Participant observation • Informal “depth” interviews • Focus groups

16. Ethnography • ethno: people or folk • graphy: to describe something • ethnography: a detailed description of insider meanings and cultural knowledge of living cultures in natural settings

17. Studying people in the field • Field researchers use a variety of techniques, but share common principles: • naturalism: the principle that we learn best by observing ordinary events in natural setting, not in a contrived, invented or researcher-created setting • flexibility: field research is less structured than quantitative research and follows a nonlinear path

18. Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago

19. Robert Taylor Homes

20. The “gallery,” Robert Taylor Homes

21. Entering the field (cont’d) • field site: any location or set of locations in which field research takes place. It usually has ongoing social interaction and a shared culture. • gatekeeper: someone with the formal or informal authority to control access to a field site. • informant: a member in a field site with whom a researcher develops a relationship and who tells the researcher many details about life in the field site.

22. Entering the field • Presentation of self • consider how you dress • want to fit in but be 'yourself' • Amount of disclosure • it’s a continuum: covert to open • Selecting a social role • formal and informal • it may take time, role may change • can't control it entirely, gender, race, age, etc

23. Being in the field • Learn the ropes • normalize: how a field researcher helps field site members redefine social research from unknown and potentially threatening to something normal, comfortable and familiar • Build rapport • Negotiate continuously • Decide on a degree of involvement • “Degree of involvement” ranges from detachment to “going native” • going native: when a field researcher drops a professional researcher role and loses all detachment to become fully involved as a full field site member